The Librarians' Bedside Table - March 2023

OSCAR GRADY PUBLIC LIBRARY

THE LIBRARIANS’

BEDSIDE TABLE The Librarians’ Bedside Table will be switching platforms!

Look for more information coming soon!

What your friendly librarians have been listening, reading, watching

& MUCH MORE!

Oscar Grady Public Library Mission Statement: The mission of the Oscar Grady Public Library is to provide high interest, high demand materials and make them readily available from the Library’s collection or through interlibrary loan. The Library supports lifelong learning, information and recreational needs for people of all ages and abilities.

Special emphasis is placed on stimulating children’s interests and appreciation for reading and learning. The integration of new technology with traditional library resources is used to expand service beyond the Library’s physical walls.

On this new issue of our “Librarians’ Bedside Table”, we compiled a list of really good titles recommended by your library friends. Each title can be accessed in electronic format for your convenience. Click or tap in the hyperlinks attached to each title that will take you right to them in the Monarch Catalog. We hope you enjoy this selection of books from your librarians at the Oscar Grady Public Library!

Emily recommends:

For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing Teddy Crutcher has won Teacher of the Year at the esteemed Belmont Academy, home to the best and brightest.

He says his wife couldn't be more proud—though no one has seen her in a while.

Teddy really can’t be bothered with the death of a school parent that’s looking more and more like murder or the student digging a little too deep into Teddy’s personal life.

His main focus is on pushing these kids to their full academic potential.

All he wants is for his colleagues—and the endlessly meddlesome parents—to stay out of his way.

It's really too bad that sometimes excellence can come at such a high cost. —goodreads.com

Emily recommends :

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days by Rebecca Donner Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment — a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution. Her co-conspirators circulated through Berlin under the cover of night, slipping the leaflets into mailboxes, public restrooms, phone booths … Historians identify Mildred Harnack as the only American in the leadership of the German resistance, yet her remarkable story has remained almost unknown until now.

Harnack’s great-great-niece Rebecca Donner draws on her extensive archival research in Germany, Russia, England, and the U.S. as well as newly uncovered documents in her family archive to produce this astonishing work of narrative nonfiction. Fusing elements of biography, real -life political thriller, and scholarly detective story, Donner brilliantly interweaves letters, diary entries, notes smuggled out of a Berlin prison, survivors’ testimony, and a trove of declassified intelligence documents into a powerful, epic story, reconstructing the moral courage of an enigmatic woman nearly erased by history. —goodreads.com

Hope recommends :

That Summer: A novel by Jennifer Weiner That Summer tells the story of Diana who as a young girl worked for a family who spent their summers on the Cape. An incident that summer will impact Diana for the rest of her life.

Another Diana, nicknamed Daisy by her husband, is the other main character in this story. Daisy is married to Hal and has a 15year-old daughter named Alexis.

Daisy starts receiving emails which she feels are clearly meant for a different Diana. Daisy feels that her life is pretty ordinary, but sees Diana's life as exciting and glamorous. Therefore, she responds to one of the emails so that she can learn more about Diana. The two women meet and start spending quite a bit of time together. As the emails continue to go back and forth, we learn that Diana has purposely sent these emails to Daisy. Why would she do that?

Diana has a past that will affect Daisy's life in the future. It is hard to tell you more without revealing too much of the story.

I chose to listen to this book on CD's as I traveled. The more I heard, the more I needed to know how this story ended. Sutton Foster is the reader of "That Summer". I found her voice to be one which was pleasant and provided easy listening. If you enjoy listening to someone read a book, I would highly recommend you choose this book on CDs.

Hope recommends :

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka The swimmers seem to me to be two books in one.

The first part of the book dealt with the various swimmers who regularly go to the underground swimming pool. There were brief descriptions of the people and what method of swimming they chose to do. One day the swimmers noticed a slight crack at the bottom of the pool. Each of them became obsessed with this crack. There were various reasons as to why the crack was there or what had caused it.

The second part of the book was about one swimmer in particular named Alice. Alice was becoming now was becoming more and more forgetful.

Her family thought perhaps she was in the early stages of Alzheimer's.

If I tell you too much more, there will be no point in your reading the book.

I found the book to be a short, easy read; however, I would say the book was average. It was not one of the better books that I have read.

Hope recommends:

Exiles by Jane Harper Federal Investigator Aaron Falk is on his way to a small town deep in Southern Australian wine country for the christening of an old friend's baby.

But mystery follows him, even on vacation.

This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of Kim Gillespie's disappearance. One year ago, at a busy town festival on a warm spring night, Kim safely tucked her sleeping baby into her stroller, then vanished into the crowd. No one has seen her since. When Kim's older daughter makes a plea for anyone with information about her missing mom to come forward, Falk and his old buddy Raco can't leave the case alone.

As Falk soaks up life in the lush valley, he is welcomed into the tight-knit circle of Kim’s friends and loved ones. But the group may be more fractured than it seems. Between Falk’s closest friend, the missing mother, and a woman he’s drawn to, dark questions linger as long-ago truths begin to emerge. What would make a mother abandon her child? What happened to Kim Gillespie? — description provided by publisher

Hope recommends:

The Last of Us (Part I) for Playstation 4 The Last of Us (Part I) is available for Playstation 3, 4 and 5. Twenty years after a pandemic has radically changed known civilization, infected humans run wild and survivors are killing each other for food, weapons; whatever they can get their hands on.

