Author: Allison

Devolution by Max Brooks

- Allison Leave a comment

You might not think that horror would be a good genre to turn to during These Troubled Times ™, but it’s  been one of my favorites since the 9th grade (shout out to Mr. Healy for introducing me to Stephen King!) In fact, back in March, I re-read World War Z  by Max Brooks, just for fun (I‘m weird, I know.)

I was very excited to read Brooks’ latest novel Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre. Much like World War Z, Devolution is told as a collection of first-person recollections, book excerpts, interviews, and journal entries. It is these journal entries, written by Kate Holland and discovered at the massacre site by her brother Frank that make up the bulk of the novel.

Kate and her husband, Dan, have joined a small “eco-community” in Washington state hoping to save their marriage. Built deep in the woods, Greenloop appears to be an idyllic escape from Silicon Valley, while still maintaining a connection to civilization through 24/7 internet connections and weekly drone deliveries.

That is until Mt. Rainier erupts.

Greenloop suddenly finds itself cut off from all communication and without enough supplies to survive for very long. The other members of the Greenloop community react to this crisis in varying and maddeningly frustrating ways. When nature –  with which some of the residents so desperately want to connect to – begins to turn on them, most remain in denial.

At least, until people begin to disappear and a troop of carnivorous Sasquatch is quite literally pounding down their doors. This assuredly is not a book for the squeamish, though it will teach you how to make an effective spear out of bamboo and kitchen knives.

With Brooks acting as narrator, he pulls testimonies and consultations together to present a story that feels incredibly plausible. And that is the mark of a great horror story – it makes you pause and examine that rustle in the bushes just a little more closely.

Adventures in Crafting

- Allison Leave a comment

First, a confession: I am not a crafter. Not in any sense of the word. If you need help with technology,  a website built, or something really neat printed on our 3D printer, I’m your librarian. But crafting? Allow me to introduce you to literally anyone else.

However, every month our library holds a craft program called Craft Cafe at our Fairmount branch, and this month it was my turn.  And I do not do things halfway. The first craft idea – a DIY hanging notepad – was ruled out due to it being far too complicated. So, what next? After to some intense Pinterest and craft blog research, I found what seemed to be an easy, cute craft: mason jar snow globes.  Glue some little trees on the lid, fill the jar with water, glycerin (to make the water thicker) and glitter, screw the lid on, and ta-da! Instant winter craft success!

Eh, not so much.

First, the supplies. Glycerin apparently comes in many forms – you’ve got your blocks of solid glycerin for soap making, tiny bottles for icing, vegetable glycerin, glycerin that’s sold in drugstores, and on and on. I settled on the icing glycerin because that was the only one I could find.  Then, on to glue. Did you know there’s a lot of glue out there? Well, there is. Walls and walls of glue. You say you just want crazy glue? Ha! Here are 147 varieties! Choose wisely, young crafter.

Then glitter, which I was not surprised to find that there were so many different choices. “But glitter is glitter, right?”  I thought, not hearing the faint but haunting laughter of all the crafters that had come before me.

One of the craft blogs I had read suggested that the trees be treated with Mod Podge before putting them in water to hold their color. No problem there, I already had some of that.

Now, with all my supplies, I sat down to make my first snow globe. Everything went smoothly. Pasting the trees with Mod Podge was tricky and weird, but I always follow the directions. I had two types of glitter, and after taking a vote from other librarians present, I settled on a mix of silver and iridescent glitter. None of the blogs gave an exact amount of glycerin to add, so I guessed, which made me very nervous as an always-follow-the-directions person.  The glue held strongly and it turned out well. Crafting success!

Happy little trees!

Until the next day.

Not so happy little trees

What once was a happy green pine tree in crystal clear water had become a sickly yellow. And the water looked like, well, use your imagination. I also detected a small leak.

I was panicked. There was no way I could do this craft, and time was running out! After even more research, I found that 1) I had used the the wrong kind of Mod Podge (there’s an aerosol, apparently) and 2) this is a common problem as the mini trees are often not colorfast. As for the leak, it turned out the thin iridescent glitter had worked its way into the seal of the jar lid.

Back to the craft store! I picked up a can of the correct sealant and found a kind of tree that was plastic and, in theory, would not lose color. I also found another kind of glitter that would hopefully not break the jar’s seal.

