Book Magic on The Point With Mindy Todd

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This morning on The Point with Mindy Todd we talked about books having to do with magic. Joining us this month was Where the Sidewalk Ends Bookstore co-owner Caitlin Doggart. Thanks to all of our listeners who shared their book suggestions on magic! And remember … you can listen online at any time!

Caitlin’s Picks

Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Magical Creatures and Mythical Beasts by Victo Ngai
Conjure Women by Afia Atakora
The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Sevogia
Circe by Madeline Miller
And for some bonus titles from Caitlin, head over to her bookstore!

Jill’s Picks

Magic: a history by Chris Gosden
Magic in Western Culture: from antiquity to the enlightenment by Brian P. Copenhaver
The Magic of Handwriting by Christine Nelson
HausMagick: transform your home with witchcraft by Erica Feldmann
The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini by Joe Posnanski
Escape: the story of the great Houdini by Sid Fleischman
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harness
Garden Spells and The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen

Listener’s Picks

Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women by Ricky Jay
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
Sacred Agriculture: the alchemy of biodynamics by Dennis Klocek
Half Magic by Edward Eager
Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger
Wise Child by Monica Furlong
Juniper by Monica Furlong

Child Bride, with author Jennifer Smith Turner: a Zoom book event

Posted on by Sue

We are pleased to welcome author (and Vineyard resident) Jennifer Smith Turner, on Tuesday evening, December 8th, at 7 p.m., for a Zoom presentation!

Child Bride is about a young girl who grows up in the segregated South. “Turner’s warm and personal narrative brings to life the vigor and interdependence of black communities in both the South and the North of the mid-20th century…uplifting and dynamic…” (Kirkus reviews). The book was named best fiction e-book for 2020 by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, and BiblioBoard, and has recently received the 2020 New York Big Book Award.

Ms. Smith Turner lives full time in Oak Bluffs. She is a published poet, and she is currently working on her third collection of poetry. Her work has been included in Vineyard Poets, an anthology of poems by Martha’s Vineyard writers, and in numerous literary publications. She has been featured on N.P.R. and on Connecticut Public Television. She has been a featured speaker at Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania Kelly Writer’s House. She has also worked extensively in the public and private K-12 schools in Massachusetts and Connecticut, bring poetry to students and educators. She recently served as interim CEO of the Newman’s Own Foundation, where she is a board member.

This event is free. Registration is required, by 6 p.m. on the day of the event. Please register online at falmouthpubliclibrary.org/events, or contact the reference department at 508-457-2555 x 7.

Sue Mellen, author of A History of Theater on Cape Cod (a Zoom event)

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We are pleased to welcome author, theater critic and former Cape Cod Times writer and reviewer, Sue Mellen on Saturday afternoon, 11/14, at 2 p.m., for a Zoom presentation!

Sue will lift the curtain on the rich history of theater on Cape Cod, beginning—where it all began—in Provincetown. She paints a vivid picture of the early years of American drama on the Cape, bringing you into the world of Eugene O’Neill and the Provincetown Players, the Barnstormers and other early groups. Then, as she does in her upcoming book, A History of Theater on Cape Cod, she will take you on a tour of the Cape’s many-faceted theater history, giving you an insider’s view of what has made Cape theater great. She will also talk about the book itself, and how you can order it!

Sue Mellen began her writing career as an arts, entertainment and features writer for the Cape Cod Times. She then worked in public relations, first for a regional healthcare system, then for a classic car museum. Then, after a short stint as a freelance business and technology writer, she began a content-creation firm YourWriters, which she still operates to this day. Through her company, she has co-written and ghostwritten dozens of books for a wide range of clients. She also taught writing at a Massachusetts community college for a number of years.

After an extended hiatus, the author has returned to her first love: reviewing the theatrical productions that grace the historic theaters of Cape Cod.

This event is free and appropriate for adults and teens. Registration is required, by noon on the day of the event. Please register at our events page-the Zoom link will be emailed separately to you before the event. If you would like to register after the registration period has ended, you can-just call the Reference Desk at 508-457-2557 x 7!

