Looking for a good book to tide you through the coldest months? Here are 10 books coming out this month that librarians are especially excited to pick up.
A socially awkward hotel maid finds herself at the center of a murder investigation when she discovers a wealthy hotel guest dead in his bed one day.
Molly loves her job, loved her recently deceased grandmother, and cherishes the way the rules of her work let her blend in with others. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection. But Molly’s orderly life is turned on its head the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself very dead in his bed. Before she knows what’s happening, Molly’s odd demeanor has the police targeting her as their lead suspect and she finds herself in a web of subtext and nuance she has no idea how to untangle.
What to read while you wait: – The Lazarus Hotel: another locked room mystery set in an upscale hotel – Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine: about an isolated young woman and the friendships she develops after she and a coworker help save an elderly man who collapses – Pretty as a Picture: a locked room mystery with a protagonist who also just wants to do her job
Well, it certainly has been a bit of a year, hasn’t it? While things were a little too pandemic-y and censorship-y around the country to make this year a pleasant one to remember, I do not think it was completely without merit. Take, for instance, reading challenges. More specifically, Mead’s Bookish Bingo Challenge, that, when complete, makes the player eligible for FABULOUS PRIZES. Readers still have until the first week of January to submit their bingo cards at the first floor desk. Those who completed a row across, down, or diagonally will receive a stylish and useful Mead tote bag. In addition to this, those who were able to complete the entire card will be entered into a drawing for $50 Chamber Cash. Wow! Talk about fabulous!
Above: Mead’s Bookish Bingo Challenge bingo card. Download and print your own HERE.
Did you miss the bingo boat this year? Do not despair. You have a couple options. The first of which is to engage with Mead’s Bookish Bingo Challenge 2022 for a whole new year of challenges to complete.
The second option is to spend the next two holiday weekends completing at least one row of the bingo card. Here’s how I would do it:
Top row middle: Read a Book Recommended by the Staff on the MPL Blog
Mead staff has been posting book, movie, magazine, website, and more, recommendations for roughly the past three years. Books for all ages, really. Many to choose from and many of which can be read in one easy sitting. No one will fault you for reading a book from a post about children’s books. If you feel like this is cheating (it’s not; children’s lit is worthy and excellent), certainly no one will fault you for reading a book in audio form while you finish last minute holiday preparations around the house or drive to and from work, etc. I would listen to something with a full-cast reading like Dealing with Dragons by Patricia Wrede or maybe the highly-acclaimed The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzie Lee, both of which were blogged about by yours truly a couple years ago. Super fun series, honestly.
Second row middle: Read a Book that is Connected to the Winter Solstice
Greenglass House by Kate Milford
Hmmm, if only there were a holiday, or several holidays, that landed on or around the Winter Solstice. What I am getting at, and what you may have gathered from my advice about the first square, is that reading challenges are a perfect opportunity to bend some rules. Greenglass House by Kate Milford takes place over a boy’s winter break. It’s a snowed-in mystery that, while not specifically about the Winter Solstice, is definitely solstice-adjacent. Get creative. Is the book set in winter? I bet you could shoehorn that thing into this bingo square.
Third row middle: READER’S CHOICE!!!!!!!!!
Okay, is THIS cheating? It is not. Any book you read gets this square crossed off the list. May I humbly suggest a little Murderbot?
Fourth row middle: Read a Magazine on Overdrive/Libby
Our 2021 reading challenge saw some changes to Mead services over the course of the year. Primary of these to effect Bookish Bingo was the absorption of RB Digital into Overdrive/Libby. RBD used to be the place to check out e-magazines and audiobooks until mid-2021, so if you read your magazine there, feel free to mark off the square. Latecomers should head to Overdrive/Libby. I really dig on America’s Test Kitchen so I would probably read an issue of their Cook’s Country magazine.
