Month: October 2023

MUSIC AND MUSICIANS

- Jill Leave a comment

If you enjoy listening to music, singing it, or creating it, October is your month!  International or Universal Music Day is celebrated on October 1. If that’s not enough to dig out your collection of musical favorites, the entire month of October is dedicated to the celebration of Country Music as a beloved genre. There’s even “Hug a Drummer Day” celebrated on October 10th, which the percussionist in your life might appreciate. Music is one of the most universal ways to express ideas and emotions, making it an integral part of every culture around the world. It is a shared, common language that has the power to bring people together.

As you find ways to celebrate music this month, you may be interested in some of these “musical” books, including books about music genres, the music industry, musicians, and songwriting. The best music books can give you a new insight, inspire new conversations, and hopefully encourage you to give another listen. Music has evolved over the course of history into many different forms. Some of the most listened to genres of today, such as Rock, Country, and Classical, can be further divided into sub-genres such as country-pop, alternative rock, etc. A variety of music genres are included in the music book displays that are up this month at the Fairmount and Eastern branches. Here are a few to get you started:

In The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music, the author, Tom Breihan, looks at twenty of Billboard Hot 100s number one songs and uncovers their historical context demonstrating how they played a pivotal role in changing pop music. Breihan includes some of the greatest pop artists of all time.  But, just as important, he also includes some musicians who never hit the number one spot, but who are now legendary because of their whole body of work. Some reviewers have suggested to read this book while listening to the selected songs in order to achieve a more immersive experience. Pop culture and music lovers will appreciate this book, especially if they have watched the Billboard Hot 100 or have read the author’s Stereogum column called, what else? “The Number Ones”.

Declassified: a low-key guide to the high-strung world of classical music is authored by Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch, a Juilliard grad and world-class violinist and veteran of symphony halls and international concert tours. In the book, she expresses her lifelong love-hate relationship with classical music and musicians. There is such variety in the “classical music” genre, that spans centuries of composers, that she argues you can find enough diversity to encompass the gamut of emotions. The author covers the 7 main compositional periods, offering a breakdown of the instruments and their “personalities”.  She invites her reader on a backstage tour of the industry to see what it is like to be a professional musician at conservatory auditions, competitions, and during grueling practice routines, ultimately making the case that classical music matters.

As a long-time writer in the country music industry – especially versed on the careers of women – Marissa R. Moss demonstrates her insider knowledge of the music scene in Nashville with her book, Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be. She writes about some of the most celebrated female artists, but brings into sharpest focus the three main subjects of her book, Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris, and Mickey Guyton. These women are heroines in their own right and have carved out their own paths to success despite the huge obstacles of a “good ‘ol boy” mentality, sexism, and even racism in the country music industry. This book isn’t just for Country music fans, but also for those interested in seeing women singers, songwriters, producers, and executives, succeed in an industry where much is stacked against them.

Tony Brown’s “coffee table” book, Elvis, Strait, to Jesus: An Iconic Producer’s Journey with Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Country, and Gospel Music features exclusive photographs and stories about his more than 40-year career as one of Nashville’s leading producers and executives. The book is a photographic journey depicting how Brown rose to the top of the Nashville music industry to take his spot in country music history.  It illuminates his rise to fame and his industry relationships; from pianist for Elvis Presley to the president of MCA Records in Nashville and producing over 100 country songs that hit #1 on the charts. The book showcases people who have played an important role in Brown’s career. A few of the many music artists included in the book show the diversity of music genres he was instrumental in creating: Lionel Richie, Vince Gill, Reba McEntire, Cyndi Lauper, Billy Joel, Joe Cocker, Jimmy Buffett, Barbra Streisand, George Strait, Brooks & Dunn, Lyle Lovett, and many more. The book is touted as a special tribute that no fan of music or artistic photography should be without.

If you are interested in other musical genres, several other books of interest are: Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld; Hip-Hop (and other things): a collection of questions asked, answered, illustrated; Anatomy of a Song: the oral history of 45 iconic hits that changed rock, R & B, and pop; Shine Bright: a very personal history of black women in pop; and Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs. These books and many others are on display during the month of October at both the Eastern and Fairmount branch libraries. You might also be interested in this DVD: Hip Hop the songs that shook America.

   

If these recommendations inspire you to explore the music, we have a large collection of music CD’s in many genres and also offer free digital music content with Freegal Music and QC Beats.

At the risk of sounding like a late night infomercial, I will further entice you to explore our collection with… “But, wait, there’s MORE!”  At all three branches, you can check out a Common Chord or Quad City Symphony Orchestra Community Experience Pass to receive FREE entry to local music events. We even have a Jensen turntable and portable cassette player/recorder that you can check out at the Main branch to listen to some of your old vinyl or cassette recordings.

 

Or, perhaps you’ve always wanted to learn to play an instrument. Checking out a ukulele at the Main branch is a great way to start.  Whether you read, listen, attend an event, or make your own music – be sure to include music in your life during the month of October – and every month!

PALESTINE 1936: the great revolt and the roots of the Middle East conflict by Oren Kessler

- Jill 2 Comments

“Exceptional…opens new vistas on troubles past and present.” – The Wall Street Journal

“Key to understanding the current situation between Israelis and Palestinians.” – Booklist (starred review)

When Oren Kessler’s first book, Palestine 1936: the great revolt and the roots of the Middle East conflict,was published earlier this year, while lauded, its true significance would not be felt until now. With the recent surprise attacks on Israel by Hamas on October 7, and the following response including a declaration of war on Hamas by Israel, this book is more important than ever in understanding the complex history which has shaped the present state of affairs. Kessler addresses this complicated topic by utilizing only recently declassified documents as well as memoirs and other sources to draw a thorough examination of this formative and often overlooked period.

In his book, Kessler relates key events from the period of 1936 to 1939 that laid the foundation for the establishment of Israel as a state in 1948 and for the current Arab-Israeli conflict. That period itself is a complicated time in world history, as political tensions were already heightened and ultimately ignited World War II. Kessler believes that events almost 90 years ago, and just prior to the second World War, have so shaped the attitudes and posture of the conflict that it will ultimately lead to tragedy for both Jews and Arabs. Primarily, Kessler suggests that many Arabs in the region are unwilling to accept Jewish equality, political or social, let along their right to an ancestral homeland. He believes that this is the true core of the conflict and not one easily resolved.