My second attempt did not go as smoothly as the first. Because the trees were plastic, they did not adhere to the jar lid as quickly as the first trees, which had a wooden base.  So, as soon as I turned the jar over, the trees floated freely. But, at least they didn’t loose any color.

Zero-g trees?

I tried a different glue, which seemed to work, but smelled horribly and needed 20 minutes to cure. Thinking that I would have to use the trees with the wooden bases, I sprayed them all with the aerosol Mod Podge a little too enthusiastically, causing great concern about the odor.  The smell did not dissipate from the trees, so I became worried about using them at all.

I mentioned that I am not a crafter, right?

At this point my eternally patient coworker, Ann, concerned for my sanity, suggested another, much easier craft (she’s a very talented artist, by the way.) But I am a very, very stubborn person and I had invested too much time in this craft to just give up. After recounting my tale to my brother, he suggested a kind of glue that is both water activated and water resistant. Could something like that actually exist?!

So I settled in for one more try.  Plastic trees, water activated glue, glycerin, chunky glitter and water.  You could cut the tension with an X-ACTO knife.

 

As they say on Pinterest, NAILED IT!

It is with great relief that I can say that December’s Craft Cafe was a success, and I emerged mostly unscathed and a little wiser to the ways of the crafter. If you’d like to make your own mason jar snow globe, check below for how we did ours! And if you like to join us for our next Craft Cafe in January, click here to register. They’re doing pinecone flowers – I hear they are far more relaxing!

_____

Mason Jar Snow Globes

What You’ll Need:

  • An 8 or 16 oz mason jar meant for canning.  My final snow globe was made in an 8 oz jar.
  • Some plastic trees or other small plastic decorative items that will fit on the jar lid. Pick something that appears to be water-resistant.
  • Water activated/water resistant glue – we used clear Gorilla Glue.
  • Liquid glycerin – we used glycerin meant to be used in icing, so look in the cake decorating section. It comes in small 2 oz bottles.
  • Glitter – find one that’s a mix of small and medium sized glitter
  • Twine or ribbon

What To Do:

  • Disassemble the mason jar.
  • Glue the trees to the underside of the lid.
  • Sprinkle a small amount of water onto the surface to activate the glue. Set it aside for about 5 minutes.
  • Fill the mason jar with water almost to the top.
  • For an 8 oz jar, add 4 caps of glycerin. Double that for a 16 oz jar.
  • Add as much glitter as you want, stirring periodically to mix. If the glitter is falling too quickly, add more glycerin.
  • Check on your trees. If the glue is tacky, slowly place the lid on to the jar and screw the collar on tightly.
  • Flip the jar over slowly. If your trees stay put, hooray! If they come loose, turn the jar back over and take the lid off. Add more glue to the trees and let it sit for about 10 minutes. Make sure the seal on the lid is clear of glitter before putting it back on.
  • Tie some twine or ribbon around the lid for a “I know exactly what I’m doing” look!

Underground Books: American War by Omar El Akkad

- Allison Leave a comment

Underground Books is a monthly book club that meets at 6:00 pm on the second Monday of the month at Main. We’re readers of books that are not typical book club fare – the subversive, the under-the radar, and the controversial. Every month, I’ll give a preview of what we’re reading, questions the book raises and start a discussion online for those who can’t make in person. Welcome to The Underground!

Hello readers! This month’s book is the 2017 novel American War by Omar El Akkad. Set roughly 60 years in the future in an America ravaged by climate change and a second civil war, it’s a story about the destruction of a nation, a family and a person by war. A cautionary tale that raises serious issues about our current national and global state of affairs, and what the future may hold. A heavy subject, yes, but worth the journey.

Opening in 2075,  the earth has warmed, the oceans have enveloped the coasts and submerged what little is left after increasingly severe storms batter the land. In response to multiple environmental disasters across the continent, the federal government – now based in Columbus, Ohio – bans the use of fossil fuels. The southern states defy the ban, and after a series of terrorist attacks culminating in the assassination of the president, the U.S. is again plunged into civil war.  This is a war of modern times –  out-of-control drones, homicide bombers, guerilla warfare, detainment camps and biological weapons deployed against an entire state.

