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Sing, Unburied, Sing

by Lucy S

“Read Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing and you’ll feel the immense weight of history—and the immense strength it takes to persevere in the face of it. This novel is a searing, urgent read for anyone who thinks the shadows of slavery and Jim Crow have passed, and anyone who assumes the ghosts of the past are easy to placate. It’s hard to imagine a more necessary book for this political era.”
Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere

Jesmyn Ward returns with her first piece of full-length fiction since her National Book Award winner, Salvage the Bones (2011). Her new novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, has already been placed in some high company. Ward’s fictional Mississippi town of Bois Sauvage has been compared to William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County in As I Lay Dying, its haunting spirits likened to those in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Sing, Unburied, Sing and its characters share a multi-generational memory and an understanding the of journey and toils of those who came before. Ghosts create a connection between the living, mourning with them.

Ward’s characters belong to three generations of a Mississippi family. Jojo and his little sister, Kayla, are being mostly raised by their grandparents. Their mother, Leonie, drifts in and out of the picture in a drug-induced haze, their father, Michael, is serving time in the Mississippi State Penitentiary, a prison farm known as Parchman. When Michael is released, Leonie brings Jojo and Kayla to pick him up. Their journey is not an easy one, their bodies crammed in a dirty, hot car, always hungry and thirsty, traveling dangerous terrain. Three narrative voices relay the details of the trip to Parchman and back; Jojo, Leonie, and Richie, a young boy whom Jojo’s grandfather had served time with in Parchman. Richie died when he was 15. That his voice not only shares in the telling of this story, but speaks to Jojo directly, shows how masterfully Ward can weave magical realism into her storytelling. These supernatural elements feel at home here, in the swampy, steamy, deep south of the Mississippi Gulf. Richie is not the only spirit who appears on these pages. Leonie is often visited by her deceased brother Given. Jojo hears not only from Richie, but is highly attuned to the sounds of the natural world, truly as if the earth’s song has been unburied for him. “Home ain’t always about a place...home is about the earth. Whether the earth open up to you. Whether it pull you so close the space between you and it melt and y’all one and it beats like your heart. Same time.”

Ward’s story retells the hardships of past racism in the south and outlines the brutality of it in the present day. She illuminates this country’s struggle with race relations, police brutality, mass incarceration, by using the voices of the past and the present in conversation. Though her characters, both living and dead, speak often of cruelty and inhumanity, Ward’s matter-of-fact tone and presentation, coupled with her use of magical realism, imbues her words with an inflection that is calm and lyrical. Sing, Unburied, Sing is a moving and important work.

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Popular: The Power of Likability in a Status-Obsessed World

by eapearce

Mitch Prinstein, the Director of Clinical Pyschology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, explains the science behind popularity—and why it can be so elusive for many—in his new book. Popular: The Power of Likability in a Status-Obsessed World explains why whether or not we are “popular” as children plays such a huge role in our development. Whether or not we were popular in elementary school and high school has surprising effects on our careers, family life and friendships later on and, interestingly, it's difficult to change our “popularity level.” Prinstein explains that, although we can control to a certain extent whether we are popular or not, craving popularity and striving for it is part of our biology—it’s the way humans are wired.

Prinstein also delves into the difference between being popular because one is likable and being popular because one has high status. Both types of people are socially powerful, but the way others feel about them is vastly different. It’s interesting to read about the details and the science behind popularity, because it’s an issue that even the happiest among us struggle with from time to time. We can all relate to wanting to be well-liked and well-received, and Prinstein’s book offers useful advice for using and controlling those impulses.

Popular is a particularly interesting read today, as social media becomes ever more prevalent in our lives.

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Organizing Your Stuff!

by PaulaG

Do you look around your home, and wonder where all of the clutter comes from? There have been books about whether or not your belongings bring you joy, and this is an important concept; many believe that streamlining your surroundings can also help bring order to other places in life. Let’s take a moment to look at organization in a more basic way, a way to be able to get through daily life, without being overwhelmed by the clutter.

