My LINKcat AccountOverheard in the library last Friday (5/11): “At least it wasn’t snow!” [As we all know from living in Wisconsin, 35 degrees and rain given the right conditions can indeed be snow.] Enough said about the weather. This coming Saturday, May 19th, the Summer Reading Program will kick off with our first ever Geekfest. As part of the festivities, members of the Wisconsin Garrison of the 501st Legion will be at the library from 1 to 3 p.m. In case your geekiness doesn’t lean towards the Star Wars franchise, let me tell you who they are. Better yet, let me quote from their webpage “The 501st Legion is a worldwide Star Wars costuming organization comprised of and operated by Star Wars fans. While the organization was founded to simply provide a collective identity for costuming fans with similar interests, the 501st is proud to put its resources to good use through fundraising, charity work, and volunteering.” This is a storm trooper garrison who bill themselves as “bad guys doing good”. Don’t miss this chance to embrace the dark side, eat snacks, take selfies, and generally geek out. Hope to see you there! In the meantime, there are a number of new books for your reading pleasure listed below. Enjoy!
New Non-Fiction
“The Recovering: The Intoxication and Its Aftermath” by Leslie Jamison. The best-selling author of The Empathy Exams presents an exploration of addiction that blends memoir, cultural history, literary criticism and journalistic reportage to analyze the role of stories in conveying the addiction experience, sharing insights based on the lives of genius artists whose achievements were shaped by addiction.
“New Power: How Movements Build, Businesses Thrive, and Ideas Catch Fire in Our Hyperconnected World” by Jeremy Heimans & Henry Timms. Two visionary thinkers and political influencers share game-changing perspectives into how power works differently in today's hyper-connected world, explaining how some of the biggest stories of our age, from the rise of Uber to the election of Trump, reflect new currents of open, participatory and peer-driven power that can be driven toward collective agendas.
“The Feather Thief: The Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century” by Kirk Johnson. Documents the astonishing 2009 theft of an invaluable collection of ornithological displays from the British Museum of Natural History by a talented American musician, tracing the author's years-long investigation to track down the culprit and understand his motives, which were possibly linked to an obsession with the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying.
“The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity” by Byron Reese. A timely assessment of the revolutionary potential of artificial intelligence and robotics in human life traces how technology arrived at this point and how such topics as artificial life, machine consciousness, extreme prosperity and technological warfare will be hotly debated issues of the near future.
“Voice Lessons for Parents: What to Say, How to Say It, and When to Listen” by Wendy Mogel. The best-selling author of The Blessing of a Skinned Knee presents an essential guide to the new art of talking with children that demonstrates how a change of voice can transform conversations and ease parent-child relationships, sharing strategies for communicating with kids at different age levels as well as talking with family members, teachers, coaches and other caregivers about one's children.
New Fiction
“Head On, No.2 (Lock In)” by John Scalzi. A follow-up to Lock In finds the near-future world reveling in a violent but seemingly harmless, robot-bodied sport until a star athlete dies unexpectedly on the field, prompting an investigation by two FBI agents into the game's increasingly lucrative competition. By the award-winning author of “Redshirts”.
“The Female Persausion” by Meg Wolitzer. A shy college freshman finds her perspectives transformed by a mentor activist at the center of the women's movement who challenges her to discover herself in ways that take her far from the traditional life she envisioned at the side of her boyfriend. By the best-selling author of “The Interestings”.
“The Only Story” by Julian Barnes. A man who ran away as a teen university student with a married woman more than twice his age reflects on how they fell in love, how he freed her from a sterile marriage and how their relationship fell apart as she succumbed to depression. By the award-winning author of “The Sense of an Ending”.
“Paris By the Book” by Lian Callanan. When her eccentric novelist husband disappears, leaving behind nothing but a hidden pair of plane tickets to Paris, Leah relocates to France and takes ownership of a small bookstore, where clues she discovers in an unfinished manuscript and in the literary paths of beloved Parisian classics lead to consequential truths for her daughters.
“We Own the Sky” by Luke Allnutt. When a devastating illness takes his beloved family from him, a man who once believed himself incredibly lucky takes solace in photographing the skyscrapers and cliff tops his son and he once visited before embarking on a powerful journey through forgiveness back to life. A first novel.
“Women in Sunlight” by Frances Mayes. Four American expats and strangers become unexpected friends during a magical year in Tuscany marked by a writer's complicated relationship with the subject of her biography, long-postponed dreams and shifting senses of adventure and bravery. By the best-selling author of “Under the Tuscan Sun”.
“The Magnificent Esme Wells” by Adrienne Sharp. The irrepressible daughter of a two-bit gangster and a movie showgirl comes of age in golden-era Hollywood and a nascent Las Vegas before her beauty captures the attentions of one of the Strip's most powerful men. By the author of “The True Memoirs of Little K”.
“My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton” by Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie. The best-selling authors of America's First Daughter draws on thousands of letters and original sources in an epic retelling of the life of Eliza Hamilton that describes her passionate dedication to a fledgling America's independence, her unlikely marriage to penniless but brilliant officer Alexander Hamilton and the turmoil and tragedies that challenged her legacy.