The novel follows the Chestnut family of flood-prone Louisiana, displaced from their home by the Battles of East Texas to an overcrowded refugee camp on the border of Tennessee. Here Sarat Chestnut comes of age among the mundane cruelties of war.  She and her family – her older brother Simon, twin sister Dana, and mother Martina – try to make a life for themselves while waiting for the end of the war.  Sarat, already considered an outsider because of her tall and awkward build, grows rebellious and is befriended by a mysterious older man who once fought overseas for the North, or, at least, the North when the country was whole. He feeds her a steady diet of Southern mythos, sending her on a path to become an instrument of revenge.  As the narrator says in the prologue, “This isn’t a story about war. It’s about ruin.”

Assorted musings:

  • When I chose this book, I based it on, of course, the numerous good reviews it had received, and I was intrigued by concept. Given the current political climate, the possibility of another civil war in the U.S. has been raised more than once. What surprised me, however, was that the crux of the war was fossil fuels. I can understand the idea of Southern states objecting to the exercise of broad federal power, and a desire to protect mining and off-shore drilling, but what I noticed most was the absence of any mention of race or ethnicity. At the start of the novel, Sarat is described as having “fuzzy” hair, and that her father had immigrated from Mexico, but that’s the only mention of race in the entire novel. I suppose the argument could be made that by 2075, race is no longer an issue, but if we’re still arguing about red vs. blue and states’ rights vs. federal authority, I have a hard time suspending that disbelief.
  • The author is an award-winning journalist born in Egypt, raised in Qatar, now living in Oregon, and he reported extensively on Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and the Arab Spring. El Akkad’s journalistic expertise is apparent in this novel, as major aspects of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are transported to America. In many cases, it’s a note-for-note transcription. I wonder if that works for everyone? While the purpose of the novel is, arguably, to create empathy for the very real wars happening now and to also serve as a cautionary tale, could the novel have taken more liberties? I don’t mean that it should have been a Hunger Games-esque battle royale, but something more adapted to the setting.

Quotes I would have underlined if it wasn’t a library book:

“How long ago was this?” she asked.
“Must have been around ’21 or ’22,” said Gaines.  “Around the time they sent us over there for the third time, right around the Fifth Spring.”
Joe leaned close to Sarat; he looked at the photograph again. “That’s right,” he said. “I remember, I remember when it was still your guns and our blood.” (p. 139)

She remembered something Albert Gaines once told her all those years ago in Patience. He said when a Southerner tells you what they’re fighting for, you can agree or disagree, but you can’t ever call it a lie. Right or wrong, he said, a man from our country always says exactly what he means , and stands by what he says.
Even that, it turned out, was a lie. (p. 278)

You fight the war with guns, you fight the peace with stories. (p. 280)

What do you think? Let me know in the comments! And join us on April 9th at 6:00 at Main to discuss in real life! Next month, we’ll be reading Difficult Women by Roxane Gay – copies available at Main, or pick one up wherever convenient!

Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich

- Allison Leave a comment

We all remember the “March of Progress” poster from grade school science class, used to illustrate the  straight-line evolution of Homo sapiens from our ancient ancestors. From Australopithecus  to Homo habilius and then to the assumed apex of human evolution – us. But what if evolution wasn’t a straight line? What if suddenly, somehow, it doubled-back on itself, returning our species to our most ancient origins?

It is in this speculative world that Louise Erdrich’s latest novel Future Home of the Living God is set. Taking place in an unspecified time in the near future, the novel is presented as the journal of 26 year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, written to her unborn child. Cedar, the adopted daughter of liberal Minnesota parents, finding herself pregnant, is compelled to seek out her Ojibwe birth parents, ostensibly to discover any genetic problems that might affect her baby, and in a larger sense, to find her own identity. This familiar journey of personal discovery is set against a tumultuous time in which the future of the earth is gravely in doubt as evolution appears to be running backward. Plants and animals are born “wrong,” throwbacks to their genetic ancestors. Human babies and their mothers are dying at an alarming rate, and those infants that do survive are abnormal, with characteristics more similar to our genetic ancestors. The planet is heating up, with harsh Minnesota winters a fond, distant memory, and political chaos is rampant. Soon, pregnant women are encouraged, then forced, into “unborn protective centers” – prisons, really – and a “womb draft” is instated. As Cedar’s pregnancy progresses, she confesses to her baby that she isn’t sure if he (and she is sure it is a he) will have the ability to read the journal that she is writing, if he survives at all. Cedar soon becomes a fugitive, then a prisoner, then fugitive again, seeking sanctuary with her birth family with the help of her adoptive parents.