Books About Food on The Point with Mindy Todd

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This morning on The Point with Mindy Todd we featured books about food for the monthly book show. Joining us for the first time (but I hope not the last) was Elspeth Hay. You can hear Elspeth regularly on CAI when she does her Local Food Report and she also has a food blog called Diary of a Locavore. We had lots and lots of listener suggestions, which was delightful! Thanks to all of you that called and emailed us with your food book suggestions. The illustration for this blog post is a postcard designed by Jane Mount. She has also illustrated a book called My Ideal Bookshelf, which includes a number of bookshelves full of cookbooks, if you need more inspiration!

Elspeth’s Picks

Forgotten Skills of Cooking by Darina Allen
Feeding a Family: a real-life plan for making dinner work by Sarah Waldman
The Real Food Cookbook: traditional dishes for modern cooks by Nina Planck
Dinner: a love story: it all begins at the family table by Jenny Rosenstrach

Not Enough Time For:

Ancient Grains for Modern Meals: Mediterranean whole grain recipes for barley, farro, kamut, polenta, wheat berries & more by Maria Speck
Out In Blue Fields: a year at Hokum Rock Blueberry Farm by Janice Riley & Stephen Spear
Jerusalem: a cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi & Sami Tamimi
Good to the Grain: baking with whole-grain flours by Kim Boyce with Amy Scattergood
The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook: healthy cooking and good living with pasture raised foods by Shannon Hayes
The Art of Fermentation: an in-depth exploration of essential concepts and processes from around the world by Sandor Ellix Katz

Jill’s Picks

Food Lit: a reader’s guide to epicurean nonfiction by Melissa Brackney Stoeger
What We Cook On Cape Cod by The Village Improvement Society
An Everlasting Meal: cooking with economy and grace by Tamar Adler
Always Home: a daughter’s recipes & stories by Fanny Singer
The Fruit Forager’s Companion by Sara Bir
Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayres
Maigret’s Dead Man by Georges Simenon
Poison à la Carte by Rex Stout, a novella that can be found in Three At Wolfe’s Door or in Seven Complete Nero Wolfe Novels

Bookmarks: for everyone who hasn’t read everything “The American ‘Foodoir: when food meets memoir” in the Nov/Dec 2020 issue.

Listener Picks

Love Real Food by Kathryn Taylor
Cooking the Catch by Dave Mausch
The Loaf and Ladle by Joan Harlow
Cape Cod Table by Lora Brody
The Seasonal Kitchen: a return to fresh food by Perla Meyers
Encyclopedia of Healing Foods by Michael Murry
Ruth Reichl books
The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perlman
The Boston Cookbook by Fannie Farmer
The Food Lab: better home cooking through science by J. Kenji López-Alt
Alice Waters & Chez Panisse by Thomas McNamee
Forest Feast by Erin Gleeson
Indian Herbalogy of North America by Alma R. Hutchins
My Bread by Jim Lahey
Lobscouse & Spotted Dog by Anne Grossman (For Patrick O’Brian fans)
The Irish Cook Book by Jp McMahon
Silk Road Cooking by Najmieh Batmanglij
The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen (many other Moosewood inspired cookbooks came after the original)

Suggestions that came in too late for broadcast:
Provincetown Seafood Cookbook by Howard Mitchum
The Victory Garden Cookbook by Marian Morash

The Point: Books About Colors

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This month’s book show on The Point with Mindy Todd featured books that were inspired by colors in some way. Mindy and I were joined by Laura Reckford, Executive Director of the Falmouth Art Center. As I found out pretty quickly, there are a mountain of books having to do with colors in one way or another. From wallpapers to gardens to fashion to essays and poetry. As always, many thanks to all the listeners who called in with their suggestions. Indeed, Laura and I had so many titles we did not get to, we are going to do part two of this show on September 30th! Below you will find the titles we did have time for, including all of the listener picks. If you missed the show, you can always listen online at WCAI.

