Category: Staff Picks

Censorship is so 1984 – Read for Your Rights

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Banned Book Week 2025 is finally here! Running from October 5th through October 11th, 2025, the theme for this year is ‘Censorship is So 1984 – Read for Your Rights’. According to the American Library Association, ‘With the escalation in attempts to ban books in libraries, schools, and bookstores around the country, George Orwell’s cautionary tale “1984” serves a prescient warning about the dangers of censorship. This year’s theme reminds us that the right to read belongs to all of us, that censorship has no place in contemporary society, and that we must defend our rights.’

Below are the Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2024 (Descriptions are provided by the publishers.):

1. All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
Why this book matters: bit.ly/allboysBR

In a series of personal essays, award-winning author and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue explores their 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. (Johnson used he/him pronouns at the time of publication.) – Farrar, Straus and Giroux

2. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
Why this book matters: bit.ly/genderBR

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. – Oni Press

3. (TIE) The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Why this book matters: bit.ly/bluestBR

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 subtlety 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. – Vintage

3. (TIE) The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Why this book matters: bit.ly/wallflowerBR

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, adapted into a major motion picture starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson (and written and directed by the author), and an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults (2000) and Best Book for Reluctant Readers (2000), 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. – MTV Books

5. Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
Why this book matters: bit.ly/tricksBR

When all choice is taken from you, life becomes a game of survival.

Five teenagers from different parts of the country. Three girls. Two guys. Four straight. One gay. Some rich. Some poor. Some from great families. Some with no one at all. All living their lives as best they can, but all searching…for freedom, safety, community, family, love. What they don’t expect, though, is all that can happen when those powerful little words “I love you” are said for all the wrong reasons.

Five moving stories remain separate at first, then interweave to tell a larger, powerful story—a story about making choices, taking leaps of faith, falling down, and growing up. A story about kids figuring out what sex and love are all about, at all costs, while asking themselves, “Can I ever feel okay about myself?” – Margaret K. McElderry Books

6. (TIE) Looking for Alaska by John Green
Why this book matters: bit.ly/alaskaBR

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 Books

6. (TIE) Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
Why this book matters: bit.ly/earlBR

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

8. (TIE) Crank by Ellen Hopkins
Why this book matters: bit.ly/crankBR

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.

8. (TIE) Sold by Patricia McCormick
Why this book matters: bit.ly/soldBR

The powerful, poignant, bestselling National Book Award finalist gives voice to a young girl robbed of her childhood yet determined to find the strength to triumph.

Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family.
He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi journeys to India and arrives at “Happiness House” full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution.

An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty and cunning. She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family’s debt-then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave.

Lakshmi’s life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Still, she lives by her mother’s words—Simply to endure is to triumph—and gradually, she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world. Then the day comes when she must make a decision-will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life?

Written in spare and evocative vignettes by the co-author of I Am Malala (Young Readers Edition), this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs. – Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

10. Flamer by Mike Curato
Why this book matters: bit.ly/flamerBR

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. (BYR)

Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston

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“Grief is just a love song in reverse.” ― Ashley Poston, Sounds Like Love

Ashley Poston, a writer of magical realism, has found her sweet spot in her newest romance, Sounds Like Love. Joni Lark knew she wanted to leave her hometown of Vienna Shores, North Carolina when she was in high school to pursue a career in songwriting. Now Joni is working as a songwriter in Los Angeles, where her songs are highly sought after by musicians. Her agent is anxious for Jodi to write her next hit, but sadly Joni is empty of ideas and can’t write. When her dad calls her back to the Outer Banks to share one last good summer with her mom, Joni hopes that she will find inspiration amongst the sand, the surf, and music at The Revelry.

When she finally gets home, Joni is shocked to see that everything has changed. Her mother’s dementia is getting worse, her best friend is hiding something, and her family’s business, The Revelry, isn’t doing well financially. Joni’s hopes of inspiration quickly shrivel, except for this one pesky melody that has been stuck in her head since the night before she left Los Angeles. It’s not just the melody though – there’s a man’s voice also in her head. While this completely freaks her out at the start, Joni slowly grows to enjoy his company. Who is this mystery man and why are they connected? When he shows up in Vienna Springs with a plan, Joni is on board. He wants them to finish the melody that’s stuck in both of their heads in order to sever their connection. Could that be as easy as he says? They’ll have to rely on each other in order to find out.

