Most Wanted Books of Summer 2019

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Looking for something to read this summer? Let us help! Our Reader’s Depot has new book lists every month, so you’ll never run out of books to read. For even more recommendations, visit the Reader’s Depot display on the library’s main level.

city-of-girlsCity of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert – Eighty-nine-year-old Vivian recounts her life after being kicked out of Vassar College, living in Manhattan with her Aunt Peg and the personal mistake that resulted in a professional scandal.

 

The Wedding Partywedding-party.jpg by Jasmine Guillory – After mistakenly spending a night together, Maddie and Theo uncomfortably share bridal party responsibilities for their best friend’s wedding, but despite the sharp barbs they toss at each other, a simmering attraction lingers that just won’t fade.

 

The Mistress of the Ritzmistress-of-the-ritz.jpg by Melanie Benjamin – The director of the luxurious Hotel Ritz in occupied Paris and his courageous American wife, Blanche Auzello, risk their marriage and lives to support the French Resistance during World War II.

 

Resistance Womenresistance-women.jpg by Jennifer Chiaverini – Resisting the power grabs of an increasingly formidable Nazi Party in 1930s Berlin, the courageous American wife of a German intellectual and her circle of women friends engage in a clandestine battle to sabotage Hitler’s regime.

 

The Farmthe-farm.jpg by Joanne Ramos – Ensconced within a Hudson Valley retreat where expectant birth mothers are given luxurious accommodations and lucrative rewards to produce perfect babies, a Filipino immigrant is forced to choose between a life-changing payment and the outside world.

 

The Last Time I Saw Youlast-time.jpg by Liv Constantine – In the aftermath of her mother’s murder, Dr. Kate English reaches out to her estranged best friend Blaire Barrington, a mystery author, who decides to investigate when Kate starts getting anonymous texts from the killer.

 

The Never Gamenever-game by Jeffery Deaver – Colter Shaw is an itinerate “reward-seeker,” traveling the country to help police solve crimes and private citizens locate missing persons. When he learns of a reward for a missing college student in Silicon Valley, he takes the job.

 

Queen Beequeen-bee.jpg by Dorothea Benton Frank – A woman wounded by her past comes to Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina to find new meaning in life and to find herself.

 

Meet Me In Monacomeet-me.jpg by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb – Set in the 1950s against the backdrop of Grace Kelly’s whirlwind romance and unforgettable wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco.

 

night-before.jpgThe Night Before by Wendy Walker – A tale told through parallel accounts of the days before and after a fateful blind date follows a woman’s revelatory investigation into her sister’s disappearance and complicated nature.

 

The Paris Diversionparis.jpg by Chris Pavone – After a leisurely start to a normal day, American expat Kate Moore finds herself partnered with a French agent to investigate a bombing threat in Paris.

 

The Night Windownight-window.jpg by Dean Koontz – When people under Arcadian control begin showing signs of instability, Jane Hawk and her supporters confront the center of power in a showdown that will determine America’s future.

 

The Tenth Musetenth-muse.jpg by Catherine Chung – From childhood, Katherine knows she is different, and that her parents are not who they seem to be. But in becoming a mathematician, she must face the most human of problems—who is she?

 

The Turn of the Keyturn-of-the-key.jpg by Ruth Ware – When a high-paying nanny job at a luxurious Scottish Highlands home ends with her imprisonment for a child’s murder, a young woman struggles to explain to her lawyer the unravelling events that led to her incarceration.

 

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creekbook-woman.jpg by Kim Michele Richardson – A last-of-her-kind outcast and member of the Pack Horse Library Project braves the hardships of Kentucky’s Great Depression and hostile community discrimination to bring the near-magical perspectives of books to her neighbors.

 

Under Currentsunder-currents.jpg by Nora Roberts – Returning to his hometown of Lakeview where his father’s abuse made his childhood a nightmare, Zane Bigelow begins a relationship with Darby McCray, a landscape designer, but his dark past comes back to haunt Zane and threatens their happiness.

 

big-kahuna.jpgThe Big Kahuna by Janet and Peter Evanovich – When unlikely partners FBI agent Kate O’Hare and con man Nicholas Fox investigate a missing Silicon Valley billionaire known as the Big Kahuna, they go undercover as a married couple in Paia, Maui, to find the man’s son.