Laura’s Picks

Blue Dog by George Rodrigue and Lawrence S. Freundlich
The Wild Party, the lost classic, by Joesph Moncure March, Drawings by Art Spiegelman
Colors, (a bound volume of all 13 issues of a magazine that Maira Kalman worked with her husband Tibor Kalman) by Tibor Kalman, edited by Maira Kalman.
Black & White and Dead All Over by John Darnton
Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler : five painters and the movement that changed modern art by Mary Gabriel
Cape Cod Gardens & Houses with photography by Taylor Lewis, text by Catherine Fallin (also Martha’s Vineyard Gardens & Houses; and Nantucket Gardens & Houses)
Life Colors Art, fifty years of painting by Peter Busa
And mentioned in passing these classics: Green Eggs & Ham by Dr. Seuss; The Color Purple by Alice Walker, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle (a caller mentioned this book too) and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (for the color green used throughout the book, especially for the green light near Daisy Buchanan’s house, the color of money and representing his hopes for the future)

Jill’s Picks

On Being Blue: a philosophical inquiry by William Gass (a caller recommended this book too)
Sara Berman’s Closet by Maira Kalman and Alex Kalman
My Private Property by Mary Ruefle (Includes 11 meditations on different colors for different kinds of sadness.)
Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, Leanne Shapton & 639 others
The Wallpaper Book by Geneviève Brunet
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman can be found in The Art of the Short Story, edited by Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn
The Green Ray by Jules Verne
The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair (A caller recommended this too.)
The Gardener’s Color Palette by Tom Fischer with photographs by Clive Nichols

Picture Books

Pantone: Colors, Illustrations by Helen Dardik
The Blue Hour by Isabelle Simler
Blue by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

Listener Picks

Pitidoe the Color Maker by Glen Dines. There is a Youtube video of this story being read aloud, if you would like to see the book.

On Being Blue: a philosophical inquiry by William Gass
Here is the quote our listener sent:
“Of the colors, blue and green have the greatest emotional range. Sad reds and melancholy yellows are difficult to turn up. Among the ancient elements, blue occurs everywhere: in ice and water, in the flame as purely as in the flower, overhead and inside caves, covering fruit and oozing out of clay. Although green enlivens the earth and mixes in the ocean, and we find it, copperish, in fire; green air, green skies, are rare. Gray and brown are widely distributed, but there are no joyful swatches of either, or any of exuberant black, sullen pink, or acquiescent orange. Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life. Whether slick light sharp high bright thin quick sour new and cool or low deep sweet dark soft slow smooth heavy old and warm: blue moves easily among them all, and all profoundly qualify our states of feeling.”

Tony & Tina Color Energy: how color can transform your life

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair

Color: a natural history of the palette by Victoria Finlay

Review: Transformers Vs. G.I. Joe, Vol. 1-6 by Tom Scioli

Posted on by Sue

One line review: If Jack Kirby and David Lynch teamed up to make a 1980s afternoon cartoon, it would look a lot like this.

Writer/artist Tom Scioli has been a darling of the underground comics scene for years. He’s won multiple awards and huzzahs from his peers, and was personally sought-out by pop star Gerard Way when Way launched his own line of comics with DC in 2016.

The reason for this is that Scioli’s comics have a very unique tone to them. There is a playful austerity to them, a po-faced silliness. He blends the dynamic art of 1960s Marvel superhero comics with an almost Cormac McCarthy approach to scripting. The mix is both heady and a headtrip. And kinda goofy.

With the comic book series, ‘Transformers vs. G.I. Joe’, Sciloi was given free reign to do whatever he wanted with two of Hasbro’s best-selling toy lines. He could change their backstories, rewrite their futures, and kill off as many characters as he saw fit. Nothing was off-limits. No one was worried about how it would effect toy sales. The result is one of the most imaginative and unpredictable comics I’ve ever read. At times, it feels like a ‘men on a mission’ movie. At other times it feels like Lovecraftian mythology. Then there are the times it just feels like you’re watching some scarily-smart kid smash their toys together on the floor of their bedroom.