“Oren Kessler is a journalist and political analyst based in Tel Aviv. He has served as deputy director for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, Middle East research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society in London, Arab affairs correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, and an editor and translator at Haaretz English edition.” –  orenkessler.com

If you want to more fully understand the current state of affairs in Palestine and the war that is now commencing, Palestine 1936 is a must read. In addition, the Davenport Library has a number of other books that you might find informative and enlightening on this topic and as well as closely related topics.

                         

A Lethal Obsession : antisemitism from antiquity to the global Jihad by Robert S. Wistrich

Master of the game : Henry Kissinger and the art of Middle East diplomacy by Martin Indyk

RAF : the birth of the world’s first air force by Richard Overy

Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco

1917 : war, peace, and revolution by D.(David) Steveson

Decolonizing Palestine : the land, the people, the bible by Mitri Raheb

Tehran children : a Holocaust refugee odyssey by Mikhal Dekel

Remember Us : my journey from the shtetl through the Holocaust by Martin Small

I Am Not Your Enemy : stories to transform a divided world by Michael T. McRay

Bethlehem : biography of a town by Nicholas Blincoe

The Lemon Tree : an Arab, a Jew, and the heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan

19 varieties of gazelle : poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye

Things you may find hidden in my ear : poems from Gaza by Mosab Abu Toha

Chronicle of the Old Testament kings : the reign-by-reign record of the rulers of ancient Israel by J.W. (John William) Rogerson

New moons : contemporary writing by North American Muslims by Ali Kazim

 

October’s Simply Held Fiction Picks

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Have you joined Simply Held? If not, you’re missing out! Four times a year, we choose fiction titles for Simply Held members to read from multiple categories: Diverse Debuts, Graphic Novel, Historical Fiction, International Fiction, Juvenile Fiction, Out of This World, Overcoming Adversity, Rainbow Reads, Stranger Things, and Young Adult. Join Simply Held to have any of the new picks automatically put on hold for you.

Below you will find information provided by the publishers and authors on the titles we have picked for October.

Diverse Debuts:

Diverse Debuts: Debut fiction novel by a BIPOC author.

We Are a Haunting by Tyriek White

A poignant debut for readers of Jesmyn Ward and Jamel Brinkley, We Are a Haunting follows three generations of a working class family and their inherited ghosts: a story of hope and transformation.

In 1980’s Brooklyn, Key is enchanted with her world, glowing with her dreams. A charming and tender doula serving the Black women of her East New York neighborhood, she lives, like her mother, among the departed and learns to speak to and for them. Her untimely death leaves behind her mother Audrey, who is on the verge of losing the public housing apartment they once shared. Colly, Key’s grieving son, soon learns that he too has inherited this sacred gift and begins to slip into the liminal space between the living and the dead on his journey to self-realization.

In the present, an expulsion from school forces Colly across town where, feeling increasingly detached and disenchanted with the condition of his community, he begins to realize that he must, ultimately, be accountable to the place he is from. After college, having forged an understanding of friendship, kinship, community, and how to foster love in places where it seems impossible, Colly returns to East New York to work toward addressing structural neglect and the crumbling blocks of New York City public housing he was born to; discovering a collective path forward from the wreckages of the past. 

A supernatural family saga, a searing social critique, and a lyrical and potent account of displaced lives, We Are a Haunting unravels the threads connecting the past, present, and future, and depicts the palpable, breathing essence of the neglected corridors of a pulsing city with pathos and poise.  – Penguin Random House

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Graphic Novel:

Graphic Novel: Fiction novel for adults of any subgenre with diverse characters depicted by color illustrations, sketches, and photographs.

Ballad for Sophie written by Filipe Melo; illustrations by Juan Cavia

A young journalist prompts a reclusive piano superstar to open up, resulting in this stunning graphic sonata exploring a lifetime of rivalry, regret, and redemption.

1933. In the small French village of Cressy-la-Valoise, a local piano contest brings together two brilliant young players: Julien Dubois, the privileged heir of a wealthy family, and François Samson, the janitor’s son. One wins, one loses, and both are changed forever.

1997. In a huge mansion stained with cigarette smoke and memories, a bitter old man is shaken by the unexpected visit of an interviewer. Somewhere between reality and fantasy, Julien composes, like in a musical score, a complex and moving story about the cost of success, rivalry, redemption, and flying pianos.

When all is said and done, did anyone ever truly win? And is there any music left to play? – Penguin Random House

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Historical Fiction:

Historical Fiction: Historical fiction novel written by a BIPOC author with BIPOC main character(s).

Skull Water by Heinz Insu Fenkl

Growing up outside a US military base in South Korea in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Insu—the son of a Korean mother and a German father enlisted in the US Army—spends his days with his “half and half” friends skipping school, selling scavenged Western goods on the black market, watching Hollywood movies, and testing the boundaries between childhood and adulthood. When he hears a legend that water collected in a human skull will cure any sickness, he vows to dig up a skull in order to heal his ailing Big Uncle, a geomancer who has been exiled by the family to a mountain cave to die.

Insu’s quest takes him and his friends on a sprawling, wild journey into some of South Korea’s darkest corners, opening them up to a fantastical world beyond their grasp. Meanwhile, Big Uncle has embraced his solitude and fate, trusting in otherworldly forces Insu cannot access. As he recalls his wartime experiences of betrayal and lost love, Big Uncle attempts to teach his nephew that life is not limited to what we can see—or think we know.

Largely autobiographical and sparkling with magical realism, Skull Water is the story of a boy coming into his own—and the ways the past haunts the present in a country on the cusp of modernity struggling to confront its troubled history. As Insu seeks the wisdom of his ancestors, what he learns, he hopes, will save not just his uncle but himself.  – Spiegel and Grau

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International Fiction:

International Fiction: Fiction novel originally written in another language with BIPOC main character(s).

Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel; translated by Rosalind Harvey

Alina and Laura are independent and career-driven women in their mid-thirties, neither of whom have built their future around the prospect of a family. Laura is so determined not to become a mother that she has taken the drastic decision to have her tubes tied. But when she announces this to her friend, she learns that Alina has made the opposite decision and is preparing to have a child of her own.

