…and haven’t finished. I’ll come back for them! In the meantime, may they each find a new reader with more free time and mental real estate.
Lauren Marks — “A Stitch of Time: The Year a Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life”
Why I checked it out: When I picked up Lauren Marks’ book, I had John Hendrickson’s “Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter” in mind, in search of another heartrending memoir about
living with some communication or speech disorder.
Marks offers a different kind of story. While Hendrickson grows up with his stutter, Marks’ aphasia strikes down in her 27th year after an aneurysm ruptures in her brain. The sudden onset of this language disorder is devastating — Marks finds herself unable to read, or to express herself on even a basic level.
What stuck: Marks describes a profound serenity that blooms within her in the aftermath of the aneurysm. Without a functional language center to articulate and store her anxieties, hopes, fears and insecurities, her internal monologue is replaced by something she calls “the Quiet.”
Recommended for: Anyone with a special interest in language, and/or language disorders. Anyone interested in chronic health conditions, the mysteries of the brain, and the unending process of recovery. Continue reading “Great Books I’ve Started”
New Year, new nonfiction books coming out in January 2024! 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 Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with Our Wild Neighbors” by Erika Howsare (Jan 2)
Deer have been an important part of the world that humans occupy for millennia. They’re one of the only large animals that can thrive in our presence. In the 21st century, our relationship is full of contradictions: We hunt and protect them, we cull them from suburbs while making them an icon of wilderness, we see them both as victims and as pests. But there is no doubt that we have a connection to deer: in mythology and story, in ecosystems biological and digital, in cities and in forests. Delving into the historical roots of these tangled attitudes and how they play out in the present, Erika Howsare observes scientists capture and collar fawns, hunters show off their trophies, a museum interpreter teaching American history while tanning a deer hide, an animal-control officer collecting the carcasses of deer killed by sharpshooters, and a woman bottle-raising orphaned fawns in her backyard. As she reports these stories, Howsare’s eye is always on the bigger picture: Why do we look at deer in the ways we do, and what do these animals reveal about human involvement in the natural world? Continue reading “Nonfiction Roundup: January 2024”
With the year coming to a close, it is often considered a time for reflection and resolutions, looking back at the year’s events, and what we’re going to do over the course of the next year. In library- and book-land, the end of the year often means lots of retrospectives about the best books published that year, what people read and love, how many books they read, etc. I do read a lot of books (since working in libraries especially, I average between 150-200 books a year), but there are always more! So, given how many books I own, have out from the library, or have heard good things about, what am I prioritizing as we move into 2024?
Tracy Deonn exploded onto the scene in 2020 with her debut novel “Legendborn.” Meant for a young adult audience (although don’t let that stop you), we follow Bree, a young Black woman as she discovers the secret behind her mother’s death. On her first day at UNC Chapel Hill’s early college program, Bree witnesses something she shouldn’t have, and when magic fails to wipe her mind, she sets off on a journey to discover more about her own magic. This novel mixes the African diaspora with Arthurian legend, while examining race, gender and intergenerational trauma.
I’ve owned a copy of this for a few years now, and it pushes so many of my buttons: King Arthur and his knights, with magic, set in the modern day, from the perspective of someone who isn’t a white male. Everyone I’ve heard talk about this book, either on social media or just within my friend group absolutely loves it, and they all immediately picked up the sequel when it came out. As of the writing of this post, the third book has been announced for 2025, with a planned fourth book down the line, meaning there will be lots to look forward to! Continue reading “TBR (To Be Read) in 2024”
If you could have dinner with any five people, living or dead, who would you pick?
In Rebecca Serle’s novel, “The Dinner List,” the protagonist finds herself at dinner with the five people from a list she penned years earlier, including the deceased Audrey Hepburn.
I have to admit, that I was skeptical in the opening chapter of the book. Partly because the dinner list concept seems a little played out. It’s not a new concept or a particularly mind-bending idea, so I doubted if Serle was going to advance the discussion in a novel direction.
But I finished the book with my mind stretched in pleasant ways.
If you’ve never given this dinner list concept any thought before, and even if you have, I would encourage you to do so. Who would you invite? Why those people?
Read the book.
Return to your previous ruminations.
And bring your thoughts to the next First Thursday Book Discussion, on January 4, 2024.
Author Rebecca Serle will also appear live as part of the DBRL Online Author Series on Wednesday, January 10 at 7 p.m. Visit the author series site to register.
The concept of time travel opens a whole world of possibilities and complexities. If you could change the past, would you change a key moment in history or maybe just in your own life? What might the consequences be? Time travel in fiction ranges from fun, almost frivolous adventures, to stories that raise serious questions about the potential disasters that could await even the most careful time travelers.
