Category: For Readers

Cape Cod & the Islands on The Point with Mindy Todd

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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 …

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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

 

Hoopla Graphic Novel Review: ‘DC: The New Frontier’ by Darwyn Cooke

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A blog entry from Josh, who is part of our circulation department.

Ever since Darwyn Cooke burst onto the scene in the early 1990s as a storyboard artist on ‘Batman: The Animated Series,’ he’s been been lauded for the unique blend of elegance and dynamo that he achieved in his artwork. What folks rarely seemed to mention, though, was how good of a writer he also was. It took Cooke making the seemingly backward career move from TV to comics (think: scion to serf) to finally right that wrong.

Essentially a re-telling of the Justice League’s formation, ‘DC: The New Frontier’ also covers 1950s race politics, the Red Scare and a dinosaur-populated monster island, blending it all into one epic, awe-inspiring superstory. Where most comics today tend to try to deconstruct the medium, Cooke seems more interested in re-constructing many of the ‘silver age’ elements that had been discarded over the years — space age science, pulp heroics, sweeping romance and an overall sense of wonder. Costume clad heroes both familiar and obscure pop up throughout. Some only appear briefly, in 10-20 page solo stories. Others weave in and out of the main mystery in an almost Altman-esque manner, finally converging en masse at the end of the book for a ‘We Are The World’-of-superfriends battle to save the planet. A few of the standout story lines are the Martian Manhunter’s arrival on Earth and his awkward assimilation of its culture, Hal Jordan’s transformation into the Green Lantern, and the Challengers of the Unknown’s beginning and (spoiler alert!) end.

Oh, and then there’s the art.

Ignore the word bubbles, and the book feels like a collection of long-lost pre-production art to some never-made superhero extravaganza from the glory days of the Hollywood studio system. Cooke’s biggest artistic influence is clearly Bruce Timm (the mastermind behind the aforementioned ‘Batman’ cartoon), but also evident in his work are the stylistic touches of Jack Kirby, Gil Kane and Carmine Infantino. In ‘DC: The New Frontier’, Cooke uses bits of all these classic cartoonists’ styles, blended with a bit of streamline moderne design and googie architecture, to perfectly capture the ‘anything is possible’ essence of the post-WWII United States. It’s gorgeous.

The ‘Deluxe Edition’ eBook format that DC has re-released the series in only adds to one’s appreciation of the art. Instead of the awkward-looking printing that sometimes ruins the enlargement of comic book pages, the simple grace of Cooke’s lines is actually enhanced by the digital blow up.

CLAMS cardholders can read DC: The New Frontier free on Hoopla!

Books From Our Bookshelves, Part Two

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This morning I had the great pleasure of talking books with Mindy Todd on The Point and joining us was author Peter Abrahams. It was part two (and the third show done from home) of Books From Our Bookshelves, as Peter returned to share with us more books from his home bookshelves. What was particularly delightful about this show was how many people called and emailed us with what they are reading during the pandemic. Here is the list of everything that was mentioned, both digital and non-digital, with some bonus content.

“The contents of someones bookcase are part of their history like an ancestral portrait.” Umberto Eco

And one of my favorite bits from the novel Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh:

“I’ve got a motor-car and a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Chateau Peyraguey – which isn’t a wine you’ve ever tasted, so don’t pretend. It’s heaven with strawberries.”

“On a sheep cropped knoll under a clump of elms we ate the strawberries and drank the wine – as Sebastian promised, they were delicious together – and we lit fat, Turkish cigarettes and lay on our backs, Sebastian’s eyes on the leaves above him, mine on his profile, while the blue-grey smoke rose, untroubled by any wind, to the blue-green shadows of foliage, and the sweet scent of the tobacco merged with the sweet summer scents around us and the fumes of the sweet, golden wine seemed to lift us a finger’s breadth above the turf and hold us suspended.”

“If it could only be like this always – always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper …”

Peter’s Picks 

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
Farnsworth’s Classical English Style by Ward Farnsworth (We don’t own this title, but we do have a copy of Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric.)
Chaucer’s Tale: 1386 and the road to Canterbury by Paul Strohm
Heart of Lions: the history of American bicycle racing by Peter Nye
Idiot by Elif Batuman
Last Train to Memphis: the rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick

Jill’s Picks

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, audio, narrated by Jeremy Irons
And here is a lovely article from the New York Times about the PBS version.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge either the Philip Hoare version (in which Jeremy Irons reads the first verse) or the paper version.
US (a.) by Saul Williams. His interview with Paul Holdengräber can be heard as part of The Quarantine Tapes.
The Cape Cod Bicycle War and other stories by Billy Kahora
The Sum of the People: how the census has shaped nations, from the ancient world to the modern age by Andrew Whitby
Reading Art: art for book lovers by David Trigg