If this all sounds strikingly familiar to The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, you would be correct. In her author’s notes, Erdrich writes that she began the novel in 2002, then set it aside,  picking it up again after the most recent election. Future Home of the Living God is Erdrich’s first speculative fiction book, but still closely shares the Native American culture she has explored in her past works. The premise of backwards evolution and how it might bring the end of civilization is compelling – it’s what interested me in the book in the first place – and it reads like a thriller (I read it all in one sitting). But at a slim 267 pages, it reads almost too fast, with not nearly enough time spent exploring the circumstances of the world it is set in, the stories of Cedar’s families, or her baby’s father. Since the story is told in the form of a journal, which does lend an intimacy to the narrative, many things go unsaid, or dropped entirely. Even the mystery of Cedar’s birth and adoption – the revelation of which is emotionally catastrophic for her – is quickly dropped to move onto the next crisis. At a few points, I thought that the plot was going in one direction, and then, disappointingly, found it dropped. Perhaps my expectations were overly influenced by my usual science fiction preferences. Some the misdirections reminded me of the short story “Before” by Carolyn Dunn (contained in the excellent collection After edited by Ellen Datlow) an end-of-the-world tale of a plague that leaves only those with Native American ancestors alive. But, that is not the case here.

Which isn’t to say the novel isn’t an exciting and interesting read. There are thoughtful explorations of faith (Cedar is a recent convert to Catholicism), the origin and evolution of our species, how and why we became human, and the consequences of ignoring and abusing our environment and each other, all alongside Cedar’s journey into motherhood and her birth family. The ending might come abruptly, but it is well worth the journey.

Recorded Books OneClickdigital & Zinio are now RBdigital!

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Do you use Recorded Books OneClickdigital to download audiobooks or Zinio for Libraries to download magazines? We’ve got great news for you, even if you don’t! OneClickdigital and Zinio are merging into one platform – RBdigital!

What does this mean for you? Now, you’ll be able to find, download, and read or listen to audiobooks and magazines in the same app! The Library will update our links to the new website, which will also have a new look, simplified searching, and a more responsive audio player.

Question: When will this happen?

Answer: Beginning in mid August the app will be available.

Q: Will I be notified? 

A: Yes! If you use OneClickdigital, you will receive an email and if you use their app, you will be notified that an update is available. If you use the Zinio app, you will also be notified that a new app is available.

Q: What if I don’t update the app right away?

A: Both apps will continue to work for a time after the new app is released.

Q: What is the new app?

A: The new app will be called RBdigital and will be available in the Apple Appstore, Google Play and the Amazon App Store. Here’s what the icon will look like (depending on when you install it):

 

 

With the new app, you’ll be able to check out, read magazines, and listen to audiobooks, all in the same app.

Q: I already have titles checked out. Will I need to check them out again?

A: No, all the titles and holds you currently have will be imported into the new app.

Q: I don’t use the app, how will this effect me?

A:  If you only use OneClickdigital and/or Zinio on a computer or laptop, you will be directed to the new website, which will have a new look. Just use the links on the library’s eBooks and More page.

Note: if you use the OneClickdigital Media Manager to download and transfer audiobooks to a portable device, you may be prompted to update the program. Please go ahead and do so.

Q: Do I need to create a new account?

A: Nope! If you already have a OneClick digital and/or a Zinio account, you won’t need to make any changes your account.

Q: I’ve never heard of these services! How do I get started?

A: New users must create an account on the RBdigital website (not in the app). To get there, click here to access the Library’s eBooks and More page.  Once you’re signed up, you can start checking out right away from your computer, or download the app, sign in, and start downloading!

Q: I have more questions!

A: As always, you can contact us at (563) 326-7832, email us here or text DPLKNOWS to 66746. You can find user guides on our eBooks and More LibGuide and you can contact RBdigital directly at 1-877-772-8346 or yoursupport@recordedbooks.com.

New Magazines!

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New magazines are coming soon to DPL!