Sounds Like Love was a trippy read. The idea that the two main characters could hear each other’s thoughts was difficult to comprehend at first, but the rules that the author built into their gifts helped me to believe it *could* have happened. If you are able, I recommend you listen to this book in audio as the narrator sings! The small town beach setting was believable, while I also enjoyed the explorations into the music industry and the different musical elements. While the author does include a character with dementia in this book, she handles this topic with sensitivity. The relationships, both family and friends, were major plot points and helped to carry the story. Solid 4 star read.

This title is also available in large print.

“How do I forgive my past self for all the futures I didn’t become? I don’t know.” ― Ashley Poston, Sounds Like Love

Online Reading Challenge – October

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Welcome Readers!

This month the Online Reading Challenge is focusing on fantasy. Our main title for October is She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker Chan. Here’s a quick summary from the publisher:

To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything

“I refuse to be nothing…”

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother’s identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother’s abandoned greatness. – Tor Books

Looking for some other fantasy titles? Try any of the following.

As always, check each of our locations for displays with lots more titles to choose from!

Online Reading Challenge – September Wrap-Up

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Hello Fellow Challenge Readers!

How did your reading go this month? Did you read a young adult literature title for September? Share in the comments!

I read our main title: The Cousins by Karen McManus. McManus is known for her Bayview High series (One of Us is Lying, One of Us is Next, and One of Us is Back), but The Cousins is a standalone novel diving into one family’s sordid history. What caught my attention about this novel was the premise: three teenage cousins invited to spend the summer with their estranged grandmother at the resort she owns. Sounds intriguing and a bit familiar, right? I thought so, too.

The three Story cousins, Jonah, Millie, and Aubrey, are contacted by their estranged grandmother, inviting them to spend the summer in a resort beach town. Mildred Story, the estranged matriarch of the Story family, cut off her four children over twenty years ago, their only notice a cryptic letter stating, ‘You know what you did’. Despite her children professing to have no idea what they did to earn her displeasure, Mildred refused to see her children or correspond in any way. This new invitation to her grandchildren comes completely out of the blue, catching everyone off guard. The fact that Mildred is incredibly wealthy has her children hoping that the grandchildren will get access to her money if they land themselves in her good graces.

Millie, Aubrey, and Jonah have no desire to spend summer with their grandma. They are teenagers with their own summer plans! Despite their protests, the three soon find themselves in the crosshairs of the rich and reclusive woman who disinherited their parents all those years ago. After their initial meeting, the three realize that Mildred’s plans are different than what they thought. She becomes increasingly hard to get a hold of, disappearing for trips, and using her assistant to blow off the cousins’ requests to meet. The cousins spend their time on island working and looking for more information about their parents. This leads to discovering some of the dark secrets in the Story family’s past. What fractured the family structure years ago? Can the cousins find the truth and repair these destroyed relationships?

Told from the point of view of the three cousins, plus one of their parents, McManus has written a mystery full of twists and turns. Flashback chapters fill in background information and family secrets that the cousins would not have been able to discover on their own. (The flashback chapters are the ones that kept me hooked throughout the book to be honest.) What kept me from completely loving this book were the twists’ reveals. I had trouble suspending my disbelief during some of the reveals, as it seemed implausible that only a few people would realize what was happening. The ending also seemed very rushed, to the point where I had to reread the last three chapters and the epilogue to piece together the end, but I’m still confused… This was a three star read for me.

Next month, we will be reading fantasy!

In addition to following the Online Reading Challenge here on our Info Cafe blog, you can join our Online Reading Challenge group on Goodreads and discuss your reads!

