What happens when you get a chance of a lifetime to help one of your favorite screenwriters rewrite his romance script (because he just doesn’t do romance), and you happen to have a crush on him too? “The Rom-Commers” introduces us to Emma, an aspiring screenwriter who has been the sole caretaker of her father, but passes on the duties to her sister in order to take this chance of a lifetime writing gig — it’s her sister’s turn to put her dreams on hold for now.
I do think the character arc of Emma is believable for the most part. She’s an adult who deals with the aftermath of a traumatic childhood event which leaves her wanting to be accommodating and too self-sacrificing, believing she deserves to put her needs aside for others. As a person myself who often explores her helpful oldest-daughter/sibling and people pleasing tendencies, I resonated with Emma a bit.
The main characters had great banter — they are writers after all. However, I do know that sometimes the banter of super quirky characters can rub readers the wrong way or be “too good,” and leave you wondering if they are even real people. Emma was unapologetically herself, which I value in a main character, and also contributed to the great banter.
I enjoy Katherine Center books. They are fun, loving, and offer a bit of light while also dealing with harder topics. I will say that Katherine Center’s writing style, where there are breaks in the fourth wall, is sometimes interesting and at other-times off-putting, but it’s something a reader can get use to eventually.
Three words that describe this book: Enemies-to-lovers, Funny, A+ Banter
You might want to pick this book up if: You are a fan of romance novels and Emily Henry.
-Taira
This reader review was submitted as part of Adult Summer Reading. We will continue to share them throughout the year.
I’m in my Medicare Era. Dealing with signing up for the programs, researching what I need and how it affects my current group coverages. Open season. Social security. What if I get it wrong? Will I screw up the rest of my life? Then there is the inner voice that was cracking jokes at my age and my creaking knees. Dismissing that there is a future for me, repeating “too late, too late.” That’s internal ageism. I know what it is; I’m battling my inner cranky person by turning to some trusted resources, one of those being my library.
What is ageism? It is a type of discrimination based on a person’s age and usually based on stereotypes, misinformation, prejudices and lack of knowledge. It presents as elder abuse and as discrimination including in health care, the work place, language, the media and in emergency services. The term was first used in 1968 by Dr. Robert Butler, a gerontologist and the first director of the National Institute of Aging, equating ageism to racism and sexism. Although over half a century has passed, ageism remains a barrier that denies equal access to older folk, putting unfair limitations on older adults’ abilities to live to their fullest potential and devalues them as individuals.
The American Psychological Association warns that ageism is one of the last socially acceptable prejudices and this article includes some ideas to help people shift their perspective on aging. Continue reading “So When are You Going to Retire, Anyway?”
After playing the video game “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” and discovering that it originated from a book series, I’ve wanted to read them ever since — I’m glad I finally did! “The Last Wish” is a collection of short stories that follow the Witcher Geralt, who travels around fighting evil and helping people. I loved reading about the different characters, creatures and adventures that make up the Witcher universe. I also found that the little bits of humor spread throughout kept it fun. Now that I’ve read the first book, I can say that I enjoyed it immensely, and I’m looking forward to continuing the series. “The Last Wish” is a fantastic read for fantasy and Witcher fans alike.
Three words that describe this book: Fantasy, adventure, riveting
You might want to pick this book up if: You like fantasy adventure with some humor and likeable characters, or if you liked the Witcher games or show.
-Anonymous
This reader review was submitted as part of Adult Summer Reading. We will continue to share them throughout the year.
Here is a new DVD list highlighting various titles recently added to the library’s collection.
“Severance” – Season 1 – Website / Reviews
This psychological thriller series follows Mark Scout as he leads a team of employees who have undergone a surgical procedure to separate their work and personal memories.
“Conclave” – Website / Reviews
Based on the 2016 novel, this mystery/thriller follows Cardinal Lawrence who is tasked with one of the world’s most secretive and ancient events, participating in the selection of a new pope.
“Strange Darling” – Website / Reviews
In this horror/thriller written and directed by JT Mollner, nothing is what it seems when a twisted one-night stand spirals into a serial killer’s vicious murder spree.
“Anselm” – Website / Reviews
Wim Wenders’ documentary of painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer traces the artist’s path from his native Germany to his current home in France, in a career that spans more than five decades.
“Pinocchio” – Website / Reviews
Director Guillermo del Toro & stop-motion legend Mark Gustafson reimagine the classic story of a wooden puppet brought to life in this Academy Award-winning stop-motion musical tale.
Continue reading “New DVD List: January 2025”
Looking at how Americans use alcohol, it’s hard to pick a statistic. The data can be as specific and sensational as you want. Americans who reported increased drinking during COVID-19 lockdowns: 60%. The percentage of driving fatalities attributable to alcohol impairment in 2022: 32% or 13,524 deaths.
But there are softer numbers, too: 41% of U.S. adults reported that they were trying to drink less in 2024. More people are growing curious about sobriety, and where there is curiosity, there are books to recommend. I’ve gathered these titles for the reader who is curious about sobriety, evaluating their relationship with alcohol or interested in how other people have moved in and out of addiction.
Leslie Jamison’s book “The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath” travels through space and time; through science, memoir and myth; from the college apartment where she drinks alone, to the freezing car parked outside the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, to the storied scenes of dead writers who drank. She learns to find meaning in the mundanity of addiction narratives — our insistence on the singularity of our relationships to alcohol, she suggests, is where danger lies. Continue reading “Literary Links: Sober Curiosity”
For the First Thursday Book Discussion this February, climb aboard a research vessel and head to the Antarctic in “The Quickening: Antarctica, Motherhood and Cultivating Hope in a Warming World” by Elizabeth Rush.
We only have 200 years of human history in Antarctica, and most of it has been written by men and about men. These stories are fraught with failure and death, struggles to survive, science and exploration.