Get your FREE copy of BookPage at any of our locations. BookPage is a monthly magazine with reviews, author interviews, book club picks, audio reviews, and the “Hold List” – the editors pick the best books, old and new. Even the ads are helpful in getting the jump on upcoming books.

Highlights Hello is a new magazine for babies! Rounded corners, and washable, tear-resistant pages make this ideal for our youngest patrons.  It will be available at Main, Fairmount and Eastern branches.

J-14 is the “#1 Teen Celeb” magazine. For pre-teen and teenagers and available at Main, Fairmount and Eastern.

Magnolia Journal is Chip and Joanna Gaines new lifestyle magazine. Get insider info about the Gaines’s and their HGTV show.   It is currently at the Main Library and is coming soon to Fairmount and Eastern.

Other new magazines include: Iowa Sportsman, Bottom Line Personal and In Touch at the Main Library. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Kiplinger’s Retirement Report, Bottom Line Personal at the Eastern Branch, and Elle, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Bottom Line Personal and Kiplinger’s Retirement Report at Fairmount.

Trees Vol. 1 by Warren Ellis and Jason Howard

- Allison Leave a comment

2014-05-28-treesTen years ago, they arrived. Silently they landed – enormous, tall cylinders settling all over the Earth. No communication, no signs of life. Just standing there, like trees, unaware of humanity, it seemed. Or, perhaps they simply didn’t care.

Their appearance causes global chaos. The Trees landed in oceans, on top of glaciers and the middle of crowded urban centers.  Governments collapsed and then slowly recovered. With no communication or interaction after ten years, the Trees have become almost normal, and humanity has adapted to their existence.

In China, a special cultural zone has been established around a Tree, called Shu, where none of the usual cultural and economic restrictions are enforced. Tian Chenglei, a young artist from the country to study art. He joins an artists commune and shyly makes friends with a transgender woman, eventually falling in love with her. But the freedoms the Tree’s arrival brought cannot last forever.

In the northern-most reaches of Norway’s Spitsbergen island, a scientific team assigned to study the Tree there struggles to maintain order and their sanity. One determined scientist discovers black poppies growing in the shadows around the Tree, areas where nothing should grow. He eventually discovers that the flowers are composed of metal filaments arranged in a mirror image of the Tree’s external symbols, and that they transmit faint RF signals. He reasons that the flowers are a method of communication and once there is enough of them, the Tree will “speak.”

In Somalia, a technocratic dictator deals with the economic and political impact of one of the smallest Trees landing in the autonomous state of Puntland within Somalia. The Tree’s arrivals resulted in a vast influx of wealth and economic growth into Puntland, while the rest of the country only grew poorer. Convinced that the Tree does not care about the land and people around it, Rahim is determined to take control of the Tree and Puntland, by any means necessary.

The Trees changed the world when they arrived. The uncertainly of their intent and the implication of another intelligent species irreparably changed civilization – it was, in fact, the end of the world as we knew it. The story is less about the Trees (although the forthcoming volumes promise more) than how humanity reacts to them.  Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Planetary) has a lot of ground to cover initially, but by end of the first volume, the action and dread intensifies to a cliffhanger of an ending. Trees is a great choice for sci-fi fans and for those who wonder what might happen when we learn we’re not alone in the universe.

Lone by Stuart Moore, Russ Manning, Jerome Opeña and Alberto Panticelli

- Allison Leave a comment

1182212Years after a massive nuclear & biological war laid waste to the Western U.S., radioactive zombies, mutants and murders roam the Western Wasteland. Luke, a gifted sharpshooter and her brother Mark barely escape with their lives after zombies overtake their town of Desolation. Once their family reaches safety, Luke sets out on her own to track the zombies – while they are somewhat intelligent, they are nowhere near smart enough to take over a town. Luke follows the zombies to the caves where she discovers … something leading the zombies. Luke has never seen anything like their leader, she only knows that it bleeds yellow.

Once Luke returns and reports what she saw (and barely escaped from) her mother sends her and her brother on a journey thought the Western Wasteland to find a man named Lone. Only he, their mother says, can save them.

Travelling across the dangerous wastes, Luke and Mark find an old farmer, who, once he learns of the “zombie boss” that bleeds yellow, agrees to help them find Lone. But while finding Lone is one thing, it is quite another to convince him to help.

