Staff Picks

This book was a fun and informative read about creativity and connection.  Peggy Orenstein is funny, witty and very honest in this clever memoir of a creative exploration during the pandemic. 

 

Publisher's Description:

The COVID pandemic propelled many people to change their lives in ways large and small. Some adopted puppies. Others stress-baked. Peggy Orenstein, a lifelong knitter, went just a little further. To keep herself engaged and cope with a series of seismic shifts in family life, she set out to make a garment from the ground up: learning to shear sheep, spin and dye yarn, then knitting herself a sweater. Orenstein hoped the project would help her process not just wool but her grief over the recent death of her mother and the decline of her dad, the impending departure of her college-bound daughter, and other thorny issues of aging as a woman in a culture that by turns ignores and disdains them. What she didn't expect was a journey into some of the major issues of our time: climate anxiety, racial justice, women's rights, the impact of technology, sustainability, and, ultimately, the meaning of home. With her wry voice, sharp intelligence, and exuberant honesty, Orenstein shares her year-long journey as daughter, wife, mother, writer, and maker--and teaches us all something about creativity and connection.

 

A retelling of an Athabascan Indian legend that has been passed down through generations. I loved this book. It is a great inspirational survival story.

 

Publisher's description:

Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along from mother to daughter for many generations on the upper Yukon River in Alaska, this is the tragic and shocking story-with a surprise ending-of two elderly women abandoned by a migrating tribe that faces starvation brought on by unusually harsh Arctic weather and a shortage of fish and game. This story of survival is told with suspense by Velma Wallis, whose subject matter challenges the taboos of her past. Yet, her themes are modern-empowerment of women, the graying of America, Native American ways.

 

When I finished this book, I closed the cover and said out loud, "that was cool." It's comfort fiction at its best. Yay libraries!!

 

Publisher's description: What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo's most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it. A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose. In Komachi's unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams. What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is about the magic of libraries and the discovery of connection. This inspirational tale shows how, by listening to our hearts, seizing opportunity and reaching out, we too can fulfill our lifelong dreams. Which book will you recommend?

 

A contemporary novel that sticks with you. Treads the line between comedy and horror. 

 

Publisher's description:

The story of a woman on the run from catastrophe, searching for love, home, healing, a swimming pool, and perhaps someone who can stop the bleeding from her head.

 

This is a book that everyone should wake up and read now! An intense book about the climate crisis. Terrifying and a bit hopeful. The audio version is really well done with a full cast of readers.

 

Publisher's description: 

In the early 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters—a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come. Their intertwined odysseys unfold against a stark backdrop of accelerating chaos as they summon courage, galvanize a nation, fall to their own fear, and find wild hope in the face of staggering odds. As their stories hurtle toward a spectacular climax, each faces a reckoning: what will they sacrifice to salvage humanity’s last chance at a future?

 

This is a book that everyone should wake up and read now! An intense book about the climate crisis. Terrifying and a bit hopeful. The audio version is really well done with a full cast of readers.

 

Publisher's description:

In the early 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters—a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come.

 

I loved being involved with the lives of this New Mexican Family. The characters are what this book is all about.

 

Publisher's description:

It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans. Their reunion sets her own life down a startling path.

 

This book takes on identity, race, and Islamophobia in a post-9/11 world, showing the powerful and devastating impact of prejudice and first love. It is both heart-wrenching and heartwarming at the same time. I found the audio version of this book to be engaging and eye-opening.

Publisher's description: 

It's a year after 9/11, an extremely turbulent time politically, but especially so for someone like Shirin, a sixteen-year-old Muslim girl who’s tired of being stereotyped. Shirin is never surprised by how horrible people can be. She's tired of the rude stares, the degrading comments -- even the physical violence she endures as a result of her race, her religion, and the hijab she wears every day. She decided long ago not to trust anyone anymore, and she doesn't expect, or even try, to fit in anywhere or let anyone close enough to hurt her. Instead she drowns her frustrations in music and spends her afternoons break-dancing with her brother. But then she meets Ocean James. He’s the first person in forever who really seems to want to get to know Shirin. It terrifies her—they seem to come from two irreconcilable worlds—and Shirin has had her guard up for so long that she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to let it down.

Find A Very Large Expanse of Sea in our online catalog. 

A book about love, family, and our broken immigration system. This book was an eye-opener for me.

 

Publisher's description

One morning, Deming Guo's mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her. With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. They rename him Daniel Wilkinson in their efforts to make him over into their version of an 'all-American boy.'

 

Allison says: 

This book takes the reader into the middle of a five generation family, indigenous to Northern New Mexico. I was completely absorbed with each character's life struggle, expectations, disappointments, and victories.

 

Quetzalli says: 

Focusing primarily on four generations of the Padilla family, The Five Wounds tells the story of the Padilla family and various individuals in Las Penas, New Mexico, that long to be seen, loved, and protected. Yolanda, still haunted by the ghost of her ex-husband, hides her brain cancer diagnosis from her family so she can try to remain the strong, stable, loving, presence her family needs. Her son, Amadeo, is filled with plans for personal redemption, which come to a halt with the arrival of his pregnant teenage daughter, Angel. Try as he might to be the son his mother deserves and the father his daughter needs, sins of the past loom large of Amadeo. Angel, meanwhile, does her best to be the mother her son Connor needs while also navigating a difficult family situation and her own romantic feelings for her classmate. Connor, it seems, is the glue that has brought the Padilla family together and has made them all determined to overcome their family trauma, no matter how difficult it may be. An absolute tour de force, The Five Wounds is the latest novel to focus on the lives of Chicanos in the American Southwest. What Sabrina & Corina did for the Chicanos of Denver, The Five Wounds has done for the Chicanos of New Mexico--particularly those in the Espanola Valley. A must read for anyone interested in Chicano literature.

 

Publisher's description: 

It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans. Their reunion sets her own life down a startling path.