The Perfect Rom-Com by Melissa Ferguson

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“Putting my foot down isn’t my strong point. Being an inconvenience to someone, or even thinking about the possibility of being an inconvenience to someone, is right up there with dropping into a tank of jellyfish. Unacceptable.” ― Melissa Ferguson, The Perfect Rom-Com

Bryony Page has written a novel that she has pinned all of her hopes and dreams on. Attending her first writers conference, Bryony knows that one of these agents will accept her manuscript, sell it, and help her raise awareness (and funding) for The Bridge, her grandmother’s organization where Bryony has taught ESL full-time for the last fifteen years. Her agent meetings are utterly disastrous with the last one ending with her critiquing and correcting a famous author’s latest manuscript. This last-ditch effort to impress literary agent Jack Sterling of the legendary Foundry Literary Agency ends up working in her favor though.

Bryony is offered the job of a lifetime: writing as ghostwriter for popular rom-com novelist, Amelia Benedict. While this isn’t exactly what Bryony’s goal, she finds a way to get what she wants out of Jack. She will agree to ghostwrite, only if Jack will work to sell her own book too. The Bridge needs all the help it can get.

Flash forward and it should come as no surprise that Bryony’s work as Amelia’s ghostwriter is fantastic. Her books have made Amelia into even more of a household name. She is selling millions of copies around the world which means that Bryony is irreplaceable to the Foundry Agency. Jack and Bryony are closer than ever, which makes the line between their professional and personal relationships grow murkier and murkier. Bryony’s ultimate goal is to get her book published under her own name, something that Jack has been working on for the past two years. Or has he?

The Perfect Rom-Com was a delightful read. While this was described as a grumpy x sunshine read, I had trouble figuring out who was who, as both Bryony and Jack had their moments of sunshine and grump. If you’re looking for a friends to lovers, opposites attract, kisses-only romance, this is the book for you. The romance is more subtle than other books I have read lately, but I kept reading because of the quippy dialogue between characters. I also enjoyed the insider knowledge of traditional publishing. This slow burn, workplace romance book about books was a good palette cleanser.

“Spend a few hours with your eyes skating over pages of happiness, all while the more serious bits of your life get to rest their legs. Take a break. Laugh your heart to healing, I like to say. Now there’s a tagline. Because laughter is a part of life too, isn’t it? Something not to be dismissed as it stands side by side with more serious matters of growth and grief.”
― Melissa Ferguson, The Perfect Rom-Com

Under Loch and Key by Lana Ferguson

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“You are not who you are because of where you come from; you are who you are because of where you choose to go.”
― Lana Ferguson, Under Loch and Key

Keyanna ‘Key’ McKay grew up in a family of secrets. Raised by a single father reluctant to share their family history, Key has never felt like she really fit in anywhere. After her father’s death, Key leaves New York, heading to Scotland to reunite with her estranged family and to explore the world her father never spoke about. All she knows about Scotland is her estranged grandmother’s name and the childhood story of her father’s about a monster that saved his life. Determined to fulfill her father’s last wish to go home, Key finds herself on the shore of a great body of water, unknowingly putting herself in danger, and eventually being rescued by an angry, yet attractive, Scotsman. Key is then escorted to her ancestral home, where the welcome she receives from her family is mixed and she realizes that her cranky rescuer lives on her family’s land.

Lachlan Greer has secrets of his own and this wily beautiful redhead who showed up out of nowhere seems determined to ruin all of his plans. After learning her name, Lachlan is even more weary. He is hunting for answers to his family’s history, but Key is a wrench in his plans that he does not need. Living on her family’s land, Lachlan and Key can’t avoid each other. Their attraction ratchets up higher and higher, despite their mutual efforts to avoid each other. It soon becomes apparent that they will have to trust each other in order to find the answers they are each looking for. Their answers rest in each other’s histories.

I picked this book up purely because of the cover, aka the man in the kilt, (plus the punny title)! Under Loch and Key ended up being an absolute delight and honestly, I’m glad I went into this book without knowing anything about it. This is a magical paranormal romance with spicy scenes that happen on page. The characters’ relationships were silly, emotional, mysterious, yet completely magical. This was also my first monster romance, which was a bit of a shock to the system, but honestly not bad. Also bonus it has two of my favorite tropes: enemies to lovers and grumpy meets sunshine. Even though this is a spicy read, the author also throws in several heartwarming themes that deal with forgiveness, family, burdens, and correcting your past mistakes in order to move on in the future. Solid four stars from me!