Alina’s pregnancy shakes the women’s lives, first creating distance and then a remarkable closeness between them. When Alina’s daughter survives childbirth – after a diagnosis that predicted the opposite – and Laura becomes attached to her neighbor’s son, both women are forced to reckon with the complexity of their emotions, their needs, and the needs of the people who are dependent upon them.

In prose that is as gripping as it is insightful, Guadalupe Nettel explores maternal ambivalence with a surgeon’s touch, carefully dissecting the contradictions that make up the lived experiences of women.  – Bloomsbury Publishing

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Juvenile Fiction:

Juvenile Fiction: Fiction chapter book with diversity, equity, or inclusion subject matter written for children 7-11

You Are Here: Connecting Flights by Ellen Oh

An incident at a TSA security check point sows chaos and rumors, creating a chain of events that impacts twelve young Asian Americans in a crowded and restless airport. As their disrupted journeys crisscross and collide, they encounter fellow travelers—some helpful, some hostile—as they discover the challenges of friendship, the power of courage, the importance of the right word at the right time, and the unexpected significance of a blue Stratocaster electric guitar.

Twelve powerhouse Asian American authors explore themes of identity and belonging in the entwined experiences of young people whose family roots may extend to East and Southeast Asia, but who are themselves distinctly American.

Written by Linda Sue Park, Erin Entrada Kelly, Grace Lin, Traci Chee, Mike Chen, Meredith Ireland, Mike Jung, Minh Lê, Ellen Oh, Randy Ribay, Christina Soontornvat, and Susan Tan, and edited by Ellen Oh.  – HarperCollins

This title is also available as a Playaway audiobook, Libby eBook, and Libby eAudiobook.

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Out of this World:

Out of this World: Science fiction novel written by a BIPOC author with BIPOC main character(s).

The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem

A fugitive queen strikes a bargain with her greatest enemy that could resurrect her scorched kingdom or leave it in ashes forever in this unmissable Egyptian-inspired epic fantasy debut. Ten years ago, the kingdom of Jasad burned. Its magic was outlawed. Its royal family murdered. At least, that’s what Sylvia wants people to believe. The Heir of Jasad escaped the massacre, and she intends to stay hidden, especially from the armies of Nizahl that continue to hunt her people.

But a moment of anger changes everything. When Arin, the Nizahl Heir, tracks a group of Jasadi rebels to her village, Sylvia accidentally reveals her magic—and captures his attention. Now Sylvia’s forced to make a deal with her greatest enemy: Help him hunt the rebels in exchange for her life.

A deadly game begins. Sylvia can’t let Arin discover her identity, even as hatred shifts into something more between the Heirs. And as the tides change around her, Sylvia will have to choose between the life she wants and the one she abandoned.

The scorched kingdom is rising, and it needs a queen. – Hachette Book Group

This title is also available as a Libby eBook and Libby eAudiobook.

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Overcoming Adversity:

Overcoming Adversity: Fiction novel with diversity, equitEny, or inclusion subject matter written for people 14 and older.

Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote

In 1916, during the early days of the Great Migration, Celia Coleman and Lucy Grimes flee the racism and poverty of their homes in the post–Civil War South for the “Promised Land” of Vauxhall, New Jersey. But the North possesses its own challenges and bigotries that will shape the fates of the women and their families over the next seventy years. Told through the voices of nine family members—their perspectives at once harmonious and contradictory—Coleman Hill is a penetrating multigenerational debut.

Within ten years of arriving in Vauxhall, both Celia and Lucy’s husbands are dead, and they turn to one another for support in raising their children far from home. Lucy’s gentleness sets Celia at ease, and Celia lends Lucy her fire when her friend wants to cower. Encouraged by their mothers’ friendship, their children’s lives become enmeshed as well. As the children grow into adolescence, two are caught in an impulsive act of impropriety, and Celia and Lucy find themselves at irreconcilable odds over who’s to blame. The ensuing fallout has dire consequences that reverberate through the next two generations of their families.

A stunning biomythography—a word coined by the late great writer Audre Lorde—Coleman Hill draws from the author’s own family legend, historical record, and fervent imagination to create an unforgettable new history. The result is a kaleidoscopic novel whose intergenerational arc emerges through a series of miniatures that contain worlds. – Zando Projects

This title is also available as a Libby eBook.

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Rainbow Reads:

Rainbow reads: Fiction novel with LGBTQ+ main character(s).

Homebodies  by Tembe Denton-Hurst

Mickey Hayward dreams of writing stories that matter. She has a flashy media job that makes her feel successful and a devoted girlfriend who takes care of her when she comes home exhausted and demoralized. It’s not all A-list parties and steamy romance, but Mickey’s on her way, and it’s far from the messy life she left behind in Maryland. Despite being overlooked and mistreated at work, it seems like she might finally get the chance to prove herself—until she finds out she’s being replaced.

Distraught and enraged, Mickey fires back with a detailed letter outlining the racism and sexism she’s endured as a Black woman in media, certain it will change the world for the better. But when her letter is met with overwhelming silence, Mickey is sent into a tailspin of self-doubt. Forced to reckon with just how fragile her life is—including the uncertainty of her relationship—she flees to the last place she ever dreamed she would run to, her hometown, desperate for a break from her troubles.

Back home, Mickey is seduced by the simplicity of her old life—and the flirtation of a former flame—but her life in New York refuses to be forgotten. When a media scandal catapults Mickey’s forgotten letter into the public zeitgeist, suddenly everyone wants to hear what Mickey has to say. It’s what she’s always wanted—isn’t it?

Intimate, witty, and deeply sexy, Homebodies is a testament to those trying to be heard and loved in a world that refuses to make space, and introduces a standout new writer.  – HarperCollins

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Stranger Things:

Stranger Things: Horror novel written by a BIPOC author with BIPOC main character(s).

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

“Some girls just don’t know how to die…”

Shirley Jackson meets Friday the 13th in My Heart Is a Chainsaw, written by the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians Stephen Graham Jones, called “a literary master” by National Book Award winner Tananarive Due and “one of our most talented living writers” by Tommy Orange.

Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw “a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.” On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.

Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.

Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges…a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.  – Simon & Schuster

This title is also available in large print.

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Young Adult Fiction:

Young Adult Fiction: Fiction chapter book with diversity, equity, or inclusion subject matter written for children 14 and older.

Girls Like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko

It’s summertime and 17-year-old Coley has found herself alone, again. Forced to move to rural Oregon after just losing her mother, she is in no position to risk her already fragile heart. But when she meets Sonya, the attraction is immediate.

Coley worries she isn’t worthy of love. Up until now, everyone she’s loved has left her. And Sonya’s never been with a girl before. What if she’s too afraid to show up for Coley? What if by opening her heart, Coley’s risking it all?

They both realize that when things are pushed down, and feelings are forced to shrivel away, Coley and Sonya will be the ones to shrink. It’s not until they accept the love they fear and deserve most, that suddenly the song makes sense.

Based on the billboard-charting smash hit song and viral music video GIRLS LIKE GIRLS, Hayley Kiyoko’s debut novel is about embracing your truth and realizing we are all worthy of being loved back.  – Macmillan Publishers

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Join Simply Held to have the newest Fiction picks automatically put on hold for you every quarter.

Social Work Spotlight: Bridge Appointments

- Stephanie Leave a comment

BRIDGE APPOINTMENTS

This month, our resource spotlight focuses on Bridge Appointments, a newly introduced service now available to Eastern Iowa residents through the Eastern Iowa Crisis Region System. While many are familiar with the crisis system’s emergency hotline, few may know about the additional support services it offers, all aimed at strengthening our communities.

Bridge Appointments were created in response to the lengthy and intimidating process many individuals face when seeking psychiatric care, especially if they are inconsistent with provider visits. So, what exactly are Bridge Appointments?

Bridge Appointments, as defined by the Eastern Iowa Crisis Region System, are appointments with a psychiatric provider to bridge the gap for individuals needing behavioral health medication. Through telehealth, individuals requiring these medications can receive a psychiatric evaluation and prescription, helping them until they can secure ongoing psychiatric care.

To qualify for this free service:

  • You must be an Eastern Iowa resident aged 12 or older.
  • It’s available to residents of Scott, Cedar, Clinton, Jackson, and Muscatine counties.
  • You must have a scheduled ongoing psychiatric care appointment before a bridge appointment can be scheduled.
  • A care coordinator will be assigned to assist you through the process.
  • No insurance is required, as the Eastern Iowa Mental Health and Disability Services Region funds the service.

If you need a bridge appointment referral, you can visit the Davenport Public Library, where a social worker can assist you. Alternatively, you can contact any Eastern Iowa Region Crisis System staff member.

For more information about Bridge Appointments or if you have questions, please email amy.gold@unitypoint.org or danielle.atta@unitypoint.org or visit https://easterniowamhds.org/eastern-iowa-crisis-system.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a crisis or requires emergency assistance, please dial 988 or contact the 24-Hour CRISIS LINE at 855.581.8111.

Solar Eclipse Glasses Available!

- Stephanie Leave a comment

We have solar eclipse glasses available while supplies last at the Davenport Public Library locations. Stop by the front desk to pick up your glasses. Glasses are available on a first come, first serve basis, so we won’t be allowing any holds. The annular solar eclipse is this Saturday, October 14th, so make sure to get your glasses!

According to NASA, “an annular solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, but when it is at or near its farthest point from Earth. Because the Moon is farther away from Earth, it appears smaller than the Sun and does not completely cover the Sun. As a result, the Moon appears as a dark disk on top of a larger, bright disk, creating what looks like a ring around the Moon.”

Curious what the October annular solar eclipse on Saturday, October 14th and the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 will look like? You can check out an eclipse simulator online. If you are unable to see the eclipse in person, you can watch a livestream online through the NASA website.

It’s incredibly important when you are wearing your eclipse glasses that you follow some important tips for eye safety. NASA has put together a handy website with tips for the annular solar eclipse and eye safety.

Fun fact: you can save your glasses until next spring when a total solar eclipse happens on April 8, 2024. Your glasses are also only good for three years, so you should discard them after those three years.

We hope to see you to pick up glasses for the eclipse before Saturday, October

October’s Celebrity Book Club Picks

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It’s a new month which means that Jenna Bush Hager and Reese Witherspoon have picked new books for their book clubs! Reminder that if you join Simply Held, these titles will automatically be put on hold for you.

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Jenna Bush Hager has selected How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair for her October pick.

Curious what How to Say Babylon is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

With echoes of Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.

Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.

In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them.

How to Say Babylon is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.  – Simon & Schuster

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Reese Witherspoon has selected Starling House by Alix E. Harrow for her October pick.

Curious what Starling House is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

I dream sometimes about a house I’ve never seen….

Opal is a lot of things—orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic and part-time cashier—but above all, she’s determined to find a better life for her younger brother Jasper. One that gets them out of Eden, Kentucky, a town remarkable for only two things: bad luck and E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth century author of The Underland, who disappeared over a hundred years ago.

All she left behind were dark rumors—and her home. Everyone agrees that it’s best to ignore the uncanny mansion and its misanthropic heir, Arthur. Almost everyone, anyway.

I should be scared, but in the dream I don’t hesitate.

Opal has been obsessed with The Underland since she was a child. When she gets the chance to step inside Starling House—and make some extra cash for her brother’s escape fund—she can’t resist.

But sinister forces are digging deeper into the buried secrets of Starling House, and Arthur’s own nightmares have become far too real. As Eden itself seems to be drowning in its own ghosts, Opal realizes that she might finally have found a reason to stick around.

In my dream, I’m home.

And now she’ll have to fight.

Welcome to Starling House: enter, if you dare.  – Tor Books

Join Simply Held to have Oprah, Jenna, and Reese’s adult selections automatically put on hold for you!