AADL offers some alternatives to scouring the internet for popular organizational hacks. The complete book of home organization, gives you tips and tricks for organizing your home inside and out. In, Cut the clutter : a simple organization plan for a clean and tidy home, the author shares how to clean and de-clutter your home, and how to keep it that way. Here’s one for caregivers that need to de-clutter both adult and kid spaces, Secrets of an organized mom: from overflowing closets to the chaotic play areas : a room-by-room guide to decluttering and streamlining your home for a happier family.

Whichever method you choose, happy organizing!

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Contemporary Fiction by African Authors

by oliviabee

With the continuous popularity of books such as Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, fiction about modern Africa is becoming ever more prominent. These novels are a great learning tool to connect readers with stories and experiences they may not necessarily be familiar with. Although these authors may seem hard to come across, the library has you covered with some great recommendations. Be sure to check out this list for more modern novels written by African authors! Here are 2 intriguing titles to get you started.

Named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post is Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue. Jende, a struggling Cameroonian immigrant lives in Harlem with his wife and son. When he finds an opportunity working for the Lehman Brothers in New York, he is certain his luck has improved but soon learns that everything is not what it seems. With the 2008 financial crisis serving as a backdrop, read and find out how Jende learns what it takes to make it in America, all while keeping his family together. The novel is currently being featured as apart of Oprah's book club.

Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta tells a unique story about Africa. Amid a perilous interstate civil war, a young Nigerian girl is sent to a neighboring village for safety. During her stay, she meets a refugee girl of a different ethnic background and quickly falls in love. Due to cultural norms, she faces negative stigmas placed on her and her new found love leaving her to make an important decision. Does she make the choice to dishonor her host family or to fall in love? This novel was featured on NPR's Best Books of 2015 list.

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we are never meeting in real life: essays

by Nholtzman

Blogger, Samantha Irby, has written a compelling, and wickedly funny book of essays, we are never meeting in real life.

Irby's essays chronicle her life in a contemporary writing style that pays attention to form, but skirts scholarly essay convention, (fine by me, let's read essays that mean something and say it in an interesting way).

She writes about her childhood, her college years, and the years she spends working at a veterinarian office.

Irby has experienced hardships that are often difficult to write about without sounding morose. However, Irby's talent as a comedian and writer is apparent in her candid and hilarious accounts of events like adapting a cat that she, and everyone else, hates.

we are never meeting in real life: essays, has been lauded by authors like Roxane Gay and Lindy West, and has been reviewed by organizations like Kirkus.

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Refuge: A Novel

by Lucy S

At the beginning of Dina Nayeri’s expressive, well-crafted, second novel, Refuge, Dr. Bahman Hamidi sits outside a courtroom and watches the proceedings of the twelve divorce cases that proceed his. During this time, he reflects back on how he arrived at this point, the verge of ending his third marriage. He thinks of his first wife, and his son and daughter, who fled from Iran in 1987 to escape religious persecution after his wife converted to Christianity. Bahman is still plagued, in 2009, by the question of whether he did the right thing in letting them go, and in not joining them. He has only seen his family four times since they left. His daughter Niloo lives in Amsterdam with her husband, and it is her voice that narrates the alternating chapters of this book. We begin to understand her perspective on leaving Iran and her relationship to her father, on her vague memories of her early refugee years that instilled in her a “forever refugee feeling.” As the novel progresses, the story continues to jump back and forth between these decades and the points of view of Bahman and Niloo.

Refuge, rooted in the Arab Spring uprisings and the European migrant crisis, emphasises the ways in which being a refugee has marked Niloo for life. For example, when her debit card is declined while shopping for groceries in Amsterdam, due to bank error, she is shamed by the memory of her mother’s card being declined, of watching her mother put back all her food until she had only what she could pay for. “What Niloo feels is animal panic, the sensation of a world spitting her into another tier, one she has occupied before and that awaits her, that has missed her and knows she will be back.” This notion of having a foot in two worlds is a central theme in Nayeri’s book. One way Niloo manages this push and pull is to set up and live by a strict set of rules, going so far as to compose a list of written guidelines for marriage that she shares with her husband. Through this order, she strives to define and know herself, her exploration underscoring a merging of identities and cultures that may be crucial for many exiles. She meets a group Persian activists and asylum seekers, and finds herself beginning to investigate some of the choices she has made about her tightly structured life. Niloo is able to re-frame the complicated way in which she has seen her father, to realize that he has had his own struggles. The chapters that focus on Bahman provide us with a picture of a man whose life is complicated by his opium addiction, his politics, his ex-wives and his desire to see his grown children. Like Niloo, he is attempting to reconcile these disparate aspects of his reality.

The idea that one must look past the flaws of family members to seek some harmony lies at the heart of this father/daughter story. Refuge speaks to reinvention, finding new roots after being so uprooted, and to finding, perhaps embracing, the exiled parts of oneself.

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The Dark Tower

by PizzaPuppy

The Dark Tower series (one of author Stephen King's crowning achievements) tells the story of gunslinger Roland Deschain and his quest to find and protect the fabled Dark Tower, said to be the link between all universes. Roland's world is a post-apocalyptic desolate wasteland where time no longer moves chronologically and reality is fraying. The eight book series combines elements of fantasy, science fiction, horror and classic Western into a brand new epic story. The movie adaptation of the Dark Tower series opened on August 4th to mixed reviews (to put it lightly). Even if fans were not quite satisfied with the adaptation, they have devoured the Dark Tower series since the beginning of its publication in the early 1980's. Now is the perfect time to catch up on this epic series!

The series consists of The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands, Wizard and Glass, The Wind Through the Keyhole, Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, and The Dark Tower. These novels also have Book on CD (BOCD) counterparts, available here. King's collection of short stories entitled Everything's Eventual also includes Dark Tower related stories, specifically "The Little Sisters of Eluria" and "Everything's Eventual".

Drawing on the popularity of the novels, a series of prequel graphic novels was published after the novels were completed. The prequels begin with The Gunslinger Born and continue with The Long Road Home (available through MeLCat), Treachery (also only available through MeLCat), The Fall of Gilead and Battle of Jericho Hill.

The first two novels themselves have also been adapted into graphic novels, all available through MeLCat. The Gunslinger series consists of The Gunslinger: The Journey Begins,
The Battle of Tull, The Way Station, The Man in Black, and Last Shots. The Little Sisters of Eluria was also adapted into comic book form. The comics continue with The Drawing of the Three series, consisting of The Prisoner, House of Cards, Lady of Shadows, Bitter Medicine, and The Sailor.

There have been several nonfiction works detailing the intricacies of the Dark Tower universe. Stephen King's The Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance, Revised and Updated is an encyclopedia of Dark Tower-related information, originally written by Robin Furth for Stephen King's exclusive personal use while he was still writing the series in order to prevent continuity errors. It was later published once King realized how valuable it would be to his "Constant Readers". There's also The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King's Epic Fantasy.

Additionally, there are many other Stephen King works that reference or are related to the Dark Tower series. A partial list includes Salem's Lot, Eyes of the Dragon, Bag of Bones, Black House, Insomnia, Desperation and its companion novel The Regulators, From a Buick 8, Cell, Rose Madder, Hearts in Atlantis, and The Stand.

The novel It also has ties to the Dark Tower series and has a widely anticipated movie adaptation coming out on September 8th. The trailer is available to watch here (if you dare!) and an interactive VR experience was released yesterday for the bravest of heart. You can also catch up with the 1990 made-for-TV movie, available here.

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"Bonnie and Clyde" Turns 50

by katrina.

This week marks the 50th anniversary of “Bonnie and Clyde,” a film that introduced a new generation's sensibility to Hollywood and influenced generations of filmmakers to come. “Bonnie and Clyde,” based on a real life couple, follows waitress Bonnie and ex-con Clyde as they road trip across America robbing banks. The film’s success, including a nomination for Best Picture, helped pivot Hollywood from musicals and more family friendly fare, to increasingly experimental and French New Wave inspired filmmaking that captured the tension of the time period.

You can check out Bonnie and Clyde on DVD, or Blu-Ray.

If you want to learn about the making of the film and how it changed American cinema you can read Mark Harris’ ”Pictures at a revolution : five movies and the birth of the new Hollywood.”

Or if you want to know more about the real life Bonnie and Clyde you can check out “Go down together : the true, untold story of Bonnie and Clyde,” “Bonnie and Clyde : the lives behind the legend,” or “The strange history of Bonnie and Clyde.”

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Saints for All Occasions: the best of the best in Irish-Catholic family sagas

by eapearce

J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Maine, Commencement and The Engagements, again returns to Boston (where at least a portion of all of her books take place) in her latest family saga, Saints for All Occasions. A master of depicting tight-knight Irish-American families full of secrets, Sullivan possesses the rare ability to tell stories that span decades without losing the reader in time. Saints for All Occasions technically begins twice: first in 2009 when Nora Rafferty’s oldest son Patrick dies in a car crash and again in 1957 when Nora and her sister Theresa make the voyage from Ireland to America to join Nora’s fiancé, Charlie, in Boston.

What transpires between 1957 and 2009 seems at first simple: Theresa gets pregnant out of wedlock—at the time a particularly terrible fate for a young Irish Catholic girl—and goes reluctantly to a nunnery for the duration of her pregnancy and to have the baby. She doesn’t want to give her child up, but is forced to by the nuns. Nora—recently married to Charlie—agrees to take the boy in and raise him as her own. The effects of this choice drive the rest of the story, which introduces us to Nora’s other three children and to the path that Theresa followed after her pregnancy. Anyone who is familiar with Boston, with Irish-Catholic families, or with both will connect immediately to the portrait of the Raffertys that Sullivan paints in Saints for All Occasions. Her characters and their choices are believable and well-formed, and she travels between time periods deftly, revealing the secrets of the story to readers at the exact right moments.

Saints for All Occasions is a wonderful read to sneak in on your summer reading list.

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Dying: A Memoir

by Lucy S

At the age of 50, Cory Taylor was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma. She wrote Dying: a Memoir 10 years later, in an energetic rush of creativity, right before her death, when the melanoma had spread to her brain. This perceptive output, at such a time, is astounding, and as readers we are its lucky recipients.

“Despite the ubiquity of death, it seems strange that there are so few opportunities to discuss dying,” says Taylor as she works to establish a conversation around death. “Death is a taboo subject, absurdly so. It is tidied away in hospitals, out of public view, the secret purview of health professionals who are generally unwilling to talk about what really goes on at the bedsides of a nation.” Taylor strives to change this, in part by taking control of the dialogue around her own death, and by taking control of her death itself. She begins the book by telling us that she has just purchased her own euthanasia drugs. She doesn’t know that she’ll use them, but it comforts her to know that she can dictate her end. She doesn’t try to convince us that dying isn’t hard, or sad, but nor does she shy away from the fact that it is unavoidable. “No, there is nothing good about dying. It is sad beyond belief. But it is part of life, and there is no escaping it. Once you grasp that fact, good things can result.” When addressing the fear that she admits to feeling, she adds, “I haven't died before, so I sometimes get a bad case of beginner’s nerves, but they soon pass.”

Taylor moves away from the topic of death for one section of this slim volume to highlight some memories from her interesting childhood spent in Australia and Fiji. This exploration highlights an understanding of her parents, their relationship to each other, and to her, that perhaps she was recognizing in an end-of-life reflection. But even in looking back at her life experiences, Taylor does not fall prey to sentimentality, nor is she mired with regret. “I don't have a bucket list because it comforts me to remember the things I have done, rather than hanker after the things I haven't done. Whatever they are, I figure they weren't for me, and that gives me a sense of contentment, a sort of ballast as I set out on my very last trip.”

Taylor writes beautifully, and it is sad to think we won’t get more from her, but we are fortunate to have this.

Add this to the ranks of When Breath Becomes Air, Being Mortal, and The Bright Hour, the books we read to try to gain insight on and understanding of the inevitable end we all face. Cory Taylor eloquently bestows both to us.

“And that is what I’m doing now, in this, my final book: I am making a shape for my death, so that I, and others, can see it clearly.”