Listener Picks

The Lives of Margaret Fuller by John Matteson
The Roman Years of Margaret Fuller; a biography by Joseph Dey Deiss
And I would add to the Margaret Fuller list Maria Popova’s book Figuring
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold S. Kusher (or anything else that he has written.)
Blackout a podcast
Homegoing: a novel by Yaa Gyasi
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham
Midnight in Siberia: a train journey into the heart of Russia by David Green
Rascal by Sterling North
Mama’s Last Hug: animal emotions and what they tell us about ourselves by Frans de Waal
Horse People: scenes from the riding life by Michael Korda
Robbins Pathologic Basis of Disease by Stanley L. Robbins, Ramzi S. Cotran & Vinay Kumar.

Books From Our Bookshelves

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This morning on The Point with Mindy Todd we were joined by author Peter Abrahams. Mindy, Peter,  Jill , and our listeners discussed books on our home bookshelves, as this was another show where we were live from our homes instead of in the studio. Many thanks to all of you who called in, and below you will find the complete list of books mentioned. 

Mindy’s Picks

Have You Filled a Bucket Today? : a guide to daily  happiness for kids by Carol McCloud; illustrated by David Messing.

Chet the Dog series by Spencer Quinn

Peter’s Picks

Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown. (Also available as an ebook.)

Open: an autobiography by Andre Agassi. (Also available as an ebook and an eaudio book.)

The Shadow Divers: the true adventures of two Americans who risked everything to solve one of the last mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson. (Also available as an ebook.)

Hitler: ascent, 1889-1939 by Volker Ullrich, translated from the German by Jefferson Chase. (Also available as an ebook.) Volume two of this biography, Hitler: downfall, 1939 – 1945 is due out in September.

As They See ‘Em: a fan’s travels in the land of umpires by Bruce Weber.

Jill’s Picks

A Fact A Day published by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., Garden City 1935 New York.

Staying Put: making a home in a restless world by Scott Russell Sanders.

Miss Rumphius Story & pictures by Barbara Cooney

Barclay Wills’ the Downland Shepherds by Barclay Wills, Richard Pailthorpe, and Shaun Payne. Not available in CLAMS, but you can see Barclay Wills here.

Madness, Rack and Honey: collected lectures by Mary Ruefle.

The Virgin in the Garden by A. S. Byatt.

Listener Picks

Stitches: a handbook on meaning, hope, and repair by Anne Lamont
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
Poem-A-Day: 365 poems for every occasion  
The Hours of Catherine of Cleves by John Plummer
I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron
The Collected Poems of John Ciardi 
Last Hope Island by Lynn Olsen
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy
Jonathan Unleashed by Meg Rosoff
Nobody’s Fool by Richard Russo
A Primate’s Memoir by Robert Sapolsky

Books About Sisters on the Point with Mindy Todd

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This morning on The Point with Mindy Todd we had a new experience … we all were talking from home, not in the studio! Joining Mindy and Jill this month was Kellie Porter of the Woods Hole Public Library. Due to coronavirus we could not all be in the studio, so we were all at home, but thanks to the intrepid duo of Dan Tritle and Kathryn Eident, we were all able to hear each other even if we couldn’t see each other. 

The theme this month was books about sisters, and as always we didn’t have time for everything we had on our tables. You can see some bonus titles below, as well as all of the suggestions made by listeners. If you have a suggestion, please let us know. If you missed the show you can listen to it anytime online.

Kellie’s Picks

Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
Sister Pie: The Recipes & Stories of a Big-hearted Bakery in Detroit by Lisa Ludwinski
The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy by Jeanne Birdsall
The Sister Knot : why we fight, why we’re jealous, and why we’ll love each other no matter what by Terri Apter

Jill‘s Picks
 
Little Women: An Annotated Edition edited by Daniel Shealy
March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women by Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado and Jane Smiley
All-Of-A-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters by Marilynn Brass & Sheila Brass
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
 
Not Enough Time For:
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
The Fabulous Bouvier SIsters by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger
 
Listener’s Picks
Saffy’s Angel by Hilary McKay
Alan Bradley series Flavia de Luce. First book in series is The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.
Amy Stewart series Kopp Sisters. First book in series Kopp Sisters on the March
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Romance Novels on The Point

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What a delightful treat it was this morning to have Petra Mayer join us on The Point with Mindy Todd on WCAI! Petra Mayer is an editor (and the resident nerd) at NPR Books, focusing on fiction, and particularly genre fiction. Our topic was romance novels, and I learned lots about romance novels both from Petra and from all the reading I did prior to the book show. If you are a romance reader and want to add a book to our list, just leave us a comment with your suggestion. Miss the show? You can listen anytime online! Want to know more about reading romance ebooks online? Just head over to CLAMS and learn all about the Libby App! (Or stop by the reference desk.)