Killers of the Flower Moon

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On October 20, Martin Scorsese’s newest blockbuster, Killers of the Flower Moon starring Leonardi DiCaprio, premiers in movie theaters across the country. Scorsese and DiCaprio have been working on this project since David Grann published a work of nonfiction by the same title in 2017. Grann’s book follows the 1925 FBI investigation, led by former Texas Ranger turned FBI agent Tom White, into the mysterious deaths of wealthy Osage Native Americans of Osage County, Oklahoma. The Osage were relocated to the land in 1870 and fifty years later oil was found. The Osage became wealthy and the federal government created a guardian system that made it extremely difficult for tribe members to handle their own affairs. This invited a slew of corruption that ultimately led to at least two dozen Osage deaths from 1921-1923. According to The Osage Nation, “Between 1920 and 1925 there were more than 60 mysterious or unsolved murders in Osage County, all dealing with Osage headright holders.”

When Scorsese and DiCaprio began working on the project, DiCaprio was cast to play FBI agent Tom White. This early version of the movie followed much the same plot as Grann’s book, but both Scorsese and DiCaprio wanted to focus more on the Osage. DiCaprio was recast as Ernest Burkhart and the relationship between Ernest and his Osage wife Mollie was further developed. So far the film has been met with praise with a  98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 10/10 on IMDB.

While the film version promises to be entertaining, memorable, and insightful, I always recommend reading the book first because films tend to leave out a lot and sometimes even make changes to the original work.  Reading Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann and watching the film by Martin Scorsese will ensure you don’t miss anything!

Additional nonfiction titles about Native Americans available at the Davenport Public Library.

Unworthy Republic: the Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory by Claudio Saunt

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer

We Refuse to Forget: a True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power by Caleb Gayle

A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South by Peter Cozzens

Covered with Night: a Story of Murder and Indigenous in Early America by Nicole Eustace

 

Old Farmer’s Almanac

- Lynn Leave a comment

Every fall since 1792, another edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanac comes out and every year it’s a bestseller.

According to the Washington Post, “The antique cover, still sporting mugs of Benjamin Franklin and Robert B. Thomas, reeks of great-great-grandma’s potpourri, and yet the 2024 edition of “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” is flying off the shelves like hotcakes, for which there’s a great recipe on page 65.”

According to publisher Sherin Pierce, “This year ‘The Almanac’ just shot right out of the gate.” Sales on Amazon, in particular, have never been so strong, and copies are also selling briskly at bookstore chains and indie bookstores. (Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)

While every other publisher in the world is in a sweaty panic to reinvent itself and chase after those unicorns known as younger readers, “The Almanac” just clomps along selling about 2.5 million copies a year… She attributes the magazine’s continued popularity to two very current trends: weather anomalies and home gardening.

“People are more interested in the environment,” she says. “They want to be self-sustainable. They want to have a guide of how to do something yourself, right? …

And in a world of constant change and rising strife, it’s undeniably comforting to find a journal that’s “Useful, with a Pleasant Degree of Humor.”

Pierce says, “Trends come and go, fashions come and go, but ‘The Almanac’ remains.” ‘

There’s also an Old Farmer’s Almanac for Kids, an Old Farmer’s Almanac Everyday Cookbook, an Old Farmer’s Almanac Gardener’s Companion and the Best of the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

October’s Simply Held Nonfiction Picks

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Have you joined Simply Held? If not, you’re missing out! Ten different nonfiction titles are chosen four times a year by our librarians and automatically placed on hold for you. Those selections come from the following categories: biography, body mind spirit, cookbook, explore your world, poetry, self-help, social justice, strength through struggle, theologies, and true crime. Join Simply Held to have any of the new nonfiction picks automatically put on hold for you four times a year.

Biography pick

Never Give Up: A Prairie Family’s Story by Tom Brokaw

In this moving story, the New York Times bestselling author of The Greatest Generation chronicles the values and lessons he absorbed from his parents and other people who worked hard to build lives on the prairie during the first half of the twentieth century.

“In our fractured times, this inspiring book reminds us how we can rise to meet our current challenges by honoring the fortitude of the generations before us.”—Walter Isaacson

Tom’s father, Red, left school in the second grade to work in the family hotel—the Brokaw House, established in Bristol, South Dakota, by R. P. Brokaw in 1883. Eventually, through work on construction jobs, Red developed an exceptional talent for machines. Tom’s mother, Jean, was the daughter of a farmer who lost everything during the Great Depression. They met after a high school play, when Jean played the lead and Red fell in love with her from the audience. Although they didn’t have much money early in their marriage, especially once they had three boys at home, Red’s philosophy of “Never give up” served them well. His big break came after World War II, when he went to work for the Army Corps of Engineers building great dams across the Missouri River, magnificent structures like the Fort Randall and the Gavins Point dams. Late in life, Red surprised his family by recording his memories of the hard times of his early life, reflections that inspired this book.

Tom Brokaw is known as one of the most successful people in broadcast journalism. Throughout his legendary career, Brokaw has always asked what we can learn from world events and from our history. Within Never Give Up is one answer, a portrait of the resilience and respect for others at the heart of one American family’s story.  – Penguin Random House

This title is also available in large print.

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Body, Mind, Spirit pick

The Witches’ Sabbath: An Exploration of History, Folklore & Modern Practice by Kelden

Discover the Hidden Depths of the Sabbath

Take flight for a mesmerizing exploration of an event long shrouded in fear and mystery—the Witches’ Sabbath. Kelden presents an in-depth examination of the Sabbath’s historical and folkloric development as well as its re-emergence within the modern practice of Witchcraft. From discussions on the folklore of flight and the events of nocturnal gatherings to enchanting rituals and recipes, you’ll find everything you need to not only understand the nature of the legendary Sabbath, but also journey there yourself. Offering impressive research and compelling stories from across Europe and the early American colonies, this book is the ultimate resource for discovering an oft misunderstood and overlooked aspect of Witchcraft.

Includes a foreword by Jason Mankey, author of The Horned God of the Witches  – Llewellyn Worldwide

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Cookbook Pick

Live Longer, Live Better: Lessons for Longevity from the World’s Healthiest Zones by Melissa Petitto, R.D.

Discover how the five cultures with the longest-living people eat and live, then enjoy 50 healthy recipes inspired by those locations—and perhaps live longer yourself.

When researchers identified a region in Sardinia as having the highest concentration of male centenarians, they later zeroed in on villages around the world with the highest longevity: Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California, among the Seventh-Day Adventists.