Joel, a violent survivor, is hired to smuggle a 14 year old girl, Ellie, out of an oppressive military quarantine zone, but what starts as a small job soon transforms into a brutal journey across the U.S. —description below from Colin Moriarty, IGN.com “The Last of Us is a near-perfect analog for The Road, a literary masterpiece written by Cormac McCarthy. Both present a hopeless, post-apocalyptic situation navigated by two characters – an adult and a child – with nothing but absolute despair surrounding them. Like The Road, The Last of Us is perpetually dangerous and unpredictable, and like The Road, what happened to get society to a point of rapid decay isn’t the focus. It’s the story of the characters at hand, and those characters alone, at the center of both plots. The beauty of The Last of Us when compared to The Road, however, is that it’s fully interactive, complete with all of the vulnerability, uncertainty and perpetual insecurity such a situation inherently provides.

The Last of Us seamlessly intertwines satisfying, choice-based gameplay with a stellar narrative. It never slows down, it never lets up, and frankly, it never disappoints. It’s PlayStation 3’s best exclusive, and the entire experience, from start to finish, is remarkable.” (https://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/05/the-last-of-us-review ) for full review

Julie recommends:

Woodpeckers Originally broadcast as an episode of Nature on the PBS Network in 2022 Go deep into the woods to explore the lives of a unique avian family.

Woodpeckers come in 239 species, each one a colorful character with a story of its own. But all woodpeckers share some very special gifts they are acutely adapted to life in the trees and are experts at working with wood. — description from publisher

Laura recommends:

What lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall “This is a great thriller/mystery that was very twisty and fun! Lots of surprises!” - Laura Naomi Shaw used to believe in magic. Twenty-two years ago, she and her two best friends, Cassidy and Olivia, spent the summer roaming the woods, imagining a world of ceremony and wonder. They called it the Goddess Game. The summer ended suddenly when Naomi was attacked.

Miraculously, she survived her seventeen stab wounds and lived to identify the man who had hurt her. The girls’ testimony put away a serial killer, wanted for murdering six women. They were heroes.

And they were liars.

For decades, the friends have kept a secret worth killing for. But now Olivia wants to tell, and Naomi sets out to find out what really happened in the woods—no matter how dangerous the truth turns out to be.

— description by publisher

Rita recommends:

In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss (2022) by Amy Bloom Is a heartbreaking yet inspiring story of the author’s life following her husband Brian’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. When faced with the accelerating changes in Brian’s in behavior and abilities, the couple chose to give him an accompanied death through Dignitas in Switzerland.

Bloom gives very specific details about the requirements that need to be met in order to be accepted by Dignitas, and she also gives information about the few other end of life alternatives. Bloom also chronicles the frustrations the couple had with the health care system.

While In Love records Brian’s end of life, it is also a love letter, as Bloom recalls the history of her marriage, her husband’s life and their love.

In Love is available through Monarch in large print, regular print, and book club kit formats. It is available through Libby in digital book and audio formats.

Stephanie recommends:

Lawns into Meadows by Owen Wormser Landscape designer Owen Wormser explains how to replace the deadscape we call lawn with low-maintenance, eco-friendly meadows. This is a how-to book on meadow-making that's also about sustainability, regeneration, and beauty.

— description from amazon.com

Beautiful No-Mow Yards by Evelyn Hadden In Beautiful No-Mow Yards, Evelyn Hadden offers the ultimate guide to rethinking your lawn-dominated yard. With inspiring color photos and cutting-edge advice about how to work with nature, Hadden offers a diverse set of alternatives to demanding green turf. Beautiful No-Mow Yards includes detailed profiles for 100 of the best ground-layer plants, design tips to reduce maintenance, and guidelines for making smaller and smarter lawns. Whether you are motivated by saving time and money, reducing your ecological footprint, or a desire to reconnect with nature daily in your own yard, it's time to turn your lawn into a livable garden!

—description from publisher

NOW PLAYING! More and more albums are being added to our collection of vinyls for you to check out.

Artists in a great variety of genres await for you and your needle to enjoy music at 33 1⁄

Steven recommends:

Deal with the Devil, The Devil You Know, Dance with the Devil If you ever considered or enjoy reading Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic, and Fantasy novels, then here you might enjoy the Mercenary Librarian series by Kit Rocha. Set in a semi apocalyptic / futuristic United States with bio enhanced and genetically enhanced individuals who are out to protect not only history, but also their local community. There are no zombies in this series, so in case you were wondering it is not that type of apocalyptic future. So far there are only 3 books in the series, but Kit Rocha, a pseudonym for co-writing team Donna Herren and Bree Bridges, have stated that they might continue the series in future.

Now around town! Books for everyone.

The Oscar Grady Library with the support of The Friends of the Oscar Grady Library has purchased three Little Free Libraries, which have been installed at three convenient locations: Quade Park, The Oscar Grady Library, and Village Hall.

Check them out! Love them, enjoy them, treasure them.

www.oscargradylibrary.org