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

How are you choosing your books? Based on reviews, word of mouth, going back to an old series or favorite authors? I placed holds on a number of books recommended through two podcasts I listen to,  "From the Front Porch" and "Currently Reading" , and was pleased to find a number of them lived up to their recommendations. Christina Baker Kline, author of patron favorites The Orphan Train and A Piece of This World , has written a wonderful novel set in nineteenth century Australia. The Exiles is based on the stories of the indigenous people being torn from their land, European women imprisoned and sent to Australia for their sentences, and English who are set on forcing their culture on native people. Weaving these disparate people and cultures through the lives of three women, The Exiles ,  entertained and enlightened my knowledge of Australian culture and history. To get a better understanding of the indigenous names and places mentioned at the beginning of the b...

Now that we have moved indoors into the Merry Room we are able to bring down many more selections for browsing. As technical services process new books , our "TBR" (To Be Read) lists are growing steadily. What does yours look like? Are you excited about books coming out in the fall or busily reading backlists of favorite series or authors?  I recently enjoyed a backlist mystery by William Kent Krueger titled "Iron Lake" . It is the first of a large series set in upper Minnesota with the main character Cork O'Connor . If you have read and enjoyed William Kent Krueger's recent best-selling novels "This Tender Land" or "Ordinary Grace" you will enjoy diving into this series.  Browsing what is available in the Merry Room I found two of my favorites from this year:  "The Water Keeper" by Charles Martin and "Dearly Beloved" by Cara Walls .  I was very surprised to see the availabilty of the audiobooks   "The Exiles...

The Circulation staff is back to work and busy checking in your reads and fulfilling your requests. We are happy to be helping those of you who are placing your requests online or via phone. We definitely enjoy seeing your smiling faces visiting the browsing tent and the  Merry Room which we have recently moved to on the lower floor of the library for browsing and checking out books, dvds, music, and audiobooks. When you visit we are happy to retrieve items inside based on your requests. As always, we enjoy helping with reading recommendations.   I asked our staff  for some recent reading recommendations.  One said she "was brought right back into the Hunger Games" while reading the prequel to the series by Suzanne Collins'  Ballad of Songbirds and Sna kes , Another recommendation is  Peace Talks  by Jim Butcher, a contemporary science fantasy/mystery . It is the latest in the Dresden Files series.  Foul is Fair is a new young  adult novel ...

What have you been reading? It seems like a lot of us are having trouble reading during covid-19. "Distracted" seems to be the key phrase.     Perhaps Earth Day inspired you ( Bookmark's Earth Day Inspirations ). Have you wanted to read more about pandemics? New York Times Essential Pandemic Books or fiction   Books to Read During a Pandemic .   Note: my husband enjoyed and recommends "Pale Horse, Pale Rider".  He read it the first week of  "stay-at-home" and periodically shared interesting facts about the Spanish Flu pandemic.  Needed to escaped into Science Fiction or Fantasy? Bookmark's Five Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books to Ease Your "April" (now May) Isolation I have had trouble reading. In the beginning of this stay-at-home time I focused my attention on my "family history" hobby and wrote a family history book to give to my aunt for her birthday.  After four weeks, that was finished, and now I had a lot of...

How many of you are spending these days putting together puzzles? My cousin's family had a puzzle challenge where they challenged a friend's family to start a 1000 piece puzzle at the same time and see who could finish it first. (Then switched puzzles and challenged again.) My puzzling challenge for the last four weeks has been "family history".  I researched, documented, and wrote out a family history for my aunt's birthday gift.  If you haven't built your family tree or you've heard family stories about where ancestors came from and never documented these stories: chunks of uninterrupted time is all you need. FamilySearch.org is a great place to get started. Archiving genealogical resources for education and family archiving, and research has been a goal of the Church of Later Day Saints since 1894. They have been microfilming records since the 1930s and switched to digital archiving in 1999. In 2013, through mostly volunteer efforts had dig...

Whether you read for entertainment, knowledge, or escape, there are many fiction books that take us on journeys. Some are obvious journeys of self-discovery by foot, such as, "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed or "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson .   In some you'll find journeys that are more spiritual: "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel   and "The Shack" by William Young . Some will change your outlook  "The Alchemist by Paul Coehlo and "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini . These type of books stick with you longer than most. They provoke discussion. They often change perspectives.  Recently I've enjoyed two books that were recommended by our Duxbury readers that have reminded me how wonderful it is to follow along on a journey with characters of a well written book. "Washington Black" by Esi Edugyan  and "This Tender Land" by William Kent Krueger.  "Washington Black" takes you on a jo...

Do you enjoy hearing author's talk about books or booksellers and publishers talk about what they've read and think will be the next "hot read"? You might enjoy one or more of the plethora of literar focused podcasts being recorded by people who enjoy talking about books. What is a podcast? Podcasts are pre-recorded interviews, informal discussions, or person opinions on a selected topic. Most are in a format similar to "talk radio", but encapsulated in themes and subjects based on the presenter's interests or experiences. They range from very informal chats to more formal outlined presentations. The length is usually around 10 minutes to no more than one hour. Most average around 30 minutes. You access podcasts via your computer or phone and find them on websites, Apple's podcast app, or a variety of other podcasts apps available for Android or Windows. I usually listen to a number of episodes over a period of time before I subscribe to a p...