In Live Longer, Live Better, nutritionist and chef Melissa Petitto, RD, looks at the food and lifestyle choices of the people in these regions and presents it in an easily digestible format. The first part of the book describes these areas of the world, what they have in common, and how their residents excel at living a healthy lifestyle that can lead to exceptional longevity. Similar characteristics of these communities include:

Happiness and emotional wellness
Family and community connections
Natural-movement physical activity
Disease prevention

The second part of the book provides 50 original, healthy recipes that reflect each of the locations, focusing on plant-based meals, as well as a typical day-in-the-life of a resident. Guidelines for this type of eating include reducing consumption of meat and dairy (but not altogether), cutting back on eggs and fish, slashing sugar, and increasing consumption of nuts, water, beans, and whole foods. The recipes offer ideas for rounding out meals so you can eat this way wherever you are. Some recipes include:

Okinawa: Bitter Melon and Tofu Stir Fry; Okinawan Milk Tea; and Kokuto, Banana, and Dark Chocolate Muffins
Sardinia: Sardinian Herb, Fennel, and Bean Soup; Fregola with Wild Mushrooms; and Sardinian Artichokes with Lemon and Pecorino
Loma Linda: California Veggie Bowl with Tahini Dressing; Quinoa and Spinach Stuffed Peppers with Cashew Cream; and No Bake Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Ikaria: Warm Figs with Honey and Pistachio Drizzle; Ikarian Ratatouille; and Cornmeal Pie with Dried Fruit and Olive Oil
Nicoya: Tomato Rice with Grilled Avocado and Lime; Potato, Sweet Pepper, Corn, and Tomato Hash; and Chan Seed Pineapple Aqua Fresca

Because there’s no counting calories or nutrient grams, eating this way doesn’t have to be complicated. So what are you waiting for? There’s no time like now to start living better longer! – Chartwell Books, an imprint of the Quarto Group

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Explore Your World pick

From One Cell: A Journey into Life’s Origins and the Future of Medicine by Ben Stanger

Inside the quest to unlock the mysteries of development—and find the key to transforming our future.

Each of us began life as a single cell. From this humble origin, we embarked on a risky journey fraught with opportunities for disaster. Yet, amazingly, we reached our destination intact, emerging as dazzlingly complex, exquisitely engineered assemblages of trillions of cells. This metamorphosis constitutes one of nature’s most spectacular yet commonplace magic tricks—and one of its most coveted secrets. In From One Cell, physician and researcher Ben Stanger offers a breathtaking glimpse into what scientists are discovering about how life and the body take shape, and how these revelations stand to revolutionize medicine and the future of human health.

In vivid prose, Stanger leads readers on a gripping odyssey retracing this universal, yet unremembered, rite of passage. Through the eyes of the scientists unraveling development’s riddles in experiments as painstaking as they are inventive, we confront fascinating puzzles: how does the plethora of different tissues that compose our bodies arise from a single source? How do cells know what they are meant to become—skin or bone, blood or muscle—when all carry the same set of genetic instructions? Once a cell starts developing down one path, can it change its mind, or is its destiny irrevocably sealed?

As Stanger shows us, the answers to these questions may at last empower us to solve some of our most persistently confounding medical challenges, from cancer to cognitive decline to degenerative disease. Recognizing tumors as evil doppelgangers of the embryo points the way toward new, more targeted cancer therapies. Learning how cells choose their identities and find their way in space could unlock lifesaving breakthroughs in regenerative medicine. The possibilities are extraordinary.

Popular science at its best, From One Cell celebrates the power and beauty of understanding our collective beginnings.  – W.W. Norton

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Poetry pick

Invasives: Poems by Emily Kingery

INVASIVES is a dark daydream in a small Midwestern town: a place of hunger, dizzying narcotics, and dormant lies in children’s minds. Here, a coming-of-age story emerges in delectable scenes, words that open and close like petals, and images that knife as easily as if through stems. INVASIVES conjures familiar dangers, then slices them open and enchants them. It softens into myth a love that refuses to disappear. – Emily Kingery

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Self-Help pick

Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good by Tina Turner with Taro Gold and Regula Curti

I dedicate this book to you…
in honor of your
unseen efforts to
triumph over each problem
life sends your way.

Tina was a global icon of inspiration. And here, with Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good, Tina shows how anyone can overcome life’s obstacles—even transform the “impossible” to possible—and fulfill our dreams. She shows how we, too, can improve our lives, empowering us with spiritual tools and sage advice to enrich our unique paths.

Buddhism has been a central part of Tina Turner’s life for decades and, in music, film, and live performances, she has shined as an example of generating hope from nothing, breaking through all limitations, and succeeding in life. Drawing from the lessons of her own life, from adversity to stratospheric heights, Tina effortlessly shows how the spiritual lessons of Buddhism help her transform from sorrow, adversity, and poverty into joy, stability, and prosperity.

Here, Tina shares the wisdom of an extraordinary lifetime in Happiness Becomes You making this the perfect gift of inspiration for you or a loved one. – Simon & Schuster

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Social Justice pick

Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: a Memoir of a Kidnapping by Shane McCrae

An unforgettable memoir by an award-winning poet about being kidnapped from his Black father and raised by his white supremacist grandparents.

When Shane McCrae was three years old, his grandparents kidnapped him and took him to suburban Texas. His mom was white and his dad was Black, and to hide his Blackness from him, his maternal grandparents stole him from his father. In the years that followed, they manipulated and controlled him, refusing to acknowledge his heritage—all the while believing they were doing what was best for him.

For their own safety and to ensure the kidnapping remained a success, Shane’s grandparents had to make sure that he never knew the full story, so he was raised to participate in his own disappearance. But despite elaborate fabrications and unreliable memories, Shane begins to reconstruct his own story and to forge his own identity. Gradually, the truth unveils itself, and with the truth, comes a path to reuniting with his father and finding his own place in the world.

A revelatory account of a singularly American childhood that hauntingly echoes the larger story of race in our country, Pulling the Chariot of the Sun is written with the virtuosity and heart of one of the finest poets writing today. And it is also a powerful reflection on what is broken in America—but also what might heal and make it whole again.  – Simon & Schuster

This title is also available as a Libby eAudiobook

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Strength Through Struggle pick

Where the Children Take Us: How One Family Achieved the Unimaginable by Zain E. Asher

In this spellbinding memoir, popular CNN anchor Zain E. Asher pays tribute to her mother’s strength and determination to raise four successful children in the shadow of tragedy.