Mindy’s Pick

The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss

Petra’s Picks

The Duchess War by Courtney Milan
The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
The Band Sinister and Any Old Diamonds by KJ Charles (available via the Commonwealth Catalog, but we’ll try to add some paper copies as well)
Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev
Listen to the Moon by Rose Lerner
Act Like It by Lucy Parker
An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole (or any of her historicals)

Not Enough Time For:
Joanna Bourne’s Spymaster series – you can read them in chronological order by story or by pub date but the best one is The Black Hawk.

Jill’s Picks

Encyclopedia of Romance Fiction, edited by Kristin Ramsdell
Everything I Know About Love I Learned From Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell (Not available as a paper book in CLAMS, but head to the Commonwealth Catalog and you can check out an e-book version!)
A Duke By Default  by Alyssa Cole
Duchess By Night by Eloisa James
How to Read a Dress: a guide to changing fashion from the 16th to the 20th century by Lydia Edwards
With My Body by Nikki Gemmell
Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart
The 100 Best Romance Novels by Jennifer Lawler

And one fascinating book, which I did not have time to mention this morning is The American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Dressmaking: how to hand sew Georgian gowns and wear them with style by Lauren Stowell and Abby Cox. The book is dedicated to “all the nameless dressmakers and milliners throughout history.”  What is the book about? The authors explain: “Within these pages we will take you on a dressmaking journey through the Georgian era, helping you to learn about, create and dress in four types of gowns and their accessories.” If you sew one of these gowns, you’ll have to stop by and show Mindy!

Listener Picks

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
You Had Me At Hello by Mhairi McFarlane

 

Books About Insects on The Point

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Who knew that this month’s book show topic on The Point with Mindy Todd would bring us so many listeners calling and emailing to tell us about their favorite books about insects?! Of course, every month I do the book show, and every month I prepare as if  not a single person will call us, as we want to be able to fill an hour of air time if no one calls. So, as usual, I had a pile of books about insects, and today’s co-booktalker, Dennis Minsky, had a pile of books about insects, never imagining that this would be the book topic for which, apparently, the listeners of the book show deeply care about! The titles were arriving so fast and furious that Mindy and I are not even sure that we have all the suggested titles written down! If we happened to have missed yours, do send us a note, and we will be happy to add your title to our list. 

Because there were so many titles that neither Dennis nor I had time to talk about, our lists this month include everything that we brought along even if we didn’t actually get a chance to say anything about the book. I did have a moment to mention the spectacular digital Biodiversity Heritage Library, and I recommend you all take a look! Thanks so much for all of your suggestions, and it looks like we clearly will need to do another show on insects sometime in the not too distant future!

Mindy’s Picks

The Smaller Majority: the hidden world of the animals that dominate the tropics by Piotr Nasrecki. (A shout out to the Edgartown Public Library, as the only library in CLAMS that owns this title! Do remember you can request books, using your CLAMS card (or whatever network your town belongs to) in order to request titles CLAMS does not own. Check out the Commonwealth Catalog, which you log into using your library card and your pin number, and they will send a book right to your library.)

Ant and Bee stories.

Dennis’s Picks

Journey to the Ants: a story of scientific exploration by Bret Holldobler and Edward Wilson
Honeybee Democracy by Thomas D. Seeley
The Mosquito: a human history of our deadliest predator by Timothy C. Winegard
The Last Butterflies: a scientist’s quest to save a rare and vanishing creature by Nick Haddad (Also only an Edgartown Public Library copy!)
Buzz Sting Bite: why we need insects by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson
Bugged: the Insects who rule the world and the people obsessed with them by David MacNeal
An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles by Arthur V. Evans and Charles L. Bellamy
The Infested Mind: why humans fear, loathe and love insects by Jeffrey A. Lockwood
Ant Encounters: interaction networks and colony behavior by Deborah M. Gordon

Jill’s Picks

The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden, illustrated by Garth Williams
Sex on Six Legs: lessons on life love & language from the insect world by Marlene Zuk
Edible: an adventure into the world of eating insects and the last great hope to save the planet by Daniella Martin
The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: how Maria Merian’s art changed science by Joyce Sidman
Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis (also a listener pick!)
Joyful Noise: poems for two voices by Paul Fleischman
The Collector by John Fowles
Nabokov’s Butterflies edited and annotated by Brian Boyd and Robert Michael Pyle
Thoreau’s Animals by Henry David Thoreau, eduted by Geoff Wisner (which includes lots of insects!) 
Angels & Insects by A.S. Byatt
Bug Music: how insects gave us rhythm and noise by David Rothenberg

