Following Creativebug’s tutorials, I made two different types of cloth napkins and repurposed a paper bag and fabric scraps to wrap them. Photo credit Maggie Maginness
You probably don’t need me to point out that Halloween is over, Thanksgiving is coming right up, and Black Friday will be here before you know it. If thinking about shopping for the holiday season has your blood pressure rising, consider making some of your holiday gifts and decorations this year (okay, you’ll likely have to do some shopping for materials, but hopefully it will be less shopping, more making, and more using odds and ends you already have). Continue reading “Worried About Holiday Shopping? Try These Craft Projects Instead!”
Posted on Wednesday, November 16, 2022 by patron reviewer
“Portrait of a Thief” is a beautiful exploration of what it means to be an American-born person whose ancestry lies on a different continent. It’s also about stealing art. More specifically, Chinese art plundered from previous conquests by the Western world.
In the book, China has requested that their plundered items be returned to them, to no avail. So now, a wealthy private citizen wants to hire a group of Chinese-American college students to steal the art back. The problem is, none of them are majoring in theft.
Can they steal all five Chinese artworks back? Or will they get caught, ruining their futures in the process? With delightful character development, lovely writing, and a little romance, this is an excellent book choice.
Three words that describe this book: Deep, intricate, thoughtful
You might want to pick this book up if: you like heists and a Robin Hood-esque quest.
-Anonymous
This reader review was submitted as part of Adult Summer Reading 2022. We will continue to share these throughout the year.
Posted on Sunday, November 13, 2022 by Reading Addict
November is Native American Heritage Month, as declared by President George H. W. Bush on August 3, 1990. We join in paying tribute to the rich ancestry and traditions of Native Americans. The national events began with a YouTube presentation by Joy Harjo, the first Native American U.S. poet laureate, who joined Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary, in a conversation with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden on November 1.Continue reading “Literary Links: Giving Thanks for Native American Heritage Month”
The Daniel Boone Regional Library vision statement begins, “DBRL strives to be at the heart of the community…” Public libraries are so much more than a place to store books, and one of the most important things they do is to help build community. In our library, we work toward this in many ways.
Libraries are some of the few public venues where you don’t have to spend money to spend time. We provide meeting spaces for local groups. We promote civic engagement by supplying voter registration forms, hosting election forums, and serving as a polling location on Election Day. A wide variety of programs bring together community members from all backgrounds, ages, living situations and abilities. We also serve active online communities through social media pages, such as the Read Harder Challenge Discussion Group on Facebook. Continue reading “The Importance of Community”
While many adults look at babies and understandably, given the convenience of diapers and the plentiful milk, envy their lifestyle, I think back to the frustrations of being unable to make larger, older humans understand me and also how uncomfortable it is to be trapped in a garment filled with waste, and so must declare, despite all the free milk, that I much prefer not being a baby. Sure, adults underuse mobiles and are rarely praised for properly using a toilet, but at least we have the agency to choose to diminish the joy in our lives by not hanging mobiles above our sleep stations, and there is nothing stopping us from asking our families and trusted colleagues to appreciate our toilet expertise. Continue reading “The Gentleman Recommends: Louise Glück”
Below I’m highlighting some nonfiction books coming out in November. All of the mentioned titles are available to put on hold in our catalog and will also be made available via the library’s Overdrive website on the day of publication in eBook and downloadable audiobook format (as available). For a more extensive list of new nonfiction books coming out this month, check our online catalog.
Top Picks
“The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family” by Kerri K. Grenidge (Nov 8)
Sarah and Angelina Grimke — the Grimke sisters — are revered figures in American history, famous for rejecting their privileged lives on a plantation in South Carolina to become firebrand activists in the North. Their antislavery pamphlets, among the most influential of the antebellum era, are still read today. Yet retellings of their epic story have long obscured their Black relatives. In “The Grimkes,” award-winning historian Kerri Greenidge presents a parallel narrative, indeed a long-overdue corrective, shifting the focus from the white abolitionist sisters to the Black Grimkes and deepening our understanding of the long struggle for racial and gender equality. That the Grimke sisters had Black relatives in the first place was a consequence of slavery’s most horrific reality. Sarah and Angelina’s older brother, Henry, was notoriously violent and sadistic, and one of the women he owned, Nancy Weston, bore him three sons: Archibald, Francis and John. While Greenidge follows the brothers’ trials and exploits in the North, where Archibald and Francis became prominent members of the post–Civil War Black elite, her narrative centers on the Black women of the family, from Weston to Francis’s wife, the brilliant intellectual and reformer Charlotte Forten, to Archibald’s daughter, Angelina Weld Grimke, who channeled the family’s past into groundbreaking modernist literature during the Harlem Renaissance. In a grand saga that spans the eighteenth century to the twentieth and stretches from Charleston to Philadelphia, Boston, and beyond, Greenidge reclaims the Black Grimkes as complex, often conflicted individuals shadowed by their origins. Most strikingly, she indicts the white Grimke sisters for their racial paternalism. They could envision the end of slavery, but they could not imagine Black equality: when their Black nephews did not adhere to the image of the kneeling and eternally grateful slave, they were cruel and relentlessly judgmental — an emblem of the limits of progressive white racial politics. Continue reading “Nonfiction Roundup: November 2022”
Here are a few of the most notable adult fiction debuts for November. These titles have all received positive reviews in library journals. For a longer list, please visit our catalog.
Edith and Ashley have been best friends for over 42 years. They’ve shared the mundane and the momentous together: trick or treating and binge drinking; “Gilligan’s Island” reruns and REM concerts; hickeys and heartbreak; surprise Scottish wakes; marriages, infertility and children. As Ash says, “Edi’s memory is like the backup hard drive for mine.”
But now the unthinkable has happened. Edi is dying of ovarian cancer and spending her last days at a hospice near Ash, who stumbles into heartbreak surrounded by her daughters, ex(ish) husband, dear friends, a poorly chosen lover (or two), and a rotating cast of beautifully, fleetingly human hospice characters.
As “The Fiddler on the Roof” soundtrack blasts all day long from the room next door, Edi and Ash reminisce, hold on, and try to let go. Meanwhile, Ash struggles with being an imperfect friend, wife and parent — with life, in other words, distilled to its heartbreaking, joyful and comedic essence.
For anyone who’s ever lost a friend or had one. Get ready to laugh through your tears.
Posted on Wednesday, November 2, 2022 by Decimal Diver
Nick Francis Potter is a Columbia, MO author whose latest book is “Big Gorgeous Jazz Machine.” The book is a collection of experimental graphic works and comics poetry. Potter teaches in the Digital Storytelling Program at the University of Missouri, and is the comics editor at Anomaly. He is the author of two other collections, “New Animals” (Sibito Press) and “Static Gifs” (Greying Ghost). Nick was kind enough to take the time to be interviewed via email.
