Blog Post
Staff Picks: Star Gazing & Planet Hopping Journeys
by lucroe
Most of Southeast Michigan will experience at least a partial solar eclipse on April 8. Most of Michigan will not fall in the path of totality, it depends on where in North America you live, but it will still be a stunning show at 99% totality in Ann Arbor. Join the library in watching the live streaming of the event on our big lobby screen. Below are some books for the astronomy lover in all of us including one about the solar eclipse of 1878.
American Eclipse by David Baron | Request Now
This book chronicles the journeys of three eclipse enthusiasts who went to witness the historic total solar eclipse of July 29, 1878 for different reasons. James Craig Watson, astronomy professor & a director of the University of Michigan's Detroit Observatory, who aimed to find a new planet; Maria Mitchell, an astronomer, sought to establish women's presence in the scientific field; and Thomas Edison, a budding inventor, intended to test his tasimeter, a tool for measuring infrared radiation, and enhance his reputation. These individuals' tales showcase the drive and inquisitiveness of American scientists during the late 19th century as the nation strove to solidify its standing in the global scientific arena. A fascinating slice of history involving the experiences of three scientists and an equally amazing, rare event.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #836, Celebrating Women with History
by muffy
The Excitements * * * by C. J. Wray (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook)
Nonagenarian sisters Josephine and Penny Williamson, Britain's most treasured World War II veterans, are constantly in demand at commemorative events. Always perfectly groomed and mentally engaged, they live independently in their London home cared for by their capable housekeeper Arlene; and devoted grand-nephew Archie who is tasked to provide them with constant “excitement”. The latest being an invitation to Paris to receive the Légion d'honneur for their part in the liberation of France.
While Josephine is circumspect initially about making the trip, Penny is eager. Unbeknownst to the family and perhaps each other, both sisters are hiding secrets, “official” and otherwise. Now armed with newly unearthed information, they intend to revisit old haunts, settle scores, avenge lost friends, and pull off one last, daring heist in the City of Light.
“Switching between the 1940s and 2022, this book is utterly charming, with its lead characters a feisty mix of Madame Arcati, Miss Marple, Mata Hari, and Danny Ocean. It's gently humorous and full of twists, but it's the liveliness, verve, and charisma of Penny and Josephine, who are determined not to let old age slow them down one bit, that makes this such a satisfying read.” (Booklist)
For fans of The Rose Code (2021) and Killers of a Certain Age (2022).
* * * = 3 starred reviews
Blog Post
Staff Picks: Teen Cookbooks
by nicole
If you're an aspiring chef or just a hungry teen, the YA section is the perfect place to search for simple and fun recipes that anyone can make. These cookbooks cover everything from revenge recipes best served cold to the cutest cakes you've ever seen.
Sweet Revenge : Passive-Aggressive Desserts for Your Exes & Enemies by Heather Kim | Request Now
Explore 50+ killer cakes, cookies, and candies that are perfectly passive aggressive - just right for serving to your exes and enemies. Dumped by your crush? Betrayed by your best friend? Lab partner a no-show? Don't take these battles online! (Seriously, don't do that.) Get out your heaviest rolling pins, sharpest cleavers, and most blistering torches, and kill your enemies and exes with kindness. Bake that loser ex a pan of Go Fudge Yourself, or gift your former friend a You're the Devil Cake. Pastry chef and tattoo artist Heather Kim serves up sinfully delicious recipes and bittersweet advice in this quirky cookbook about working out your aggression in the kitchen.
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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #835, Debuts from Down Under
by muffy
Greta & Valdin * * by Rebecca K. Reilly, a Maaori novelist from Waitaakere, New Zealand, is a New York Times Editors’ Choice (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook).
“We’re all strange, romantic emotional people in this family,” proclaims Linsh Vladisavljevic as he watches his two younger children navigate queerness, multiracial identity, and the familial dramas big and small.
Linsh, an Auckland university professor of Biology is Russian Moldovan while wife, Betty is Māori. Daughter G (Greta), a graduate student in literature, shares an apartment with her brother Valdin - a former astrophysicist with O.C.D. who now hosts a tv travel show. The novel opens when a missed directed package plunges Valdin (who goes by V) into melancholy, pining for ex-boyfriend Xabi who moved to Argentina, while G is smarting from her painfully unrequited crush on a fellow tutor and tentatively reaching out to a charming fellow student. Then work sends V to Buenos Aires where he has to decide whether to reconnect with Xabi and what the future will hold for them.
