Every month there are new titles purchased for the Too Good to Miss collections at our libraries. If you're not familiar with TGTM (as we call it here in library-world), it's a special collection of popular books that are truly too good to miss. Some are new and popular titles, others are older titles that might not have had as much media attention as a bestseller or celebrity book club selection but are still great reads that deserve another look. New books are added to the collection monthly, and are available at all Madison Public Library locations on a walk-in, first-come-first-served basis.
For this month of July we have six new titles that were added.**
What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World's Most Enigmatic Birds by Jennifer Ackerman - Science writer Ackerman turns her attention to owls in her new book.Due to their cryptic plumage and nighttime habits, owls can be difficult to study, but new technologies and approaches have allowed researchers to discover their intimate lives. In this captivating survey of what makes an owl an owl and how different species "owl" in disparate ways, Ackerman delves into the biology and natural history of owls around the globe.
The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende - One of Allende's many powers is creating intriguing, deeply sympathetic characters which she accomplishes with exceptional empathy in this incisive, gripping, and intricately plotted tale of genocide, femicide, exile, survival, compassion, and love.
It's Elementary by Elise Bryant - Mavis Miller is not a PTA mom. She has enough on her plate with her feisty seven-year-old daughter, Pearl, an exhausting job at a nonprofit, and the complexities of a multi-generational household. So no one is more surprised than Mavis when she caves to Trisha Holbrook, the long-reigning, slightly terrifying PTA president, and finds herself in charge of the school's brand-new DEI committee. And then the principal disappears.
Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden by Camille T. Dungy - In this memoir Dungy winds through her attempts at re-wilding her yard in Fort Collins, CO; into stretches of her family history; deep into her roles as a mother, Black woman, and poet; through the difficulty of parenting during COVID-19 school closures; and into the politics that underpin nearly every element of life.
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck - Erpenbeck's new novel tells the story of the romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s when nineteen-year-old Katharina meets by chance a married writer in his fifties named Hans. The novel describes the path of the two lovers, as Katharina grows up and tries to come to terms with a not always ideal romance, even as a whole world with its own ideology disappears.
Sorry for the Inconvenience: A Memoir by Farah Naz Rishi - Spanning thirteen years of complex family dynamics and a surprising kinship, Farah Naz Rishi's story explores the unpredictability of love--familial, platonic, and romantic, but never truly instant.
If you're ever just looking for something "good" to read, I highly recommend browsing the TGTM books at your Madison Library. There's a little something for everyone in this collection and it's my go-to when I'm not sure what I'm wanting to read.
**Linked titles are to the regular copies, which may have hold lists. The TGTM browse collection books are separate from those.