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Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors

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Cover of The Collective
A review of The Collective by Alison Gaylin

Camille Gardner's life ended five years ago when her daughter died. The loss alone devastated her. But the lack of justice for her daughter has filled her with so much anger she doesn't have any room for anything else. And she has no outlet for all that rage. Until now. Alison Gaylin explores the depths to which someone might go in order to get justice (or is it revenge) and brings the reader along for the thrilling ride.

Jul 11, 2023

Who is your favorite character from The Office?

Cover of The Office BFFs: Tales of
A review of The Office BFFs: Tales of The Office from Two Best Friends Who Were There by Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey

My favorite character from The Office is Oscar Martinez. Also, they are all my favorite character. I've watched all nine seasons twice (more about that later) and could talk about The Office all day. It turns out, the actors who portray the characters Pam and Angela could talk about it all day, too, and they do on their Office Ladies podcast!

Jul 10, 2023

What would the Bandit Queen do?

Cover of The Bandit Queens
A review of The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff

“Remove my nose ring.”  Geeta hasn’t heard that expression in a while, but she immediately knows what the woman before her is asking: make me a widow. Geeta has been an outcast in her small Gujarati village ever since her husband Ramesh mysteriously disappeared five years ago. While Geeta most certainly did not kill her husband, she does little to dispute the rumors that she’s a killer, since it keeps the villagers at arm’s length.

Jul 7, 2023

La baguette magique

Cover of I Always Think It's Foreve
A review of I Always Think It's Forever: A Love Story Set in Paris as Told by an Unreliable But Earnest Narrator by Timothy Goodman

This book created by award-winning graphic artist Timothy Goodman is visually stunning. It's a hybrid graphic memoir of when the author moves to Paris in 2019 to take a break from everything and unexpectedly meets the love of his life. You might guess from the title of the book that the author always thinks his relationships are going to last forever when in reality they are never forever. This book is about that, one man exposing his heart and soul and the details of a crushing short-lived romance.

Jul 3, 2023

Everyone wants to delay the moment

Cover of I Just Want to Say Goodnig
A review of I Just Want to Say Goodnight by Rachel Isadora

“On the African veld, there is a village. As the sun sets, parents tell their children, ‘It is time for bed.’” I Just Want to Say Good Night is a universal story of childhood. While Rachel Isadora’s beautiful oil paint illustrations transport children to a far away African landscape, all the cheeky little ways Lala employs to stay up just a little bit longer will feel wholly familiar. I can imagine my own three-year-old in central Wisconsin saying… “I just want to say goodnight to the little ants” or "Yes. Yes. I am coming.

Jun 30, 2023

Bringing icons back to life

Cover of WARHOLCAPOTE: A Non-Fictio
A review of WARHOLCAPOTE: A Non-Fiction Invention by Rob Roth

Andy Warhol and Truman Capote planned to write a smash Broadway play together in 1978. The two friends recorded approximately 80 hours of their conversations as an artistic experiment. The project was never completed and the tapes were filed away and inaccessible to the public at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. After Andy Warhol's death in 1987, over 3,000 cassettes recorded on Andy's Sony Walkman were discovered. The tapes were undated and had little or no notations and had been recorded by somewhat stealthy means so were not "legal" to listen to until 2037 under New York law.

Jun 21, 2023

Some helpful tidbits

Cover of Waiting for Service: an In
A review of Waiting for Service: an Insider’s Account of Why Customer Service is Broken and Tips to Avoid Bad Service by Ama Tenumah

I heard a radio interview with Amas Tenumah about his book, Waiting for Service: an Insider’s Account of Why Customer Service is Broken and Tips to Avoid Bad Service. I was eager to read this book for two reasons: 1) to improve my attitude and patience when dealing with customer service at, say, AT&T, and 2) to improve my own skills in delivering customer service.

Tenumah, a motivational speaker and former customer service consultant, writes that most businesses have small customer service departments and budgets - and little incentive to improve. This is news?

Jun 20, 2023

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