 

Anna of Kleveanna.jpg by Alison Weir – Chosen as his fourth wife by England’s infamous Henry VIII, Anna of Kleve, a princess from a small German duchy, hides a desperate secret in a hostile foreign court.

 

The Daughter’s Taledaughter.jpg by Armando Lucas Correa – A tale of love and redemption based on the 1944 Oradour-Sur-Glane massacre follows an octogenarian’s receipt of a cache of letters, written by her mother during World War II, that uncover decades of secrets.

 

Recycling your Reading

There are somewhere between 600,000 and 1,000,000 books published every year in the US alone. Even if I do work in the library, that number can be pretty daunting to even the most seasoned reader. If you’re like me, and you have more books than bookshelf, you know what an expensive hobby reading can be. I have to pull myself away from the draw of big box bookstores like Barnes and Noble, and often find myself shocked at the prices of flashy new hardcover titles, or that fancy art print book I’ve had my eye on. Luckily for you and your wallet, there are plenty of ways to get the books you’re after, save some money in the process, as well as still supporting the authors and creators you love.

1. The Library

Of course I’m going to say the library, but you really can’t beat this system! Libraries are built to support readers and authors alike, its free to join the library, and you can request virtually any book. Through our holds system, you can request an obscure book from your childhood, or the newest thriller. There are 30 libraries in our consortium, meaning that if we don’t have what you’re looking for, we can request the book from the thirty other libraries connected to us. You can take out as many as you’d like, and return them when you’re done, saving you from buying a book you may not love (libraries are also good places to donate books when thinning out your bookshelves – most libraries gladly accept gently used books for their collection or book sales). 359,026 items were checked out at the Cheshire Public Library when library statistics were last taken; we have a collection of over 100,000 items in our library alone, and that’s just in the physical building. Which brings me to my next resource, the digital world of reading…

2. Ebooks

If you have a kindle, Ipad, or smartphone, you have access to a world of books, movies and magazines from the comfort of your own home. Our library alone has access to several apps including OverDrive/Libby and RB Digital, that let you download materials for free with your library card. You can also look into Amazon’s Daily or Monthly deals, each day you receive an email letting you know about kindle books that are on sale, some for as little as 99 cents. Have a look at the free classics that Amazon offers, too. There are hundreds of great books, so if you’re a lover of classics you can build your digital library for free!

  • Looking for children’s books? Try the ICDL Foundation’s library. This program has evolved into the world’s largest digital collection of children’s books. Currently its digital library collection includes 4,619 books in 59 languages. The compete ICDL collection is also available as a free iPad app.
  • There’s also Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg is the largest single collection of free electronic books. With more than 40,000 free books in the Project Gutenberg Online Book Collection, there are plenty of options across different genres. The Project Gutenberg site offers download formats suitable for eBook readers, mobile phones, and other devices.

3. Used Books and Thrift Books

My favorite smell in the world is an old book (stereotypical I know) and the best place to find used books can be thrift stores and used book shops. These used bookstores can beat Amazon and other online booksellers on price, offering shoppers both a browsing experience and a money-saving one. Also, profit margins on used books are better than new ones, anscreen-shot-2018-09-19-at-8-09-17-pmd the product they carry is built on the community around it. This creates a unique experience in every bookstore you frequent, you’ll never find the same selection twice. Used bookstores are also the place to go if you’re looking to bulk up your classics collection (I’ve been known to walk out with a stack of mass market Stephen King books for less than five dollars.) Putting your money into these small businesses ensure that a staple in our communities and our culture remains alive. I for one would be sad to live in a world without used book stores. Another place to find books, often a only a few months old, is library book sales. These books can be from the libraries own collection that have been donated or weeded due to lack of circulation (a fancy way of saying they aren’t being checked out as frequently as they were). The Friends of Cheshire Library host two book sales every year, one in the spring and one in the fall, and even includes days where you can fill a shopping bag of books for only five dollars! This is a fantastic way to fill your bookshelves, all while supporting your local library in the process. The funds from these sales go directly to the funding of the library programs and projects.

