The View From Circulation - What's Trending, Unique, & Informational

If someone asked you what four books you'd like to read this summer would you know off the top of your head or would you think long and hard about your selection? I find myself leaving the television off in the summer and reading more so I'm happy to have the time to read more than four books, although, my summer selections are usually quicker and lighter reading then I select in the winter. The Massachusetts Board of Library Commissions is challenging all of the residents of Massachusetts to read four books this summer. To help promote this effort the staff at Duxbury Library has been asked to share their four summer reads. Follow us on  Facebook  and  Twitter  : @DuxburyFreeLibrary to see what four books our staff has selected for their own personal reading this summer. Don't forget to check in for other library happenings (sign up online for our  Summer Reading Program for all Ages ) and previews of scheduled events, including highlights, such as, our aut...

It's Father's Day weekend and our thoughts and minds go to the fathers.  Looking for book recommendations off our shelves for the men in our family? There are always the popular prolific authors: Balducci, Sandford, Connelly, Grisham , however, if you are looking for something to stretch out of the standard thrillers and crime fiction try these. New Fiction " Fall" by Neil Stephenson . If you have never read this author, check out " Cryptonomicon" " Recursion" by Blake Crouch " Sentence is Death" by Anthony Horowitz Off our Hot Summer Reads "Good Omen" by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman  This has gained a resurgance of popularity due to the Netflix series. "The Poacher's Son" by Paul Doirdon "The Golem and the Jinni" by Helen Wecker New Non-Fiction The Pioneers by David McCullough Non-Fiction off our Summer Reads Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston The Big Short by Michael ...

Our Hot Summer Reads are on the bookshelves and I just finished one of last year's favorites "Stillhouse Lake" by Rachel Caine . It is a "don't want to put it down" suspense and at 286 pages a perfect size to take with you for a quick read. What are your perfect summer read selections? Past favorite summer authors of mine include Charles Martin, Elizabeth Berg,  and Kristen Hannah . Summertime vacations gave me enough time to read some of my all time favorites like "Water for Elephants" or "The Help" .  Duxbury readers enjoy local authors Elin Hildebrand and Nancy Thayer whose summer themed novels fly off the shelves. Don't forget some of the YA (young adult) series or even adolescent series for a great escape. Two different summers at my daughter's urging I read through the " Twilight"  series and  "The Hunger Games" . When your children recommend book take them up on it, they are often great esca...

Its been a while since I had the time to share what is being read and enjoyed in the Duxbury Library, as well as, in my own reading experiences. I have made notes of a number of interesting genres, books, and topics that have passed through circulation and look forward to sharing them over the coming months. This year Educated by Tara Westover Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens are still our most popular reads, especially with Duxbury's over 24 book clubs who have registered with the circulation desk. Both the memoir, Educated, and the fiction story, Where the Crawdads Sing , are stories of self discovery. Common to both stories are strong girls being raised in a environment of fear and isolation. They both push caring relationships away due to a distrust built from abusive family relationships, yet both women grab onto the instinct to persevere. They find hope and confidence through self-education and apprehensive explorations of the outside world. Questioning their c...

photo credits from quotesgram.com Have you ever stepped into a world of fantasy and magic with just enough of realism that you can almost believe it could be possible? I'm sure most of us have at some point in our lives. From childhood through our adult years books about knights in shining armor, dragons, mermaids, time travel, and magic have pulled us in to alternative realities. Harry Potter fans can easily imagine stepping through the wall at King's Cross Station. Me? Give me a good historical fiction or detective mystery. Something that is rooted in facts and lays out a well woven plot where dots can easily be connected or even foreseen. I'm not one who will easily choose a Science Fiction or Fantasy book off the shelves, but once in a while I come across a book, either by recommendation or through my book club selections, that completely engages and surprises me. Recently highlighted in an email I received from Penguin Books titled "Cozy Up with the...

Do you already have a large list of books to read in 2019? 'The goal setting season is upon us and I hope in that list all of us are incorporating time in your day for reading or listening to a book. Last year I started a new practice of listening to audio books when I walked the dog or while in the car. Many hours were productively passed while I enjoyed a number of books I would not have had time to read and some that I probably enjoyed more because of the storytelling talents of the narrators. I also tried to be more intentional about picking up a book to read versus logging on to social media or email, thus, reduced the hours we can sometimes lose on the computer and enriched my perspectives through a good book instead. I have to say I read a lot of good books in 2018 helped by culling my reading selections based on your recommendations, recommended reads from various book review sources and previewed selections by the Duxbury Library Staff.  Perusing my Goodreads li...

Reading soothes, entertains, humors, educates, thrills, and through them we travel to foreign places, and the past. Through reading we learn to empathize, relate, draw parallels with the human condition, and most of all widen our perception of the world around us. Different from the visual media-based culture that is encompassing our lives, books provide us a mechanism to combine our previous perceptions and knowledge with new ideas and character stories easing us into expanding those ideas and perceptions. Alternatively, the visual media-based outlets spend a lot of time and money figuring out how to “market” to you to keep you watching. The wonderful, but sometimes overwhelming, pleasure of working behind the circulation desk is seeing so many books that have the ability to expand my world view, challenge me, and even sometimes "touch a nerve". Through reading each of us can walk away gaining something different from the same book. The National Book Foundation su...