Category: Reading

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

Posted on by Jessica O'Connor

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month where we recognize and celebrate the heritage and cultures of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and their contributions and influences on the United States and its history.  For more information and online events, lectures, exhibits, collections, videos and images, please visit https://asianpacificheritage.gov/

In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the Falmouth Public Library has put together a reading list of 2020 and 2021 books for all ages that are available from the library.

Kids:

A Girl Like Me by Angela Johnson

Amy Wu and the Patchwork Dragon by Kat Zhang

Finish the Fight!: the Brave and Revolutionary Women who Fought for the Right to Vote written by the Staff of The New York Times

Grandpa Grumps by Katrina Moore

Stand Up, Yumi Chung! by Jessica Kim

Watercress by Andrea Wang

When you Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller

Who Is Kamala Harris? by Kirsten Anderson

Yasmin the Writer by Saadia Faruqi

Your Name is a Song by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow 

Teens:

Almost American Girl : an Illustrated Memoir by Robin Ha

Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen

Super Fake Love Song by David Yoon

Adults:

Crying in H Mart : a Memoir by Michelle Zauner

Eat a Peach : a Memoir by David Chang with Gabe Ulla

Facing the Mountain : a True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II by Daniel James Brown

Heart of Fire: an Immigrant Daughter’s Story by Mazie K. Hirono

How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang

Inheritors by Asako Serizawa

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

Last Tang Standing by Lauren Ho

Made in China : a Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America’s Cheap Goods by Amelia Pang

Minor feelings : an Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong

RomeAntically Challenged by Marina Adair

Sex and Vanity : a Novel by Kevin Kwan

Sigh, Gone : a Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit in by Phuc Tran

Sparks Like Stars: a Novel by Nadia Hashimi

Speak, Okinawa : a Memoir by Elizabeth Miki

Things We Lost to the Water: a Novel by Eric Nguyen

This is One Way to Dance : Essays by Sejal Shah

Tower of Skulls : a History of the Asia-Pacific War, July 1937-May 1942 by Richard B. Frank

The Scientist and the Spy : a True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage by Mara Hvistendahl

The Son of Good Fortune: a Novel by Lysley Tenorio

Women’s Liberation! : Feminist Writings that Inspired a Revolution & Still Can edited by Alix Kates Shulman and Honor Moore

 

The Book Bike Rides Again

Posted on by Jessica O'Connor

The Falmouth Public Library Book Bike is hitting the road once again for its 2021 touring season!  Come check out the Book Bike on its first ride, Monday, May 17th from 10:30 to 11:00 am when it will be at the Choate Lane Apartments.  

All members of the community are invited to stop by. You can sign up for a library card, pick up free books and DVDs, and meet FPL staff.  We are looking forward to seeing you and spreading our love of the Library throughout town! 

Please note all visits are weather permitting:

Choate Apartments, Choate Ln: 10:30-11:00 am on May 17, July 12, September 13

Cape Cod Apartments, 62 Locust St: 10:30-11:00 am on June 21, August 16, September 27

Dillingham Place, 110 Dillingham Rd: 10:30-10:50 am on June 4, July 16, August 13, September 10

Harborview Apartments, 115 Scranton Ave: 10:30-11:00 am on June 7, August 2

Rose Morin Apartments, Rose Morin Ln: 11:00-11:20 am on June 4, July 16, August 13, September 10

Salt Sea Apartments, Salt Sea Ln: 10:30-11:00 am on May 24, July 19, September 20

Surf Drive Beach Storytime: 4:45-5:15 pm on July 8, July 15. July 22. July 29, August 5, August 12, August 19, August 26

For the most up to date information on the Book Bike and for additional visits, visit our Book Bike webpage by clicking here and by following @falmouthbookbike on instagram.

