MADreads
Book reviews by library staff and guest contributors
Weird and wonderful and somewhat sinister
I picked this book up thinking it was a collection of darkly mischievous stories based on fairy tales. Perfect! That is just my cup of tea! But there's more to it than that. The Merry Spinster is a collection of stories representing classic children's literature, Grimms' Fairy Tales, Scottish folklore, the Book of Genesis, and more. That's a lot to take on!
In a perfect world...?
This book is an interesting view on immortality and complete harmony. Centuries into the future, anything that brought despair has been eliminated - government, war, illness, famine, etc. This leaves life almost limitless. The only people who can kill are in the Scythe Legion. Offending a Scythe leads to certain death. However, the main character, Citra, is taken to be an apprentice Scythe. This novel creates a very realistic world, if the world was a perfect, idealistic, utopia.
Sweet Anticipation for August 2018
This month’s new releases are filled with familiar names as publishers compete for readers’ attentions in the final month of the summer season. On to the highlights:
OverDrive Announces Its 2018 Big Library Read
This summer, join fellow readers in OverDrive’s Big Library Read, available through Wisconsin’s Digital Library!
How does your garden grow?
The library owns about two billion gardening books. I’m pretty sure that is hardly an exaggeration. It can be a bit overwhelming.
So let me recommend one as a librarian and a gardener: Emily Murphy’s Grow What You Love: 12 Food Plant Families to Change Your Life. It isn’t the only gardening book you’ll ever need, but it’s a darn good start.
Goal Diggers. Like Real Housewives
If this were a reality show on television today, I would totally watch it.
Beauty queens lost
Really smart, funny, feminist, anti-capitalist satire about what it's like to be a teen girl (and not necessarily just a cis/straight/able-bodied and/or white teen girl).
The warmth shines through
Grace Burrowes is pretty much an auto-read for me when it comes to historical romances. I don't get to every book of hers the minute it comes out, but eventually I'm going to read them. And the reason she's on my auto-read list is because she just does what she does so well. She writes engaging heroes and heroines. Her historical settings are well done - no major klinkers like a Lady Kardashian in Regency England. And the emotional journey she creates in each book always hits me just right.
Cake cake cake cake
This book is about cake and it is delightful.