Some stand-out moments include issue 0, a brief intro to many of the leads and a pretty good litmus test as to whether or not you’ve going to want to stick around, and the majorly meta issue 7, wherein the evil Doctor Mindbender makes Scarlett, “a crossbow-toting southern belle with a history in martial arts”, believe her entire existence is a lie and that she and everything else are actually — gasp! — toys.

I read this series 3 years ago, and imagery and ideas from it still pop into my head every week or so. That’s gotta be a good thing, right?

(reviewed by Josh)

All six volumes of this series are currently available to read — FOR FREE! — via the Hoopla app, if you’re a Falmouth Public Library, West Falmouth and Woods Hole cardholder! Click here.

For information on how to get a Hoopla account, click here!

Browsing, or What I Have Learned from 11 AM to Noon

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By Jill E. Erickson, Head of Reference and Adult Services

Over the past few weeks I have been spending an hour of my time chatting with people who are waiting outside to pick up library materials. It has been such a pleasure for me to actually talk mask to mask with people for the first time in many months. Yes, I have been answering telephone calls and emails, as well as texting, sending postcards and talking about books on WCAI during the months we have been closed, but none of this has involved seeing people in person. What a joy it has been to actually have real time conversations, look people in the eyes, and know that we would be shaking hands if we could.

Chatting with our patrons has been a real education for me in what people most miss about not being allowed into the building. Sure they have missed seeing us, and ask When are you going to open? However, the number one comment about what people miss the most, is browsing the library stacks! Of all the things we had considered that people might miss, I don’t think we were fully aware of how much people love to browse the stacks. As someone who grew up going to public libraries from a very young age, you would think I would have considered the heartbreak that comes when you you can’t browse in the library that you love.

We have tried to meet this need by creating browsing carts, which we deeply know is not enough, but is something. The East Falmouth Branch has the most browsing carts at this point, because they have the best location for it. The main library, where I spend my days, now has a small browsing cart of Express books (which means no one else can put a hold on those copies) and of Express DVDs. Originally, we put carts out at Noon, rather than when we first opened the doors at 11:00 AM. After hearing person after person tell me between 11 and noon that what they most missed was browsing, I asked Tammy Amon, the Head of Circulation, if she would be willing to put them out earlier. So now they do go outside when we first open for pickup.

The first definition in the Oxford English Dictionary for the word browse is “To feed on the leaves and shoots of trees and bushes; to crop the shoots or tender parts of rough plants for food: said of goats, deer, cattle.” So now I think of browsing on books as a real nourishment for our minds and hearts, and we hope that you will be browsing again inside the building before long.

Cape Cod & the Islands, Part Two.

Posted on by Library User

This morning, I had the pleasure of sharing books about Cape Cod and the Islands with Mindy Todd and Dennis Minsky on the monthly book show. If you missed the show, you can always listen on line at WCAI! Thanks to all our listeners who were listening or who called in with other title suggestions. It is hard to believe that this is the fifth month that we have been sharing books from our homes, and I know we all look forward to the day when we can see each other as well as listen to each other! In the meantime, here is today’s list of all the titles that were mentioned.

And if you are interested in being part of the Twitter reading group that is currently reading The Maytrees by Annie Dillard, just follow @APublicSpace and @elizmccracken on Twitter and join the fun!

Mindy’s Picks

Craig Kingsbury Talkin’ by Kristen Kingsbury Henshaw
Beyond the Bright Sea, Wolf Hollow and Echo Mountain by Lauren Wolk
Anything by Martin Sandler

Dennis’ Picks

The House on Nauset Marsh by Wyman Richardson
Cape Cod Yesterdays by Joseph Lincoln
Nature’s Year: the seasons of Cape Cod by John Hay
Time and the Town: a Provincetown chronicle by Mary Heaton Vorse
Cape Cod Shore Whaling: America’s First Whalemen by John Braginton-Smith and Duncan Oliver