Lone had been in the war and he had been changed, experimented on, and became something more powerful than a man. His fellow soldiers in this private army were the same, and elite force to protect mysterious masters. Gunfathers, they were called, and they were not like anything Lone had seen before. And they bled yellow.

Lone had long thought the Gunfathers had all been killed in the apocalypse that followed. Lone agrees to help Luke and Mark stop these Gunfathers and the monsters that follow them. And ultimately, finally discover who the Gunfathers are and why they destroyed the world. Or, at least, kill them all.

Moore’s (Wolverine Noir, Firestorm) Lone reads like a classic Western, with a science fiction twist. Fans of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series and Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead series will enjoy this tale.

 

New Philosophy, Psychology & Self-Help in October

- Allison Leave a comment

Featured new additions to DPL’s Philosophy, Psychology & Self-Help 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.

y648Jump: Take the Leap of Faith to Achieve Your Life of Abundance by Steve Harvey – On January 13, 2016, at the close of a taping of Family Feud, Steve Harvey spontaneously began to speak. Not knowing that the cameras were still rolling, he offered his studio audience insights into his own happiness and success. His staff, also moved by Steve’s passionate words, shared the riveting six-minute video on social media. In this very personal and illuminating guide, Harvey  elaborates on those spontaneous remarks. His message is simple: You need to jump like your life depends on it – because it does – if you truly want a life of peace and abundance.

 

51-0ynurwdlOn Living by Kerry Egan – As a hospice chaplain, Kerry Egan didn’t offer sermons or prayers, unless they were requested; in fact, she found, the dying rarely want to talk about God, at least not overtly. Instead, she discovered she’d been granted an invaluable chance to witness firsthand what she calls the “spiritual work of dying”–the work of finding or making meaning of one’s life, the experiences it’s contained and the people who have touched it, the betrayals, wounds, unfinished business, and unrealized dreams. Most of all, though, she listened as her patients talked about love–love for their children and partners and friends; love they didn’t know how to offer; love they gave unconditionally; love they, sometimes belatedly, learned to grant themselves.  Each of her patients taught her something – how to find courage in the face of fear or the strength to make amends; how to be profoundly compassionate and fiercely empathetic; how to see the world in grays instead of black and white. In this poignant, moving, and beautiful book, she passes along all their precious and necessary gifts.

51xu-tbfaql__sx329_bo1204203200_American Philosophy: A Love Story by John Kaag – In American Philosophy , John Kaag – a disillusioned philosopher at sea in his marriage and career – stumbles upon a treasure trove of rare books on an old estate in the hinterlands of New Hampshire that once belonged to the Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. The library includes notes from Whitman, inscriptions from Frost, and first editions of Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant. As he begins to catalog and preserve these priceless books, Kaag rediscovers the very tenets of American philosophy – self-reliance, pragmatism, the transcendent – and sees them in a twenty-first-century context. American Philosophy is an invigorating investigation of American pragmatism and the wisdom that underlies a meaningful life.

614dfzpgwllGhostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey – Colin Dickey is on the trail of America’s ghosts. Crammed into old houses and hotels, abandoned prisons and empty hospitals, the spirits that linger continue to capture our collective imagination, but why? His own fascination piqued by a house hunt in Los Angeles that revealed derelict foreclosures and “zombie homes,” Dickey embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places. With boundless curiosity, Dickey conjures the dead by focusing on questions of the living – how do we, the living, deal with stories about ghosts, and how do we inhabit and move through spaces that have been deemed, for whatever reason, haunted?

voices-within-the-history-and-science-of-how-we-tal-1497582-5e148f4d561644358a67The Voices Within: The History and Science of How We Talk to Ourselves by Charles Fernyhough – At the moment you caught sight of this book, what were you thinking? Was your thought a stream of sensations? Or was it a voice in your head? Did you ask yourself, “I wonder what that’s about?” Did you answer? And what does it mean if you did? When someone says they hear voices in their head, they are often thought to be mentally ill. But, as Charles Fernyhough argues in The Voices Within , such voices are better understood as one of the chief hallmarks of human thought. Whether the voices in our heads are meandering lazily or clashing chaotically, they deserve to be heard. Bustling with insights from literature, film, art, and psychology, The Voices Within offers more than science; it powerfully entreats us all to take

how-the-secret-changed-my-life-9781501138263_hrHow the Secret Changed My Life: Real People, Real Stories by Rhonda Byrne – Since the very first publication of The Secret a decade ago, Rhonda Byrne’s bestselling book has brought forth an explosion of real people sharing real stories of how their real lives have miraculously changed for the better. How The Secret Changed My Life presents a selection of the most heartwarming and moving stories in one inspirational volume. Each story provides an authentic, real-life illustration of the pathway that leads to success in every area of life: money, health, relationships, love, family, and career.

