My LINKcat AccountIt looks like Booky, the library’s prognosticating Badger, made the correct call on Groundhog’s Day. Winter seems to have withdrawn while spring exerts its influence more and more each week. Birds are literally flocking back. The dawn chorus has started up and early signs of nest building can be found. We have already rolled past the Girls WIAA basketball tournaments with nary a flake of snow to be seen. The Boys WIAA basketball tournament gets underway on March 15th and if you believe the Weather Kitty app -- which I do-- the only precipitation in the forecast is rain. So, it would appear that we have dodged that potential blizzard magnet. This upcoming weekend is also the selection weekend for the NCAA Basketball Tournaments. Those tournaments pose the last of the big-snow-attracting events. While my Weather Kitty app doesn’t forecast beyond 7 days, by the end of March the probability of snow diminishes weekly. All that being said, the spring book titles are popping up at the library like croci and daffodils reaching towards the sun. Below you will find some of the many new titles which recently arrived at the library. With the milder weather and more light at the evening end of the day, why not sit and read daylight? Enjoy!
New Non-Fiction
“Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against The Apocalypse” by Emily Raboteau. An award-winning author and critic crafts a moving meditation on race, climate, environmental justice—and what it takes to find shelter.
“Royal Audience: 70 Years, 13 Presidents-One Queen’s Special Relationship With America” by David Charter. This fascinating, in-depth look at the extraordinary and varied personal bonds Queen Elizabeth II forged with 13 presidents over her 70-year reign charts her distinctive brand of one-to-one diplomacy through the eyes of those who experienced it firsthand and shows how, throughout the years, her sense of duty and service remained steadfast.
“Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout” by Cal Newport. Harnessing the wisdom of history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists and writers who mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power, this timely book provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment.
“The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic” by Daniel De Vise. Forty-four years since one of the most significant films of the 20th century hit theaters, this story of the epic friendship between John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the creative geniuses behind modern comedy, doubles as a behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene.
New Fiction
“The Day Tripper” by James Goodhand. After an altercation with a former childhood bully leaves him bruised, bloody and almost drowning in the Thames, 20-something Alex Dean wakes up each day in a different year and must piece together what happens in his life after that fateful night to save himself and the people he loves most.
“Fruit of the Dead” by Rachel Lyon. An electric contemporary reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter is set over the course of one summer on a lush private island and explores addiction and sex, family and independence and who holds the power in a modern underworld.
“The Funeral Ladies of Ellerie County” by Claire Swinarski. Armed with a Crock-Pot and a pile of recipes, a grandmother, her granddaughter and a mysterious young man work to bring a community together.
“Help Wanted” by Adelle Waldman. A group of misfit, big-box store employees working the overnight shift in a small upstate New York town vie for the stability, salary and possibility of a new job when their store manager announces he is leaving.
“Jaded” by Ela Lee. A young lawyer wakes up the morning after a work gala with no memory of how she got home the previous night and must figure out what, exactly, happened—and how much she's willing to put up with to make her way to the top of the corporate ladder.
“A Love Discovered, No.1 (Heart of Cheyenne)” by Tracie Peterson. Marybeth and Edward forge a marriage of convenience as they venture westward to the untamed frontier of the newly incorporated
railroad town of Cheyenne, where they must rely on each other's strength amidst the perils of their new life.
“Parasol Against the Axe” by Helen Oyeyemi. In Prague, a city with a penchant for playing tricks on the unsuspecting, on a bachelorette weekend hosted by her estranged friend Sofie, Hero Tojosoa finds the lines between illusion and delusion, fact and interpretation blurring as tensions between the friends’ different accounts of the past reach a new level.
“Sylvia’s Second Act” by Hillary Yablon. Divorcing her cheating husband, 63-yearold Sylvia and her best friend, Evie, a glamorous older widow, set up a new life in Manhattan they pawn jewelry and rough it in tiny apartments until Sylvia revives her decades-old wedding planning business and realizes her entire second act is right in front of her.
“Until August” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In a rediscovered novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Ana Magdalena Bach has been happily married for 27 years, and yet, every August, she travels by ferry to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover.