Time After Time by Lisa Grunwald

- Ann 2 Comments

She appears suddenly, out of thin air, on a cold December morning, wearing an out-of-style dress and no coat, confused but not lost. It’s early and Grand Central Station is quiet, filled with the bright light of the just-rising sun. Joe Reynolds, on his way to work, stops to ask if she needs help. She tells him she’s fine and they part ways and Joe never expects to see her again.

Except he does, exactly one year later, at the same place and time. Joe has not been able to forget about her and admits that he has always hoped to see her again. Joe finds out what her name is (Nora Lansing) and they spend some time together, wandering around Grand Central Station. Joe offers to walk Nora home but a few blocks from the station she disappears again.

Dumbfounded and intrigued, Joe starts researching Nora and the address she had given him; what he discovers shocks and unsettles him, but what he is sure of is the connection he had with Nora and that he must see her again.

Set starting in 1937, Time After Time takes place almost entirely at Grand Central Station which Grunwald brings vividly to life. Filled with people constantly on the move, it is also home to multiple shops, restaurants, hotels, classrooms, an art gallery and even a tiny hospital, all orbiting around the trains and their schedules. Against this lively backdrop, Joe and Nora fall in love and learn how to be together under unique circumstances.

This book has a lot going for it including a historical setting (the World War II era), intriguing facts about the trains and about Grand Central Station (which is nearly a character in the book itself), Manhattenhenge (which is critical to this story),  interesting characters (some real, some fictional) as well as a love story that stands firm no matter the hardship, across time itself. Highly recommended.

 

Travel Talk – Iowa, Part 2

- Ann Leave a comment

Hello Travel Fans!

It’s time for our next installment of travel in Iowa! This month Michelle is describing some of the beautiful, natural places to explore in Iowa – it’s not all corn fields here! Over to you Michelle.

Reiman Gardens at Iowa State University in Ames – Part of Iowa State University in Ames, Reiman Gardens is a serene space that offers 17 acres of outdoor gardens, an indoor butterfly garden, tropical plant conservatory and endless learning opportunities.  Did I forget to mention it is also the home of Elwood, the world’s largest concrete gnome?  The gardens also feature periodic exhibitions and this summer’s exhibition is “Toys & Games,” in which toys inspired by nature are sprinkled throughout the gardens.  The gardens are open daily and offer something for everyone!

Effigy Mounds near Harpers Ferry – Effigy Mounds National Monument is a perfect day trip in the far northeastern part of the state.  The free trails allows visitors to hike near the animal shaped mounds constructed during the Late Woodland Period (between 800 and 1600 years ago).  According to the National Park Service, these mounds were a regional cultural phenomenon.  Mounds of earth in the shapes of birds, deer, bison lynx and turtle abound.  Some archeologists believe the mounds were built to mark celestial events or seasonal occurrences.  Others speculate the as boundaries between or markers between groups, but it is unclear exactly what was the purpose of the Mounds.  Hiking up to the bluff overlooking the Mississippi River gives a beautiful view of the surrounding area.  Also, near Harpers Ferry are the picturesque towns of Marquette, McGregor and Pikes Pike State Park, which is also a great place to see views of the river.

Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge – The Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge is just south of Des Moines near the Colfax and Mingo exit in Prairie City.  Visit the extensive learning center and walk the number of trails that offer a variety of easy hikes.  To see the bison and elk you will drive through their habitat and be prepared to see them up close – or not, depending on the day.  Even if you do not see as many bison or elk as you would like from your car, the learning center has binoculars in order to spot the herds up close.

 

 

Makes you want to jump in your car and explore these beautiful places, doesn’t it? I especially love the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge. You can almost imagine what the Great Plains must have been like before cars and wagon trains.

What about you – what’s your favorite outdoor area to visit in Iowa?

Mario Switch Games

- Ann Leave a comment

Guest post by Wesley B.

If you own a Nintendo console, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you aren’t playing any Mario games – the mustachioed plumber is Nintendo’s mascot for a reason. The Switch is no exception to this rule, and we have several Mario Switch games available here at the Library!