New Religion & Spirituality in October

- Allison Leave a comment

Featured new additions to DPL’s Religion & Spirituality 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.

51w5mgcl1slA Second Wind: Time to Own Your Future by T.D. Jakes – While focusing on his core mission to preach the gospel worldwide, T.D. Jakes has seen many good people not spend enough quality time with family, friends, and God. They have gotten so swept up in the daily grind that they have failed to live the rich life that God desires for each of His people.  In his new book, Jakes provides readers with strategies that will help them rejuvenate their life and turn their “busyness” into a “business.”

 

 

41h3k7jitxl__sy344_bo1204203200_The Broken Way: A Daring Path Into the Abundant Life by Ann Voskamp – New York Times best-selling author Ann Voskamp sits at the edge of her life and all of her own unspoken brokenness and asks: What if you really want to live abundantly before it’s too late? What do you do if you really want to know abundant wholeness? This is the one begging question that’s behind every single aspect of our lives – and one that The Broken Way rises up to explore in the most unexpected ways.

 

 

51n4vwbnnl__sy344_bo1204203200_What Pope Francis Really Said: Words of Comfort and Challenge by Tom Hoopes – His likeable, spontaneous, unguarded manner has drawn both estranged Catholics and even non-Catholics to take a closer look at the Catholic Church. He has also puzzled and even outraged the faithful who listened uncritically to the media’s interpretation of Pope Francis’s off-the-cuff commentary on hot-button issues such as abortion, marriage, divorce, the environment, immigration, and a host of other issues.  Nationally respected Catholic journalist Tom Hoopes explores how Pope Francis is bringing the Catholic Church to bear on a dramatically changing world, not by altering its teachings but by applying enduring truths to new realities in fresh ways.

 

51psqpts6wlThe Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron –  Ignorance is bliss–except in self-awareness. What you don’t know about yourself can hurt you and your relationships–and maybe even how you make your way in the world. In The Road Back to You Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile forge a unique approach – a practical, comprehensive way of accessing Enneagram wisdom and exploring its connections with Christian spirituality for a deeper knowledge of God and of ourselves. Witty and filled with stories, this book allows you to understand more about each of the Enneagram types, keeping you turning the pages long after you have read the chapter about yourself. Beginning with changes you can start making today, the wisdom of the Enneagram can help you get on the road that will take you further along into who you really are–leading you into places of spiritual discovery you would never have found on your own, and paving the way to the wiser, more compassionate person you want to become.

k10820Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation by Eric Leigh Schmidt – A much-maligned minority throughout American history, atheists have been cast as a threat to the nation’s moral fabric, barred from holding public office, and branded as irreligious misfits in a nation chosen by God. Yet, village atheists–as these godless freethinkers came to be known by the close of the nineteenth century–were also hailed for their gutsy dissent from stultifying pieties and for posing a necessary secularist challenge to majoritarian entanglements of church and state. Village Atheists explores the complex cultural terrain that unbelievers have long had to navigate in their fight to secure equal rights and liberties in American public life

9780802414502Keeping Love Alive As Memories Fade: The 5 Love Languages and the Alzheimer’s Journey by Gary D. Chapman – Across America and around the world, the five love languages have revitalized relationships and saved marriages from the brink of disaster. Can they also help individuals, couples, and families cope with the devastating diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease? Coauthors Chapman, Shaw, and Barr give a resounding yes. Their innovative application of the five love languages creates an entirely new way to touch the lives of the five million Americans who have Alzheimer’s, as well as their fifteen million caregivers. At its heart, this book is about how love gently lifts a corner of dementia’s dark curtain to cultivate an emotional connection amid memory loss.