Month: March 2016

Magical Realism Wrap Up

- Ann 2 Comments

ReadingChallengeBWHere it is, the end of March and the finish of another month in our Online Reading Challenge. So, how’d you do? Did you read anything amazing? Or was this month just kind of “meh”?

My March book was The Night Circus by Erin Morganstern. This is a lovely, magical story with many layers and, at its heart, a love story.

A circus, consisting of multiple black and white striped tents, mysteriously appears in the night. It stays for a few days, performing only at night, delighting the locals with various fantastic and magical acts, then disappears again as if it never existed. There is no schedule for when or where it will appear again, but it draws a loyal following wherever it opens.

What most people don’t realize is that the circus is actually a stage for a duel being played out by two fierce competitors, each pitting one of their students against the other. The students, Celia and Marco, have been trained since childhood. The purpose of the duel is never explained to them nor is the fact that the duel is to the death until long after they have fallen in love with each other. What would you do to save the one you love? Would you sacrifice yourself? Or allow them to sacrifice themselves to save you? What would you do to spare the innocent people caught in this mad game, one you never asked to be a part of?

Beautifully written with a large supporting cast of unique and interesting characters, The Night Circus is by turns charming and fun, serious and suspenseful. I especially loved the stories of Poppet and Widget and their performing kittens, but there are many characters to love. The story jumps back and forth through time, and changes viewpoint multiple times which can make it difficult to keep track of what is happening, but also adds to the secretive and not-knowing-all-the-answers of the action. I recommend it highly, but be prepared for a sometimes wild ride!

So, what is your opinion of Magical Realism?  What is the appeal of magical realism in fiction? I think it has something to do with the fact that, no matter how sophisticated we become, or how much we tie ourselves to technology, there is a basic need for joy and delight and the unexpected. I think we also wish for the impossible sometimes, for an outcome that can only happen with the aid of something inexpiable.

Let me know in the comments what you thought of this month’s reading choices and any recommendations that you might have!

NFL Confidential by Johnny Anonymous

- Bill Leave a comment

nflconfidentialBackup O-line player “Johnny Anonymous” gives us an opportunity to step behind the scenes of the 2014 – 2015 NFL season in NFL Confidential.   He writes in candid detail about the infractions, machinations, and politics of the League.

As you’ll recall, the tumultuous 2014-2015 season featured the Ray Rice domestic battery scandal.   Johnny Anonymous considers the league’s knee-jerk sensitivity education a half-hearted exercise in futility.

My personal favorite was how teams habitually pick up older knowledgeable free agents on short notice from their rivals.  They’ll make them ride the pine on the active roster the rest of the season just to poach the entire defensive scheme for that one game.

Enjoy tedious appearances of the F word, which some consider gritty realism.  On the whole, Johnny is a nice guy and this book will give you a great place to focus your attention in this downtime between the Superbowl and the Draft.

New CDs for March

- Bill Leave a comment

3 Doors Down — Us and the Night

Grammy-nominated rockers 3 Doors Down return with their sixth studio album, which comes five years after the successful Time of My Life. Among the tracks is the single In the Dark.

 
Joe Bonamassa — Blues of Desperation

Grammy nominated rock guitar icon Joe Bonamassa releases a brand new studio album. With these eleven original tracks, he continues to redefine the worlds of both rock and blues.

 
Steven Curtis Chapman — Worship and Believe

For the first time in his three decade long career, Steven Curtis Chapman releases a worship album. It features eleven brand new songs and four live tracks. There are also appearances from Chris Tomlin and Matt Maher.

 
Various Artists — Star Wars: Headspace

Produced by the legendary Rick Rubin, this compilation features electronic tunes influenced by one of the world’s most successful movie franchises. Included are tracks from Bonobo, Kaskade, Flying Lotus, and more.

Letter 44, Volume 2: Redshift by Charles Soule and Alberto Jimenez Alburquerque

- Stephanie Leave a comment

letter 44 vol 2Previously I reviewed Letter 44, Volume 1: Escape Velocity and was instantly intrigued. As a result, I decided that I needed to find the second volume to figure out how the story progressed. Letter 44, Volume 2: Redshift goes further into the extraterrestrial life the astronauts on the space ship, Clarke, discovered in the first volume.

With President Blades struggling to deal with if and when he should alert the public to the existence of the aliens, he finds himself having to deal with other people in the government who are calling for him to tell the truth and if not, risk being impeached. This alien presence is becoming more than he think he can deal with and instead of following the plan laid out for him by the previous administration, he decides to go his own way and ends up thinking more short-term than long-term. That decision ends up costing the American people dearly.

