Growing up I wanted to be a circus strongman or some sort of trickster god. Unfortunately, I could never choose a leotard and as of yet have not transcended the mortal realm, so, at least until the next leotard catalogue arrives in the mail, I will have to settle for reading about the fearsome and magnificent beasts and trickster gods, too. Continue reading “The Gentleman Recommends: Daniel Kehlmann (Again)”
I’m continuing my tour of the United States through literature by heading up the coast to the Pacific Northwest. My first stop on the way is Portland, Oregon with the science fiction classic, “The Lathe of Heaven” by Ursula K. Leguin. It tells the tale of George Orr, who can manipulate the world with his dreams, but they have become nightmares for him and so he tries to never sleep. He seeks help from a psychiatrist who quickly begins to use George, through hypnosis, for his own gain. But, in spite of things going horribly awry, the psychiatrist is not willing to stop. Continue reading “Travel Through Story: The Pacific Northwest, Alaska and Hawaii”
When I first began working at the library, I quickly learned that most staff could walk directly to the true-crime section, having long ago memorized its Dewey Decimal classification. Novels of mystery and suspense fly off the library shelves, so it’s not surprising that their nonfiction counterparts are also hugely popular. Like a good mystery novel, true crime provides a glimpse into the darker side of human nature. Unlike the fictional stories where the good guy almost always wins out, true-crime books often feature crimes that remain unsolved or criminals whose true motivations are scarily unclear. But true crime also offers a satisfying look into the process involved in crime solving and the real-life individuals whose dogged pursuits are often the key to solving the case. Let’s take a look at some of the new true-crime reads on the library’s shelves. Continue reading “Literary Links: True Crime Reads”
Spring publishing is in full swing with lots of great new books to check out! 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 eAudiobook format (as available). For a more extensive list of new nonfiction books coming out this month, check our online catalog.
Top Picks
“Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty” by Patrick Radden Keefe (Apr 13)
This is the saga of three generations of a single family and the mark they would leave on the world, a tale that moves from the bustling streets of early twentieth-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cap d’Antibes to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions: Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing Oxycontin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis. “Empire of Pain” chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability. The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama — baroque personal lives; bitter disputes over estates; fistfights in boardrooms; glittering art collections; Machiavellian courtroom maneuvers; and the calculated use of money to burnish reputations and crush the less powerful. “Empire of Pain” is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling. It is a portrait of the excesses of America’s second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed and indifference to human suffering that built one of the world’s great fortunes. Continue reading “Nonfiction Roundup: April 2021”
Spring is a big time of year for publishing, as evidenced by the many debut novels coming out in April. Here are just a few that have received quite a bit of buzz. For a complete list, please visit our catalog.
“Dial A for Aunties” by Jesse Q. Sutanto
What happens when you mix one (accidental) murder with two thousand wedding guests, and then toss in a possible curse on three generations of an immigrant Chinese-Indonesian family?
You get four meddling Asian aunties coming to the rescue!
When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline. It’s the biggest job yet for the family wedding business — “Don’t leave your big day to chance, leave it to the Chans!” — and nothing, not even an unsavory corpse, will get in the way of her auntie’s perfect buttercream flowers.
But things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy’s great college love — and biggest heartbreak — makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos. Is it possible to escape murder charges, charm her ex back into her life, and pull off a stunning wedding all in one weekend?
Continue reading “Debut Author Spotlight: April 2021”
B.K. Boes is a Mid-Missouri author who recently came out with her debut book, “Mother of Rebellion.” The book is the first in her epic fantasy series, The Leyumin Divided Saga, and introduces us to the divided continent of Leyumin, where two nations vie for dominance — one through politics and manipulation, the other through brute force and self-proclaimed pure blood. You can find out more about the book on her website, or follow her through twitter, facebook, and her email newsletter. 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 B.K. Boes, Author of “Mother of Rebellion””
Join us online to discuss “Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love” by Dani Shapiro. At the age of 54, on a whim, the author submitted her DNA through a genealogy website and discovered that her beloved deceased father was not her biological father. “Inheritance” tells the story of the family secrets that kept one woman’s true biological origins hidden from her for a lifetime and demonstrates how modern science and technology are challenging medical ethics and the human heart’s capacity to heal. This discussion is geared for adults. Please register to receive a Zoom link.
Interested in more books about this topic? Check out these books.
My fondness for survival stories began as a wee lad with a reading of “Hatchet” by Gary Paulsen. It taught me that a hatchet can be the difference between starving in the woods and having a pretty cool and readable time. Naturally, when I’m inspired to take the air in the wilderness, I always have a suitcase full of hatchets in tow. This allows me to not only to thrive like a fictional boy if I get lost, but also, due to its weight, keeps me from straying too far into the wild. Continue reading “The Gentleman Recommends: Rye Curtis”
One of the most treasured books in my home library is “One Hundred and One Famous Poems,” a book that belonged to my mother. This anthology helped plant the seed for my own life-long love of poetry, introducing me to some of the greats I still frequently revisit, such as Emily Dickinson and Robert Browning. I realize now that the works in it came from a fairly narrow — mostly dead — demographic, but it provided a starting point from which to branch out. With the approach of World Poetry Day on March 21, and National Poetry Month in April, the time feels right to mention a few poets whose work I’ve enjoyed recently. They are all alive and still writing.
Like so many others, I was mesmerized by poet Amanda Gorman’s
performance during the presidential inauguration in January. Her powerful cadences and message of hope resonated deeply. Now, Viking Press is publishing “The Hill We Climb” as a book, due to be released March 30. Continue reading “Poetry is Alive and Well”
In Honor of Women’s History Month, let’s take a look at several books on the topic of women in medicine and women’s health. With everything that’s happened in the last year, health feels like a very important topic to consider. Women have had to work very hard to make inroads into the field of medicine and also advocate for their health. It is a testament to that hard work that one of the more recent innovations in medicine, the creation of a vaccine to fight COVID-19, was made in part by the Black female scientist Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett.
In the early 1800s women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided medical care. Motivated by personal loss and frustration over inadequate medical care, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake decided to pursue medical careers in the male-dominated field of medicine. Their stories are explored in “Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine” by Olivia Campbell. Continue reading “Literary Links: Women, Medicine and Health”