“The story follows the duo in alternating first-person chapters as they navigate bad dates, bouts of insecurity and even encounters with racism, and as they come closer to understanding themselves and their desires.” (New York Times)
“Reilly herself is of Ngāti Hine and Ngāti Wai descent. In the wrong hands this could all be quirk for quirk’s sake, or a half-baked hybrid of Schitt’s Creek and The Royal Tenenbaums. But Reilly’s humor is so riotously specific, and the many moments of true poignancy so gently infused with that same humor, that the Vladisavljevics seem like no one but themselves….Say hello to your new favorite fictional family.“ (Kirkus Reviews)
Green Dot by Sydney writer/critic Madeleine Gray (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook) introduces readers to Hera Stephen, a 24 year-old comments-moderator for an online news outlet where she meets Arthur, a middle-age journalist (and her boss). With 3 arts-degrees, Hera is broke and living in Sydney with her lovely gay father. What started as message-based flirtation (hence the title, referencing the green dot that indicates a user is online) she soon finds herself falling into an all-consuming affair with Arthur though for years, she preferred women to men. Before long, Hera develops an obsession, which only grows stronger as Arthur refuses to leave his wife.
“As the book tracks the increasingly doomed love affair (including through the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic), the only thing keeping the narrative from devolving into something grim and cynical is Hera's dynamic and snarky voice….Her narration is peppered with references to music and pop culture, the things that define your personality in your 20s, when you're still searching, as Hera is, for some kind of identity.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“Although ironic and flippant, Green Dot avoids nihilism, and is ultimately about the search for meaning through love. It vividly illustrates how someone can lose their perspective, principles and dignity in its name, ignoring overwhelming evidence of the probable conclusion.” (The Guardian)
Readers interested in examining why smart women expect their lovers to leave their wives, despite overwhelming evidence that the contrary is more likely, might be interested in Sally Rooney's Conversations With Friends, Imogen Crimp's A Very Nice Girl, and Laura Warrell's Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm.
* * = 2 starred reviews
Blog Post
Staff Picks: Kids Mystery Comics
by nicole
If you're searching for a mystery, these kids comics about sleuthing sloths, rat detectives, and alligator investigators are perfect for animal-lovers and aspiring detectives alike.
Sloth Sleuth, Vol. 1 by Cyndi Marko | Request Now
On Winkelfuss, an island crawling with crime, everyone's a suspect. Luckily, its resident sloth can solve crimes in her sleep (and often does!). Meet Paz, the world's first sloth sleuth. She may be slow . . . but she's on the case! Whether she’s hunting for pirate treasure or solving mysterious disappearances, she's always one step ahead of the bad guys. This series follows Paz and her friends as she solves crimes and tries to avoid being sloth-napped! When you're done with #1, you can find the rest of this series here.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #834, Celebrating Women’s History Month
by muffy
City of Laughter, * * a debut novel (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook) by a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award winner Temin Fruchter is “a wondrous intergenerational story of queerness and Jewish folklore.” (Publishers Weekly)
Called “brainy and richly textured (The New York Times) the novel opens in 18th century Ropshitz, Poland where a holy jester whose job is to make wedding guests laugh, receives a visitation from a mysterious stranger. In present day New York, 32-year old Shiva Margolin, reeling from the recent death of her father and the breakup with her girlfriend, Dani found among her father’s things, photos of her enigmatic maternal grandmother, Syl, and great-grandmother Mira. But her mother Hannah refuses to talk about them.
Frustrated with the generational silence, Shiva starts studying the work of Jewish folklorist S. Ansky, and enrolls in a master's program which presents her with an opportunity to visit Warsaw, only hours away from Mira's small town of Ropshitz. She hopes her family's mysteries will make more sense if she walks in their footsteps.