Awaiting the return of her husband and young son from a road trip, Obiajulu Ejiofor receives shattering news. There’s been a fatal car crash, and one of them is dead.

In Where the Children Take Us, Obiajulu’s daughter, Zain E. Asher, tells the story of her mother’s harrowing fight to raise four children as a widowed immigrant in South London. There is tragedy in this tale, but it is not a tragedy. Drawing on tough-love parenting strategies, Obiajulu teaches her sons and daughters to overcome the daily pressures of poverty, crime and prejudice—and much more. With her relentless support, the children exceed all expectations—becoming a CNN anchor, an Oscar-nominated actor—Asher’s older brother Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)—a medical doctor, and a thriving entrepreneur.

The generations-old Nigerian parenting techniques that lead to the family’s salvation were born in the village where young Obiajulu and Arinze meet with their country on the brink of war. Together, they emigrate to London in the 1970s to escape the violence, but soon confront a different set of challenges in the West.

When grief threatens to engulf her fractured family after the accident, Obiajulu, suddenly a single mother in a foreign land, refuses to accept defeat. As her children veer down the wrong path, she instills a family book club with Western literary classics, testing their resolve and challenging their deeper understanding. Desperate for inspiration, she plasters newspaper clippings of Black success stories on the walls and hunts for overachieving neighbors to serve as role models, all while running Shakespeare theatre lines with her son and finishing homework into the early morning with Zain. When distractions persist, she literally cuts the TV cord and installs a residential pay phone.

The story of a woman who survived genocide, famine, poverty, and crushing grief to rise from war torn Africa to the streets of South London and eventually the drawing rooms of Buckingham Palace, Where the Children Take Us is an unforgettable portrait of strength, tenacity, love, and perseverance embodied in one towering woman.  – HarperCollins

This title is also available in large print and a Libby eBook.

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Theologies pick

Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman by Abby Stein

The powerful coming-of-age story of an ultra-Orthodox child who was born to become a rabbinic leader and instead became a woman

Abby Stein was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, isolated in a culture that lives according to the laws and practices of eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, speaking only Yiddish and Hebrew and shunning modern life. Stein was born as the first son in a dynastic rabbinical family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews.

But Abby felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. She suppressed her desire for a new body while looking for answers wherever she could find them, from forbidden religious texts to smuggled secular examinations of faith. Finally, she orchestrated a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood to mainstream femininity-a radical choice that forced her to leave her home, her family, her way of life.

Powerful in the truths it reveals about biology, culture, faith, and identity, Becoming Eve poses the enduring question: How far will you go to become the person you were meant to be? – Seal Press, Hachette Book Group

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True Crime pick

I Know Who You Are: How an Amateur DNA Sleuth Unmasked the Golden State Killer and Changed Crime Fighting Forever by Barbara Rae-Venter

For twelve years the Golden State Killer terrorized California, stalking victims and killing without remorse. Then he simply disappeared, for the next forty-four years, until an amateur DNA sleuth opened her laptop. In I Know Who You Are, Barbara Rae-Venter reveals how she went from researching her family history as a retiree to hunting for a notorious serial killer—and how she became the nation’s leading authority on investigative genetic genealogy, the most dazzling new crime-fighting weapon to appear in decades.

Rae-Venter leads readers on a vivid journey through the many cases she tackled, often starting with little more than a DNA sample. From the first criminal case she ever solved—uncovering the long-lost identity of a child abductee—to the heartbreaking story of the Billboard Boy, whose skeletal remains were discovered along a highway, to the search for the Golden State Killer, Rae-Venter shares haunting, often thrilling accounts of how she helped solve some of America’s most chilling cold cases in the span of just three years.

For each investigation, Rae-Venter brings readers inside her unique “grasshopper mind” as she analyzes DNA data and pores through obituaries, marriage records, and old newspaper articles. Readers join in on urgent calls with sheriffs, FBI agents, and district attorneys as she details the struggle to obtain usable crime scene DNA samples, until, finally, a critical piece of the puzzle tumbles into place.

I Know Who You Are captures both the exhilaration of the moment of discovery and the sheer depth of emotion that lingers around cold cases, informing Rae-Venter’s careful approach to her work. It is a story of relentless curiosity, of constant invention and reinvention, and of human beings striving to answer the most elemental questions about themselves: What defines identity? Where do we belong? And are we truly who we think we are? – Ballantine Books

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Join Simply Held to have any of the new nonfiction picks automatically put on hold for you four times a year.

Banned Book Week 2023: Let Freedom Read!

- Stephanie Leave a comment

October 1 through October 7th, 2023 marks Banned Books Week! From the Banned Books Week website: ‘Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools. Typically (but not always) held during the last week of September, the annual event highlights the value of free and open access to information and brings together the entire book community — librarians, educators, authors, publishers, booksellers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas.’

LeVar Burton leads this week as the Honorary Chair! Da’Taeveyon Daniels is the Youth Honorary Chair for 2023.

In April 2023, the American Library Association announced the Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2022 list. This list actually contains 13 books, due to ties. Below you will find the list of books as well as the reasons they were banned. Descriptions are provided by the publishers. If you have a favorite banned book, share it in the comments!

1. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
Reasons: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.

Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.  – Simon & Schuster

This title is also available as a Libby eBook.

Kobabe also released a deluxe edition which is also available as a print book and a Libby eBook.

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2. All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
Reasons: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit

In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia.

From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.

Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young queer men of color, All Boys Aren’t Blue covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy. Johnson’s emotionally frank style of writing will appeal directly to young adults.  – Farrar, Straus and Giroux

This title is also available as a CD audiobook, Libby eBook, Libby eAudiobook.

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3. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Reasons: depiction of sexual abuse, claimed to be sexually explicit, EDI content

From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace.

In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.  – Penguin Random House

This title is also available as a Libby eBook, large print, and CD audiobook

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4. Flamer by Mike Curato
Reasons: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit

I know I’m not gay. Gay boys like other boys. I hate boys. They’re mean, and scary, and they’re always destroying something or saying something dumb or both.