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Mario Party likely need no introduction. Either can be played alone, but they shine in their multiplayer modes (which the Switch is perfectly suited for). While Super Mario Party fails to fully recapture the magic of some of the earlier games in the series, it’s still a great way to spend an evening battling, betraying, and bickering with your friends – and laughing uproariously the whole time. Mario Kart 8, on the other hand, is probably the definitive Mario Kart game ever made. Chock full of courses, characters, and karts, there’s enough content here to last quite a while, and it’s customizable enough to be just as fun and accessible to newcomers as it is to series veterans.

Unlike the previous two games, Mario Tennis Aces might have flown under your radar. However, it’s just as strong a candidate for game night with your friends as the other two. You can play singles or doubles, one-off matches or tournaments, and with conventional or motion controls. Plus, unlike Mario Party and Mario Kart, it has a robust single player campaign!

And then of course we have the more traditional single-player platforming experiences: New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe and Mario Odyssey. Mario Bros. is classic 2D Mario at its finest. It starts off a little slow, but before long the levels start to get fiendishly difficult. Odyssey, on the other hand, is the latest 3D Mario entry, and in many ways the culmination of all the games that came before it. With over 900 Moons to find across its 16 worlds, it should keep you busy for quite a while.

Last but not least, I want to leave you with a recommendation for a strange game whose very existence is surprising, and that has no right to be as good as it is: Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. This game is actually developed by Ubisoft, not Nintendo, and is a new genre for Mario: turn-based strategy. While some people may be turned off by the Rabbids, strange creatures previously relegated mostly to background roles in Ubisoft games, they’re depriving themselves of a shockingly great game. You’ll eventually unlock eight characters, from whom you choose three to make your battle team. Each character has customizable skill trees as well as a variety of weapons to choose from, lending a surprising amount of depth to this bright and cartoonishly stylized game.

We Must Be Brave by Frances Liardet

- Stephanie Leave a comment

What would you do if you found a child abandoned on a bus? In current times, there are procedures in place for how to handle this. Now travel back to World War II. Imagine you found a small child asleep on the backseat of an empty bus after a mass evacuation from a town miles away that had just been bombed. What would you do now? We Must Be Brave by Frances Liardet tackles this topic and more as civilians in England during World War II struggle to find a new normal.

We Must Be Brave by Frances Liardet begins in December 1940. German bombs are falling on Southampton. In the midst of a massive and chaotic scene, residents are evacuating from the bombed town on buses to rural villages to escape the devastation. Helping to clear one bus in Upton village, Ellen Parr is stunned to find a young girl sleeping in the back of an empty bus, entirely by herself. Picking up the exhausted child and walking through town to search for her mother, Ellen quickly realizes that five-year-old Pamela is utterly alone. Left with no other options, Ellen and her husband take the child and some other refuges home with them.

While the other refuges leave their house in the morning, young Pamela stays. Newly-married Ellen and her husband never thought that they would have children. In fact, they knew that they could never have any biological children of their own, something that Ellen always thought that she was fine with. The addition of Pamela to their home, as well as some other children that the Parrs have taken in, begins to change Ellen’s mind. The longer Pamela stays, the more attached Ellen becomes (Pamela gets attached as well). Ellen starts to think that after the war, Pamela will stay with them and their family will be complete. Once the fighting settles down however, circumstances occur that will once again shatter the quiet idyllic life that the Parrs have created with Pamela. They realize that Pamela was never truly theirs to keep.

Frances Liardet has written a masterful story about the many different forms family and friends can take. As we go through life, Liardet spins a tale of the many different ways we can reach out and change the lives of others. Both the smallest gestures and largest acts can forever alter the lives of others.

This book is also available in the following formats:

Lego DC Super-Villains Video Game

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Lego DC Super-Villains is a Lego game from Traveller’s Tales. If you have played Lego games in the past, this one should seem familiar to you. You break stuff, get studs, solve puzzles, and build stuff, all while playing as some of your favorite characters. This coupled with the Lego game’s signature coach co-op means that you can play through the game by yourself or with a friend. This game shifts the focus away from caped crusaders to the nefarious super villains of the DC universe.

There are over 170 playable characters, both villains and super heroes, for you to play as. These range from characters that you know and love such as The Joker, Lex Luthor, Batman and Aquaman, to more obscure DC characters such as Clock King and Condiment King.

This game is unique because of how it integrates the character creation feature into the story. Usually in Lego games, you play as your favorite characters and get to play as them throughout the game. In Lego DC Super-Villains, however, you get to make your own villain named The Rookie that you get to play as an upgrade as you progress through the game.