Listener Picks

The Dancing Bees: an account of life and senses of the honey bee by Karl von Frisch
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
A Field Guide to the Ants of New England by Aaron M. Ellison
Ants of North America: a guide to the genera by Brian L. Fisher
For Love of Insects by Thomas Eisner
The Songs of Insects by Lang Elliot and Wil Hershberger
The City Under the Back Steps by Evelyn Sibley Lampman
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
Bringing Nature Home by Douglas W. Tallamy
The Fisherman and His Wife: a brand new version by Rosemary Wells and illustrated by Eleanor Hubbard
Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (which is a film)
The Cockroach by Ian McEwan

What Laura’s Reading

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This blog entry is brought to you by Laura Ford, otherwise known as “Miss Laura,” the FPL Youth Services Librarian.
 
On New Year’s day I read a couple of fascinating nonfiction books: The Superpower Field Guide: Moles and The Superpower Field Guide: Beavers, both written by Rachel Poliquin and illustrated by Nicholas John Frith. 
 
Most of the time I read fiction…there’s nothing like a good story to take me away. But sometimes I like a good nonfiction book, full of facts. I love learning new things. These two books are full of fascinating facts, strung together with bits of humor. 
 
Fact: Moles have two-way fur. You can’t rub a mole the wrong way like you can a cat.
 
Fact: Some moles live their whole lives underground. 
 
Fact: Someone has been folding back the corners of the mole book. Please don’t do that, it’s not good for the books! You can pick up a free bookmark at the circulation desk every time you come to the library. 
 
Fact: Beavers have orange teeth. 
 
Fact: Beavers have fur lined lips.
 
Fact: The biggest beaver dam on record is visible from space! (There was some push back on this fact when I announced it to my family. I did a little poking around and found that the fact was corroborated by a few random articles i found on the internet, but that wasn’t good enough of course. So I looked it up in our Gale Power search database, and found it in The National Geographic for Kids magazine, cited here: Kiffel-Alcheh, Jamie. “Beaver dam visible from space.” National Geographic Kids, Dec. 2010, p. 11. Gale In Context: Science,. Accessed 1 Jan. 2020.) 
 
Both of these books have quizzes and a puzzle or drawing page in the middle. Please follow the author’s suggestion and “If this is a library book, DO NOT DRAW ON THIS PAGE! Your librarian isn’t going to like that. Not one bit.” <-True!!
 
Moles and Beavers are part of a four book series. Ostriches was published this year, and there is one copy available in CLAMS (and we’re ordering another one!) Eels will be published in June 2020, and it’s already on the purchase list. 
 
When I come across a book that I like, I often look the author up in the catalog to see if they have written any other titles. Poliquin has also a book called Beastly Puzzles : a brain-boggling animal guessing game that I have put on hold to look at. And just from looking at the entry in the CLAMS catalog, I’m interested in the illustrator, Byron Eggenschwiler. Oddly enough, Eggenschwiler also illustrated Operatic by Kyo Maclear. Which just happens to be sitting in my To Be Read pile, right next to me. 
 
Have I mentioned that I love books?

Plays on The Point

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Today on The Point with Mindy Todd, Jill Erickson and Nelson Ritschel, humanities professor at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, talked about plays to read by yourself or to read aloud with your Thanksgiving company! If you missed the show, you can always listen online. Thanks to those of you that called in, and you can always add your choices to this list by leaving us a comment. I highly recommend your reading two great articles about the joy of reading plays. One is by Dan Kois, where he talks of the deep and unique pleasure of reading plays, and the other is an article by Dwight Garner, “Submitting to a Play’s Spell, Without the Stage.”

Nelson’s Picks

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman
Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill

Not enough time for:
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
The Price by Arthur Miller

Jill’s Picks

The Gabriels: election year in the life of one family by Richard Nelson
Red by John Logan
Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein by Marty Martin
The Clean House and other plays by Sarah Ruhl
100 Essays I Don’t Have Time To Write: on umbrellas and sword fights, parades and dogs, fire alarms, children, and theater by Sarah Ruhl
The Flick by Annie Baker

Not enough time for:
The White Card by Clauria Rankine
Betrayal by Harold Pinter

Listener Picks

Shirley Valentine by Willy Russell
The Zoo Story by Edward Albee