One Read, the community-wide reading program coordinated by the Daniel Boone Regional Library, celebrates its 20th anniversary this September with Casy Cep’s “Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee.” This gripping mashup of true crime and literary biography beat out the cleverly crafted dystopian novel “The Resisters” by Gish Jen.
Before the public vote on the 2021 title, a panel of community members considered a varied list of finalist books. Their themes run the gamut of timely topics from immunization and mental health to systemic racism and capitalist consumerism.
During COVID lockdowns, many of us spent more hours connected to the internet, scrolling, shopping and watching. In “Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion,” Jia Tolentino shares candid, sharp, sometimes wry, often bleak personal essays examining and skewering our self-obsessed consumer culture and the pressures — particularly for women — of living online. Continue reading “Literary Links: One Read Final 10”
There’s something undeniably creepy about folk tales. Think of Bloody Mary, Krampus, the Big Bad Wolf and the Headless Horseman. Folktales are the kind of stories told at night around a fire, and they don’t start out written down as short stories or novels. These tales have always been transmitted among a people through oral tradition. Folklore, legends and myth are a boundless topic, and found in almost every aspect of human culture, but here we’re looking specifically at Gothic horror novels that take their inspiration from tales that once propagated exclusively through oral traditions. Continue reading “Frightened Folk: Where Folktales and Horror Intersect”
I’m highlighting some nonfiction books coming out in June. 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
“Somebody’s Daughter: A Memoir” by Ashley C. Ford (Jun 1)
For as long as she could remember, Ashley has put her father on a pedestal. Despite having only vague memories of seeing him face-to-face, she believes he’s the only person in the entire world who understands her. She thinks she understands him too. He’s sensitive like her, an artist, and maybe even just as afraid of the dark. She’s certain that one day they’ll be reunited again, and she’ll finally feel complete. There are just a few problems: he’s in prison, and she doesn’t know what he did to end up there. Through poverty, puberty, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley returns to her image of her father for hope and encouragement. She doesn’t know how to deal with the incessant worries that keep her up at night, or how to handle the changes in her body that draw unwanted attention from men. In her search for unconditional love, Ashley begins dating a boy her mother hates; when the relationship turns sour, he assaults her. Still reeling from the rape, which she keeps secret from her family, Ashley finally finds out why her father is in prison. And that’s where the story really begins. “Somebody’s Daughter” steps into the world of growing up a poor Black girl, exploring how isolating and complex such a childhood can be. As Ashley battles her body and her environment, she provides a poignant coming-of-age recollection that speaks to finding the threads between who you are and what you were born into, and the complicated familial love that often binds them. Continue reading “Nonfiction Roundup: June 2021”
Editor’s note: This reader review was submitted as part of Adult Summer Reading. We will be sharing more throughout the year.
In the book “Strands of Truth,” Harper, a young woman who has always longed for family, is ecstatic when a DNA test reveals she has a half-sister. When Harper and her half-sister meet they find out both of their mothers died tragically. The sisters wonder if their unknown father was involved in their mothers’ deaths and they begin to investigate with the help of Ridge, the son of a mentor to Harper when she was a runaway teenager. Events from the past collide with the present in this fast-paced novel.
I liked this book because it was about the importance of family, trust, and forgiveness. The author is a master at character development and interweaving faith into her books.
Three words that describe this book: Suspenseful, Fast-paced, Intriguing
You might want to pick this book up if: you enjoy Christian romantic-suspense novels and enjoy novels that have many twists and turns until the very end.
-Anonymous
Nothing helps me feel more centered than a good, long walk, whether in the woods or just up and down the streets of my neighborhood. In this, I join a large sisterhood. Throughout human history, women have found peace, fulfillment and health through the act of taking a walk.
A few years ago, readers were mesmerized by Cheryl Strayed’s memoir of her solo hike along the Pacific Coast Trail, a journey in which she sought healing from grief and addiction after losing her mother, her marriage and almost her very sense of self. As much an account of her spiritual journey as it is a story of hiking, “Wild” speaks to the healing powers of nature and of movement. Continue reading “Women Walking”
Here are just a few of the books by debut adult fiction authors that are being published this month. The books listed below have received one (or more!) starred reviews by library journals. For a complete list of debut fiction, please visit our catalog.
“The Other Black Girl” by Zakiya Dalila Harris
26-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.
Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.
It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career.
Continue reading “Debut Author Spotlight: June 2021”
It’s time to saddle up and head from the West Coast into the Rocky Mountains and the High Plains. In the words of Wallace Stegner, “Under the rough and ridiculous circumstances of life in the Rocky Mountains there was something exciting and vital, full of rude poetry: the heartbeat of the West as it fought its way upward toward civilization.” So I begin my journey of this poetic land. Continue reading “Travel Through Story: The Rocky Mountains”
I picked up A.R. Moxon’s “The Revisionaries” because it had a glowing blurb from the brilliant Sergio de la Pava on its cover, and one great way to get me to read a book over 600 pages long is to earn an endorsement from someone else that has written a long and genius novel (in de la Pava’s case, two of them). Another way is to put half a cat on the cover of your book (“Where’s the other half of the cat?!” I’ll inevitably wonder. “Is it ok?” I’ll ask anyone in proximity.) as Moxon’s publisher did with the hardback edition. Yet another way is to make it spectacularly zany and satirical but also high stakes and sometimes frightening and loaded with sentences bursting with the enthusiasm of a gifted writer precisely conveying the complex reality they’ve created. (There are awesome sentences.) Continue reading “The Gentleman Recommends: A.R. Moxon”
Join us virtually to discuss the fascinating work of nonfiction, “Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail” by Ben Montgomery, winner of the 2014 National Outdoor Book Award for history/biography.
Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. This virtual discussion is on June 3 from 12:00-1:00 p.m.
Check here for more books about adventurous women and solo traveling.
Please register to receive a Zoom link.
Marc McKee is a Columbia, MO author whose latest book is, “Meta Meta Make-Belief.” It’s a poetry collection full of riffs, tangents, & experiments inspired in spirit by the long tradition in literary and performing arts of calling attention to and celebrating the artificiality and constructedness of art. McKee has authored several other poetry collections, and is currently the managing editor at the Missouri Review. I emailed some interview questions to him, and he was kind enough to take time to write back some answers. Continue reading “Q&A With Marc McKee, Author of “Meta Meta Make-Belief””