I hate that word. Gay. It makes me feel . . . unsafe.

It’s the summer between middle school and high school, and Aiden Navarro is away at camp. Everyone’s going through changes—but for Aiden, the stakes feel higher. As he navigates friendships, deals with bullies, and spends time with Elias (a boy he can’t stop thinking about), he finds himself on a path of self-discovery and acceptance.  – Henry Holt and Co.

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5. (TIE) Looking for Alaska by John Green
Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicit, LGBTQIA+ content

First drink. First prank. First friend. First love.

Last words.

Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words—and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet François Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps.” Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young, who will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.

Looking for Alaska brilliantly chronicles the indelible impact one life can have on another. A modern classic, this stunning debut marked #1 bestselling author John Green’s arrival as a groundbreaking new voice in contemporary fiction.  – Penguin Random House

This title is also available as a Libby eAudiobook, Libby eBook, and Playaway Audiobook.

This book came out as a TV Mini Series in 2019.

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5. (TIE) The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicit, LGBTQIA+ content, depiction of sexual abuse, drugs, profanity

Read the #1 New York Times bestselling coming-of-age story that takes a sometimes heartbreaking, often hysterical, and always honest look at high school in all its glory. Also a major motion picture starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a funny, touching, and haunting modern classic.

The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky follows observant “wallflower” Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.

A #1 New York Times bestseller for more than a year, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults (2000) and Best Book for Reluctant Readers (2000), and with millions of copies in print, this novel for teen readers (or “wallflowers” of more-advanced age) will make you laugh, cry, and perhaps feel nostalgic for those moments when you, too, tiptoed onto the dance floor of life. – Simon & Schuster

This book came out as a movie in 2012.

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7. Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison
Reasons: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit

One of the American Library Association’s Top 10 Most Banned Books for the past two years, this award-winning coming-of-age novel takes readers into the heart and humor of a young man determined to achieve the ever-changing American dream. He just happens to find himself along the way.

For Mike Muñoz, life has been a whole lot of waiting for something to happen. Not too many years out of high school and still doing menial work–and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew–he’s smart enough to know that he’s got to be the one to shake things up if he’s ever going to change his life. But how? He’s not qualified for much of anything. He has no particular talents, although he is stellar at handling a lawn mower and wielding clipping shears. But now that career seems to be behind him. So what’s next for Mike Muñoz?

Funny, biting, sweet, and ultimately inspiring novel, bestselling author Jonathan Evison’s coming-of-age novel evokes the lives of working class people with compassion and honesty. – Algonquin Books

This title is also available as a Libby eBook.

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8. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicit, profanity

In his first book for young adults, bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author’s own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by acclaimed artist Ellen Forney, that reflect the character’s art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live. – Little, Brown and Company

This title is also available as a Libby eBook, Playaway Audiobook, CD audiobook, a book club selection, and a discussion in boxes kit.

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9. Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez
Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicit

“This is East Texas, and there’s lines. Lines you cross, lines you don’t cross. That clear?”

New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive.

Ashley Hope Pérez takes the facts of the 1937 New London school explosion—the worst school disaster in American history—as a backdrop for a riveting novel about segregation, love, family, and the forces that destroy people. – Lerner Publishing Group

This title is also available as a Libby eBook and Libby eAudiobook.

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10. (TIE) A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicit

Feyre has undergone more trials than one human woman can carry in her heart. Though she’s now been granted the powers and lifespan of the High Fae, she is haunted by her time Under the Mountain and the terrible deeds she performed to save the lives of Tamlin and his people.

As her marriage to Tamlin approaches, Feyre’s hollowness and nightmares consume her. She finds herself split into two different people: one who upholds her bargain with Rhysand, High Lord of the feared Night Court, and one who lives out her life in the Spring Court with Tamlin. While Feyre navigates a dark web of politics, passion, and dazzling power, a greater evil looms. She might just be the key to stopping it, but only if she can harness her harrowing gifts, heal her fractured soul, and decide how she wishes to shape her future-and the future of a world in turmoil. – Bloomsbury Publisher

This title is also available as a Libby eBook, CD audiobook, Libby eAudiobook, and Playaway audiobook.

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10. (TIE) Crank by Ellen Hopkins
Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicit, drugs

Life was good
before I
met
the monster.

After,
life
was great,
At
least

for a little while.

Kristina Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble.

Then, Kristina meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild, ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul—her life. – Simon & Schuster

This title is also available as a Libby eBook and Libby eAudiobook.

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10. (TIE) Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
Reasons: Claimed to be sexually explicit, profanity

This is the funniest book you’ll ever read about death.

It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. But on the first day of his senior year, Greg Gaines thinks he’s figured it out. The answer to the basic existential question: How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad? His strategy: remain at the periphery at all times. Keep an insanely low profile. Make mediocre films with the one person who is even sort of his friend, Earl.

This plan works for exactly eight hours. Then Greg’s mom forces him to become friends with a girl who has cancer. This brings about the destruction of Greg’s entire life. – Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams Books

This title is also available as a Libby eBook.

This book was made into a movie in 2015, both in DVD and Blu-ray.

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10. (TIE) This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson
Reasons: LGBTQIA+ content, sex education, claimed to be sexually explicit

The bestselling young adult non-fiction book on sexuality and gender!

Lesbian. Gay. Bisexual. Transgender. Queer. Intersex. Straight. Curious. This book is for everyone, regardless of gender or sexual preference. This book is for anyone who’s ever dared to wonder. This book is for YOU.

This candid, funny, and uncensored exploration of sexuality and what it’s like to grow up LGBTQ also includes real stories from people across the gender and sexual spectrums, not to mention hilarious illustrations.

Inside this revised and updated edition, you’ll find the answers to all the questions you ever wanted to ask, with topics like:
• Stereotypes―the facts and fiction
• Coming out as LGBT
• Where to meet people like you
• The ins and outs of gay sex
• How to flirt
• And so much more!

You will be entertained. You will be informed. But most importantly, you will know that however you identify (or don’t) and whomever you love, you are exceptional. You matter. And so does this book.  – Sourcebooks

This title is also available as a Libby eBook.

This book was first published in 2014 and was then revised, updated, and rereleased in 2021.

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