While Blades deals with threats from inside his administration and tries to balance everything happening outside, the people on spaceship Clarke are struggling just to live day-to-day. Losing one of their own on the asteroid and with a newborn baby on board, they are trying to figure out what the aliens want and what their device is actually for. Learning what the aliens plan to do throws the crew into a state of panic, especially when it is discovered that one of their own has the ability to communicate with the aliens. This second volume is jam-packed with action, sabotage, danger, and the struggle to survive. Personally, I cannot wait for the third volume, so I can catch up the crew of the Clarke and see how Blades is doing as President.

New Science Fiction & Fantasy in March

- Allison Leave a comment

Featured new additions to DPL’s Science Fiction and Fantasy collections! Click on the title to place a hold. For more new books, visit our Upcoming Releases page. As always, if there’s a title you would like to read, please send us a purchase suggestion.

Story-of-Kullervo-Tolkien
The Story of Kullervo by J.R.R. Tolkien – A first official publication of a previously unknown work by the author of The Lord of the Rings follows the story of a hapless orphan who swears revenge on the dark magician responsible for the death of his father, in a volume complemented by author drafts, notes and lecture essays.

 

 

 

9780765382153
Arkwright by Allen Steele – Nathan Arkwright is a famous science fiction writer who is convinced that humanity cannot survive on Earth. His Arkwright Foundation dedicates itself to creating a colony in deep space. Fueled by Nathan’s legacy, generations of Arkwrights are drawn together, and pulled apart, by the enormity of the task and weight of their name.

 

 

81SlNLr3ZoL

Version Control by Dexter Palmer – A woman deals with a strange and persistent sense of everything being slightly off, which may or may not be related to her scientist husband’s pet project, a “causality violation device” that might actually be working.

 

 

 

25489437

Poseidon’s Wake by Alastair Reynolds –  In the conclusion of his Poseidon’s Children saga, the Akinya family receives an invitation from across the stars–and a last opportunity to redeem their name… Send Ndege… The cryptic message originated seventy light-years away from the planet Crucible, where Ndege Akinya lives under permanent house arrest for her role in the catastrophe that killed 417,000 people. Could it be from her mother, Chiku, who vanished during a space expedition decades earlier? Ndege’s daughter Goma, a biologist, joins the crew of the Travertine dispatched to Gliese 163 to uncover the source behind the enigmatic message. Goma’s odyssey will take her not only into the farthest reaches of space, but centuries into her family’s past where the answers to the universe’s greatest mysteries await.

51+k3aYKGaL__SX333_BO1,204,203,200_

Eagle in Exile by Alan Smale – In A.D. 1218, Praetor Gaius Marcellinus is ordered to conquer North America and turn it into a Roman province. But outside the walls of the great city of Cahokia, his legion is destroyed outright; Marcellinus is the only one spared. In the months and years that follow, Marcellinus comes to see North America as his home and the Cahokians as his kin. He vows to defend these proud people from any threat, Roman or native. After successfully repelling an invasion by the fearsome Iroqua tribes, Marcellinus realizes that a weak and fractured North America won’t stand a chance against the returning Roman army. Worse, rival factions from within threaten to tear Cahokia apart just when it needs to be most united and strong. Marcellinus is determined to save the civilization that has come to mean more to him than the empire he once served.

9780374281137
The Lost Time Accidents by John Wray – Exiled from time after a failed love affair, Waldemar “Waldy” Tolliver is forced to confront a difficult betrayal and his ancestral legacy against a backdrop of historical events in the first half of the 20th century.

 

 

 

 

25746707The Immortals by Jordanna Brodsky – The Relentless One, the Bearer of the Bow, the Untamed – those are only a few of the names Selene DiSilva’s answered to over the years. But these days she’s content to work in secret, defending the women of Manhattan from the evils of men. She’s reclusive, stubborn, and deeply unfriendly to everyone but her dog. But when a woman’s mutilated body washes up in Riverside Park wearing a laurel wreath, Selene finds that she can no longer hide in the shadows. As more women are threatened, Selene is forced to embrace the one name she’s tried hardest to forget — Artemis. For who better to follow the killer’s tangled trail than the Goddess of the Hunt herself?

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

- Stephanie Leave a comment

eleanor and parkHave you ever read a book that immediately piqued your interest? One that you just couldn’t put down? My latest “must finish quickly” book was Eleanor & Park, and what hooked me, besides the immediately engaging story line, was that I listened to it as an audiobook and was therefore able to listen to it while I was doing other things. (The version I listened to was through OverDrive, but this title is also available as a print book and a book on cd – same narrators too!)