 

New Mystery Book Group Meets May 19th

Posted on by Library User

Mysteries of all kinds are an extremely popular fiction genre at the Falmouth Public Library and we have a new book group dedicated reading and talking solely about these stories. The first meeting of the group is Wednesday, May 19 from 4:30-5:30 on Zoom. Held as a three-part series with a new theme each series, the group will meet 9 times per year. The book group will remain a virtual book group hosted by Jennifer Woodward, FPL’s Assistant Director.

Our first theme is “Firsts & Lasts” and for each meeting we will read both (yes, both) the first and last books in a completed series.

On May 19th, we’ll read Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot series. The first is The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1921) and the last is Curtain (1975). Both books take place in the same county house and joins together Hercule Poirot with his sidekick Captain Arthur Hastings to solve the murder of the days. Curtain was written 30 years before its publication during World War II and saved in a vault. Intended by Agatha Christie to be published after her death, but published shortly before it, the title – Curtain – hints at the author’s intentions.  Please be sure to register to receive a Zoom link.

On June 9th, we’ll read Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon Series. The first is Track of the Cat (1993) and the last is Boar Island (2016).  

On July 14th, we’ll read Philip R. Craig’s Martha’s Vineyard Mysteries. The first is A Beautiful Place to Die (1989) and the last is Vineyard Chill (2008).

Upcoming Themes:
Beyond the Bridge: Set in distinctive locales not on Cape Cod
2021: September 8, October 13 & November 10

Short Stories: Short stories by one or more authors collected in one book.
2022: January 12, February 9 & March 9

Norton Juster June 2, 1929-March 8 2021

Posted on by Library User
Some Thoughts From Our Children’s Librarian, Laura Ford, on Norton Juster.
 
Norton Juster, most famous for his book The Phantom Tollbooth, died last week. Which is, of course, a sad thing. He was a classic figure in Children’s Literature, and The Phantom Tollbooth is a classic book. 
 
Here’s where I make a big confession … I didn’t read The Phantom Tollbooth as a child. It was published in 1961, which certainly made it readily available during my childhood, I just never came across it. And ok, when I did come across it, it seemed like it involved math, which I’m embarrassed to say was NOT my thing, so I didn’t pick it up. Fast forward a few years, and I became a Children’s Librarian. And not just a Children’s Librarian, but a Children’s Librarian in FALMOUTH. There’s a certain amount of responsibility to being a Children’s Librarian in Falmouth. People here know their books. And they deserve a librarian who’s read the classics. So believe you me, I read The Phantom Tollbooth, and plenty of other classics I’d missed along the way. 
 
It’s a story about a boy named Milo who is bored, bored, bored. (Sound familiar?) Milo is so bored that when a large package appears out of nowhere in his bedroom, he’s barely interested enough to open it, and when it reveals a toll booth, he hops in his boy-sized toy car and drives on through, only because he hasn’t got anything better to do. And drives on into history. 
 
Does everyone have to read The Phantom Tollbooth? Certainly not. But at at almost 5 million copies sold since it was first published (and one would have to assume that some of those copies are in a library and were read more than once,) it certainly is worth a try. If sales numbers don’t impress you, try it because it has won a slew of awards, including the Parent’s Choice Book Award and the  MSRI/CBC Mathical Books for Kids from Tots to Teens. (See? That award, right there, would’ve kept me away from it. But I digress.) 
 
Here are a few quotes, because the PT is infinitely quotable:
 
“You can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and not get wet.”
 
“It’s not just learning things that’s important. It’s learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things at all that matters.”
 
“I am the Terrible Trivium, demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, ogre of wasted effort, and monster of habit.”
The Humbug dropped his needle and stared in disbelief while Milo and Tock began to back away slowly.
“Don’t try to leave,” he ordered, with a menacing sweep of his arm, “for there’s so very much to do, and you still have over eight hundred years to go on the first job.”
“But why do only unimportant things?” asked Milo, who suddenly remembered how much time he spent each day doing them.
“Think of all the trouble it saves,” the man explained, and his face looked as if he’d be grinning an evil grin – if he could grin at all. “If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you’ll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won’t have the time. For there’s always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing, and if it weren’t for that dreadful magic staff, you’d never know how much time you were wasting.”
 