4. Trade/Swap Books

Have friends who are just as into reading as you are? Start a book swap between friends! This is a fantastic way to read new titles, and share books that you’ve loved with friends. That way, you both get to read them, and talk about your favorite titles and characters. After all, what’s a better gift to give and receive than a new book. I’ve been trading books with friends for years, and I find it’s a fantastic way to read things I normally never would have picked up, and learn more about my friends taste in books. It’s like having an informal book club, without all the pressure of meetings and who’s bringing the snacks.

Luckily there are plenty of ways to find information in our day and age, and plenty of ways to satisfy your book craving. Through clever shopping, or clever borrowing, you can fill you time and your bookshelves with titles you’ve been meaning to read, or meaning to go back to reading. By practicing book “recycling” you can build your collection for a fraction of the price, and feel good about where your collection is coming from. With your support, small town libraries, book stores and independent sellers can continue to thrive and enrich their communities.

 

 

 

 

50 Years of Apollo

On July 21, it will be FIFTY years since mankind first walked on the Moon.

Although the Russians – with superior rocket power – managed to get not only the first satellite in space, but the first man in orbit, first woman in orbit, and smash the first man-made object into the moon, it wasn’t until May of 1961 when President John F. Kennedy gave his famous speech, challenging America that “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

United for the Cause

Perhaps no other statement since Roosevelt’s “Date which will live in infamy…” speech has done more to stir an entire nation in a single united direction. Congress allotted funding. The infant technology industry ramped up. Mylar was invented. Velcro found a use. Manufacturing learned to miniaturize (in a time of bulky tubes and transistors, when each reel of magnetic computer tape could hold a whopping 184 Kilobytes of memory [for reference, an MP3 recording of the Star Spangled Banner runs around 900 Kb – half your memory]). The entire country surged forward with that dream, no doubt spurred on as an homage to Kennedy following his assassination. TV picked up the dream with serious and non-serious programs like Star Trek, Lost in Space, Dr. Who, and more. Movies gave way to huge spectacles, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, and a few thousand campy pulp films. Food wasn’t left out: the need to eat in space gave us the use of TANG, dehydrated ice cream, and Pillsbury Space Food Sticks.

The Final Frontier

The road to the moon was littered with failures – we didn’t even manage to smash a probe onto the moon until 1962. We made it through the Gemini program, only to learn that some things couldn’t be rushed or corners cut when the Apollo 1 crew – Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee – burned to death in an oxygen fire in a test module, because the pressurized doors opened the wrong way. This led to a pause – there was no Apollo 2 or 3, and 4-5-6 were all unmanned. If ever there was a lot of pressure on a crew, Apollo 7 was the first 3-manned crew to blast off Earth, period. Missions 8-10 looped the moon, giving us the famous Earthrise photo.

Apollo 11 pulled it all together. With less computer capability than an Apple watch, the lunar lander settled on the moon,  Armstrong sent out the famous words, “The Eagle has landed,” followed shortly by Armstrong’s historic “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” At the end of an incredibly violent, divisive, depressing decade, the entire world came together for a few brief moments to rejoice.

Fifty years later, we sit back on our Tempur-pedic cushions with our cell phones, tablets, LED lights, and flat-screen TVs, watching through scratch-proof lenses or LASIK-fixed eyes (all outgrowths of the space program),  and marvel at a time when space exploration was our future.

Deniers

How do we know it wasn’t faked? Like everywhere Man goes, we left our garbage behind – landing modules, rovers, flags and plaques – more than 400,000 pounds worth, and though they can’t be seen by any telescope on Earth (you’re talking a 10-foot object from 239,000 miles away), they can by orbital satellites around the Moon.  The path to space is far too complex for a blog post, so grab a good book, watch a good film (join us for a viewing of the documentary Apollo 11 at CPL on July 18), and think on just how different our lives would be if we never tried to reach for the Moon.

             

                       

                           

Helping Your Young Child Become a Successful Reader

Today’s post comes to us from Ali, Head of Children’s Services.

 

Many people assume that there isn’t much they can do to help their child learn to read until they are of a certain age. Believe it or not, you should start at birth.  The five core practices to help prepare children for reading are Reading, Writing, Talking, Singing, and Playing.  These practices are taken from the Every Child Ready to Read Initiative. You may already be nurturing these pre-reading skills at home, but it is important to use these techniques everywhere you go with your child. To learn more about these practices, you can ask any children’s librarian for suggestions or attend an early literacy program or storytime at the Cheshire Public Library.