Fifth row middle: Watch a Film with Subtitles on Kanopy
Kanopy can be accessed anywhere you have an internet connection. I use the Roku app and it’s pretty slick. To find the film with subtitles, head to “Browse” and then select “World Cinema”. Watch Parasite (2019) if you haven’t yet because buddy, you are missing out.
Everyone at Mead hopes everyone reading our blog enjoyed participating in this inaugural reading challenge. What were your favorite squares? What were the most difficult? What do you wish we would do differently? Click HERE to download your last-ditch 2021 bingo card and stay tuned for access to the 2022 edition. Please do not hesitate to reach out for help troubleshooting tech stuff, for last minute book recs, or anything else, really. Enjoy the holiday season, and to those of you attempting to complete a bingo row over two holiday weekends, best of luck, you can do it!
Every December, hundreds of librarians from across the country vote for their favorite books of the year. This year’s picks include a thriller about what happens to the survivors after the credits roll in a horror flick, a historical novel about an abandoned mother who works to save her family during the Dust Bowl, and a fantastical love story between a ghost who needs to cross over to the other side and the ferryman responsible for transporting the souls of the dead.
Elsa Martinelli has two children, an unhappy marriage, and a farm that she stubbornly helps tend. But when the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl hit, the family’s relations are stretched to the brink. Abandoned by her husband, faced with dying livestock and failing crops, Elsa must choose whether to stay with the land she loves or flee in search of a better life for her and her children.
Krampusnacht is coming up this weekend. It’s the night before St. Nick’s Day when people believe Krampus comes to punish children that misbehave. Krampus wasn’t always associated with the Christian holidays. As Smithsonian Magazine explains, “His name originates with the German krampen, which means “claw,” and tradition has it that he is the son of the Norse god of the underworld, Hel.” In Europe, every year for Krampusnacht, there will be parades and festivals where people dress up as Krampus. These festivities are spreading to America as well. There is a Krampusnacht that happens in Milwaukee. If you’re not able to go to a Krampusnacht or want to be cautious with the ongoing pandemic, I’ve made a list of items to get you in the holiday mood. One of the items in this blog is honestly one of my favorite Christmas movies. As with my other recent posts, I’ve included the summary from our catalog about each item.
“This darkly festive tale of a yuletide ghoul reveals an irreverently twisted side to the holiday. The horror-comedy tells the story of young Max, who turns his back on Christmas as his dysfunctional family comes together and comically clashes over the holidays. When they accidentally unleash the wrath of Krampus, an ancient entity from European folklore, all hell breaks loose and beloved holiday icons take on a monstrous life of their own.”
One of the book displays on the first floor of the library right now is on diverse romance novels, and it’s pretty amazing to see the variety of covers on there! Of course you have your books that are just some model’s shirtless torso – but romance novels are a lot wider than that, too! We see a lot of popular romance books here at the library with protagonists and love interests of different races, sizes, orientations, so I wanted to highlight some of them here!
This book is not Sonali Dev’s latest, but a little older (2016) – which is great, because it means that if you like it, you have a bunch more books by her just waiting for you!
Mili Rathod hasn’t seen her husband in twenty years—not since she was promised to him at the age of four. Yet marriage has allowed Mili a freedom rarely given to girls in her village. Her grandmother has even allowed her to leave India and study in America, all to make her the perfect modern wife. Which is exactly what Mili longs to be—if her husband would just come and claim her.
Bollywood’s favorite director, Samir Rathod, has come to Michigan to secure a divorce for his older brother. Persuading a naïve village girl to sign the papers should be easy for someone with Samir’s tabloid-famous charm. But Mili is neither a fool nor a gold-digger. And before he can stop himself, Samir is immersed in Mili’s life—cooking her dal and rotis, escorting her to her roommate’s elaborate Indian wedding, and wondering where his loyalties and happiness lie.
Heartfelt, witty, and thoroughly engaging, Sonali Dev’s novel is both a vivid exploration of modern India and a deeply honest story of love, in all its diversity.