Into this history steps Elizabeth Rush, a woman who wants to write about Antarctica, the changing climate and motherhood. She brings nuance and empathy to keen observations on crucial endeavor. Her tone is hopeful.
In 2019, Elizabeth Rush set out with 57 scientists on an icebreaker headed for Antarctica. They spent the next 50-plus days studying “the doomsday glacier.” The Thwaites Glacier is significant for its sheer mass. If it melts, the water freed from its ice is enough to raise the sea level of the world by two feet. In addition, Thwaites is like a keystone in the local topography. The loss of this behemoth would destabilize the surrounding glaciers, causing more thawing, culminating in a devastating 10-foot rise in sea level — doomsday.
The 2019 expedition was first the research trip to study the glacier and look at the forces affecting it, with the hope of understanding its — and ultimately our own — fate.
Rush’s thorough reporting of the scientific mission combined with the perspective she brings as a reporter, a woman and a future mother provide plenty of fodder for discussion. Join us for the next First Thursday Book Discussion on February 6 at noon in the Columbia Public Library to delve into the subjects and themes Rush brings to light.
Below I’m highlighting some nonfiction books coming out in January. All of the mentioned titles are available to put on hold in our catalog and will also be made available via the library’s Overdrive website on the day of publication in eBook and downloadable audiobook format (as available). For a more extensive list of new nonfiction books coming out this month, check our online catalog.
Top Picks
“The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne” by Kate Winkler Dawson (Jan 7)
On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troubled past and a secret correspondence with charismatic Methodist minister Reverend Ephraim Avery was uncovered, more questions emerged. Was Sarah’s death a suicide… or something much darker? Determined to uncover the real story, Victorian writer Catharine Read Arnold Williams threw herself into the investigation as the trial was unfolding and wrote what many claim to be the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River. The murder divided the country and inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” — but the reverend was not convicted, and questions linger to this day about what really led to Sarah Cornell’s death. Until now. In “The Sinners All Bow,” acclaimed true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson travels back in time to nineteenth-century small-town America, emboldened to finish the work Williams started nearly two centuries before. Using modern investigative advancements — including “forensic knot analysis” and criminal profiling (which was invented 55 years later with Jack the Ripper) — Dawson fills in the gaps of Williams’s research to find the truth and bring justice to an unsettling mystery that speaks to our past as well as our present, anchored by three women who subverted the script they were given. Continue reading “Nonfiction Roundup: January 2025”
“The Anthologist” is a meandering meditation on poets, meter and style; a novel that light on plot and often stream-of-consciousness. I adore author Nicholson Baker’s “minutiae” books (“The Mezzanine,” “Room Temperature,” and “A Box of Matches”) but I’ve picked up few of his other works too. It’s easy to recognize that the same mind/voice that created a story like “The Mezzanine” is behind “The Anthologist,” but because this book is so predominantly focused on poetry, and that’s never been a huge interest for me, this tale didn’t capture me in the same way his minutiae ones did.
I will say I’m walking away from this reading better informed of, for example, what iambic pentameter really is as well as having some further insights into the lives and works of numerous poets (Ezra Pound doesn’t come out looking very good). I also am glad I listened to the audio version of this (read by Baker himself) because his cadence really helps me better understand some of the points he’s trying to make.
Three words that describe this book: calm, thoughtful, light
You might want to pick this book up if: you have a passion for poetry and want to dive into the argument for or against free verse.
-Xander
This reader review was submitted as part of Adult Summer Reading. We will continue to share them throughout the year.
“Wally Funk’s Race for Space” is a delightful meandering book — part travelogue, part homage to the space race and particularly women’s role in it, and partly a biography of a very memorable character. Wally Funk was one of the original Mercury 13, women who were tested at the same time as the Mercury Seven male astronaut corps in the 1960s, but ultimately denied the opportunity to go up in space by Congress. It would be 20 more years, in fact, before Sally Ride made her historic trip on the shuttle!
Wally, still living today, spent her post-Mercury 13 life working in aviation and trying to get up in space, eventually buying a ticket on one of the commercial space flight services that have been popping up over the last decade. She is also a Stephens College alumna, although how she got there is never really explained since she grew up in New Mexico.
This book captures Wally in a moment in time when she was working with British radio personality and author, Sue Nelson, to develop a podcast about women in space. Nelson presumably got Funk’s permission to include some of the details about her and her very big personality, but sometimes I was surprised at how very candid Nelson was about Funk (who definitely has some personality quirks).
Nonetheless, the portrait is affectionate and the details woven throughout about women, and Wally, in terms of space exploration, are fascinating. In some ways I feel like these women are the ‘frontierswoman’ of the 20th century, and encountered just as many challenges as the Oregon Trail pioneers in many ways. This book was published in 2019 — Wally finally made it up on the Blue Origin spacecraft in 2021.
Three words that describe this book: Quirky, captivating, info-packed
You might want to pick this book up if: You like women’s history or space history.
-Anonymous
This reader review was submitted as part of Adult Summer Reading. We will continue to share them throughout the year.
I wrote about new sewing machines in my last post. Now I want to discuss how my social media is also active with people learning thrifting and flipping skills. Many people plan to make cautious choices about clothing purchases in 2025 and hope to move away from fast fashion to more sustainable practices.
This is completely different from the movement 10 years ago when crafters were buying all the wool sweaters, washing them in hot water to felt them and turning them into mittens and scarves. No, this is in line with patching the holes in those sweaters or recrafting a maxi dress’ generous fabrics into something else. Exploring what is still good in your closet even if you are tired of it, and updating it by rebuilding it. Maybe also melding in the coordinating piece that is also left in the closet because it’s boring, if sturdy. Continue reading “Altering Thrifted Clothing”
