Posted on Friday, June 20, 2025 by The Biblio-Buckaroo
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?”
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”
Last month on Friday, April 18, author Min Jin Lee took the stage at Jesse Auditorium as keynote speaker of the 2025 Unbound Book Festival. Her speech, and the conversation that followed between Lee and fellow novelist Crystal Hana Kim, opened up depths of compassion and wisdom that served as welcome refuge for readers that evening. (A writeup from the Missourian has the highlights, and an interview from Vox magazine has the backstory.)
Min Jin Lee, joined by Crystal Hana Kim, answers an audience question after her keynote speech at the Unbound Book Festival on April 18, 2025.
I was excited to be in the audience, having read “Pachinko” years ago — an experience that left me with an aching heart and baffled curiosity about the kind of writer who could craft a story so enormous (in scope) that somehow registered on a molecular level (in feeling). And I get it now. It takes a writer like Min Jin Lee: rigorous, reverent; insatiable in research and courageous in art. Someone willing to walk the dark alleys of history in hopes that one will take her home, and patient enough to show us the way.
The month of May brings fresh flowers and fresh books! LibraryReads are the top 10 books selected by library staff across the country each month, and this time around we have horror, thrillers, romance and more. Read on to discover a new favorite!
“The Missing Half” by Ashley Flowers with Alex Kiester
Nic has been messed up since her older sister went missing. Enter Jenna, who is searching for connections between her sister’s disappearance and Nic’s. They decide to work together to uncover what happened, but the deeper they get the harder it becomes. A twist ending completely turns the tables on this tightly written thriller.
~Kimberly McGee, Lake Travis Community Library, Austin, TX Continue reading “May 2025 LibraryReads”
For the June First Thursday Book Discussion choose a book that fits the Summer Reading theme “Color Our World.” With a little creativity, any book could fit this criteria — what book hasn’t brought at least some color into your world? If you can think of a completely colorless book, you could still bring that and talk about how it’s author managed such a feat.
“Color Our World,” could be interpreted very simply: plant flowers, paint a mural, knit a colorful scarf or make your own dyes from wild materials.
The glimmering blue surface of a pool, the verdant ripple of the trees and the ruby-red shine of a snow cone — summer is a reminder that life is better in color. At the Daniel Boone Regional Library, you can read vibrantly with our Summer Reading program; this year’s theme is “Color Our World.”
Summer Reading begins on May 30 and is open to all ages and reading levels. While reading this summer, you can pick up rewards as you finish books and activities. Additionally, readers can enter drawings for bigger prizes. Continue reading “Literary Links: Summer Reading: Life Is Better in Color”
Below I’m highlighting some nonfiction books coming out in May. 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
“Mark Twain” by Ron Chernow (May 13)
Before he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, the man who would become America’s first, and most influential, literary celebrity spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Twain went west to the Nevada Territory and accepted a job at a local newspaper, writing dispatches that attracted attention for their brashness and humor. It wasn’t long before the former steamboat pilot from Missouri was recognized across the country for his literary brilliance, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize. In this richly nuanced portrait of Mark Twain, acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brings his considerable powers to bear on a man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune, and crafted his persona with meticulous care. After establishing himself as a journalist, satirist, and lecturer, he eventually settled in Hartford with his wife and three daughters, where he went on to write “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” He threw himself into the hurly-burly of American culture, and emerged as the nation’s most notable political pundit. At the same time, his madcap business ventures eventually bankrupted him; to economize, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exile in Europe. He suffered the death of his wife and two daughters, and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache, political crusades, and eccentric behavior that sometimes obscured darker forces at play. Drawing on Twain’s bountiful archives, including thousands of letters and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures the man whose career reflected the country’s westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars, and who was the most important white author of his generation to grapple so fully with the legacy of slavery. Today, more than one hundred years after his death, Twain’s writing continues to be read, debated, and quoted. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer’s talent and humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and often maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history. Continue reading “Nonfiction Roundup: May 2025”
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?