Another fun game for the whole family to enjoy from Traveller’s Tales. Lego DC Super-Villains is available at the Davenport Public Library for both Xbox One and PS4.

 

Online Reading Challenge – July

- Ann 2 Comments

Hello! Welcome to the July edition of the Online Reading Challenge!

We’re going over to the dark side this month, since July’s subject is: Crime!

Crime is actually a pretty popular subject at the library, between True Crime books (lots of serial killers and murderers in the 364.1523 Dewey section) and Mysteries (the majority of which involve a murder). There are (sadly) plenty of other crimes to consider, some that don’t even involve bloodshed! Here are some suggestions.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. A classic murder story that, even many years after it came out, will give you chills and make sleep difficult. Based on an actual murder, Capote delves into the background of the Clutter family and the two men who killed them. A masterpiece.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones follows the devastation and long-term consequences to a man and his family when he is wrongly accused of rape and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. Kevin has been convicted of killing nine students when he went on a shooting spree at his high school. Kevin’s parents are devastated and try to come to terms with what their son did.

Prefer something a little less grim? Try Lawerence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr series about a burgler based in New York City. Bernie takes great pride in a well-executed burglary and is offended when a dead body intrudes. Much lighter than Block’s Matthew Scudder PI series (which is excellent if you’re looking for something hard-hitting).

As always, check out the displays at each Davenport Library location for lots more suggestions!

I don’t usually read crime novels and only a few mysteries so it took me awhile to settle on a title. I finally decided to read Not a Sound by Heather Gudenkauf. It caught my attention for several reasons including that it’s set in Iowa and that the protagonist is deaf. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Now, what about you? What will you be reading in July?

 

 

 

Online Reading Challenge Wrap-Up

- Ann 4 Comments

Hello Readers! How was your June reading about the movies? Did you find a hidden jewel (reading-wise)? Please let us know.

I read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid and enjoyed it immensely. I was actually pretty skeptical about this one; the reviews were good, but it’s a subject (the glitz and glamour of Hollywood) that doesn’t really interest me. Boy am I glad I gave it a chance!

Starting during the last days of the Golden era of the Hollywood movie industry when the studios still controlled everything up to and including how each movie star would look and behave, Evelyn is determined to get out of New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen and make it big in the movies. She will – and does – do anything to make her dream come true. Blessed with good looks and grim determination, Evelyn schemes and manipulates her way to the top. She’s not always likable, but she is honest and forthright about what she wants and most of the people she uses know exactly what they’re getting (they often benefit too). Evelyn is also talented, a bombshell that can act, and she works very hard.

Of course, there is a price to be paid for this somewhat brutal approach to life. She has, at most, two or three friends, the public make assumptions about her based on scandal sheets and she is unable to be with the one person she does love. Despite the veneer of glamour and money, she does not escape pain or heartbreak – a husband that beats her, another that cheats on her, a difficult relationship with her daughter.

The book devotes a section to each husband. It’s fascinating to see her reasoning for marrying each – some she truly loves, some she marries to further her career, some she marries for convenience. Each marriage reflects a stage of her career, another step in the cultivation of her image. The writing is sharp and snappy and just a bit hard-edged, very fitting for a woman that won’t back down from her dreams despite the odds.

Now it’s your turn – what did you read this month?

Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts

- Stephanie Leave a comment

I love The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum so much so that I wrote one of my final thesis papers comparing the book to the movie starring Judy Garland. This book and the subsequent series helped shape me to become the person I am today.  Knowing this, imagine my excitement when I saw a new book by Elizabeth Letts called Finding Dorothy on the  shelf at work.

Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts is inspired by the story behind The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. L. Frank Baum’s wife, Maud, serves as the catalyst for this book by showing readers what is happening both in 1938 Hollywood and in her past both as a child and a newlywed. In Hollywood in 1938, Maud has learned that M-G-M is adapting Frank’s masterpiece for the screen. Without being asked her opinion on this development, seventy-seven-year-old Maud is convinced that she must make it on to the set in order to talk to the movie producers. Eventually making her way to the lot, Maud is eager to fulfill the promise that she made to Frank: the movie will stay true to the spirit of the book. Maud is the only one left who remembers the secrets of the book.