Early literacy programs at public libraries have changed significantly over the years. Early literacy is everything a child knows about reading and writing before he or she can read or write, typically between the ages of 0-5. Traditionally, children’s library programs focused on the education of children.  Today, these programs focus on the education of the parent or caregiver.  If you attend storytimes at the public library, you may hear the children’s librarian state an early literacy tip or model a specific behavior during their programs.  This is done intentionally to encourage caregivers to use these tools at a later point.

Here are some ideas on using each of the 5 best practices in your everyday life.

  • TALKING is the most critical early literacy skill because it helps children learn oral language. You can talk to your child about things you see or ask them open-ended questions to encourage a response from them.
  • SINGING develops language skills by slowing down syllables and sounds that make up a word. You can sing in the car whenever you’re traveling and you never have to worry about other people hearing your singing voice.
  • READING together not only develops vocabulary and comprehension, but it fosters a love of reading.  Try to pick a time to read when you are both in a good mood and never force it. It is a good idea to establish a reading routine at bedtime when your child is most relaxed.
  • You can start to practice WRITING as soon as your child can grip anything. Even if they are only making scribbles, they are getting those small hand muscles ready to hold a pencil.
  • Children also learn language and literacy skills through PLAY by helping them put thoughts into words as they talk about what they are doing.

Caregivers have the most important role in developing a child’s reading skills, so it is important that you practice these techniques as often as possible. I encourage you to visit the library and check out some of the early literacy programs and resources that we have.  To see our full events calendar, you can go to https://cheshirelibrary.libcal.com/.

Check out  our Parenting section for more on early literacy and school readiness:

 

And don’t forget to sign up for our summer reading program for kids and adults : Summer Adventure! The program runs from June 21 through August 17. Raffles, prizes, and giveaways will be available to those who complete the activities. Who will take home the crown for the most minutes read? Will it be the kids, or will it be the adults?

 

In Dog We Trust

Today’s post comes to us from our Teen Librarian, Kelley:

It’s not just a snappy title – I really do have enormous faith and trust in a dog. My husband is blind and he (and I) depend every day upon the amazing skills of his guide dog Becca to help him navigate his world. I can go off to work and not worry about him, because I know he and Becca will manage perfectly well. They’re not stuck at home and are never bored. They go on long walks, golf, visit friends… at this point they actually have a much richer social life than I do! I am filled with wonder every time I see the two of them working together – she warns him of curbs, cars, and dangers both underfoot and at head height, she finds doors, counters, empty seats, and me (!) whenever needed and with great determination and enthusiasm.

Once we were shopping at the grocery store, and a family with children walked by. The parents conscientiously cautioned their kids about not distracting Becca while she was working, telling them that she was a service dog. The littlest child wasn’t quite sure what a service dog was, but he used his own best judgement, and looked out for us for the rest of our shopping trip. He alerted everyone: “Don’t bother that dog- she’s a serious dog!” every time we crossed paths. It was adorable, but he was absolutely correct- Becca is a very serious dog when she is working.

Other dogs besides our Becca do serious work that truly helps others too. These dogs all have natural talents that are carefully perfected with exhaustive training. Detection dogs have exceptional senses of smell. A detection dog is trained to sniff out a particular substance or group of substances such as currency, illegal drugs, explosives, blood, insects, and even cancer. Herding dogs work with various types of livestock, such as cattle, sheep, goats, reindeer, and even poultry. Military dogs assist members of the military with their operations. Police dogs, often called K-9s, are trained specifically to assist police and other law-enforcement personnel in the line of duty. Search and rescue dogs have high energy, great stamina and focus. These highly trained animals serve in many different fields, including tracking, specialized search, avalanche rescue, and cadaver location. Therapy dogs offer emotional support to sick or injured persons, often visiting hospitals, schools, hospices, nursing homes and more.  Service dogs are working dogs that have been specially trained to assist persons with disabilities.

There are many other types of working dogs out there who have real jobs that they take very seriously, and new types of jobs for dogs are being developed all the time. You can read more about them with our doggone good list of books about inspiring dogs who love to work. Good dogs!!

From the Children’s Room: