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NPR's Best Books of 2015

by eapearce

NPR recently released its Best Books of 2015 list, an in depth yearly endeavor where critics and NPR staff choose their favorite books of the year and compile them into a genre-spanning list of several hundred titles. I love that, along with the expected books on the list that are getting accolades from numerous publications and organizations, NPR’s list always contains more obscure titles that many readers likely missed over the course of the year.

You can view all of the titles from the list that we have available in our catalog here.

So what’s on this list of nearly 300 books? Here’s a preview:

In Speak, by Louisa Hall, a young Puritan woman travels to America with her unwanted husband, while in other time and place Alan Turing writes letters to his best friend’s mother and a Jewish refugee tries to reconnect with his distant wife. Elsewhere in time and space, a lonely young girl speaks with an intelligent software program and a formerly celebrated Silicon Valley entrepreneur is imprisoned for making illegal lifelike dolls. How does Hall tie all these characters together? As they all try somehow to communicate across gaps, Hall connects their stories, creating an amazing book that is a blend of historical fiction, science fiction and fantasy.

V is for Vegetables offers more than 140 simple recipes for cooking vegetables in unique and unexpected ways at home. Author and chef Michael Anthony has cleverly divided the chapters of the book by vegetable, so if you ever find yourself staring at kohlrabi or tomatillos in the grocery store, curious about how one cooks such things, this is the book for you! And even expert cooks will be refreshed by Anthony’s new ideas for ways to use common vegetables like broccoli, tomatoes, carrots and squash.

The Battle of Versailles tells of a little-known event that took place at the Palace of Versailles: as a fundraiser for the restoration of the palace, the world’s elite gathered in the grand theater there for a “fashion competition” of sorts: five American designers (including Oscar de la Renta and Anne Klein) faced off against five French designers considered to be the best designers in the world—Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy and others. The American clothes were expected to be a laughingstock but instead, the garments and the energy of the models who wore them wowed the crowd. By the end of the evening, American fashion in the world had transformed from a footnote to an enormous influence, not only on style itself but also on the way race, gender, sexuality and economics were treated in fashion in the years to come.

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Blog Post

Listen to this book!

by Lucy S

Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl

Length 7 hrs and 4 mins

Author: Carrie Brownstein

Narrator:Carrie Brownstein

Carrie Brownstein, musician (Sleater-Kinney), actress (Portlandia, Transparent) and author, does an excellent job of narrating her new book, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl. What could be read as flat on the page, in Brownstein’s singular voice becomes anecdotic and reflective. Though her telling, we get a sense of Brownstein’s self-deprecating humor and sharp wit. I found myself laughing at stories of her early performances for family and friends. Her nuanced narrative voice well conveys the angst and misdirection she felt in her early 20s starting out on the music scene in Olympia, Washington and the Pacific Northwest. She provides an unflinchingly honest look at herself both as a child and an adult. Brownstein speaks with candor about her mother’s eating disorder and hospitalization for such and her father’s coming out as a gay man. In later chapters she doesn’t shy away from the not-so-glamorous facets of life on the road as part of her band, Sleater-Kinney. She speaks of the intensity of her relationship with bandmate Corin Tucker, the pain of their break-up, of being publicly outed in a magazine article, and of the difficulty of navigating a break-up while remaining in a band with her ex. Her accomplished writing is filled with anecdotes that run the full gamut of her emotional landscape, yet she stays away from sentimentality.

Her focus on music and her role in it are the meat of most of this book. This means that we get a dissection of many of Sleater-Kinney’s songs and albums, from their creation to performance. For Sleater-Kinney fans, this book is a must. A review in The Guardian says of Brownstein’s book that “...it delivers its goods in what I can only describe as a compellingly depressive register, which sounds like an insult but isn’t. By keeping her affect flat, Brownstein is able to avoid melodrama, a good thing because there are elements of her life story she could have frothed up into soap...Brownstein’s way of telling those stories is from a rather intellectualized, even aestheticized, distance.” I agree, as listening to a recording of this book, as read by Brownstein, furnished me with an entirely different experience than reading it on the page. I highly recommend checking out the audio version of this book.

