Hey there, comic fans! While we’re on a bit of a hot streak, why don’t we go ahead and do our first ever part two for an entry? For this segment, we’re going to go over five more “obscure” characters/teams that you might find interesting. I use quotation marks because, of course, there’s going to be someone out there who’s a graphic novel expert and thinks these entries are common knowledge. Well, good for them! For the rest of you, however, I hope these give you some new reading material. As always, some mature content might be involved. Let’s go! Continue reading “Quintessential Comics: Dive into Obscurity II”
Through intricately interwoven alternating perspectives, Jennifer Latham’s lightning-paced page-turner, “Dreamland Burning,” brings the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 to blazing life and raises important questions about the complex state of U.S. race relations — both yesterday and today. For more books about this and other related historical events, check out this list.
Register for a Zoom link to attend this online discussion for teens and adults on Thursday, December 2 from 12-1 p.m.
One of my favorite things about learning history is that it adds new dimension to the things I already enjoy, and this is especially true for food history. For example, I have always loved pumpkin pie, but it hits me differently knowing that I’m eating Sri Lankan tree bark mixed with a spicy root that can grow just about anywhere and was as common in medieval Europe as pepper. These flavors are complemented by an aromatic flower bud from an Indonesian evergreen and a seed whose origins were so jealously guarded that it was dipped in lime juice before it was sold or exported so no one could grow their own. (Those are cinnamon, ginger, cloves and nutmeg, respectively.) Every ingredient and every recipe we enjoy is born of a long journey, both geographical and historical, and 
there is an absolute feast of books that tell those stories. Continue reading “Literary Links: Food History”
As someone who loves books and fears fairies, I am part of the target audience for “The Absolute Book” by Elizabeth Knox. You probably are, too. (If you don’t currently fear fairies, you haven’t read the right books about them, and you’ve certainly never faced the consequences of entering (even unknowingly) a bargain with one. For example, perhaps you’re traipsing through an idyllic woodland in a doomed attempt to recover a monocle or ascot you lost the previous day while burying a cache of aged cheese, when a dapper young man calls out to you, “Yoo hoo, care for some aged cheese?” There’s no way you’re passing up free cheese, and now that it’s been brought up, you have a real hankering, and you’ve left your shovel at home, so you can’t very well dig up your cheese cache, and also, you’re beginning to suspect this young feller may have acquired his cheese by pilfering the stash you’d so carefully concealed, and accepting the cheese would give you the chance to compare it to the cheeses you’d buried, and, if it matches, give this lad a stern talking to about a burier’s honor and the digger’s code. So you graciously accept the cheese, compliment him on his monocle and ascot, compare the cheese to your memory, and realize it’s an exact match. You start to admonish him, but then he says some stuff about how in exchange for the cheese you’re now forever doomed to write preposterous and patience-testing introductions to your blog posts without realizing you’re doing so. He also offers his monocle in exchange for a “magically sealed guarantee that you will fulfill a darkest bargain” at a later date. After asking for another piece of cheese and impatiently agreeing to additional inscrutable terms as he presents them (you’re quite hungry, and could do with a long soak in the tub), you retire to your manor. Much to your relief, you find your blog posts are as sensical and relevant as ever. But even were his “darkest bargain” to hold, even if the stuff about “forever serving” and “suffering the emptiness of the bleakest evenings eternally for the amusement of the fae’s brood” is true, a being who extracts bargains in exchange for stolen goods is one a gentleman does not hold in high regard, and a being who steals buried cheese is one to be feared.) Continue reading “The Gentleman Recommends: Elizabeth Knox”
Many a time I have been expounding on one of my favorite topics — classic literature — only to notice that my intended audience was edging toward the door with a trapped, hunted look in their eyes. After blocking exits and conducting interrogations interviews, I discovered why. Some people are under the impression that the label “classic” means a piece of writing is boring, Serious with a capital S, and designed to Teach a Lesson in the most ponderous way possible. As your Classics Maven, it is my unsolemn duty to dispel this notion by providing a list of books virtually guaranteed to elicit chuckles rather than furrowed brows. Continue reading “Classics for Everyone: What’s So Funny About Classic Literature?”
Morgan Eye is a Columbia, MO author who recently came out with her debut book, “The Eye In Team: Cinderella Wore Sneakers.” It’s an autobiography of her life in basketball, from her early years playing in the small town of Montrose, Missouri, to her record breaking career at Mizzou and beyond. The book covers the highs and lows of her journey, as well as the challenges she’s faced both on and off the basketball court. Morgan and her husband both live in Columbia, where she teaches classes through the Columbia Public Schools and coaches girls basketball at Hickman High School. I emailed some interview questions to her, and she was kind enough to take time to write back some answers. Continue reading “Q&A With Morgan Eye, Author of “The Eye In Team””
Here are a few of the most notable debut novels coming out in October. These have all received positive reviews in library journals. For a longer list, please visit our catalog.
“A Marvellous Light” by Freya Marske
Robin Blyth has more than enough bother in his life. He’s struggling to be a good older brother, a responsible employer, and the harried baronet of a seat gutted by his late parents’ excesses. When an administrative mistake sees him named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society, he discovers what’s been operating beneath the unextraordinary reality he’s always known.
Now Robin must contend with the beauty and danger of magic, an excruciating deadly curse, and the alarming visions of the future that come with it — not to mention Edwin Courcey, his cold and prickly counterpart in the magical bureaucracy, who clearly wishes Robin were anyone and anywhere else.
Robin’s predecessor has disappeared, and the mystery of what happened to him reveals unsettling truths about the very oldest stories they’ve been told about the land they live on and what binds it. Thrown together and facing unexpected dangers, Robin and Edwin discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles — and a secret that more than one person has already died to keep.
Continue reading “Debut Author Spotlight: November 2021”
I’m highlighting some nonfiction books coming out in November. 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
“Immune: A Journey Into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive” by Philipp Dettmer (Nov 2)
You wake up and feel a tickle in your throat. Your head hurts. You’re mildly annoyed as you get the kids ready for school and dress for work yourself. Meanwhile, an epic war is being fought, just below your skin. Millions are fighting and dying for you to be able to complain as you head out the door. But most of us never really stop to ask: What even is our immune system? Second only to the human brain in its complexity, it is one of the oldest and most critical facets of life on Earth. Without it, you would die within days. In “Immune,” Philipp Dettmer, the brains behind the most popular science channel on YouTube, takes readers on a journey through the fortress of the human body and its defenses. There is a constant battle of staggering scale raging within us, full of stories of invasion, strategy, defeat, and noble self-sacrifice. In fact, in the time you’ve been reading this, your immune system has probably identified and eradicated a cancer cell that started to grow in your body. Each chapter delves into an element of the immune system, including defenses like antibodies and inflammation as well as threats like bacteria, allergies, and cancer, as Dettmer reveals why boosting your immune system is actually nonsense, how parasites sneak their way past your body’s defenses, how viruses work, and what goes on in your wounds when you cut yourself. Enlivened by engaging full-color graphics and immersive descriptions, “Immune” turns one of the most intricate, interconnected, and confusing subjects — immunology — into a gripping adventure through an astonishing alien landscape. “Immune” is a vital and remarkably fun crash course in what is arguably, and increasingly, the most important system in the body. Continue reading “Nonfiction Roundup: November 2021”
Throughout its history, the horror genre has been effective at exploring and subverting cultural anxieties and taboos. Between the late 1960s and early 90s, there was plenty of material to work with. These decades saw one revolution after another, including the upending of social mores around sexuality, rapid developments in science and technology and the apocalyptic fears of the Cold War. It was also a boom time for mass market paperbacks, and horror authors in this period abandoned convention and respectability, running with the most bizarre and indecent plots they could imagine.
“When’s the last time you read about…sex witches from the fourth dimension, flesh-eating moths, homicidal mimes, or golems stalking Long Island?”
Continue reading “Paperbacks From Hell & Retro Horror”
PBS recently announced that season two of Masterpiece Theater’s “All Creatures Great and Small” will be available in the U.S. on January 9, 2022. I’m a big James Herriot fan, and I enjoyed season one of this new television adaption of James Herriot’s classic stories of working as a young veterinarian in rural England in the 1930s. The announcement has me anxiously awaiting season two. If you’re also getting antsy for the next installment, here are some ideas to tide you over until January, 2022.
It’s always a good idea to re-watch the previous season, which is available on DVD at the library.
But that won’t take very long to watch if you’re serious about Herriot, which I am. What will take awhile to get through is 90 episodes of the BBC series by the same name which ran sporadically from 1978 to 1990.
Continue reading “Anxiously Awaiting Season Two of “All Creatures Great and Small”?”
