Posted in Adult, Biography & Memoir, Fiction, Mystery, Nonfiction

While You Wait October 2023: Mother-Daughter Murder Night and Counting the Cost

Posted on by Anneliese

This is a first for this series – the non-fiction book this month has more holds than any of the fiction books! Sometimes, to be honest, I have to scroll quite a ways down our list of most popular holds to find a non-fiction book. People just prefer fiction, I guess! But this month, Jill Duggar’s memoir has shot way up the library’s charts. And on the fiction side, we have a murder mystery that is also a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick. Get on the holds list, and check out some readalikes while you wait!

Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon

High-powered businesswoman Lana Rubicon has a lot to be proud of: her keen intelligence, impeccable taste, and the L.A. real estate empire she’s built. But when she finds herself trapped 300 miles north of the city, convalescing in a sleepy coastal town with her adult daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack, Lana is stuck counting otters instead of square footage—and hoping that boredom won’t kill her before the cancer does. 

Then Jack—tiny in stature but fiercely independent—happens upon a dead body while kayaking near their bungalow. Jack quickly becomes a suspect in the homicide investigation, and the Rubicon women are thrown into chaos. Beth thinks Lana should focus on recovery, but Lana has a better idea. She’ll pull on her wig, find the true murderer, protect her family, and prove she still has power.

Continue reading “While You Wait October 2023: Mother-Daughter Murder Night and Counting the Cost” →
Posted in Adult, Biography & Memoir, History, Nonfiction

Your Next 5 Books: History & Hollywood Glamour

Posted on by Carol

Patron Lori T.* recently asked us to track her down some history and biography titles using our Your Next 5 Books service, and graciously allowed us to share her interests and answers. Lori was particularly interested in biographies of people in the entertainment industry, especially those from the mid-century era of glamour, as well as Wisconsin history, but wanted to stay away from World War II or true crime books.

My main interest is biographies.  I especially enjoy biographies about famous people/stars in the 1940’s & 1950’s, including about places like the Catskill and French Riviera resorts during that time. I’d also like to find a biography of Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachael Maddow, and Desi Arnaz’s [of “I Love Lucy”] biography A Book.

Continue reading “Your Next 5 Books: History & Hollywood Glamour” →
Posted in Adult, History, Nonfiction, Staff Picks, Uncategorized

Time to Read a Great Book

Posted on by Corrina

Dear reader, have you ever been reading a book and just felt like it was one you wanted to buy? To highlight it, reread certain passages, or just simply to have it on your bookshelf, resting in the knowledge that it’s there, ready like a favorite comfy sweater, whenever you need it?

This book is one of those books. Chock full of fascinating information and history about the evolution of the watch. The watch is something we take for granted in 2023, isn’t it? I can’t even remember the last time I had an analog watch, and I bought my first Fitbit three years ago. Children and teens alike come into the library and stare at the analog clock we have mounted on the wall behind the customer service desk, trying to decipher its face and the time it presents. Eventually, most of them just ask us for the time. Theirs is a digital world and analog clocks, like cursive, have mostly fallen away. Although, admittedly, my own cursive skills are severely lacking!

Here are some interesting historical tidbits from the book! The first battery-powered wristwatch to make it to the market was the 1957 Hamilton Ventura, which, because production was rushed, was plagued with a short battery life. The world’s first commercial quartz watch, the Astron, came from Japan, released by Seiko on Christmas Day in 1969. Instead of a tuning fork, the new invention used piezoelectricity, a process discovered by Pierre and Jacques Curie in 1880. Amazing how old discoveries pop up in new inventions decades and centuries later, isn’t it? Finally, the very first digital watch was American, the Hamilton Pulsar, released in 1972. The Pulsar used LED technology developed at the Space Agency.

Hands of Time by Rebecca Struthers

Timepieces have long accompanied us on our travels, from the depths of the oceans to the summit of Everest, the ice of the arctic to the sands of the deserts, outer space to the surface of the moon. The watch has sculpted the social and economic development of modern society; it is an object that, when disassembled, can give us new insights both into the motivations of inventors and craftsmen of the past, and, into the lives of the people who treasured them.

Hands of Time is a journey through watchmaking history, from the earliest attempts at time-keeping, to the breakthrough in engineering that gave us the first watch, to today – where the timepieces hold cultural and historical significance beyond what its first creators could have imagined. Acclaimed watchmaker Rebecca Struthers uses the most important watches throughout history to explore their attendant paradigm shifts in how we think about time, indeed how we think about our own humanity. From an up-close look at the birth of the fakes and forgeries industry which marked the watch as a valuable commodity, to the watches that helped us navigate trade expeditions, she reveals how these instruments have shaped how we build and then consequently make our way through the world.

