Teen Volunteer Reviews: “Serpent & Dove” and “Powerless”

/ Evelyn / Leave a comment

Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin. Reviewed by SS ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Serpent & Dove is a fantasy romance novel following Louise Le Blanc and Reid Diggory. A few years ago, Louise ran away from her witch coven and tried to survive in Cesarine by forsaking magic and stealing. In Cesarine, witches are hunted, feared, and burned. On the other hand, Reid Diggory is Chausser, sworn to the Church to protect the people from witches. He’s only ever lived by the principle “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”. When a chase gone wrong forces Louise and Reid to become tied together in marriage, the situation becomes much more dangerous. The war between the Church and witches has an ancient past, but when the pair’s feelings for each other grow, Louise realizes she must make a choice. And love might change everything.

I’ve been searching for a good romance novel in a fantasy setting. Recently, I’ve been reading a lot of realistic fiction romance, which is excellent, but sometimes the books just get a bit too real, which isn’t great. Hence the great search for a well-thought-out fantasy romance novel. When I read Serpent & Dove, I really loved it. I liked how the romance wasn’t immediate but rather a transition from hatred to tolerance to supporters and finally to lovers. It made the romance a lot more profound and more connected. I loved Louise’s character – the opposite of a “demure woman” – who Reid has always been surrounded by. She cusses like an old sailor, which I find quite funny, and Reid’s reactions to her actions are often quite comical. The only negative I have for this story is the beginning. The beginning was kind of abrupt, I had no context for what was happening, or why. However, once Reid and Louise got married, the story got into the swing of things. It’s also important to note that while this book is part of a trilogy, please stop reading after the Serpent & Dove. As many other readers have claimed, the other two books make you lose connections with the characters, and there is a lot of talking and no action. So while this book is truly unique, be aware that the next two will not live up to expectations. On that note, I think I would give this story four stars.

Powerless by Lauren Roberts. Reviewed by MP ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Powerless” by Lauren Roberts is the perfect romantic fantasy. Powerless follows Paedyn, a girl without powers, and Kai, a boy who hunts the powerless. Paedyn has to take part in a dangerous competition held at the castle. Kai is the prince. A romance starts to bloom. Expect enemies to lovers, pretty ball gowns, knife to the throat, dual points of view, and witty bantering!

Plot: While the plot is pretty simple and similar to the Hunger Games, it still manages to engage readers.

Characters: This book is primarily character-driven. Where the plot could be seen as bland, the characters make up for it. Being in Kai’s head was amazing. He’s amazing. I loved it. Paedyn was excellent, too. Dual point of view can be hit or miss, but I loved the use of it in this book. These characters are both grumpy and pretty morally grey. I love that combo. They both can be ruthless, but deep down, they are softies. Their romance is so sweet and extremely slow burn. It’s also full of tension as Kai kills people like Paedyn. They have many cute moments, such as a rock paper scissors game! Both characters are deep and compelling. They are not simply one-dimensional. Due to the first-person point of view, you get to understand their personality and get to know them well.

World-building: It’s quite simple, actually—think superheroes. The world is not one bit confusing (at least for me). If you’re new to fantasy, this book would be a great choice because it won’t overwhelm you. The world-building was minimal and simple.

Writing: The writing was gorgeous. I loved the pretty words, the metaphors, and the dialogue. Its poetic while being easy to understand. This book is highly quotable because of its beautiful sentences. The author is extremely talented.

Whether new to fantasy or not, this book is fresh and fun. You’ll adore the characters, root for them, and be at the edge of your seat for our girl, Paedyn. I know I was kicking my feet, smiling, and swooning. I read it twice because that’s how great it is!

Summer Reads: Books to Beat the Heat

/ Kristy / Leave a comment

Whether you prefer snarky humor, historical fiction, or a nice, wholesome murder, there’s something on this list for you.

Killing Me by Michelle Gagnon

The single-line summary on the cover of some editions of this title reads, “She escaped a serial killer. Then things got weird.” I’ve loved the proliferation of murder mysteries featuring a heavy dose of dark humor that have swept publishing over the last few years, and the glitzy Las Vegas setting in Killing Me secures this as a summer read for me. The protagonist is far from perfect but you’ll still want to root for her; the supporting cast will win your heart, and the twists are just frequent and surprising enough to keep the pages turning.

Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone

A woman wakes up alone in her bed. Her husband has vanished. She’s on vacation in a strange place with no idea where her husband may have gone, and in every place she turns she finds no help- or worse, is met with suspicion. Pavone paints a beautiful picture of Lisbon; it’s an interesting juxtaposition, where the setting should make you yearn to be there, but each chapter brings new revelations and a heightened sense of dread. If you’re looking for a taut thriller to read on the beach, poolside, or on the patio, this is a great pick.

The Cuban Heiress by Chanel Cleeton

Cleeton is, to my mind, one of the most underrated authors of historical fiction writing today. Is it because she sometimes allows women’s faces to be seen on her book covers, while others in the genre stick to the “women in period costume facing away” template? Hard to say. What is clear is her talent for creating three-dimensional women characters in rich historical settings. The Cuban Heiress is a great example of Cleeton’s ability to weave the lives and storylines of disparate characters together throughout her books, generally in a tropical setting (think Florida, Cuba, or here, a luxury ship), always with an immensely satisfying ending.

I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue

This book is perfect for anyone who has wished for death over the prospect of replying to one more email. Sue skewers workplace culture and the characters she writes are laugh-out-loud funny, but be careful, those same characters develop over time and the same people you at first found annoying for microwaving popcorn in the break room or asking for help doing the same thing you’ve shown them 20 times become surprisingly relatable and even heartbreakingly vulnerable the more you learn about them. Perfect for anyone who has ever had to work with human beings, and great for summer because does anyone ever want to be at work in this season?

Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead

This is a funny but heartfelt coming-of-age tale, set in a 1980s summer, in the Hamptons. That should be enough to place it on any summer Must-Read list, but thankfully, because it’s Colson Whitehead, it doesn’t stop there. The writing is superb and the story feels authentic; it’s based on Whitehead’s own experiences as a Black kid who went to a mostly-white Manhattan prep school but spent his summers in Sag Harbor, an enclave for Black upper class professionals. If you’ve read some of Whitehead’s other works like Underground Railroad or Nickel Boys you might think that such a premise as this will necessarily be lacking in the gravitas of those other books, but you would be wrong: although lighter in tone, there is much to be gleaned from Sag Harbor.

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

Finding out you’ve been left a life-changing inheritance from a relative to whom you have no emotional attachment is the dream, right? Our hero, Charlie, has a somewhat sad but entirely relatable life when he finds out a long-lost uncle has bequeathed him his fortune and his business. His supervillain business. Charlie must learn how to fend off rival supervillains, do right by his new employees, and survive each day in this new world.

Why is this a summer read? Much of the book is set on a tropical (okay, volcanic) island, complete with (foul-mouthed, desperate to unionize) dolphins. What’s not to love?

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

According to the internet [so insert grain of salt here], the author was watching The Princess Bride with his family when his wife complained of Buttercup’s passivity given her circumstances. This inspired Sanderson to write Tress in secret, eventually surprising his wife with the story, who in turn urged him to publish it more widely. Tress is an appealing protagonist, the world she inhabits is wildly creative, and you’ll finish the book hoping for more adventures with Tress and crew.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

First of all, the dedication in this book reads, “For anybody who could use a break.” Second, we have a book club here at the library whose majority is very vocal about the fact that they neither read nor care for the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres. I knew this would be a hard sell. (Overheard grumbling when I handed out copies of the book: “There’s a robot on the cover!”) But at 147 pages, I asked the participants to trust me and give it a try- even if it didn’t end up being their cup of tea, I believed they could stick it out for a book this short. Lo and behold, a month later we met again, and 18 out of 21 participants enjoyed it immensely, much to everyone’s surprise.

This book is thoughtful but soothing, with page after page of phrases you’ll want to pluck out, scribble down on an index card or in your Notes app, and reread to yourself on rough days. Oh, you wanna know what the book’s about? A garden monk living in a Utopian world has an existential crisis, becomes a tea monk, meets one of the robots who wandered off into the wilderness centuries ago, and together they attempt to answer the question, “What do people need?”

Just- trust me and give it a try.

Holler Rat: Kentucky Meets Connecticut in Anya Liftig’s Memoir

/ Lauren / Leave a comment

Meet the author! Anya Liftig will come to the library on Thursday, August 1 at 6:30 pm for a conversation about her memoir. Cheshire residents can borrow the audiobook with Libby, and physical copies will be available for sale at the event. Reserve your spot for August 1st!

Anya Liftig grew up in Westport and graduated from Yale. She was an artist living in Brooklyn before it was cool. You wouldn’t expect her memoir to begin with a relative lying dead in a shack in rural Kentucky, cleaved in half by a piece of construction equipment. But as I learned from my recent reading (audiobook listening, really) of her memoir Holler Rat, Liftig defies expectations.