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Blog Post

President Obama and the First Lady share their favorite books of 2015

by eapearce

In a recent interview with People magazine, President Obama and First Lady Michelle shared their favorite books of 2015. The President chose Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies, as his favorite book of the year. Spanning twenty-four years, the acclaimed novel is a fascinating portrait of a marriage, told first from the husband’s perspective and, in the second half, from the wife’s perspective. With elements of Greek Tragedy, Fates and Furies throws fitting themes at the reader; betrayal, passion, forgiveness, and vengeance all interweave themselves throughout the story of Lotto and Mathilde’s relationship, from their courtship, into the glamorous early years of their marriage, through their journey into middle age. Groff’s brilliant idea to paint one picture for readers in the first half of the novel, and then upend it in the second half by switching narrators is a deafening reminder that there are two sides to every story. The book is a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award.

First Lady Michelle Obama also chose a portrait of a marriage for her favorite book of the year: Elizabeth Alexander’s memoir The Light of the World, which details the sudden death of her husband and her ensuing feelings, reactions and experiences. Some of her emotions surprise her: she feels an intense gratitude for the years that she and her husband were able to share together and a renewed devotion to her two young sons. She details her quest for meaning, understanding and acceptance of the tragedy that has befallen her in beautiful prose, seamlessly switching from her typical medium of poetry. “This beautifully written book is for anyone who has loved and lost,” reads the jacket. “It’s about being strong when you want to collapse, about being grateful when someone has been stolen from you—it’s discovering the truth in your life’s journey: the good, the bad and the ugly.”

The Obamas also shared their favorite TV shows and songs from 2015. The First Lady’s favorite song of the year was “Uptown Funk.”

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Blog Post

It Ended Badly: a fun winter read

by eapearce

New to the AADL collection is It Ended Badly, a fun book by Jennifer Wright detailing thirteen of the worst breakups in history. The book spans centuries: from medieval Rome to the Debbie Reynolds-Eddie Fisher-Elizabeth Taylor saga of 1950s-60s Hollywood, the breakups in the book are carefully chosen for their drama, their absurdity, and, of course, for the heartbreak they caused. This book is no downer though, despite its technically sad subject matter. Wright describes the characters vividly and throws in amusing anecdotes to keep the overall tone light. “If he was unhappy,” she writes about Timothy Dexter, who told everyone his wife was a ghost while she was still alive, “it seems it would have been easier to divorce than to pretend your wife does not exist, especially when she was still living in your home and throwing things at you.”

The introduction suggests that this book is intended for those who have just undergone a rough breakup (“If you are lying in bed right now, a pint of ice cream in one hand, a bottle of Scotch in the other, and this book clenched between your teeth, with tears streaming down your face over how much you loved, loved, loved your ex, let me commend you on how well you are coping. You could be doing so much worse.”), but I think it’s a fascinating read for anyone. Readers will learn a great deal about the individuals that Wright focuses on in the book, and about the time periods that they lived in, AND feel entirely equipped to answer trivia questions with obscure historical romance themes/have something at least moderately interesting to talk about with anyone at upcoming holiday parties. It Ended Badly is a great book to burrow under a blanket with on a chilly December evening, accompanied by a warm winter beverage.

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Writing & Publishing

Memoir Writing: Turning Your Life into Art (or Is it the Other Way Around?)

