In the past few years I’ve noticed more books with lead characters who have several decades of living under their belts. Perhaps publishers have come to realize that a good chunk of their audience is comprised of older adults who would like to see themselves represented in stories and another segment contains readers who want to imagine a future in which they don’t disappear into the background as they age. Then there’s the fact that the more past a character has, the more richly layered their backstory is. Here are a few titles with older and bolder protagonists:
“Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame” by Olivia Ford has been called a “coming-of-old-age tale.” After nearly 60 years of marriage, Jenny Quinn’s husband seems content to believe the time for new adventures is past. But Jenny surprises him, and herself, by winning a spot on a reality TV show, “Britain Bakes,” where she wows the world with her baking skills. Each edible creation relates to her past in some way, which serves to unfold her story. But as her fame grows, she finds herself struggling with the possible revelation of a secret she’s kept for decades. Continue reading “Older and Bolder: Fiction”
Join staff and community members for next First Thursday Book Discussion at noon on August 7 in the Columbia Public Library to talk about “Adventures in the Louvre: How to Fall in Love With the World’s Greatest Museum.”
The title sounds like it could be the next hot mystery from Dan Brown, à la “The Da Vinci Code.” Instead “Adventures in Louvre,” by Elaine Sciolino is a lively nonfiction account of the famous Parisian museum. By the end, you will understand why the Louvre, the artworks within, and the history without have inspired such a dazzling variety of passionate responses ranging from Beyonce and Jay-Z’s 2018 viral music video (explicit content) to a 1909 protest threatening to burn or flood the museum. Continue reading “August First Thursday Book Discussion: Adventures in the Louvre”
Below I’m highlighting some nonfiction books coming out in July. 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
“We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate” by Michael Grunwald (Jul 1)
Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions. By 2050, we’re going to need a lot more calories to fill nearly 10 billion bellies, but we can’t feed the world without frying it if we keep tearing down an acre of rainforest every six seconds. We are eating the earth, and the greatest challenge facing our species will be to slow our relentless expansion of farmland into nature. Even if we quit fossil fuels, we’ll keep hurtling towards climate chaos if we don’t solve our food and land problems. In this rollicking, shocking narrative, Grunwald shows how the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to making it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land. But he also tells the stories of the dynamic scientists and entrepreneurs pursuing real solutions, from a jungle-tough miracle crop called pongamia to genetically-edited cattle embryos, from Impossible Whoppers to a non-polluting pesticide that uses the technology behind the COVID vaccines to constipate beetles to death. It’s an often infuriating saga of lobbyists, politicians, and even the scientific establishment making terrible choices for humanity, but it’s also a hopeful account of the people figuring out what needs to be done — and trying to do it. Continue reading “Nonfiction Roundup: July 2025”
Books and beats to give texture to these long, hot days.
“Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth” by Maggie Nelson
Publication Date: April 1, 2025
Why I Picked It: “Pathemata” arrives as a companion to “Bluets” (2009), an astonishing work of prose poetry of which I’ve memorized whole passages (speaking more to the way Nelson writes — with stunning precision; straight to the heart — than to my memory). In “Bluets,” Nelson lifts up the color blue as a lens, muse, mirror. In a similar fashion, “Pathemata” makes chronic pain its precious subject.
Recommended For: Anyone who is familiar with pain, especially pain that doesn’t go away, that demands an answer. Anyone who still visits early memories of the COVID-19 pandemic with a feeling of grief and fascination.
Continue reading “Quick Recs: Three Books and an Album”
Summer has officially begun! This month’s LibraryReads brings new books to check out. Some of the favorites books by library staff from around the country include a new Maggie Stiefvater, some romance, a thriller or two, and a new book by this year’s One Read runner-up, Nicki Erlick. Read on to learn about these and more!
