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.
“We All Want Impossible Things” by Catherine Newman
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.
Continue reading “Debut Author Spotlight: November 2022”
While considering what to write about for this month’s Literary Links article, I stumbled across the fact that October is “Right Brainers Rule!” month. The human brain is divided into two hemispheres, and each side of the brain handles different jobs. The brain’s left side is stronger in dealing with facts and logic in an analytical and methodical way; whereas the right side of the brain appears to be the more creative side. Some theorize that each of us ends up having a side of the brain that dominates the other. Of course, there is so much about the brain that we do not yet fully understand. One thing we really know about the brain, though, is that it’s the body’s only organ that can contemplate its own existence! So, let’s take a look at some books that explore this delightfully complex organ that is such a driving force in our lives. Continue reading “Literary Links: All About the Brain”
In honor of spooky season, here are a few of the most notable (and creepiest) adult fiction debuts for October. These titles have all received positive reviews in library journals. For a longer list, please visit our catalog.
“The Immortality Thief” by Taran Hunt
Far off the edge of human existence, beside a dying star lies a nameless ship abandoned and hidden, lost for a millennium. But there are secrets there, terrible secrets that would change the fate of humanity, and eventually someone will come looking.
Refugee, criminal and linguist Sean Wren is made an offer he knows he can’t refuse: life in prison, “voluntary” military service — or salvaging data in a long-dead language from an abandoned ship filled with traps and monsters, just days before it’s destroyed in a supernova. Data connected to the Philosopher’s Stone experiments, into unlocking the secrets of immortality.
And he’s not the only one looking for the derelict ship. The Ministers, mysterious undying aliens that have ruled over humanity for centuries, want the data — as does The Republic, humanity’s last free government. And time is running out.
In the bowels of the derelict ship, surrounded by horrors and dead men, Sean slowly uncovers the truth of what happened on the ship, in its final days… and the terrible secret it’s hiding.
Continue reading “Debut Author Spotlight: October 2022”
Below I’m highlighting some nonfiction books coming out in October. 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
“Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions” by Temple Grandin (Oct 11)
A quarter of a century after her memoir, “Thinking in Pictures,” forever changed how the world understood autism, Temple Grandin, transforms our awareness of the different ways our brains are wired. Do you have a keen sense of direction, a love of puzzles, the ability to assemble furniture without crying? You are likely a visual thinker. With her genius for demystifying science, Grandin draws on cutting-edge research to take us inside visual thinking. Visual thinkers constitute a far greater proportion of the population than previously believed, she reveals, and a more varied one, from the photo-realistic object visualizers like Grandin herself, with their intuitive knack for design and problem solving, to the abstract, mathematically inclined “visual spatial” thinkers who excel in pattern recognition and systemic thinking. She also makes us understand how a world increasingly geared to the verbal tends to sideline visual thinkers, screening them out at school and passing over them in the workplace. Rather than continuing to waste their singular gifts, driving a collective loss in productivity and innovation, Grandin proposes new approaches to educating, parenting, employing and collaborating with visual thinkers. As this important book helps us see, in a highly competitive world we need every mind on board. Continue reading “Nonfiction Roundup: October 2022”
Recently I was in the mood to read a book that was uncanny, insightful, thrilling, beautiful, able to make me write better blog posts and, in a pinch, act as a meal replacement. Reasoning that if such a powerful book existed, I’d either have heard about it or it would be very new, I perused the new book shelf at the Columbia Public Library. In the sort of serendipitous moment that usually only occurs in telenovelas or upscale puppet shows, I noticed, while retrieving some dropped pudding, that my pudding had landed nearest a book with a blurb reading: “Uncanny, insightful, thrilling, beautiful… my favorite book by one of America’s great living writers.” Despite saying nothing about its qualifications as a meal replacement or blog-betterer, I figured I’d give the book a shot, plus it was going to take me a little time to get the pudding off of it. Continue reading “The Gentleman Recommends: Ken Kalfus”
In “The Sum of Us” Heather McGhee says, “The American landscape was once graced with resplendent public swimming pools, some big enough to hold thousands of swimmers at a time. In the 1920s, towns and cities tried to outdo one another by building the most elaborate pools; in the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration put people to work building hundreds more… Officials envisioned the distinctly American phenomenon of the grand public resort pools as ‘social melting pots.’ Like free public grade schools, public pools were part of an ’Americanizing’ project intended to overcome ethnic divisions and cohere a common identity — and it worked.” It worked, she conceded, until integration arrived. Continue reading “The Sum Of Us and a Reflection on the WPA”
Hispanic Heritage Month is observed from September 15 to October 15. In recognition of this, I will offer a short booklist of cookbooks in Spanish, English, and bilingual languages.
I looked at a few of the titles in English, but one quickly grabbed my interest: “The Latin American Cookbook” by Virgilio Martinez. I also paged through: “The Cuban Table” by Ana Sofia Peleaz and Ellen Silverman, “The Chilean Kitchen” by Pilar Hernandez and Eileen Smith, “Peru: The Cookbook” by Gaston Acurio, “My Mexico City Kitchen” by Gabriela Camara and “Mexico: The Cookbook” by Margarita Carrilo Arrante. It’s a long list, though nowhere near complete, but I wanted a wider representation of the variety of ingredients and approaches. Though I think the previous titles are all good and will be referenced for future meals, I ended up focusing on “The Latin American Cookbook.” Continue reading “Read The Recipe! Hispanic Heritage Month”
Not all challenged books are great literature, but many of them are. Not all challenged books are award-winning books, but many of them are. Not all challenged books are the right book for everyone, but they are almost certainly the right book for someone. And even a bad book can make a good point depending on how it’s approached.
Banned Book Week is September 18-24 and this year’s theme is “Books Unite Us – Censorship Divides Us.” The American Library Association (ALA) began Banned Books Week in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in challenges to books in schools, stores and libraries. Continue reading “Books Unite Us – Censorship Divides Us”