Monday January 11, 2016: 6:30pm to 8:30pm
Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room
Grade 6 - Adult

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Blog Post

Blackout: a moving portrait of alcoholism and recovery

by eapearce

Sarah Hepola writes of her experiences with both alcoholism and sobriety in the deeply personal, relatable, and relevant new book Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget. With so many college activities now focused around drinking, it's often difficult after graduation has occurred for young people to shed the mentality of making-everything-more-fun-with-alcohol. Alcohol-fueled events and parties extend into our twenties, thirties and beyond, and the line between normal alcohol consumption and alcoholism is increasingly blurred for many young people. Hepola calls alcohol the “gasoline of all adventure” for her when she was in her younger years. She spent fun nights at cocktail parties and at bars, drinking til last call… but the frivolity didn’t come without a price. She blacked out often and was left spending entire mornings trying to piece together what she had done the night before, making self-deprecating jokes to cover her shame. As with many alcoholics, her career flourished during this time, but as the blackouts continued, Hepola was forced to admit the truth: the alcohol she thought she needed to lift her spirits was depressing her and negatively affecting her health and relationships. Thus, she embarks on a new and unexpected adventure: that of sobriety.

This memoir is simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking, and always unfailingly honest. A highly recommended read for anyone who has been forced to reinvent themselves or cope with necessary change, Blackout reveals how sometimes giving up the thing we cherish the most can allow us to truly find ourselves.

For other excellent stories about women and alcoholism, try Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas, Note Found in a Bottle, by Susan Cheever, and Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol, by Ann Dowsett Johnston.

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Blog Post

Oliver Sacks, Writer and Neurologist, Dies at 82

by evelyn

On Sunday, Dr. Oliver Sacks passed away in his home after a long battle with cancer. Dr. Sacks was a wonderful writer who brought the lives of his neurology patients to a wider audience through his many books. His writing was caring, funny, and fascinating. Dr. Sacks was one of the first writers to actively work to make science accessible to all people, regardless of their scientific training. His work in this field has been carried on through outlets such as RadioLab and the series The Best American Science and Nature Writing.

Dr. Sacks first rose to fame through his book Awakenings, which told the story of his work with a group of catatonic patients and was later adapted into a movie of the same name. Dr. Sacks wrote a plethora of other books about his patients, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales and An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales. An endlessly curious man, Dr. Sacks also wrote about his travels, his own life story, music, and more. Dr. Sacks was a true talent whose work and writing greatly improved our world.

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Blog Post

Love and Mercy

by manz

The film Love and Mercy is a bit of a music biopic that sheds light on the story of Beach Boys’. singer and songwriter Brian Wilson. He is wonderfully portrayed by Paul Dano and John Cusack at two very different stages of Wilson’s life and the split storyline darts in and out, detailing Wilson’s workflow, anxiety, and musical genius. In the end it shows Wilson in the 1980s as a very broken man under the overbearing care of his therapist Eugene Landy, and then the inevitable release of this care which leads to where he is today. It’s a well done story and it was great to hear all the Beach Boys. music throughout the film. Those boys sure can harmonize.

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Blog Post

Notable New Memoir: Sally Mann's Hold Still

by eapearce

Renowned photographer Sally Mann’s new memoir, Hold Still, is a breath of fresh, Southern air. Stories of her family—past and present—as well as anecdotes about her deep love of the southern United States and her photography sojourns are interspersed with her beautiful photographs.

Mann generated controversy in the 1990s for her photo collection “Immediate Family,” which featured many pictures of her children, some in the nude. No matter how you feel about these photographs, its undeniable that they are striking, and the work of someone deeply talented. Her other work is equally breathtaking, particularly her haunting landscapes, many of which are taken at and near the farm where she was raised and continues to live, in Virginia.

Hold Still is written at an almost soothing pace. Mann spins out stories of generations of family troubles, and analyzes deeply who she is today. Excerpts from years of letters and diary entries compliment her stories, and add unique details and perspectives to situations whose outcomes have been altered by the passing of time. She writes at length about her beloved South and the deep-seated sense of place that she has found during her lifetime there. I loved becoming more familiar with Mann’s work while also reading this fascinating account of a memorable life.

For more of Mann’s photography, check out Deep South and What Remains.

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Lectures & Panel Discussions

Jeanne Mackey: Stories & Songs from an Elder-in-Training

Wednesday September 30, 2015: 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room