Eleanor & Park tells the story of the two title characters: Eleanor, a red-haired chubby high school student starting at a new school, who runs into Park, a kid right on the cusp of the cool crowd, but not firmly implanted there. Eleanor feels like she doesn’t belong anywhere, especially at her new school or at home. and Park feels like she doesn’t belong at their school either. Despite himself, Park finds himself falling for Eleanor, a situation that she has trouble with since she can’t possibly believe or see why this perfect Asian boy with the perfect family would ever fall for a mess like her, living with her mother, abusive step-father, and four siblings in a tiny house. This book is set over the course of one school year in 1986 with readers getting an intense look into Eleanor and Park’s budding relationship and daily lives as they struggle with trying to fit in and the strange sweetness and intense hold that first love has on them. This book pulled at my heart strings, making me pull for Eleanor and Park to beat the odds.

What really hooked me about this book was the narrators. Their voices perfectly matched the characters that I envisioned in my head with earnest emotion shining through both voices. Their inflections as both narrators mimicked the different people in both Eleanor and Park’s lives had me present, immediately in the story with them: sitting on the top bunk in Eleanor’s room while she read the comic books and listened to the tapes that Park gave her, and watching Park as he only asked for batteries for Christmas, so he could continue to give Eleanor music to listen to. I couldn’t get enough and finished this audiobook in two days. Check this book out, either in print or audio, and let me know what you think!

Spring at Last! New Gardening Books at Davenport Library

- Ann Leave a comment

Spring has finally arrived! Even though it was a mild winter, I’m still anxious for spring and flowers and gardening to start again. Here are some of the newest books on gardening available at the Davenport Library – reserve some spring inspiration now!

 

growyourownweddingflowersGrow Your Own Wedding Flowers by Georgie Newbery. Filled with gorgeous pictures for inspiration, and written in a friendly, no-nonsense style, this practical book makes growing and arranging your own wedding flowers both achievable and fun, whether you are a beginner or advanced gardener or flower arranger.

 

 

containerthemegardensContainer Theme Gardens by Nancy Ondra. There’s something here for every setting and every style, including a meadow in a box, a pond in a pot, a simple salad garden, and a combination that will attract hummingbirds.

 

 

gardeningwithlesswaterGardening With Less Water by David Bainbridge offers simple, inexpensive, low-tech techniques for watering your garden much more efficiently — using up to 90 percent less water for the same results.

 

 

flowerworkshopThe Flower Workshop by Ariella Chezar  walks you through the nuts and bolts of creating a variety of small flourishes, tonal arrangements, branch arrangements, handheld bouquets, wreathes, garlands, grand gestures, and more–all accompanied by detailed photography.

 

 

flowerchefThe Flower Chef by Carly Cylinder is a modern, comprehensive guide to floral design that caters to all readers–from beginners who have never worked with flowers before and are looking for a new creative outlet, to decorators, party planners and photographers looking to liven up their spaces.

Strong Female Protagonist, Book One Written by Brennan Lee Mulligan, Drawn by Molly Ostertag

- Stephanie Leave a comment

strong female protagonistThis is a superhero comic book, but not your typical one. While there is a significant amount of crime fighting and struggling with inner demons, writer Brennan Lee Mulligan and artist Molly Ostertag have incorporated necessary humanity into the lives of their superheroes and villains, allowing readers to become more attached to their daily lives outside of being more than normal.

Strong Female Protagonist dives into the life of Alison Green. Alison used to be an active superhero. When she was younger, it was discovered that she was one of many teenagers who had “biodynamic anomalies,” in essence they were different than normal people. These anomalies allowed her to become Mega Girl, her superhero alter ego with super strength and invulnerability to injury, heat, cold, and many other things. Alison and other heroes went about life fighting crime on a day-to-day basis until she had an interaction with her nemesis, the villain Menace, who has the ability to read minds. This encounter forces Alison to take a close look at her life fighting crime and decide whether or not she wants to continue being Mega Girl. Flash forward and now Alison is going to college and trying to balance her superhero side with the normalcies of college life. She still wants to save the world, but does not necessarily want to be forced to do so while hiding behind a mask. She shouldn’t need a mask to be a hero. After all, everyone has different opinions on what really constitutes being a hero.

While this book follows a fairly straight storyline, there are some flashbacks, as well as a running commentary at the bottom of each page that allows readers to break away from the seriousness of the comic to revel in the writer’s witty commentary. I felt like those sentences added to the events happening within the book and even allowed me to garner a little insight into the writing and artistic processes that went into creating this book. Check this out if you want a break from the traditional superhero graphic novel, but still want to see some battles alongside a “normal” life.