Liftig’s mother hails from that ramshackle home in Kentucky, and her father is from an upper-middle-class Jewish family in Connecticut. When school ends each year in Westport, the family drives down to the holler to spend summers with Mamaw, the family matriarch. The book initially caught my interest because it straddles the vastly different worlds of rural poverty and New England affluence. I’ve got my own history between those worlds, so I wondered how much of this book would resonate with me personally. Liftig’s narrative was so engrossing that from the first paragraph, I completely forgot about my search for parallels and just settled in to enjoy the ride.

She details medical traumas, cringeworthy adolescent romances, and her family’s quirks (her father plays the bagpipes and her grandmother won’t sell the old Studebaker that’s decaying in the middle of a potato field). Also, there was that time she made out with a dead fish in front of an audience and then put it in a blender and drank it. If it sounds both horrifying and hilarious, that’s a pretty good way to describe the memoir. Liftig moves from story to story with a masterful sense of pace, and her brilliant placement of her performance art pieces within the narrative helped me interpret and appreciate this art genre, which I knew only from parodies. The lead-up to the last chapter is heavy, and you don’t know how it’ll end until you reach the very last word. It’s the best memoir I’ve read recently, and I’m really looking forward to having a conversation with her at the library program on August 1!

It’s worth mentioning a book by another Yale alum and descendant of poor Kentuckians: Hillbilly Elegy, the 2016 memoir by J.D. Vance. This Ohio senator was announced as Donald Trump’s pick for VP candidate only a few days ago. Hillbilly Elegy was a bestseller upon release, but it was criticized for painting broad generalizations and reinforcing negative stereotypes about the rural poor. Now in 2024, it’s not hard to see Elegy as a calculated move from an aspiring politician. (It’s standard political playbook – Barack Obama made a similar move in 1995 when he released his memoir Dreams from My Father right before he ran for senate in Illinois.) Vance’s book is great if you want to better understand his politics, but if you’re looking for a more sympathetic and arguably more accurate portrayal of Appalachia, Holler Rat’s tight personal narrative from a longtime artist is a better pick.

Behind the Scenes: The Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award

/ Sandy / Leave a comment

I never really need an excuse to read. It is my favorite pastime. I typically have an expanding “to be read” list and my nightstand is always covered by an unwieldy pile of books. At the start of this year, however, I was in a reading funk and couldn’t seem to finish any book I started. It was right around that time that I received an email from someone at the Mark Twain House looking for readers to help create the long list for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. The Mark Twain House has been giving the award out since 2016 to works of fiction that “speak with an American voice about American experiences.” I signed up to be a judge, hoping that this commitment to judging at least three titles on the list would motivate me to start reading again.

The list of titles to choose from was long and extensive so I decided to pick a variety of different genres. Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead was first on my list but to read that book, I needed to read the first in what will eventually be a three-part series, Harlem Shuffle.  Harlem Shuffle is set in Harlem from 1959-1964. For anyone who has read Colson Whitehead, it is a departure from his heavier works like The Nickel Boys. Harlem Shuffle follows the life of Ray Carney, a furniture salesman in Harlem with a dubious past, desperately trying to live a crime-free life. It is a funny, clever, and breezy crime novel, reminiscent of Chester Himes’s Harlem Detective Series.

The second in Whitehead’s series, Crook Manifesto takes place in the early 70s and the plot is centered around the protagonist, Ray Carney trying to score impossible to find Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter. Crime, violence, and comedy ensue. The two books in the series are both fun reads that give a great snapshot of New York City in the 60s and 70s. Whitehead still manages to portray issues of race, class, and police brutality, particularly during his description of the Harlem race riot of 1964 and the tension between the police and those active in the Black Power movement in the 1970s. There is no date set for the publication of the final book in the series, but I am awaiting its release to see if Ray Carney does eventually manage to stay on the straight and narrow.

The next book I read was a debut novel titled A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens, by Cuban American author Raul Palma. I was immediately intrigued by the title having grown up in Miami. The story follows Hugo Contreras who is mourning the sudden death of his wife as well as dealing with mountains of debt. Deeply immersed in the world of Santeria since he is a Babalawo, Hugo agrees to help the debt collector who has been tormenting him, who is in turn being tormented by a ghost, in exchange for clearing his debt. It is an absurd story, but also a very Miami story. The novel is a modern gothic tale, complete with hauntings, demonic possession, and highly accurate descriptions of the oppressive heat in Miami and endless rows of strip malls. It is scary at times with an ending easily left up to interpretation by the reader and a good read for anyone who wants a different kind of supernatural novel.