September’s Celebrity Book Club Picks

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Bestsellers Club is a service that automatically places you on hold for authors, celebrity picks, nonfiction picks, and fiction picks. Choose any author, celebrity pick, fiction pick, and/or nonfiction pick and The Library will put the latest title on hold for you automatically. Select as many as you want! Still have questions? Click here for a list of FAQs.

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 Bestsellers Club, you can choose to have their selections automatically put on hold for you.

Jenna Bush Hager has selected Buckeye by Patrick Ryan for her September pick.

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

One town. Two families. A secret that changes everything.

In Bonhomie, Ohio, a stolen moment of passion, sparked in the exuberant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, binds Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, to Margaret Salt, a woman trying to obscure her past. Cal’s wife, Becky, has a spiritual gift: She is a seer who can conjure the dead, helping families connect with those they’ve lost. Margaret’s husband, Felix, is serving on a Navy cargo ship, out of harm’s way—until a telegram suggests that the unthinkable might have happened.

Later, as the country reconstructs in the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie—but nothing stays buried forever in a small town. Against the backdrop of some of the most transformative decades in modern America, the consequences of that long-ago encounter ripple through the next generation of both families, compelling them to reexamine who they thought they were and what the future might hold.

Sweeping yet intimate, rich with piercing observation and the warmth that comes from profound understanding of the human spirit, Buckeye captures the universal longing for love and for goodness. – Random House

This title is also available in large print.

Reese Witherspoon has selected To the Moon and Back by Eliana Ramage for her September pick.

Curious what To the Moon and Back is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

In this dazzlingly powerful story of family, ambition and belonging, one young woman’s obsessive quest to become the first Cherokee astronaut irrevocably alters the fates of the people she loves most.

My mother took my sister and me, and she drove through the night to a place she felt a claim to, a place on earth she thought we might be safe. I stopped asking questions. I picked little glass pieces from my sister’s hair. I watched the moon.

Steph Harper is on the run. When she was five, her mother fled an abusive husband—with Steph and her younger sister in tow—to Cherokee Nation, where she hoped they might finally belong. In response, Steph sets her sights as far away from Oklahoma as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing get in the way of pursuing the rigorous physical and academic training she knows she will need to be accepted by NASA, and ultimately, to go to the moon.

Spanning three decades and several continents, To the Moon and Back encompasses Steph’s turbulent journey, along with the multifaceted and intertwined lives of the three women closest to her: her sister Kayla, an artist who goes on to become an Indigenous social media influencer, and whose determination to appear good takes her life to unexpected places; Steph’s college girlfriend Della Owens, who strives to reclaim her identity as an adult after being removed from her Cherokee family through a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act; and Hannah, Steph and Kayla’s mother, who has held up her family’s tribal history as a beacon of inspiration to her children, all the while keeping her own past a secret.

In Steph’s certainty that only her ambition can save her, she will stretch her bonds with each of these women to the point of breaking, at once betraying their love and generosity, and forcing them to reconsider their own deepest desires in her shadow. Told through an intricately woven tapestry of narrative, To the Moon and Back is an astounding and expansive novel of mothers and daughters, love and sacrifice, alienation and heartbreak, terror and wonder. At its core, it is the story of the extraordinary lengths to which one woman will go to find space for herself. – Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster

Oprah has picked All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation by Elizabeth Gilbert as her latest pick. Oprah’s Book Club has been around for years! Oprah’s book club picks are not released every month, so it may be a couple months between her releases.

Curious what All the Way to the River is about? Check below.

In 2000, Elizabeth Gilbert met Rayya. They became friends, then best friends, then inseparable. When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally laid bare: The two were in love. They were also a pair of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe.

What if your most beautiful love story turned into your biggest nightmare? What if the dear friend who taught you so much about your self-destructive tendencies became the unstable partner with whom you disastrously reenacted every one of them? And what if your most devastating heartbreak opened a pathway to your greatest awakening?

