Category: Staff Picks

Flyover Lives by Diane Johnson

- Stephanie Leave a comment

flyover lives For those of you not familiar with Diane Johnson, she is a writer who grew up right in the Midwest, in Moline, Illinois to be specific. Her Midwest roots can be found throughout her writings, specifically in her memoir, Flyover Lives.

Johnson grew up in Moline and writes that the Midwest was a place she wanted to escape from. She  eventually ended up in California and then in France, where the idea for this book sprang forth. At a house party in France, Johnson’s friend told her that Americans had an “indifference to history,” that that was why Americans were naïve and didn’t have as much of a grasp and pride in their history as the French did. When Johnson eventually made her way back to California, this conversation stayed stuck in her head. What if the people in the Midwest, otherwise known as the flyover states, also flew over their family history with little thought given to where they came from and the struggles of their ancestors? This bothered Johnson and she set out to find out more about her genealogy. This book serves as her rebuttal.

Accompanied with pictures from her life and her ancestors’ lives, Johnson weaves together a story about the hold that home has on us all and our twin desire to escape to other places and make a name for ourselves. Johnson and her readers will find similarities between their own lives and the descriptions of her ancestors and their eventual journey to the Midwest. The letters and memoirs Johnson discovered serve as the backdrop to her exploration of a proud family history that ends up in the Midwest with the potential to leak around the world.

Looking for more books by Johnson? You’re in luck! The library has a number of books by her like Le divorce, Le mariage, and L’affaire. Some of these books are also available in large print, e-books, and audio books. Le Divorce was also made into a movie. Interested in finding copies of those, either click on the titles or visit the library catalog and search.

Interstellar on DVD and Blu Ray

- Bianca Leave a comment

Interstellarinterstellar takes place in a future Earth where a plague called the Blight is eating up the food sources around the world. Another effect of the Blight is routine dust storms that cause a range of health problems. Scientists have concluded the Earth is dying.  As food dwindles and dust storms increase, a young girl begins to receive messages through her bedroom bookshelves. Her father (played by Matthew McConaughey), an ex engineer and pilot, is called upon to lead a hail Mary expedition through space to find a new home for Earth’s residents.  He is joined by three others (including the lovely Anne Hathaway) to travel through space and time where minutes lost in space mean years lost on Earth.

Watching Interstellar is a complete mind boggling experience. Be prepared going in to it that you will be stuck to your seat for the next three hours. I recommend going to the bathroom first and keeping liquid intake to a minimum. Whatever you do, do not start this moving an hour before bed time. You will be up two hours past your bedtime. I made all of these mistakes. Luckily  during my bathroom break, I stopped the movie long enough to knock some sense into myself and go to bed (only an hour late). However I spent the entire next day thinking about this movie and wondering how it was going to end. And one more thing, use the subtitle function. It may seem strange at first to have it on, but you will get used to it. Action movies tend to be really loud or really quiet and you can never get it just right. You might miss some good information if you don’t have the subtitles on.

Interstellar has all of the things we have come to expect from a space movie (including plenty of terminology and theory that you need a degree in astrophysics to understand), but it finishes way ahead of predecessors. Interstellar gives you raw human emotion and good, sometimes great acting. On more than one occasion I wanted to drop to my knees, snap my head to the sky and scream ‘nooooooo!’  Other times my face lost all expression and my body went limp as I tried to grasp what just happened. It is the kind of movie that will you keep you up at night, and make you hold on to the ones you love just a little bit tighter.

I’m sure after reading this you will all be determined to watch this movie. While you will love it, you will be confused. After you have watched the movie, come back to this blog and check out this site. Den of Geek gives a great explanation of what is really going on in this movie as the movie does wrap up pretty quick.

Verdict: Not only one of the best movies of 2014, but could possible break into my personal top ten hit list of all time.

Award Watch: Won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. To see a full list of awards visit Interstellar Awards.

Fun Fact: Matt Damon is actually in this movie! He pops up about halfway through the movie. Interstellar is full of big name actors that have little actual screen time. John Lithgow, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, and Topher Grace all appear in Interstellar in small roles.

Introverts in Love

- Stephanie Leave a comment

introverts in loveFinding love is difficult for anyone, especially for those of us who would rather stay home where it’s quiet than go out to bars and shows to meet up with people. Sophia Dembling has chosen to address this issue in her book, Introverts in Love: The Quiet Way to Happily Ever After.

Dembling says that she wrote this book as a way to provide introverts a list of things to think about as they try to find their happily after. The items she discusses in this book as meant to be a buffet of information: pick and choose what applies to you because not everything she writes is going to apply to every introvert. Dembling discusses the mistakes introverts can make in relationships, as well as providing some solutions for those mistakes. She also talks about why some introverts seek other introverts to spend their lives with, while others are instead drawn to extroverts. Dembling continuously reiterates that this is a book for introverts and that extroverts will most likely find themselves underrepresented here since extroverts are the ones that usually do not have trouble representing themselves in the dating scene.

