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Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors

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

You need a chicken to wave and cheer!

Cover of Woo Hoo! You're Doing Grea
A review of Woo Hoo! You're Doing Great! by Sandra Boynton

Sandra Boynton needs no introduction for anyone with a toddler in their life, and I was very excited for the newest addition to the collection, this one a hardcover picture book instead of the classic board book, but still filled with the signature silly animals and great rhymes. 

Not since Mo Willems' pigeon had to go to school ("The unknown stresses me out, dude") have I felt so seen and understood by an animal in a picture book, but this story spoke to me from the opening page:

Jun 14, 2023

Reading dilemmas 101

Cover of Fourth Wing
A review of Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

Anyone who's known me for a while as a reader knows I can dig my feet in when a book becomes too popular. If I read a book before it became hugely popular, great. But if it's become hugely popular? I'm far more likely to not read it then. If I'm being honest here (and why else would I start talking about this?), I'll admit I like to be the discoverer of the books. I like to find the gems before everyone else. My petty confession of the day.

Jun 13, 2023

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