All the Way to the River is a landmark memoir that will resonate with anyone who has ever been captive to love—or to any other passion, substance, or craving—and who yearns, at long last, for liberation. – Riverhead Books

This title is also available in large print.

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

Golf Titles

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Working in a library means we get to see what types of books are popular at any given time. When the John Deere Classic happened in July in Silvis, I noticed an increase in patrons asking for books about golf. This of course meant a list must be made of golf books! As of this writing, all of these titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions are provided by the publishers.

Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf by Ben Hogan

Over the past sixty-five years, millions of golfers have studied Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons, making it the bestselling golf book of all time. Now, Hogan’s masterpiece has received the definitive edition it deserves.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest golfers in the history of the sport, Hogan is especially known for his mastery of the golf swing. At the start of his career, he played with a hook that threatened to ruin his game, until he dedicated himself to correcting it—and in doing so, he gained a rare and hard-fought understanding of the fundamentals. Curious fans itched for clues about his legendary technique, dubbed “the secret,” that allowed him to persevere and even return to the height of his powers after a car crash that shattered his body and almost took his life in 1949. His terse answer, “I dug it out of the dirt”—the dirt of the driving range—fueled the Hogan mystique. He went on to become one of only five players to win all four professional championships, claiming nine major championships in total.

In 1957, Hogan partnered with Herbert Warren Wind, “the dean of American golf writers” (The New York Times), and illustrator Anthony Ravielli to capture his expertise from the peak of his career in a series of lessons. Hogan believed that any golfer with average coordination can learn to break eighty. In each chapter, a different tested fundamental is explained and demonstrated with clear illustrations, as though Hogan were giving you a personal lesson with the same skill and precision that made him a legend.

Now expanded with a new introduction by Lee Trevino, essays about Hogan and the book’s legacy, unpublished photos of the publicity-shy Hogan, and more, this definitive edition offers greater context and fresh insight into an icon of the game. – Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster

Golf: Stroke by Stroke by Brian A. Crowell

Learn the game and perfect your technique with this guide to golf for beginners

Golf is a popular hobby sport, but if you’ve never picked up a club before, it’s hard to know where to begin. Geared for the absolute beginner, Golf Stroke by Stroke is a comprehensive guide that covers everything you need to head to the golf course with confidence. From the clubhouse to the green, golf pro Brian Cowell will introduce you to each stage of the game and teach you how to swing a club through a series of simple lessons with full-color photos and baby-step-by-baby-step instructions. In addition, you’ll get:

  • Guidance on choosing the best clubs, balls, and gear for your needs
  • Helpful golf pro advice on common mistakes and how to avoid them
  • Dozens of practice drills and “Picture This!” images to remind players of swing technique
  • Detailed information on golf rules, lingo, and etiquette, including keeping score and calculating handicaps

-DK

Playing from the Rough: A Personal Journey Through America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses by Jimmie James

When he set out to play each of Golf Digest’s America’s100 greatest golf courses in one year, Jimmie James knew he was attempting the impossible. But then again, he’d spent his entire life defying the odds.

James was born invisible. His birth certificate, long since filed away in some clerk’s office in East Texas, recorded facts about him that were deemed most relevant in the late 1950s: “colored” and “illegitimate.” His great-great-grandmother was enslaved, and his early life was confided by the privation and segregation of the late Jim Crow-era South.

Four decades later—having put himself through an HBCU and determinedly risen through the executive ranks at ExxonMobil—he embarked on his journey to play the 100 greatest golf courses in the United States. In a single year. From the first tee at Augusta National, the distance between the world he grew up in and the world of extreme privilege to which he’d now managed to gain access was impossible to ignore. – Simon & Schuster

Seven Days in Augusta: Behind the Scenes at the Masters by Mark Cannizzaro

A celebration of what makes the Masters singular and iconic
The Masters is unquestionably the crown jewel of golf’s major tournaments, not only for the transcendent performances it has inspired over the years, but for the incomparable sights and sounds of Augusta National and its environs, each distinct element contributing to the storied, rarefied atmosphere which draws tens of thousands to Georgia each spring.