The inclusion of interviews from introverts from a wide variety of backgrounds will provide other introverts, like myself, with the necessary confidence to discuss how we need solitude in relationships, to articulate how we handle conflict differently than our boisterous counterparts, and to hopefully help us describe our feelings on socializing versus staying home.

Interested in learning more about what makes introverts tick? Check out Dembling’s first book about introverts, The Introvert’s Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World, which maps as a general guide to life as an introvert.

Essays After Eighty by Donald Hall

- Stephanie Leave a comment

essays after eightyLet me first admit that the way I discovered this book was not when I placed it on my “to-be-ordered” list or when I stumbled upon it by happenstance in the library. Instead, I was talking about BookFace Friday. This event happens every Friday when librarians and other bookish people find books with people’s faces as the cover, pose with them as their actual face, and post pictures on their social media accounts. (Still confused? Check out the Instagram page for BookFace Friday.) As I was looking up examples to show, I found someone using this book as their face. I was instantly intrigued by the title and immediately wrote it down to order/read.

Donald Hall, former U.S. poet laureate, constructed Essays After Eighty as a way to describe for others the vantage point of life at very old age. The essays Hall has written for this collection intricately weave subjects like death, aging, being limited when you reach old age, traveling in foreign countries, honorary degrees, his love of garlic, and just what is actually important to you when you reach his age. Describing for readers his deep love for his home, the deceased love of his life, and how to deal with growing older are just some of the topics Hall broaches in this enduring collection. Hall extends back to his past in some essays describing scenes that stand out in his mind to the present where he spends his time at Eagle Pond Farm.

Be sure to check out this book to read more about Hall’s life as a biographer, children’s author, and as a human being trying to figure out how to deal with everything old age has thrown at him.

Michael Jackson: The Experience

- Stephanie Leave a comment

michael jackson the experienceNow that it’s finally spring, it is time for “the wiggles” to come out. This happens every year when the weather gets nice outside and kids are fit to bursting to do anything outside. But what about those rainy spring days when they’re stuck inside? I turn to video games, but ones that people of all ages can enjoy playing (and ones that *hopefully* won’t lead to fighting matches between the players).

My favorite go-to games like this are any of the singing and dancing ones. I just discovered Michael Jackson: The Experience and was pleasantly surprised with the game as a whole. This Wii game allows four players to play with the only requirement being that each has a Wii remote.

If you want to practice your moves before you compete against your friends, the game offers a practice space in Video Training mode. This game also allows you to battle your friends in a Challenge Mode, have the other players be your back-up dancers, or even make your own dance crew. Dance along with Michael to 26 of his iconic hits that range from “Beat It” to “Billie Jean” to “Smooth Criminal”.

So next time it’s rainy outside or you need a new distraction, head to the library and check out our collection of musical video games.

An Audiobook for The Mom Taxi: The Knights’ Tales by Gerald Morris

- Ann Leave a comment

TaxiI’ve been driving the Mom Taxi at least twice a day for the past ten years and getting my fares—I mean, kids—into the car on time has been something of a struggle, especially on school mornings.

But one day, I forgot to stop the audiobook I’d been playing on my way to pick them up and we listened to it on the way home. The next morning, both kids were up and ready as quickly as I could have wished, asking if I was going to let them listen to more.

How could I say no?

I did say no to portions of it; I’d checked out Anyone But You by Jennifer Crusie, which is fantastically funny and has a manic-depressive beagle in it, but is still an adult romance.  I occasional had to lunge at the fast-forward button in the effort to avoid questions  for which I wanted more preparation time (say, ten to twelve years) to answer.

The kids still enjoyed it—partly because of the lunging, I suspect—and after the book was done, they asked if I could get another audiobook.

This time, tired of fast-forwarding (and rewinding after I’d dropped them off), I headed for the children’s section. All the branches of the Davenport Public library have audiobooks that appeal to my second-grader and others that appeal to my pre-teen.

It was trickier to find ones that would appeal to all of us.

Knights Tales Collection - MorrisEnter The Knights‘ Tales collection, written by Gerald Morris and read by award-winning voice artist Steve West.

The four tales included on the five CDs are about the adventures of Sir Lancelot the Great (“He’s sooooo handsome!”), Sir Givret the Short (and his friend, Sir Eric the Not Too Bright), Sir Gawain the True (and his frenemy, the Green Knight), and Sir Balin the Ill-fated (whose mother just wants him to marry a “nice Nothern girl.”).

The main characters spend a lot of time getting into impossible situations that are unraveled by a piece of astoundingly simple logic. They’re funny and clever and twisty and very well-written.

Mr. Morris doesn’t talk down to his target audience (3rd to 6th grade) and his plots and intelligent, witty style won’t bore adults.   Mr. West uses an assortment of voices and accents that make even the minor characters—like the herald Harold, the argumentative Lady Elaine, and the Old Woman of Some Nonspecific Mountain—come to life.

These stories ensure that my kids are eager to get up and get going for the next installment—even on Mondays—and that our morning commutes are full of intent listening, predictions about what might happen next, and a lot of laughter.