“This novel, like Shiva’s work, is a collection of beautiful scraps—scraps of folktales and memory, hidden family histories, love letters, accounts of strange happenings in the past and present—all tangled together and rewoven into a whole that’s strange, lush, imaginative and pulsing with life…As Shiva becomes more deeply immersed in the lives of her foremothers, those foremothers become more vibrant and detailed, in prose that moves from shimmering and dreamlike to sharply funny to wonderfully contemplative.” (BookPage)
Readers might also enjoy The Thirty Names of Night * * * * by Zeyn Joukhadar (2020), and The Fortunes of Jaded Women by Carolyn Huynh (2022).
* * * * = 4 starred reviews
* * = 2 starred reviews
Blog Post
Staff Picks: For the Love of Birds
by lucroe
Birding has become especially popular since the pandemic. It can be a relaxing and enjoyable hobby for adults and kids. It can even be rewarding when you spot a new species to add to your list. The library has a number of great books and resources for those just starting as well as pros who want to learn more. From the Wingscapes Birdcam to Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Birds of World database (see below for more about this), there is something for every bird lover at AADL.
Birding to Change the World by Trish O’Kane | Request Now
This memoir tells the story of O’Kane’s tragic loss of her New Orleans home after Hurricane Katrina and how it led to her environmental activism especially dedicated to wildlife conservation. In her mid-40’s, she decided to return to college to earn a PhD in environmental studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There her focus turns to ornithology. She realized that bird-watching was “like journalism. ... You observe. You listen. You take good notes. You piece together clues.” Her other concern became lower income children’s lack of access to the wonders of nature. As a result, she created an after-school birding club and mentoring program between college students and middle schoolers which is still active today.
Blog Post
Staff Picks: Recommendation Potpourri: Seven Books in Seven Days
by emjane
At the end of February, I took one of those wonderful, restorative vacations where you fly somewhere warm and don’t do much of anything for a week. When I find myself lucky enough to have these “gift of time” trips, I still can’t help but set up a little structure and challenge myself to read a book a day. I have the benefit of being a fast reader, and I also stack the deck a bit by leaving the giant tomes at home (you can only pack so many books!), but on the trips where I manage to achieve that silly benchmark, I return home bubbling about the reading even more than about the sunshine! Here are my reading highlights from that trip!
No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood | Request Now
Blog Post
Staff Picks: Graphic Novels Series to Start
by nicole
If you're sick of standalone reads or need something to keep you hooked for a while, here are some great graphic novel series from AADL's collection. These titles are perfect if you're looking to start a new series.
Saga by Brian K. Vaughan | Request Now
Blending sci-fi and romance, Saga is a sweeping tale about star-crossed lovers from enemy worlds fighting to find their place in the universe. When Alana first meets Marko, they're two soldiers fighting on opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war. Against all odds, they fall in love and risk everything to escape and bring a fragile new life into their dangerous old universe. This story is a wild, intergalactic ride that follows new parents Marko and Alana as they try to raise their child in a war-torn galaxy. This epic space opera is both heartfelt and hilarious, and is intended for mature readers only. Readers who love the first book can find the others in the series in AADL's catalog.
Blog Post
Staff Picks: Fiction By Debut Authors
by eapearce
Everyone has to start somewhere, and sometimes an author’s first book isn’t always their best work. It can take time to find one’s voice and style of writing! I often find it interesting to go back and read an author’s early work after discovering them by reading their third or fourth novel. Debuts often just feel a bit less… polished. But sometimes an author seems to know exactly how to tell a story right from the start and, first book or not, the writing keeps readers turning the pages as quickly as they can. Several 2024 debuts that fall into this category have already been released. If you’re looking to discover a new author and dive right into some excellent writing, peruse these suggestions!
Ways and Means, by Daniel Lefferts | Request Now
Alistair McCabe arrives in New York determined to escape the Rust Belt poverty of his childhood. He’s determined, fiercely intelligent, handsome, gay, and eager to earn an excellent living to support the mother who raised him and give her a better life. There’s a fine line between ambition and greed, however, and as Alistair is sucked into the world of modern high finance, he finds himself adrift and unsure of how to make the right decisions. Desperate, in the spring of 2016 he begins working for an enigmatic billionaire and tries to keep his dream alive. Of course, things don’t go according to plan and when Alistair discovers his employer’s secret he finds himself on the run and, along with the older couple he’d been in a relationship with, facing a nation on the brink of chaos to match that of his personal life. Ways and Means is an “indelible, deeply moving investigation of class and ambition, sex and art, and politics and power in the American 21st century.”