By now, most of the people in my inner circle have received their jabs so I’m back to having houseguests. My friend B came to town last weekend. We had a lovely bonfire and ate many cheeses. The nicest time was had by all. There was a moment, however, that I managed to astonish and appall my guest with one statement: I Have Never Read A Stephen King Book. In the past my biggest librarian sin was not having gotten around to reading Harry Potter. Relax, I got that covered in 2019 and it was fine. My friend B, as it turns out, is a HUGE King fan and could not believe that someone who is a librarian, avid reader, and horror fan, has not once thought to pick up something by The Master. Folks, my reading list is well over one thousand titles and while Stephen King has for sure cornered a certain portion of the market, would you believe there are literally THOUSANDS of authors cranking out content at any given moment competing for my attention? I do not actively dislike King. His work is often an emerging reader’s first interaction with a “grown-up” book and extrapolates into a lifelong love of reading and learning. His work is not unworthy, just uninteresting to me, specifically. Below, I have listed several horror authors of note for those of you who have run out of Stephen King books (I understand that is nigh impossible) and for people who love King but aren’t sure where to look next for more great horror.
Mira Grant Grant has been churning out some of the most genuinely creepy science fiction/horror for the last dozen or so years. She is preoccupied with various iterations of zombie apocoli and eldritch horrors of the deep. Grant is best known for her Newsflesh and Parasitology series and also writes under the name Seannan MacGuire whose catalog is well worth a look. For Grant, start with Parasite (2013) or Feed (2010).
Victor Lavalle The Ballad of Black Tom (2016), is probably Lavalle’s best known book, but I first encountered him when I read The Changeling (2017). Any threadbare notion of ever having children was burned out of me after reading that book. The horrors of motherhood and more depicted in The Changeling gave me about a week’s worth of sleepless nights. Effective horror fiction, yes, but wow sometimes there are books I wish I could unread. This statement should be taken as an enthusiastic recommendation for the work of Victor Lavalle.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia This one. Moreno-Garcia has been hitting it out of the park for years now, but had her breakout to mainstream success with 2019’s Gods of Jade and Shadow, which was an extremely satisfying fairy-tale-like epic based on Mexican folklore. Last year’s Mexican Gothic upped the creep factor by serving Shirley Jackson realness at a secret-filled crumbling mansion isolated in the Mexican foothills. Grade: A+++++++++.
Harold Schechter Horrific, but not horror fiction. Schechter is a modern true crime master beloved to the true crime/podcast community. I learned about his work because my favorite horror/true crime podcast The Last Podcast on the Left often uses his work as their primary source. I listened to the audio version of The Serial Killer Files (2003) on Hoopla, which is a kind of “heavy hitters” lineup of the creepiest and most notorious serial killers of the 20th century. The solid research and clear prose were only overshadowed by the narrator mispronouncing Ed Gein’s name. My understanding is that we say “geen” rhymes with jean, not “gyne” as in gynecologist. As a daughter of Wisconsin this was glaring to me, which is why I’m having a hard time moving on. Check out Hell’s Princess (2018), one of Schechter’s latest, which details the totally bananas true story of Bell Gunness, butcher of men.
David Wong Jason Pargin has been writing under the pen name David Wong since before his days as editor-in-chief at Cracked.com and now even that is several years in the past. His first full-length novel, John Dies at the End (2007), was originally written in serial form on the author’s blog. It’s fun to start with this book and work through his catalog chronologically to see how his writing gets better and better. It’s also such a joy to see a personal favorite get so successful. John Dies at the End ended up getting adapted for film in 2012. It starred Paul Giacometti and was directed by horror royalty Don Coscarelli. For non-horror stans, this was a big huge deal and made many fanboys and girls spin off into dorky paroxysms of joy.
