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Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
Wisconsin's Digital Library just got bigger. There are now 300 magazine titles that have been added for you to check out from home. They range from popular and venerable (Us Weekly, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Cooks Illustrated) to the obscure (Cricket Skills and Secrets). The magazines include current issues and back issues.
Famous for his pioneering flight from New York to Paris, Charles Lindbergh was lionized in his lifetime. Fleming’s well-researched biography is a rags-to riches story that doesn’t side-step Lindbergh’s Nazi sympathies and white supremacist activities, but rather portrays the path of eugenics pseudo-science paired with disinformation that he followed to get there.
In Eldridge's new series the main character is a Chinese-Norwegian ninja-trained woman who takes on the Ukranian mob in Los Angeles. Talk about cross-cultural! This is it. It's also action-packed and fast-paced and the perfect book to dive into if you're hunkered down during this polar vortex.
I saw a New York Times article about celebrity memoir audiobooks that are read by the author. The three titles they mentioned are listed below as well as a few others you might enjoy. And if audiobooks aren't your cup of tea, then there are also links to the physical book or the ebook.
Read through the seasons - and emotions - in Birdsong by Julie Flett. A young Cree girl, Katherena, moves to a new home with her mother. She misses her “friends and cousins and aunties and uncles”. The new home is over the mountains and near a field “covered in snowdrops”. She feels lonely and does not feel like getting out her pencils and paper for drawing. “My hands are cold.” But soon, she meets their nearest neighbor, an older woman named Agnes – who loves gardening and making things out of clay.
Libertie Sampson is a free-born Black girl coming of age in 1860s Brooklyn. She is the daughter of the only Black woman doctor in the region and as such feels incredible pressure from her mother to follow in her footsteps. She's always known that her mother wants her to go to college and study medicine so that they can one day open a practice together. And to a point Libertie is willing to go along - mostly because this is all that she has ever imagined.
As they start their marriage, Yejide and Akin are aware they’ve a lot to learn, but there is one thing they are sure of: theirs will be a monogamous marriage. In late 1980s Nigeria, it is still assumed that Akin will take several wives. The pair, who met at university and have thus far weathered Nigeria’s often volatile political and social climate, have the sort of love that is strong enough to withstand any outsider’s attempts to drive them apart. But Akin and Yejide may be their own greatest threat to their marriage, a discovery that comes almost too late.
The idea of attending a Broadway show in person still seems so distant right now. Luckily, the library collects plays, musical scores and original cast recordings to help you get in the spirit.
Sera Fleece is recently divorced, out of a job and at extreme loose ends. Her only emotional outlet is a true crime podcast hosted by Rachel Bard. Rachel's stories of unsolved crimes of the missing keep Sera company as she struggles with depression and loneliness. When Rachel suddenly stops posting new episodes and there are no new updates on her social media, Sera is thrown for a loop. The only thing she can think to do is find out what has happened to Rachel, who may have disappeared just like the subjects of the podcast.
Author Candace Fleming and illustrator Eric Rohmann have wowed the children’s book world with a very engaging and detailed book about bees. Did you know bees are quite hairy?! The oil paintings of bees in this book are so close-up you’ll feel like you’re just as tiny, getting exclusive access of a nest from a bee's point-of-view.