Seven Days in Augusta spans everything from the par-3 contest, to Amen Corner, to Butler Cabin. Mark Cannizzaro goes behind the scenes of the exclusive competition, covering wide-ranging topics including green jacket rituals, tales from The Crow’s Nest atop the clubhouse, the extreme lengths some fans have gone to acquire tickets, and what goes on outside the gates during Masters week. Also featuring some of the most memorable and dramatic moments from the tournament’s history, this is an essential, expansive look at golf’s favorite event. – Triumph Books

So Help Me Golf: Why We Love the Game by Rick Reilly

Beloved bestselling author and golf aficionado Rick Reilly channels his insatiable curiosity, trademark sense of humor, and vast knowledge of the game in a treasure trove of original pieces about what the game has meant to him and to others.

This is the book Rick Reilly has been writing in the back of his head since he fell in love with the game of golf at eleven years old. He unpacks and explores all of the wonderful, maddening, heart-melting, heart-breaking, cool, and captivating things about golf that make the game so utterly addictive. We meet the PGA Tour player who robbed banks by night to pay his motel bills, the golf club maker who takes weekly psychedelic trips, and the caddy who kept his loop even after an 11-year prison stint. We learn how a man on his third heart nearly won the U.S. Open, how a Vietnam POW saved his life playing 18 holes a day in his tiny cell, and about the course that’s absolutely free.

Reilly mines all of the game’s quirky traditions—from the shot of bourbon you take before you tee off at Peyton Manning’s course, to the way the starter at St. Andrews announces to your group (and the hundreds of tourists watching), “You’re on the first tee, gentlemen.” He means that quite literally: St. Andrews has the first tee ever invented. We’ll visit the eighteen most unforgettable holes around the world (Reilly has played them all), including the hole in Indonesia where the biggest hazard is monkeys, the one in the Caribbean that’s underwater, and the one in South Africa that requires a shot over a pit of alligators; not to mention Reilly’s attempt to play the most mini-golf holes in one day.

Reilly expounds on all the great figures in the game, from Phil Mickelson to Bobby Jones to the simple reason Jack Nicklaus is better than Tiger Woods. He explains why we should stop hating Bryson DeChambeau unless we hate genius, the greatest upset in women’s golf history, and why Ernie Els throws away every ball that makes a birdie. Plus all the Greg Norman stories Reilly has never been able to tell before, and the great fun of being Jim Nantz. Connecting it all will be the story of Reilly’s own personal journey through the game, especially as it connects to his tumultuous relationship with his father, and how the two eventually reconciled through golf. This is Reilly’s valentine to golf, a cornucopia of stories that no golfer will want to be without. – Grand Central Publishing

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

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“What’s wrong with me? … I might seem like the ideal student: homework always in early, every extra credit and extra curricular I can get my hands on, the good girl and the high achiever. But I realized something just now: it’s not ambition, not entirely. It’s fear. Because I don’t know who I am when I’m not working, when I’m not focused on or totally consumed by a task. Who am I between the projects and the assignments, when there’s nothing to do? I haven’t found her yet and it scares me. Maybe that’s why, for my senior capstone project this year, I decided to solve a murder.”
― Holly Jackson, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

Every community has a story that haunts the residents. The town of Fairview is not exception to this. Five years ago, popular high school senior Andie Bell went missing and her boyfriend, Sal Singh, was accused of her murder. Not long after Andie went missing, Sal killed himself, leaving the community bereft with questions and her family without a body. It was all anyone could talk about for years. Now five years later, senior Pippa Fitz-Amobi has decided to reopen the Andie Bell case as her senior capstone project. Pip believes that Sal was innocent and that the only way to find the real killer is to do her own investigation. This means digging for answers to a case that everyone else believes is closed. With the help of Sal’s younger brother, Pip reexamines this closed case. It doesn’t take long before Pip ruffles someone’s feathers enough that they start threatening her. This case takes a dangerous turn for all those involved.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is the first book in the series of the same name by Holly Jackson. This series debut was intriguing from the start. Pip is smart and driven to solve this case, sometimes to the detriment of her own safety. Each character in this story is well-developed, while the plot wasn’t too predictable. The plot twists were unexpected. I also enjoyed that the author was able to weave in multiple storylines without it becoming too convoluted and confusing. All in all, a great read for both teens and adults.

Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series

  1. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (2019)
  2. Good Girl, Bad Blood (2020)
  3. As Good as Dead (2021)

Interested in this book? A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is the October See YA Book Club pick (it was also made into a series on Netflix!). We will be discussing this book on Wednesday, October 1st at 6:30pm at our Eastern Avenue branch. For more information about future See YA book picks, visit our website.

See YA Book Club

Join our adult book club with a teen book twist. See why so many teen books are being turned into movies and are taking over the best seller lists.

Registration is not required. Books are available on a first-come, first-serve basis at the Eastern Avenue library. We meet the first Wednesday of the month at Eastern at 6:30pm. Stop by the service desk for more information.

October 1 – A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

November 5 – Rez Ball by Byron Graves

December 3 – Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

New Horror Novels

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What genre do you seldom read? For me, it’s horror! While checking the new shelves this month, I found quite a few new titles that caught my eyes in the new horror section. Below are four new horror titles that I wanted to share with you all. As of this writing, all of these titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions are provided by the publishers.

Cold Eternity by S.A. Barnes

Halley is on the run from an interplanetary political scandal that has put a huge target on her back. She heads for what seems like the perfect place to lay low: a gigantic space barge storing the cryogenically frozen bodies of Earth’s most fortunate citizens from more than a century ago…

The cryo program, created by trillionaire tech genius Zale Winfeld, is long defunct, and the AI hologram “hosts,” ghoulishly created in the likeness of Winfeld’s three adult children, are glitchy. The ship feels like a crypt, and the isolation gets to Halley almost immediately. She starts to see figures crawling in the hallways, and there’s a constant scraping, slithering, and rattling echoing in the vents.

It’s not long before Halley realizes she may have gotten herself trapped in an even more dangerous situation than the one she was running from…. – Tor Nightfire

Senseless by Ronald Malfi

What do you see…?

When the mutilated body of a young woman is discovered in the desert on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the detective assigned to the case can’t deny the similarities between this murder and one that occurred a year prior. Media outlets are quick to surmise this is the work of a budding serial killer, but Detective Bill Renney is struggling with an altogether different scenario: a secret that keeps him tethered to the husband of the first victim.

What do you hear…?

Maureen Park, newly engaged to Hollywood producer Greg Dawson, finds her engagement party crashed by the arrival of Landon, Greg’s son. A darkly unsettling young man, Landon invades Maureen’s new existence, and the longer he stays, the more convinced she becomes that he may have something to do with the recent murder in the high desert.

What do you feel…?

Toby Kampen, the self-proclaimed Human Fly, begins an obsession over a woman who is unlike anyone he has ever met. A woman with rattlesnake teeth and a penchant for biting. A woman who has trapped him in her spell. A woman who may or may not be completely human.

In Ronald Malfi’s brand-new thriller, these three storylines converge to create a tapestry of deceit, distrust, and unapologetic horror. A brand-new novel of dark suspense set in the City of Angels, as only “horror’s Faulkner” can tell it. – Titan Books

The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig

Five high school friends are bonded by an oath to protect one another no matter what.

Then, on a camping trip in the middle of the forest, they find something extraordinary: a mysterious staircase to nowhere.

One friend walks up—and never comes back down. Then the staircase disappears.

Twenty years later, the staircase has reappeared. Now the group returns to find the lost boy—and what lies beyond the staircase in the woods. . . . – Del Rey

When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy

One night, Jess, a struggling actress, finds a five-year-old runaway hiding in the bushes outside her apartment. After a violent, bloody encounter with the boy’s father, she and the boy find themselves running for their lives.

As they attempt to evade the boy’s increasingly desperate father, Jess slowly comes to a horrifying understanding of the butchery that follows them—the boy can turn his every fear into reality.

And when the wolf finally comes home, no one will be spared. – Tor Nightfire