Additional horror authors who are not Stephen King:
Max Brooks (World War Z; Devolution) Octavia Butler (Fledgling; Kindred) Tananarive Due (The Good House; My Soul to Keep) Stephen Graham Jones (The Only Good Indian; My Heart is a Chainsaw) Grady Hendrix (My Best Friend’s Exorcism; The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires) Joe Hill (Horns; N0S4A2) T. Kingfisher (The Twisted Ones; The Hollow Places) Ira Levin (Rosemary’s Baby; The Stepford Wives) Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire; The Queen of the Damned) Riley Sager (Final Girls; Home Before Dark)
As for me, I promised my friend that I would read minimum one (1) Stephen King novel within the next calendar year, so now I have the audio copy of Salem’s Lot waiting in my Overdrive/Libby holds. There are 12 other people ahead of me, so I imagine it will be well past spooky season by the time I get to check it out. Not to worry, because I try to keep that shit in my heart the year-round.
And as for you, what happens if nothing on the list stands out? Do not hesitate to reach out for more book recommendations whether they are for horror fiction, cozy mysteries, amish romance, silkpunk, Nordic noir, cashier memoir, you name it we will help find it for you.
In the lastcouple of years, I wrote about some of my favorite horror movies. Instead of movies, to keep things fresh, I decided to talk about horror graphic novels. So get cozy in your favorite reading chair and grab one of these terrifying titles! Like my other posts, I’ve included the synopsis from our catalog.
“Kurôzu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but by a pattern: uzumaki, the spiral, the hypnotic secret shape of the world. It manifests itself in everything from seashells and whirlpools in water to the spiral marks on people’s bodies, the insane obsessions of Shuichi’s father and the voice from the cochlea in our inner ear. As the madness spreads, the inhabitants of Kurôzu-cho are pulled ever deeper into a whirlpool from which there is no return!”
Code-switching is becoming an increasingly popular practice in writing children’s literature. Code-switching happens when one moves fluidly between two languages within written or spoken dialogue. It is often used when a word cannot be directly translated or loses meaning in translation, or as a way of better illustrating themes where another language may describe something better or be more appropriate than English. Spanglish is a common word used when referring to the code-switching between English and Spanish.
Children’s books are an enjoyable way to introduce your child (or yourself) to another language. If you are looking to incorporate a second language into your daily life or to keep a language alive in the home, books that use two languages are a good place to begin. They often include a glossary with translations and use repetition to emphasize words that are in the language other than English. These books can be found in a variety of languages, but the most common are English to Spanish. Below are a selection of favorites from Mead Public Library’s children’s collection (descriptions provided are taken from the book publishers):
Shark Week may be over for the year, but that doesn’t mean you can go back in the water quite yet. You might know the more famous shark movies, like Jaws or Deep Blue Sea. Today’s blog post is a school of more unusual shark movies. Below each title, you’ll find a summary of the movie from our catalog. Let’s dive in.
“Strange things are happening in Druid Hills, Kentucky. People are saying there are “large Great White sharks swimming in the corn stalks!” Meanwhile, serial killer Teddy Bo Lucas is arrested for killing dozens of people using shark jaws and teeth as weapons. Chief Vera Scheider is caught in the middle, trying to figure out if her missing twin sister Lorna might be one of them.”
I often receive requests from young patrons wanting to find Junie B. Jones books. Young readers seem to really enjoy reading her series. She has a spunky personality that kids find hilarious. Not all grown-ups seem to love her though (she is pretty sassy)! I have some alternative series recommendations from our children’s library for Junie B. Jones fans (or for those needing a break from her) that will appeal to new readers just starting to read chapter books. These are all shorter chapter books with illustrations and relatable characters that are appealing to kids building up their reading stamina. Whether you share the love for the popular Junie B. or not, we have many options your new readers will enjoy.
Second graders, Ivy and Bean, are a likeable pair of best friends. They have very different personalities and at first, didn’t even want to be friends with each other! They discover that their differences actually complement each other to make them a dynamic duo. You will enjoy their creative problem solving and humorous adventures, which don’t always go as planned – despite their good intentions. The large font, short chapters, and humorous illustrations will appeal to early readers of this series.
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