Maud is invited to the set where she witnesses Judy Garland rehearsing ‘Over the Rainbow’. As she closes her eyes, Maud finds herself transported back to the past. The yearning that Judy infuses into the song is reflective of the yearning that burned through Maud as she was growing up. Maud grew up in the shadow of her suffragette mother. When she decided to go to college, Maud made her way as one of the first women in the Ivy League. Meeting Frank one day drastically changed her life and Maud soon found herself growing fond of this young fellow. As their life grew together, Maud and Frank struggled. Desperate for a new beginning, they moved to the prairie where their life became even harder. The difficult times they experienced together on the prairie helped influence and inspire Frank as he wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Watching Judy Garland bring Dorothy to life reminds Maud of the young girl that she helped to raise in South Dakota. Maud strives to help Judy more than she was able to help the other young girl. Seeing Judy under immense pressure from the studio and witnessing first-hand the advances the men made towards her serves to further strengthen Maud’s resolve to protect Judy.

Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts works to tie together two storylines: the lives of the Baum family members beginning in the 1860s and the development of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1938 Hollywood. Even though Letts imagines the dialogue between the characters, this book is a reflection of her dedicated abilities as a conscientious researcher. Her in-depth research into the lives of Frank and Maud Baum allowed Letts to capture how one family persevered through a mess of love and loss to create a book that has inspired many generations of readers.

This book is also available in the following formats:

Can’t Get Enough Thanos?

- Atticus Leave a comment

If you loved your experience watching Avengers: Endgame when it came out back in April and you want to learn more about the Villain of the film, Thanos, then I have great news for you. The Davenport Library has a plethora of resources that you can sink your teeth into.

The Infinity Gauntlet  is the original graphic novel that inspired the events of both Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.

If you are more into a recent comic that features Thanos fighting the Avengers, we have you covered there too. Infinity  is a graphic novel that came out in 2014 that follows Thanos and his invasion of Earth while the Avengers are fighting an intergalactic conflict at the same time and earth’s mightiest heroes are spread between the two conflicts.

If reading novels is more your thing, we also have the novelization of the film Avengers: Infinity War written by Liza Palmer that covers all of the events from the movie entitled Destiny Arrives.

If you want to learn more about Thanos as a character, there is also the graphic novel Thanos: Titan Consumed available to check out. This graphic novel follows the origins of the Mad Titan from when he was young until he begins his quest for the Infinity Stones and gives insight into how the character became the galaxy-conquering destroyer that we see in Endgame.

All of these resources and many more are all available at your Davenport Public Library.

Free Solo on DVD

- Ann Leave a comment

Imagine clinging to the sheer side of a mountain, no ropes, no superpowers, no safety harness. One slip and you will fall to your death. Now imagine going climbing this way – on purpose! People do – they are called free climbers and they climb mountains using only the strength of their hands and the agility of their feet.

Free Solo, which won an Oscar earlier this year for Best Documentary Feature, follows one of the best free climbers in the world, Alex Honnold, as he attempts to climb what has long been considered unclimbable – the sheer, 3000 foot wall of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Filmmakers Jimmy Chin and E. Chai Vassarhelyi knew the route that Honnold would be taking and were able to set up cameras along the way in advance and as unobtrusively as possible. Tension mounts as Honnold debates when to go (good weather is critical), trains for the most difficult sections and confers with other free climbers.  However, it is Honnold’s decision alone on when to climb and very early one morning, he slips away and, without fanfare, begins to climb.

The climb itself is harrowing to watch. The documentary goes into some depth about free climbing and what makes El Capitan so difficult. Judicious use of drone footage (the filmmakers were very concerned about not creating a distraction while Honnold is climbing) gives the viewer a clue to the immensity of this task. There is only one alternative if Honnold misses a step, or chooses the wrong foothold and that is dying.

Free Solo also reveals some of Honnold’s lifestyle and personality. He himself claims in the documentary that he is probably somewhere on the Asperberger’s spectrum. His demeanor is quiet and withdrawn, nearly emotionless. When asked if he worries about the dangers (many free solo climbers have died while climbing) of his sport, he shrugs and says that he accepts this and seems unconcerned about how any friends or family he would leave behind might feel. He is, in many ways, not terribly likable, but his skill and focus are admirable.

Beautifully produced by National Geographic, Free Solo will give you a thrill ride without the threat of dying.

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