Posted in Adult, History, Science, Staff Picks, Teen & Young Adult, Uncategorized

Let’s Celebrate National Parks!

It is that time of year again. The weather is getting warmer and most of us just want to be outside. I grew up in Dundee Wisconsin surrounded by the vast Kettle Moraine State Forest. I would spend hours as a child running through the meadows, climbing rocks and trees, and exploring the woods. When I was very little my grandfather would babysit me at his office at the Ice Age Center. He was a naturalist there. He and Grandma made sure that my cousins and I had the chance to travel and explore many of the national parks where Grandpa had worked in his younger years. Each summer they took us somewhere new. I was blessed to be able to see The Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, Mount Rushmore, Mesa Verde, and The South Dakota Badlands. Our grandparents also took us east to Niagara Falls, Gettysburg, The Finger Lakes of upper New York, and Washington D.C. As an adult it is more difficult to travel to these places as life is busy. This time of year I get out and explore the many beautiful natural areas closer to home. Though I am unable to travel to the national parks whenever I may like, I do still carry a deep appreciation for our country’s protected wilderness areas. These national parks deserve to be celebrated and protected for all future generations to enjoy. Dear reader, please join me on a literary tour and celebration of our national parks through the books I have selected below.

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Posted in Adult, Award Winners, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical, Horror, New & Upcoming, Romance, Science

Library Reads Top 10: September 2023

Every month, librarians across the country vote for the upcoming titles they’re most excited to read. This month’s choices include a good old-fashioned haunted house horror story, the quest of a godkiller and a minor god she cannot kill, and a lyrically-written survival tale set in Jamestown-era America.

Top Pick: The September House by Carissa Orlando

Margaret believes in following the rules. Four years after moving into a haunted Victorian, she knows how to avoid the dangerous ghosts. But her husband can’t take it anymore and leaves when the paranormal activity escalates to excessive levels. Now their estranged daughter—who’s never been to the house—is coming to visit, and Margaret doesn’t know how to explain (much less keep her child safe from) the specters’ violent antics. —Lucy Lockley, St. Charles City-County Library District

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Posted in Adult, Contemporary, Fiction, Nonfiction, Science, Thrillers

While You Wait August 2023: Tom Lake and Outlive

Ann Patchett’s new novel is at the top of our most popular books this month. Set right next door in Northern Michigan, it’s a moving exploration of the relationship between generations, between parents and children, and of how the past informs our view of the present. In non-fiction, we have an investigation into the science of aging – not only how to live longer but how to live better.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family’s orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart.

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Posted in Adult, Nonfiction, Science, Teen & Young Adult

Fall Reading Challenge: Conservation!

Starting September 1 and running through September 30, Mead Library is teaming up with the Glacial Lakes Conservancy on their 25th anniversary for a fall Reading Challenge! Watch for it to appear in Beanstack (the same website/app our Summer Reading Program uses). Read books, explore the outdoors, and earn tickets for prize drawings! And mark your calendar, because the challenge will wrap up with an outdoor anniversary celebration from 10am-2pm on Saturday, October 9 at the Willow Creek Preserve.

Below, I’ll share some books pulled together by my coworker, Erica, that would be perfect for this challenge. There are separate sections for adult books and teen books; descriptions have been taken from our catalog or the publisher. If you’re looking for children’s books, check out this previous blog post by Bree, Love Your Mother Earth!

Books For Adults

Wild Wisconsin Notebook by James Buchholz

Featuring 144 short and fascinating nature essays grouped by season, this beautifully illustrated volume serves as a trailside companion year-round. Find out about black bears and blackbirds, walleyes and woodchucks, snow geese and snow fleas, all in your own backyard. Nature lovers of all ages will appreciate Buchholz’s breezy style and wealth of outdoor knowledge.

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Posted in Kids 5-12, Nonfiction, Science, Uncategorized

Love Your Mother Earth

Environmental issues have been receiving increasing attention in recent years. Earth is facing a lot of problems, many as a direct result of human activity. With Earth Day coming up on April 22nd, this is a great time to remember to bring awareness to the issues our planet is facing and what we can do as individuals and communities to help care for our planet and keep it healthy. Have a conversation with the kids in your life about what it would mean to them to have a healthy place to live and what they can do to help make that happen. Take this day as an opportunity to show Mother Earth some love and participate in an environmentally friendly activity together. Some fun and easy ideas you may want to consider trying include: taking a walk and picking up trash around your neighborhood, planting a tree, planting a pollinator garden, repurposing unwanted items, doing a closet cleanout and donating no longer needed items for others to use, or creating an art masterpiece from recycled materials. Remember, the kindness we show our planet doesn’t have to take place on just one day. We can take steps to reduce our negative impact each day through simple acts. Supplement your environmentally friendly activity with a book that covers an environmental issue of interest. I have some nonfiction children’s book recommendations from our library that will educate and inspire kids to find ways they can help our planet and prevent issues from worsening.

Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, Oscar! by Mary Lindeen

Sesame Street fans will appreciate the basic information given in this book that introduces younger readers to the concepts of recycling, reusing, and reducing in an effort to care for the environment. Sesame Street characters provide explanations for why we need to do these things, along with clear examples of how we can easily do them. Abby Cadabby gives readers the idea to reuse a can to hold pens, Oscar recommends eating foods that don’t have wrappers to reduce waste, and Rosita shows us a set of chairs that are made from recycled plastic. Delightful illustrations also include photographs of children demonstrating ways they help to take care of the environment.

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Posted in Nonfiction, Science

Epidemiology: Containing What Ails Us

Epidemiology has been pushed to the forefront of conversations since the coronavirus pandemic began. Epidemiologists identify emerging diseases, how they spread, and how best to prevent people from getting ill. For my blog post this week, I’ve found some books that cover how epidemiologists work and about past pandemics. As with my other list posts, I’ve included a summary of the book from its publisher.

Epidemiology: A Very Short Introduction by Rodolfo Saracci

“Epidemiology plays an all-important role in many areas of medicine, from discovering the relationship between tobacco smoking and lung cancer, to documenting the impact of diet, the environment, and exercise on general health, to tracking the origin and spread of new epidemics such as Swine Flu. It is truly a vital field, central to the health of society, but it is often poorly understood, largely due to misrepresentations in the media. In this Very Short Introduction, an internationally recognized authority on epidemiology, Dr. Rodolfo Saracci, provides a wealth of information on this key field, dispelling some of the myths surrounding the study of epidemiology, and explaining what epidemiology is and how vital it is to the discovery, control, and prevention of disease in world populations. Dr. Saracci provides a general explanation of the principles behind clinical trials, and explains the nature of basic statistics concerning disease. He also looks at the ethical and political issues related to obtaining and using information concerning patients, and trials involving placebos.”

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Posted in Adult, Nonfiction, Science

It’s alive!

My last blog post inspired me to write up a post about science books. I’ve tracked down a list of new or upcoming books on topics ranging from pandemics to mycology. I’ve included the publisher’s description of the book under each listing.

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COVID-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One by Debora Mackenzie

“Over the last 30 years of epidemics and pandemics, we learned nearly every lesson needed to stop this coronavirus outbreak in its tracks. We heeded almost none of them. The result is a pandemic on a scale never before seen in our lifetimes. In this captivating, authoritative, and eye-opening book, science journalist Debora MacKenzie lays out the full story of how and why it happened: the previous viruses that should have prepared us, the shocking public health failures that paved the way, the failure to contain the outbreak, and most importantly, what we must do to prevent future pandemics.

Debora MacKenzie has been reporting on emerging diseases for more than three decades, and she draws on that experience to explain how COVID-19 went from a potentially manageable outbreak to a global pandemic. Offering a compelling history of the most significant recent outbreaks, including SARS, MERS, H1N1, Zika, and Ebola, she gives a crash course in Epidemiology 101–how viruses spread and how pandemics end–and outlines the lessons we failed to learn from each past crisis. In vivid detail, she takes us through the arrival and spread of COVID-19, making clear the steps that governments knew they could have taken to prevent or at least prepare for this. Looking forward, MacKenzie makes a bold, optimistic argument: this pandemic might finally galvanize the world to take viruses seriously. Fighting this pandemic and preventing the next one will take political action of all kinds, globally, from governments, the scientific community, and individuals–but it is possible.”

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Posted in Adult, Biography & Memoir, eBooks & eAudio, Graphic Novels & Memoirs, Horror, Science, Science Fiction

A Dive into the Reading Pile

My social life has taken a pretty sharp decline since I’ve gone into quarantine. Being home more has given me a bit of a push to reevaluate my reading pile. I’ve sifted through the books that have piled up around my home to find some that I thought others might be interested in as well.

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A Planet of Viruses by Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer was one of the authors that I read for a few classes at university. He’s a writer that can take relatively dry science topics, like evolution, and make them engaging for every degree of reader. Near the end of my undergraduate education, I found an interest in virus-host coevolution and tried to find books on viruses. I stupidly didn’t take a microbiology class due to initially thinking microbes were boring. I need to note that this particular book has been in my pile for a few years, but it has taken on new relevance.

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Posted in Film, History, Nonfiction, Science

Nights at the Museum

One of my favorite things to do is to visit museums. Needless to say, I can’t do that these days while in quarantine. So here are some museums that are doing virtual tours that I paired with a documentary on Hoopla or Kanopy.

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The Louvre (Hoopla/Monarch)

International travel, like late-night Taco Bell or book shopping, is just one of those things we don’t get to do in-person right now. So instead of risking a plane trip, bring the Louvre to you!

I thought it was interesting that, before this documentary, the Louvre had not been filmed.

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Posted in Adult, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical, New & Upcoming, Nonfiction, Romance, Science

8 Books to Watch For This Fall

Big names are dominating the fall book press: Margaret Atwood, Bill Bryson, Jon Krakauer and Stephen King are all releasing new titles this season. Here’s what to watch for (and reserve early).

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

Over 30 years after the initial release of Atwood’s celebrated dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, she returns to the Republic of Gilead. Set 15 years after the van doors shut behind Offred, the sequel offers the “testaments” of three more women from Gilead.

Release date: September 10

Continue reading “8 Books to Watch For This Fall”