Here are some books that explore different kinds of time travel. Some try to answer big questions, and others just have fun with it.
I had to start off this list with an older title and a personal favorite of mine: “To Say Nothing of the Dog” by Connie Willis. It combines many elements I love: time travel, romance and historical fiction, all with a dash of zaniness. Continue reading “Literary Links: Time Travel”
Kennon Sheldon is a Columbia, MO author whose latest book is “Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live.” In the book he argues the case for free will from a psychological perspective, and also draws on research into motivation and goal setting as a guide to how we might use our freedom wisely. Sheldon is professor of psychology at the University of Missouri. One of the founding researchers of positive psychology, he researches in the areas of well-being, motivation, self-determination theory, personality and positive psychology. He was kind enough to take the time to be interviewed via email.
Continue reading “Q&A With Kennon Sheldon, Author of “Freely Determined””
The next First Thursday Book Discussion will be December 7, from 12-1 p.m. at the Columbia Public Library. The featured book will be “Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother’s Will to Survive,” by Stephanie Land.
37.9 million. That’s the number of people living in poverty in the U.S. in 2022*.
37.9 million. My brain can’t make much meaning out of that number. It’s really big. It’s more than one in ten people in our country. Just as it’s hard to understand really large numbers, I think it is hard, nearing impossible, to understand what it is like to live in poverty unless you’ve been there.
That’s one reason that Stephanie Land’s debut book, “Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother’s Will to Survive,” is such a gift. By sharing her story, Land provides a rare glimpse into the life of a single mother living below the poverty line. Land’s family was hit hard by the 2008 recession, leaving her with almost no support from family when she became pregnant after graduating from high school. While parts of the Pacific Northwest are associated with wealth and affluence, many individuals — such as Land — are experiencing the impacts of generational poverty that dates back to one of many economic crises such as the 2008 Recession, the collapse of the logging industry or even the Great Depression. Continue reading “December First Thursday Book Discussion: Maid”
“Machine intelligence is the last invention that humanity will ever need to make.” – Nick Bostrom
As a child, I would watch reruns of “The Jetsons” and dream about the days when my car would fly and a robot would clean my house. It’s difficult to believe, but that future of which I dreamt is here. And although there is a lot that we still can’t do (flying cars I’m looking at you), technology is running more aspects of our lives every day. It’s also practically impossible to turn on the television, flip on the radio or check your social media feed without seeing mention of artificial intelligence (AI). Fears abound that this technology might someday overpower the human race. Will AI be the end of us or will it put us on an exciting new path? Let’s take a look at a few recent titles that explore the topic. Continue reading “Literary Links: Artificial Intelligence”
You might think I would have a healthier appreciation for Shakespeare, given how many times I watched and rewatched “The Lion King” growing up; the VHS would end, and I would immediately demand it be rewound and restarted. It is a Shakespeare retelling, after all, “Hamlet” specifically. A king murdered by his brother, his son cast out, only to come back and reclaim the throne. Maybe the Disney version is a little lighter and features the voice talents of James Earl Jones and Nathan Lane, but it’s still (mostly) “Hamlet” and sometimes just as dark. But as I entered high school and started reading more from the Bard, I found it difficult to follow characters and plots, and especially the language. Shakespeare has staying power though, and many authors have put pens to paper to revisit, recontextualize, and sometimes just rewrite the stories we know. Continue reading “Shakespeare, Retold”
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
“Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education” by Stephanie Land (Nov 7)
When Stephanie Land set out to write her memoir “Maid,” she never could have imagined what was to come. Later it was adapted into the hit Netflix series, which was viewed by 67 million households and was Netflix’s fourth most-watched show in 2021, garnering three Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Stephanie’s escape out of poverty and abuse in search of a better life inspired millions. “Maid” was a story about a housecleaner, but it was also a story about a woman with a dream. In “Class,” Land takes us with her as she finishes college and pursues her writing career. Facing barriers at every turn including a byzantine loan system, not having enough money for food, navigating the judgments of professors and fellow students who didn’t understand the demands of attending college while under the poverty line — Land finds a way to survive once again, finally graduating in her mid-thirties. “Class” paints an intimate and heartbreaking portrait of motherhood as it converges and often conflicts with personal desire and professional ambition. Who has the right to create art? Who has the right to go to college? And what kind of work is valued in our culture? In clear, candid, and moving prose, “Class” grapples with these questions, offering a searing indictment of America’s educational system and an inspiring testimony of a mother’s triumph against all odds. Continue reading “Nonfiction Roundup: November 2023”