“The Listeners” by Maggie Stiefvater
Joan is the manager of a resort hotel in West Virginia. Life is good until the U.S. is pulled into WWII and the hotel’s only guests are detained Axis diplomats. While Joan is very good at keeping secrets, this adds strain on the staff. Readers who adored Stiefvater’s YA books will welcome this historical fiction that reads like a classic spy thriller.
~Kimberly McGee, Lake Travis Community Library, Austin, TX Continue reading “June 2025 LibraryReads”
100 years ago, two of the top 10 most popular names in the United States were Doris and Donald. My grandmother was named Doris and the current U.S. president is a Donald. In 2024, Olivia and Liam topped the list. Times and tastes change but what does it matter? What is in a name?
Florence Knapp’s book, “The Names,” begins with a mother heading to the registry office to register her baby. She must decide upon his name. What follows is three different storylines based on what his life might have been depending on the name she chose. How will her son be treated if he is named Gordon or Julian or Bear? How will it affect his future or people’s perception of him? What burden would he carry if he is named after his abusive father, Gordon? Publishers Weekly says, “Readers won’t be able to stop talking about this intelligent exploration of a single choice’s long tail of repercussions.” Continue reading “What’s in a Name?”
Because Summer Reading 2025’s theme is “Color Our World,” for July’s First Thursday Book Discussion I aimed to select a book that revolves around art and artists. As I was searching through options, “Anita de Monte Laughs Last” jumped out at me and seemed to be a perfect pick. Trust me, it doesn’t disappoint!
Continue reading “First Thursday Book Discussion – “Anita de Monte Laughs Last””
Elijah Burrell is a Mid-Missouri author whose latest book is “.” It’s a book of poems that navigate the depths of human connection and disconnection, love and loss, and the spaces between. Burrell is the author of two other collections of poetry and his writing has appeared in many various publications. He is part of the faculty of Lincoln University, where he serves as a Professor of English. He was kind enough to take the time to be interviewed via email. Continue reading “Q&A With Elijah Burrell, Author of “Skies of Blur””
Written by Kat Stone Underwood and Lauren Williams, One Read co-chairs.
This year’s One Read selection, Daniel Mason’s “North Woods,” follows an extraordinary succession of inhabitants of a single house in the woods of New England, exploring the many ways we’re connected to our environment and to one another across time, language and space. This work of historical fiction narrowly beat out Nikki Erlick’s work of magical realism, “The Measure,” in a public vote.
The remaining eight titles considered by our reading panel examine survival of all kinds, from processing grief and escaping abuse to thriving in spite of oppression and being alien in a human world. Continue reading “Literary Links: One Read Finalists 2025”
Below I’m highlighting some nonfiction books coming out in June. 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 Sisterhood of Ravensbrück: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler’s All-Female Concentration Camp” by Lynne Olson (Jun 3)
Decades after the end of World War II, the name Ravensbrück still evokes horror for those with knowledge of this infamous all-women’s concentration camp, better known since it became the setting of Martha Hall Kelly’s bestselling novel, “Lilac Girls.” Particularly shocking were the medical experiments performed on some of the inmates. Ravensbrück was atypical in other ways as well, not just as the only all-female German concentration camp, but because 80 percent of its inmates were political prisoners, among them a tight-knit group of women who had been active in the French Resistance. Already well-practiced in sabotaging the Nazis in occupied France, these women joined forces to defy their German captors and keep one another alive. The sisterhood’s members, amid unimaginable terror and brutality, subverted Germany’s war effort by refusing to do assigned work. They risked death for any infraction, but that did not stop them from defying their SS tormentors at every turn — even staging a satirical musical revue about the horrors of the camp. After the war, when many in France wanted to focus only on the future, the women from Ravensbrück refused to allow their achievements, needs, and sacrifices to be erased. They banded together once more, first to support one another in healing their bodies and minds and then to continue their crusade for freedom and justice — an effort that would have repercussions for their country and the world into the 21st century. Continue reading “Nonfiction Roundup: June 2025”