For this Taxi Mom, that almost makes up for the dismal lack of tips.

Almost.

 

War of the Wives

- Stephanie Leave a comment

war of the wivesA phone call wakes you up in the middle of the night: “This is Detective Inspector Bowles from the Metropolitan police, Mrs. Busfield. We’re outside your house. Can you please let us in?” You scramble out of bed in shock, your first thoughts running to your two grown children and the one sleeping down the hall. Are they okay? You open the front door to find two policemen telling you your husband of twenty-eight years has been found dead, floating in a river. Not possible. He’s supposed to be in Dubai on business. You are in denial.

Fast forward to the funeral. As you walk to the crematorium flanked by your children, everyone stares. Standing outside, you hear wailing coming from the parking lot and see a grown woman on her knees keening. As she staggers to the door, you’re infuriated that she dare intrude on your grief. She reaches the vicar standing on the steps, grips his arms, and demands to know what happened to your husband and wants to know who organized the funeral without telling her. He politely tries to disengage, while asking who the woman is. She grips his arm and says, “I’m his wife.” You are shocked. She can’t be.

Two women. One husband. Deception, betrayal, and death. If this description has caught your interest, check out Tamar Cohen’s War of the Wives for more information about Selina, Lottie, their families, and the dead patriarch of the family, Simon Busfield. Just remember: Not everything is as it seems.

If You Find this Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

- Stephanie Leave a comment

if you find this letterIn today’s world, it’s not uncommon to see many people concentrating more and more on their screens and less and less on the people in front of them. This sad fact hit Hannah Brencher when she moved to New York right after she graduated from college. As she was exploring her new home, she discovered that instead of the warm and welcoming place she expected it to be, she was surrounded by people who knew exactly what they wanted to do, who knew exactly where they needed to be, and who were not the least bit concerned about a young girl who was just trying to figure things out and looking for help.

Feeling somewhat defeated one day at the subway station, she saw an old woman who seemed to be in a similar lonely situation. Brencher was drawn to the woman and could not look away. Staring at her, she remembered how her mother used to write her love letters and how that simple piece of paper always made her feel better because that meant someone else understood and cared about you. She decided then and there to write the woman a love letter. Sitting curled up on the train, Brencher hurriedly scrawled a note to this woman, wrote “If you find this letter, it’s for you…” on the front, and dropped it. Feeling better, she began leaving love notes all over the city and eventually created the blog The World Needs More Love Letters.

Seeking help when her inbox reached over 400 requests for love letters, she created a campaign that you can subscribe to join to write love letters to perfect strangers. If You Find this Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers is a memoir Brencher wrote describing her love-letter writing journey in her new home, how she began to feel more connected to the people around her, and how this simple letter writing campaign has helped her restore her belief in the goodness of people.

Dictatorship of the Dress by Jessica Topper

- Stephanie Leave a comment

dictatorship of the dressWhen I was growing up, I always had a secret hope that I would meet my significant other on a plane and we would magically fall in love, travel to an exotic location, and live happily ever after. When I reached high school, I realized that my plane-phobic self would actually have to get WILLINGLY on a plane(and not freak out) to do this… My child self was crushed. I would have to continue to look for those fairy tales in books.

Just last week, I stumbled upon a fiction romance novel called Dictatorship of the Dress by Jessica Topper that allowed me to live out my childhood fantasy of travel love. In this novel, Topper weaves together the lives of Laney Hudson, the dress bearer for her mother’s wedding, and Noah Ridgewood, a software designer on his way to his bachelor party. Laney is sick of hauling her mother’s dress around, as her mother seems to care only if the dress actually makes it to the wedding, not her daughter. As she carries the giant dress bag through the airport, she is constantly mistaken for the bride, a mistake Laney uses to her advantage so she can be bumped up to first class. Here she is seated next to Noah, who the flight crew mistakenly thinks is her husband-to-be. Enter in horrible winter weather, missed flights, Laney’s lost love, and an overbearing fiancé, Laney and Noah soon find themselves grounded in the last available honeymoon suite. The two must wrestle with events in their past that are holding them back from catching this new love connection.

The Price is Right

- Stephanie Leave a comment

the price is rightCome on down! When I’m sick, I find myself binge-watching daytime television. Bob Barker’s voice haunts my sickness dreams telling me that I’m the next contestant on The Price is Right! Even though Mr. Barker is no longer the host, I still find myself watching the show as Drew Carey leads contestants through all the classic games in order to win the showcase.

Since my dream to be on The Price is Right has never materialized(Dangit!), I have found other ways to compete with my family and friends to win bragging rights. One of these is the Wii game, The Price is Right. Here I can live out my fantasy of being on the show and compete on Contestant’s Row against my friends to try to get to that treasured Showcase round. Fans of the old and new version of the show will recognize a wide variety of the games: Bonkers, Plinko, Punch a Bunch, Hole in One, Contestant Row, Grocery Game, Lucky Seven and many more. Over thirty classic pricing games are available to be played.

Gather up your friends and see which one of you is the best at guessing the closest price!