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Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
It can sometimes be easy to forget how transformative World War I was to the course of history. A war that began with nineteenth century visions of cavalry charges to glory fatally collided with the reality of the technology of the twentieth century. The brutal carnage that the war became soon revealed that medicine, like army tactics, would have to change radically in order to address the wounds—physical and mental—of the casualties returning from battle.
In Be Quiet! Rupert, a mouse, wants to create his very own wordless book. His friends are game, but unfortunately, they won't stop talking about it, filling the book with more and more words and making Rupert more and more frustrated. This book is hilarious, introduces some wonderful vocabulary, and takes advantage of every part of the book, from the cover to the endpapers. It's perfect for elementary school-aged children.
Did you read Malibu Rising? Remember when tennis pro Carrie Soto threatened to light Brandon Randall’s clothes on fire? Well, fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid can rejoice! Because Carrie Soto is back!
The Macavity Awards are nominated and voted on by members of Mystery Readers International. The winners were announced at Bouchercon, an annual mystery convention which was held in Minneapolis this past weekend. The nominees were published in 2021, so here's your chance to find a great read that my not have a long waiting list.
"Sharks that walk, sharks that speed, sharks that glow, sharks in danger… and baby sharks! Meet these sharks–and many more–in The Shark Book!”
If you, like me, are feeling the end of summer doldrums a bit, then I've got the book for you. The Passengers by John Marrs takes you on a wild ride and sets you on a collision course with fun! Too much? One pun too many?
I'm always a little skeptical of books about libraries - maybe being a librarian has made me too jaded. But this story isn't really about libraries, and it's not even really about books, although there is a gorgeously illustrated spread celebrating the breadth of imagination and worlds to be found within the pages of a book and the walls of a library.
When describing this book to a friend, I summarized as the story of two women in Victorian England: Ruth, a seamstress who believes she can hurt and kill others through her sewing, and Dorothea, a member of the gentry who visits Ruth in prison, believing that phrenology (the study of the contours of the human skull to describe a person's personality) holds the clues to Ruth's innocence or guilt. It sounds a bit wacky, I'll admit, but the story is so much more complex than that.
In her stellar adult fiction novel debut Veronica Roth explores what happens when a totalitarian, dystopian regime falls and whether or not the society can rebuild without repeating the same patterns and mistakes. And she does all of this through the eyes of someone who was complicit in that regime's behavior.
This fictionalized biography of Artemisia Gentileschi is as beautiful, powerful, and haunting as the paintings its subject produced. Gentileschi is best known as a celebrated Italian Baroque painter, and for insisting on trying her rapist in a court of law-- two things that were near unheard of for women of her time.