Still not sure it’s for you (and/or your kids?) Try it in audio. It’s available as a book on cd AND in downloadable audio. (You will have to put it on hold though. It has come to the attention of scores of people now that the author has passed.) It’s available in an annotated version, and in Spanish. And listen, if it just doesn’t appeal to you, I understand. No hard feelings. There other roads into Norton Juster’s work. Try The Hello, Goodbye Window, illustrated by Chris Raschka, or The Odious Ogre, illustrated by Jules Feiffer (who just so happens to be the illustrator of a certain book about a tollbooth…) My favorite of Juster’s picture books is Neville, illustrated by G. Brian Karas. It’s fabulous to read aloud to a group of kids, given that the characters spend quite a bit of time yelling…..”Neville!” There’s a plot twist on the last page, which many kids figure out way ahead of time. I LOVE it when kids figure out the plot twist ahead of time. 
 
[P.S. From the Reference Department … don’t miss The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth. As The Horn Book Magazine wrote: “If ever there were a twentieth-century children’s book that deserved an annotated edition, it’s Juster and Feiffer’s masterpiece.”]

Marvel Movies and TV Series Are Just Comics Persevering

Posted on by Library User
Marvel Movies and TV Series Are Just Comics Persevering 
 
So now that you’ve watched every episode of ‘WandaVision’ (twice!), how are you gonna keep the manic magic inside you alive?
Good news! Your CLAMS card entitles you to TWO different Scarlet Witch comic book series for immediate reading on your computer, phone or tablet.
 
A nice place to start might be Steve Englehart, Richard Howell and Al Milgrom’s classic 1980s series, ‘Vision and the Scarlet Witch: A Year In The Life’. This series covers plotlines and characters that will be familiar to everyone who watched ‘WandaVision’, but it was done in such a completely different way that it will still feel fresh and exciting and offer new insights into what you just watched — and possibly hint at what may be coming in future Marvel/Disney+ releases!
 
If you’re curious as to the Scarlet Witch’s more recent comics appearances, check out James Robinson and Steve Dillon’s 15 issue ‘Scarlet Witch’ series. This series came out between 2015-2017, and sees Wanda traversing the globe on a mission to ‘fix’ Witchcraft. This series has one, long story arc, but it also works as a bunch of stand alone mini-adventures. Some are funny, some are sad, some are action-packed, others are creepy mysteries. Super stylish cover art, too!
 
Interested? Grab your CLAMS card, click this link to Hoopla and get reading!
 

Browse Our Collections

Posted on by Library User

We hear that you all miss being able to browse our shelves! To help everyone to scan through the last year’s acquisitions, click on our links below.  These links will be updated and refreshed as we learn more about what you would like to browse and through the seasons, and the links are dynamic and will show new titles as they are added to our collections.

Each link will take you to the CLAMS catalog and list the selections that are new to our shelves within the last year (2020). We’ve done the search for you, so each link will bring you to a selection of titles similar to browsing our new sections in our buildings.

Browse Adult Collections

Click on a link below to open the catalog and browse these collections.

Books

Movies, TV and Music

Browse Children’s Collections

Click on a link below to open the catalog and browse these collections.

Books

Browse Teen Collections

Click on a link below to open the catalog and browse these collections.

Black History Month

Posted on by Library User

Black History Month is always a great month to discover all sorts of authors you might have missed. Some of you may have already discovered on our web page our No Place for Hate reading list.

In spring of 2020, No Place for Hate-Falmouth and Eight Cousins Books generously donated a collection of 23 print books focused on diversity to the Main Library. The collection includes books for all ages. Books in this collection have a special identifying label on the spine and book plate. 

In the summer of 2020, the Falmouth Public Library Support Fund, generously donated additional children’s books to help expand our collection. The Support Fund’s donation included books at all three locations of the Falmouth Public Library.

