SHELF HELP

Staff from your Monroe County Public Library recommend some of their favorites from the collection.

What: “Leviathan Wakes” by James S.A. Corey

(usually me) gave up. I’d crumple the map into the backseat, prepared at that moment to start a new life wherever we happened to be.

Finally, the driver would acquiesce and pull over to regroup and consult the map together. The navigator, still a bit huffy, would smugly enjoy the driver’s difficulty in interpreting the same spider web of roadways.

Say what you will about simpler times, but I’m not willing to go back to the time before GPS. Ever.

Those satellites in geosynchronous orbit led Stan and me to and around Tampa last weekend for an utterly fantastic wedding. They found our AirBnB. They rerouted us around gridlock on I-75 (or tried to, as people kept crashing into each other).

I’m no longer the one saying we’d missed our turn. The GPS voice tells Stan to do a U-turn, then instantly figures out where we are, where we went wrong and where we’re supposed to be.

And when all’s going smoothly again, there’s time to play the “GPS challenge.” That’s what I call the driver’s innate desire to “trick” the satellites, speed up and outrun its estimated time of arrival.

“Sure, we’ll get there at 8 p.m. IF we go 65 mph. But we can do better. We can beat that.”

Shaving a minute or two off the predicted ETA is cause for celebration on a road trip.

I thought last weekend, it’d be funny if the GPS responded to us like a real person.

“Hey, dumbass, I TOLD you to turn left. Ding ding. Rerouting. Now ya gotta do a U-ey. Good luck with that on this divided highway, ya chump.”

“OK, tough guy. I see you speeding up. I’ll give you a few extra minutes. I’ll update your arrival time. But guess what? There’s congestion up ahead that’s gonna slow ya down. You can’t see it now, but I know it all, and a sea of brake lights in three miles will knock you down a peg.”

Yes, times have changed, and when it comes to road trips, I’m thrilled to have been replaced by technology.

Why: One of the better sci-fi TV shows of recent years is “The Expanse.” Even better is its source material, a series of novels by James S.A. Corey (a pen name for a pair of writers).

“Leviathan Wakes” is the first in the series, and it’s a series you should read in order. These books are good old-fashioned space operas with life-threatening interplanetary peril at every turn, even as the characters are coping with basic human questions. One of the writers formerly worked as an assistant to George R.R. Martin; like A Song of Ice And Fire, the books are built on chapters from alternating characters’ point of view. Unlike Martin, these guys managed to turn around their books in a timely manner – even after TV took an interest! – so you won’t be left hanging as we are in (book-version) “Westeros.”

Where: This is available as an eBook from the Monroe County Library system.

How: You can request books online by logging in to www. keyslibraries.org and get ebooks and e-audiobooks 24/7 at www. estuff.keyslibraries.org. If you don’t have a card, you can visit your local branch or register online to get one. Questions? info@ keyslibraries.org

Recommended by: Nancy Klingener, community affairs manager, Monroe County Public Library

The school district has 18 months to find its next superintendent.

Superintendent Theresa Axford retires in July 2024, and school board members face a decision: National search, internal promotion or national search then internal promotion.

Four public speakers at the Jan. 24 school board meeting — some representing conservative political organizations — urged the board to conduct a national search for the next superintendent.

Christine Miller of Big Pine Key told the school board to hire a superintendent who “will bring prayer and God back to schools,” “post The 10 Commandments in every classroom,” “ban the LGBTQ agenda from all curricula” and still promote “the vision and values of our community.”

Marathon resident John Strickland simply told the board, “I want you to perform a national search for the superintendent.”

The topic wasn’t on the agenda for the school board’s meeting in Marathon, and the board did not discuss the superintendent succession plan.

Axford has been with the school district for nearly 35 years and was the longtime principal of Sugarloaf School, then Key West

High School. She was the district’s executive director of teaching and learning until July 2020, when the board appointed her superintendent in a tumultuous time.

The pandemic was raging; the previous superintendent, Mark Porter, had decided not to renew his contract; and the district had just lost its longtime finance director.

In other news

The school district received a five-year, $8.9 million mental health grant that will fund nine additional social workers and provide at least one for every school, Erin WIlliams, the district’s coordinator of student support, told the board on Jan. 24.

Currently, WIlliams said, some schools are sharing social workers, and the grant will place at least one in every school, and two or three in larger schools.

It also will fund foreign language training for the social workers, as only one of the district’s six current social workers is bilingual. Emphasis will be placed on Spanish and Creole, Williams said, though board chair Andy Griffiths pointed out that more than 30 different languages are spoken at Key West’s Horace O’Bryant Middle School. Williams agreed, and added that 120 languages are spoken throughout the district.