Friday, July 19, 2019

Midnight at the Electric by Jodi Lynn Anderson

This was a fast read for me.  I especially enjoyed the three different eras that the novel was set in and how the characters from each were all connected.

Kansas, 2065. Adri has secured a slot as a Colonist—one of the lucky few handpicked to live on Mars. But weeks before launch, she discovers the journal of a girl who lived in her house over a hundred years ago, and is immediately drawn into the mystery surrounding her fate. While Adri knows she must focus on the mission ahead, she becomes captivated by a life that’s been lost in time…and how it might be inextricably tied to her own. 

Oklahoma, 1934. Amidst the fear and uncertainty of the Dust Bowl, Catherine fantasizes about her family’s farmhand, and longs for the immortality promised by a professor at a traveling show called the Electric. But as her family’s situation becomes more dire—and the suffocating dust threatens her sister’s life—Catherine must find the courage to sacrifice everything she loves in order to save the one person she loves most. 

England, 1919. In the recovery following the First World War, Lenore struggles with her grief for her brother, a fallen British soldier, and plans to sail to America in pursuit of a childhood friend. But even if she makes it that far, will her friend be the person she remembers, and the one who can bring her back to herself? 

While their stories spans thousands of miles and multiple generations, Lenore, Catherine, and Adri’s fates are entwined.

Thursday, July 18, 2019

Check out our Makerspace!




Our new Makerspace project is in the works: 3D printers, embroidery machine, Cricut maker,
vinyl cutter, poster plotter, button maker,
vinyl heat press, studio lightbox, etc.


Thursday, June 20, 2019

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens


WOW! No wonder this has been on the best seller list and has a long line of reserves at the Public Library.

I find that there is less of a waiting list if you request the audio version and I'm glad I did.  Got to hear the North Carolina dialects...  Great read for the summer.  The NC marsh isn't just a setting in this book, it's a character...

Go out and find a copy and enjoy!

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life–until the unthinkable happens.

Perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Karen Russell, Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

Friday, May 24, 2019

This is East Texas, and there’s lines. Lines you cross, lines you don’t cross. That clear?”


New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them.

“No Negroes, Mexicans, or dogs.”

They know the people who enforce them.

“They all decided they’d ride out in their sheets and pay Blue a visit.”

But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive.

“More than grief, more than anger, there is a need. Someone to blame. Someone to make pay.”

Ashley Hope Pérez takes the facts of the 1937 New London school explosion—the worst school disaster in American history—as a backdrop for a riveting novel about segregation, love, family, and the forces that destroy people

Friday, April 5, 2019

We Are Displaced by Malala Yousafzai


Nobel Peace Prize-winner Malala Yousafzai will start with her own story of displacement as an Internally Displaced Person to show what it means to lose your home, your community, and the only world you've ever known. She will also share the personal stories of some of the girls she has met on her various journeys to refugee camps and the cities where refugee girls and their families have settled.

In a time of immigration crises, war, and border conflicts, We Are Displaced is a reminder from one of the world's most famous people who experienced displacement that everyone deserves universal human rights and a home.







Sunday, February 10, 2019

Jane Goodall’s Lovely Letter to Children About How Reading Shaped Her Life



BriainPickings has a great blog post about the wonders of reading.  Mary Oliver's quote really resonates with me "We read to remember. We read to forget. We read to make ourselves and remake ourselves and save ourselves. “I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life,”

That life-steering power of books 
is what pioneering primatologist 
Jane Goodall articulates with great simplicity and sweetness in her contribution to 
A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader (public library) — a labor of love eight years in the making, comprising 121 illustrated letters to children about how books form and transform us by some of the most inspiring humans in our world: artists, writers, scientists, philosophers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and adventurers whose character has been shaped by a life of reading.

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Educated by Tara Westover



Here's our next Lunch Book Bunch pick! Highly recommended by Bill Gates.
Just started it and it's fascinating!

An unforgettable memoir in the tradition of The Glass Castle about a young girl who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University