Jill’s Picks

Stone, Paper, Knife by Marge Piercy. The poem I read was Very Late July.
Dream Work by Mary Oliver. The poem I read was Starfish.
The Maytrees by Annie Dillard
The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken
Martha’s Vineyard and Other Places by David Hockney
Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman
The House on Oyster Creek by Heidi Jon Schmidt
Hot Water by Sally Gunning
A Beautiful Place to Die by Philip R. Craig

Listener Picks

A Cape Cod Sketch Book by Jack Frost. (Many of the structures he sketched are still standing today!)
That Quail Robert by Margaret A. Stanger with drawings by Cathy Baldwin. This true story is set in Orleans.
In the Wake of the Willows: a sequel to Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows by Frederick Thurber and illustrated by Amy Thurber. The listener says even though the book isn’t based on the Cape, it evokes a feeling of Cape Cod.
The Wild Edge: life and lore of the great Atlantic beaches by Philip Kopper

Cape Cod & the Islands on The Point with Mindy Todd

Posted on by Library User

What a delight it was to have Dennis Minsky join us on The Point with Mindy Todd this morning on WCAI. Normally Dennis can’t join us in the summer, because he is tremendously busy guiding whale watching tours in Provincetown, but due to the pandemic the world as we knew it is considerably changed. In any case, what a treat and we hope that he might even be able to join us for a part two at the end of July or whenever he is next available for book talk on the radio. Needless to say, we had gigantic piles of books and probably only got through a third of them.

Thanks to all of our listeners who shared book titles with us, and if you have a favorite book that we missed (as we sure you do) save it for the next Cape Cod & Islands book show or you can just email us at info@falmouthpubliclibrary.org and we will add it to this list. So here are the lists!

Dennis’ Picks

Cape Cod by Henry David Thoreau with an introduction by Robert Finch
The Outermost House: a year of life on the great beach on Cape Cod by Henry Beston, with an intro by Robert Finch. Please note there are many, many, many editions of The Outermost House, including a lovely children’s edition.
The Outer Beach: a thousand-mile walk on Cape Cod’s Atlantic Shore by Robert Finch
A Wild Rank Place: one year on Cape Cod by David Gessner
The Salt House: a summer on the dunes of Cape Cod by Cynthia Huntington

And an email from a listener that got to Mindy too late to read on air, but is fascinating nonetheless:

“Eugene Clark of Sandwich and an early speaker at Cape Cod National Seashore did some research into Coast Guard records and found that the shipwrecks that Beston writes of occurred in different years. From that he realized that Beston telescoped his book, which authors can do. This means that Beston lived for each season of the year in his outermost house, but did not live in it for one year continuously. Col Clark is now deceased, but I knew him and worked in the early years of CCNS. Peter B. Cooper of Yarmouth.”

Jill’s Picks

A Field Guide to Cape Cod Including Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Block Island, & Eastern Long Island by Patrick J. Lynch
An Illustrated Coastal Year: the seashore uncovered season by season by Celia Lewis
Wild Is the Wind by Carl Phillips. The poem I read was “Monomoy”.
Seaweed’s Revelation: a Wampanoag clan mother in contemporary America by Amelia G. Bingham
To the Harbor Light by Henry Beetle Hough

Listener Picks

Crab Wars: a tale of horseshoe crabs, bioterrorism and human health by William Sargent
Asia Rip by George Foy
Dreaming Monomoy’s Past: walking its present by Lee Stephanie Roscoe
Flintlock and tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War by Douglas Edward Leach
The Last Best League: one summer, one season, one dream by Jim Collins

Need to be educated on race issues? Let us help …

Posted on by Library User

We have a rich and deep collection of books having to do with race and racism, from picture books to heavy reference books. There have been many terrific lists posted by many terrific sources. Below you will find some of our favorite lists. If you find a book on any list that we do not own that you wish to read, please let us know, and we will be happy to add it to our collection.

Antiracist Booklist
From Eight Cousins Bookshop

A History of Race and Racism in America, in 24 Chapters
From the New York Times.

Race, Social Justice, and Civil Rights: Adults

Race, Social Justice, and Civil Rights: Teens

Race, Social Justice, and Civil Rights: Kids

From the Boston Public Library

Category: Books