The last book I chose to read was Dearborn, a collection of short stories, also written by a debut author, Ghassan Zeineddine. I love short stories as a genre, so I was excited to dive into these ten stories chronicling the Arab American experience in Dearborn, Michigan. The stories were funny, sweet, poignant, and at times heartbreaking. Though focused on Arab American life, the stories often told a greater story about the immigrant experience more broadly. This was the book that I most enjoyed out of all the ones that I read and the one I chose to be considered for the prize’s long list. Zeinedine writes beautifully and I hope he chooses to publish more in the future.

The long list for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award is up on their website. Unfortunately, Dearborn didn’t make the list but I am grateful for the experience of being a reader for this prize. I was able to discover novels I might not have read otherwise and it got me reading again.

Save Your Memories

/ Susan O. / Leave a comment

In December of 1983, we didn’t have internet. We barely had personal computers – a 256k machine cost $500, and you had to program it yourself. You couldn’t just save to disk, you had to format the darned thing before you could even use it. Video tape machines cost $600, and DVDs were still a dream. We were on the cusp of the CD player, but the real world still ran on cassette tapes. 

I was no different, with a cassette tape built into my stereo, eagerly recording songs and programs off the radio as they played live. Yes, we still listened to live radio programs back then, whether Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 Countdown, or Radio Mystery Theater, or, on Sunday nights, Dr. Demento, the leading program for off the wall parody and novelty music.

What’s novelty music? Novelty music is a humorous song that doesn’t fit in any other category but entertainment. You know it well. Alvin and the Chipmunks is novelty music. Barnes and Barnes’ Fish Heads. The Purple People Eater. The Monster Mash. Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. Steve Martin’s King Tut. Anything by Tom Lehrer or Weird Al Yankovic. While it’s a serious industry with all the requirements of mainstream music, and such songs can hit high on the pop charts (The Monster Mash hit #1), novelty music isn’t considered “serious” music. 

On that Sunday, it was the Christmas edition of Dr. Demento, and I threw a cassette in the player and hit record, because, back then, Grandma Got Run Over by A Reindeer was just a basement tape on Dr. Demento, it hadn’t gotten a contract yet. Weird Al wasn’t mainstream, and hadn’t gotten permission from the Kinks yet to record his Lola parody Yoda. On that tape, I happened, by luck, to record a song that in the history of radio may only have been played one time. It was a “bonus” track to fill space, and it was the only time it ever appeared on Dr. Demento. It hasn’t even been uploaded to his website. And it is one of my absolute favorites of underground tapes. In the era of the cold war, that song scared the living daylights out of me.

Cylent Night, by the Scrooge Brothers, tells a short story of the start of World War 3 to the tune of Silent Night, while air raid sirens start in the background and grow slowly louder. Off went the bomb at a quarter to three/ It’s the end of you and the end of me….  Have that hit you out of nowhere when you’re listening to the radio at 10 at night in your basement. In 40 years, I’ve never forgotten a line. And I just happen to have that song on tape. 

But cassette tapes are fragile things. They demagnetize. They fade. They tangle. My very rare basement tape has been bouncing around drawers and basements for 40 years. So what did I do? With the equipment at the Cheshire Public Library AV Studio, I very easily threw that cassette into the player and transferred that song to digital Media. Now I can store it digitally, share it with other Dementoids and Dementites who have never heard it (if you didn’t hear it live, you truly never heard it), even send it back to Dr. Demento. 

We all have those things kicking around our homes. Media changes so rapidly, from reel to reel tapes to 8 Track to cassette to CD to memory stick. We all have Grandma’s vacation slides of the Old Country, with relatives no one ever met. Dad’s wedding videos. That old LP you have that’s never been released on CD (or singles, like Rolf Harris’s Two Buffalos, which Bob Steele used to play on WTIC-AM). Your personal video of MTV’s top 100 countdown of 1985, when music videos were short stories of their own. You can transfer all of them to digital media, right here.

Beware, though – transfers occur in real-time. If you’re planning on transferring that 12-hour MTV countdown, it’s going to take 12 hours to put it onto digital. You might want to do it over a few weeks. But that LP? 40 minutes, you’ll be done.

Call (203) 272-2245 ext. 61245 to schedule an appointment at the AV Studio!