A fusion of art and science, history and social commentary, this fascinating work, told in Struthers’s lively voice and illustrated with custom line drawings by her husband and fellow watchmaker Craig, is filled with her personal observations as an expert watchmaker—one of the few remaining at work in the world today. Horology is a vast subject—the “study of time.” This compelling history offers a fresh take, exploring not only these watches within their time, but the role they played in human development and the impact they had on the people who treasured them. 

However, as with every invention, there is a dark side to the watch. Thanks to the discovery of radium by Marie and Pierre Curie, hollowed out watch hands were filled with luminous paint. This new invention helped soldiers accurately see the time on their watches while sitting in deep, dark trenches. But it wasn’t only the battlefield that employed this new paint. Watch dials, aeroplane instruments, gunsights and ships’ compasses were also starting to glow.

Dial factories sprang up across the US, and also in Switzerland and the UK. To apply the expensive and precious radium paint to the narrow spaces on the watch hands, women in the dial factories stuck the extremely fine camel hair brushes in their mouths to bring them to a point. They were assured by management that the trace amounts of radium they were ingesting wasn’t harmful, but when you consider these women were paid in dials painted, it started to add up. Radium was touted as a cancer destroyer, but it also has no ability to distinguish between healthy tissue and cancerous. Therefore it began to eat away at the very bones of the women ingesting it. If you would like to read a harrowing and informative book on this topic, I would suggest the following.

Continue reading “Time to Read a Great Book” →
Posted in Adult, Award Winners, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical, Horror, New & Upcoming, Romance, Science

Library Reads Top 10: September 2023

Posted on by Carol

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

Continue reading “Library Reads Top 10: September 2023” →
Posted in Adult, Biography & Memoir, Fiction, History, Nonfiction

While You Wait September 2023: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store and American Prometheus

Posted on by Anneliese

We’ve got some heavy hitters in the popular books this month. First up is the winner of the National Book Award, James McBride’s new novel The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. In non-fiction, we have a much older book – it’s rare to see a book from 2006 with so many requests! But when you look at the book, it’s very clear why; American Prometheus was Christopher Nolan’s inspiration for the new movie Oppenheimer.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

Continue reading “While You Wait September 2023: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store and American Prometheus” →
Posted in Fantasy, Games, Science Fiction

While You Wait to Play: Baldur’s Gate 3

Posted on by Zachary

At this point, it goes without saying that Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game-of-the-year contender. It’s been torture waiting for it to get released on console. I’m still waiting to hear when Baldur’s Gate 3 is getting released for the Series X. Or maybe you’re waiting for the price to come down for the PS5 version of the game. Either case, you don’t have to go without something to play. This week we’ve got a few games to tide you over until Baldur’s Gate 3 is ready for your console of choice!

Disco Elysium (Xbox/PS4/Switch)

Disco Elysium‘s story doesn’t start as fantastically as having a mind-flayer tadpole in your brain as you journey across the Forgotten Realms. You wake up with amnesia and a murder to solve right outside your hostel. With a premise like that, Disco Elysium definitely leans into the role-playing in RPG. There’s no combat in this game per se. Instead, the game focuses on investigating for clues by interacting with the characters that make up the city of Revachol, and figuring out who you were before your amnesia. Disco Elysium is definitely a good pick if you want to get lost in a well-built world.

Continue reading “While You Wait to Play: Baldur’s Gate 3” →
Posted in Adult, Fiction, Nonfiction

Book Kits for the DIY Reader

Posted on by Molly

When people think LIBRARY, they think “books”. When books think LIBRARY, we worry about books turning sentient. However, when I think library, I think programming, and a classic all-time library program: the humble book club. Mead offers a variety of excellent book clubs that suit many tastes and schedules. Here’s a list of the book clubs we’re currently running. Click the title to see the calendar listing for fall quarter meeting timings, locations, and books:

What to do if none of the clubs are appealing? Or what if they appeal greatly but the timing doesn’t work? The public at large may be interested to learn that Mead Library has several dozen circulating book kits. Book kits contain 6 or 12 books so anyone with a Monarch card can easily acquire enough copies of the same title for a good-sized book discussion. Book kit checkouts go for 28 days with the possibility of renewing twice. All you need to do is decide where to meet and what to snack on while discussing. Below, I listed several titles that make for great conversations whether the desired vibe is super serious or light and fluffy. Descriptions provided by Goodreads. All titles are linked to their respective book kit listing in the Monarch catalog:

Transcendent Kingdom (2020) by Yaa Gyasi

Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.

But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family’s loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief–a novel about faith, science, religion, love.

Gender Queer (2019) by Maia Kobabe

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

*Please note this book was targeted by bigots across the country and right here in Sheboygan under the guise of “protecting children” a few years ago. The bigots admitted to never actually reading this book, just cherry-picking images they deemed inflammatory. I don’t think it’s controversial for me to declare reading any book in full is crucial to understanding words and images in their intended context. I would like to take this opportunity to encourage anyone with a curious and compassionate mind to read this book. It’s one of the best autobiographical graphic novels ever published and deserves the attention of eyes unclouded by hate. 

Hidden Valley Road (2020) by Robert Kolker

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don’s work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony—and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.

The Library Book (2018) by Susan Orlean

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who?

Hogfather: A Novel of Discworld (1996) by Terry Pratchett

It’s the night before Hogswatch. And it’s too quiet.

Where is the big jolly fat man? Why is Death creeping down chimneys and trying to say Ho Ho Ho? The darkest night of the year is getting a lot darker…

Susan the gothic governess has got to sort it out by morning, otherwise there won’t be a morning. Ever again…

Here is a variety of additional book kit titles currently available in the Monarch catalog:

The Round House (2013) by Louise Erdrich

The City We Became (2020) by N.K. Jemisin

The Feather Thief (2018) by Kirk Johnson

A Bad Day for Sunshine (2020) by Darynda Jones

The Changeling (2017) by Victor LaValle

Circe (2018) by Madeline Miller

Women Talking (2019) by Miriam Toews

The Underground Railroad (2016) by Coleson Whitehead

And that’s just the tip of the book kit iceberg. Mead has well over one hundred book kit titles waiting for deployment into your life and brain. Search the catalog for “kits” in the format field, and limit target audience to “adult” to see the list. Why yes, we also have book kits aimed at younger audiences, if that is of interest to you parent and teacher types. For help requesting material of any type, or to learn more about book kits and other services do not hesitate to call us up at 920-459-3400 option 4. If you’re like me, and resent having to read on a schedule and therefore have no interest in starting your own book club, may I direct your attention to Mead’s Your Next Five Books service instead. Happy reading.

-Molly

Posted in Adult, Horror

My Summer of Vampires

Posted on by Aubrey

This summer, I bit into a Vampire Lit Class! I assumed that I would be (re)reading Dracula, but I was thankfully wrong. My professor was determined to teach from works that existed years before 1897, the year Dracula by Bram Stoker was published. I found it fascinating to learn more about vampires as plot devices, how the creatures represented fears that were in society at the time the stories were written, and about what horror as a genre can reveal about humanity. Yes, I suppose you could say I was “sucked” into this course.

Anyways…

Here’s some pre-Dracula stories you can also sink your teeth into:

  • The Vampyre by John William Polidori, released in 1819

Credited as the first literary vampire story! This story started with a friendly writing contest featuring friends, including renowned author Mary Shelley. (In fact, this contest also helped bring Frankenstein to the world.) The story was first published in the New Monthly Magazine, a British magazine. Finally, it was published as a novel in London in 1819.

This story follows Aubrey, a man who is tormented by former mentor Lord Ruthven. The destruction basically happens because Aubrey calls out Lord Ruthven for being promiscuous when, in reality, Lord Ruthven much worse. Lord Ruthven is *drumroll please* a vampire!

Click here to place a request for a collection of horror stories that includes The Vampyre.

  • The Black Vampyre, a Legend of St. Domingo by Uriah Derick d’Arcy, released in 1819

This is an American short story that was written under a pen name. It’s been unofficially given a nice handful of credits, including: the first black vampire story, the first comedy vampire story, the first vampire story written by an American author, and even the first short story that spoke against slavery.

The short story centers on Euphemia, a woman who has had much tragedy around her. Her first husband did evil deeds, her only son died, and is now in mourning for her third dead husband. Then a prince shows up looking more than love…revenge!

Click here to read the story.

  • Varney, the Vampyre, or, the Feast of Blood by J.M. Rymer, released in 1845-1847

This story was released by chapter weekly as a penny dreadful. When finally put into book format in 1847, it was 232 chapters long! This is the story that is given credit for officially having the first vampire with fangs for chompers.

This is the arguably the closest to Dracula on this list. In this, a family tries to beat Sir Francis Varney, the story’s vampire, as he tries to steal the literal life from women.

Click here to place a request for a collection of vampire stories that includes Varney, the Vampyre, or, the Feast of Blood.

  • Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, released in 1872

This was first published in pieces in a London literary magazine The Dark Blue over the years of 1871-1872. The cost per issue was one shilling. Finally, it was published it its entirety in the author’s short story collection, In a Glass Darkly. Uniquely, Carmilla is written as a medical case for a doctor.

The story centers on young and lonely Laura, as she befriends and loves a young guest, Carmilla. Slowly, Laura learns that Carmila is not what she seems. “Spoiler”: Carmilla is a vampire!

Click here to place a request for a collection of horror stories that includes Carmilla.

I hope you have a bloody good time with these stories, “fangs” for reading!

–Aubrey

Posted in Adult, Staff Picks, Uncategorized

Set Sail With a Great Book!

Posted on by Corrina

Dear reader, I have a confession. Although I love reading about ships, the ocean, the great lakes, life at sea, lighthouses, and everything related to these topics, I cannot swim, and am in fact terrified of deep water and being on boats of all shapes and sizes. Quite the contradiction, isn’t it?

But therein lies one of the magical aspects of books! Through them we can live vicariously, we can travel to places we may never reach, we can experience things – like sailing the ocean on ships! – that we may never experience in real life, we are exposed to different cultures, to different time periods both in the past and the future, and the list goes on!

I am sure, dear reader, that one of the reasons you picked up a book this week was to, even if for a moment, escape the everyday of your life, to break up the monotony of another work week. Books are magical, aren’t they? We can read about a failed Antarctic exploration in the middle of summer, the ocean while living in a landlocked state or country, the desert and mountains when we live nowhere near them, etc.

I just finished a non-fiction book where I got to experience sailing on the replica of an eighteenth-century warship. This was one of those non-fiction books where I was amazed people actually experienced this, and got paid for it, no less! Certainly not a situation I will ever find myself in. I may tour a tall ship someday, but I can assure you, if one ever sets sail, I will not be on it!

All Hands on Deck: A modern-day high seas adventure to the far side of the world by Will Sofrin

A maritime adventure memoir that follows a crew of misfits hired to sail an 18th-century warship 5,000 miles to Hollywood

In the late 1990s, Patrick O’Brian’s multimillion-copy-selling historical novel series—the Aubrey–Maturin series, which was set during the Napoleonic Wars—seemed destined for film. With Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey and Paul Bettany as Stephen Maturin, the production only needed a ship that could stand in for Lucky Jack’s HMS Surprise , with historical accuracy paramount. The filmmakers found the Rose , a replica of an 18th-century ship that would work perfectly. Only there was one problem, the Rose was in Newport, Rhode Island, not in Southern California, where they would be filming. Enter a ragtag crew of thirty oddballs who stepped up for the task, including Will Sofrin, at the time a 21-year-old wooden-boat builder and yacht racer, who joined as the ship’s carpenter.

All Hands on Deck is Sofrin’s memoir of the epic adventure delivering the Rose to Hollywood. It’s a story of reinvention, of hard work on the high seas, of love, and of survival. The Rose was an example of the most cutting-edge technology of her era, but in the 21st century, barely anyone had experience sailing it. The crew effectively went back in time, brought to life the old ways of a forgotten world, and barely lived to tell the tale. Just a few days in, a terrifying hurricane-strength storm nearly sank the Rose, and later, a rogue wave caused a nearly fatal dismasting. And the ups and downs weren’t limited to the waves—with the crew split into factions, making peace between warring camps became necessary, too, as did avoiding pirates and braving the temptations of shore leave. All Hands on Deck is a gripping story of an unforgettable journey and a must-read for fans who adore O’Brian’s novels and the dramatic film adaptation of Master and Commander.

Dear reader, if you would like to read more books that feature tall ships, let me recommend a few for you.

Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Jr.

Two Years Before the Mast is a book by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr. written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834.

While at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles, which affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana, rather than going on a Grand Tour as most of his fellow classmates traditionally did (and unable to afford it anyway) and being something of a non-conformist, left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor on a voyage around Cape Horn on the brig Pilgrim. He returned to Massachusetts two years later aboard the Alert (which left California sooner than the Pilgrim).

He kept a diary throughout the voyage, and after returning he wrote a recognized American classic, Two Years Before the Mast, published in 1840, the same year of his admission to the bar.

Of course this blog post would not be complete unless I recommended the following title!

Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian

Ardent, gregarious British naval officer Jack Aubrey is elated to be given his first appointment as commander: the fourteen-gun ship HMS Sophie. Meanwhile—after a heated first encounter that nearly comes to a duel—Aubrey and a brilliant but down-on-his-luck physician, Stephen Maturin, strike up an unlikely rapport. On a whim, Aubrey invites Maturin to join his crew as the Sophie’s surgeon. And so begins the legendary friendship that anchors this beloved saga set against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.

As they say in the maritime world, and with my own literary twist, may you have fair winds and following seas on your reading journey, dear reader.

Continue reading “Set Sail With a Great Book!” →
Posted in Adult, Contemporary, Fiction, Nonfiction, Science, Thrillers

While You Wait August 2023: Tom Lake and Outlive

Posted on by Anneliese

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.

Continue reading “While You Wait August 2023: Tom Lake and Outlive” →