Most recently, the Woods Hole Diversity Advisory/Black History Month Committees shared with us their suggestions of terrific books, television shows, and films that you might enjoy as we all celebrate Black History Month. The national theme this year for Black History Month is The Black Family: Representation, Identity, and Diversity.

Here are their book recommendations:

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (We also have a book club kit available, which comes with ten books.)
Born a Crime: stories from a South African childhood by Noah Trevor
The Warmth of Other Sons by Isabel Wilkerson
The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry; illustrated by Vashti Harrison
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
All Boys Aren’t Blue: a memoir-manifesto by George M. Johnson

We will miss seeing the annual Harambee in Woods Hole this year, but the Woods Hole Diversity Advisory Committee have created a virtual Harambee! They invite you to participate in their virtual Harambee either by trying one of the delicious recipes listed and sharing a photo of your meal, or submitting your own recipe and photo.  In addition there will be a series of virtual talks, all of which you can find here.

Falmouth Public Library Reading Challenge 2021

Posted on by Sue

Happy New Year!  If you are looking to get outside your literary comfort zone this year, join our reading challenge group on Facebook – “Falmouth Public Library Reading Challenge 2021”. 

We are encouraging people to read one book a month, each from a different category.  We hope the group will function as a loose book club – a place where people can recommend books to others and find their next read.  The category for January is “Autobiography, Biography, or Memoir”.  

(Visit the group by clicking here,  to see all 12 categories!) If you’re looking for a jumping off point, check our Facebook Group for recommendations from the staff.  If you’ve got one you’d like to share, visit our group and feel encouraged to post it!  This is a public group, and you certainly don’t have to read a book from each category to participate.  The goal is simply to create a space for readers to find books they might not otherwise have picked up, and to share highlights with each other.  

Crafty Books on The Point with Mindy Todd

Posted on by Library User

December 30, 2020

This morning on the monthly book show on The Point with Mindy Todd we had the pleasure of Kellie Porter, librarian at the Woods Hole Library, joining us to talk about books focusing on crafts. After a very difficult year, we thought some crafty books would inspire us to be more crafty in 2021 as a way to focus on something other than 2020! As written in Craftfulness: mend yourself by making things by Rosemary Davidson and Arzo Tahsin: “As  long as we are making and creatively fulfilled we are equipped to deal with all the rest that life throws at us.” In the photo attached to this blog, you will see Mindy’s Fa La La Felt bird, and my sixth grade puppet, both of which are now Christmas ornaments on my tree every year. My puppet, by the way, was Belle, who I was cast as in a sixth grade play reading (with puppets) of A Christmas Carol by Dickens. You’ll also see a WCAI mug which was made by Tessa Morgan of Flying Pig Pottery.

Below you will find a list of all the books we mentioned, and a few for which we did not have time. If we missed your favorite craft book, feel free to leave us a comment below.

Here is a link to the program on WCAI ‘s website so you can listen anytime.  https://www.capeandislands.org/post/books-crafts

Mindy’s Picks

Fa La La Felt by Amanda Carestio. Amanda’s follow-up to this was Heart-Felt Holidays

Not A Box by Antoinette Portis

Kellie’s Picks

Craeft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts by Alexander Langlands
The Foxfire Book edited with an introduction by Eliot Wigginton
51 Things to Make with Cardboard Tubes by Fiona Hayes
Paper Goods Projects by Jodi Levine
Playing with Books: The Art of Upcycling, Deconstructing, and Reimagining the Book by Jason Thompson
BIBLIOCraft: A Modern Crafter’s Guide to Using Library Resources to Jumpstart Creative Projects by Jessica Pigza
The Repurposed Library: 33 Craft Projects That Give Old Books New Life by Lisa Occhipinti
Foxtails, Ferns, & Fish Scales: A Handbook of Art and Nature Projects by Ada Graham

Magazines:

Quiltfolk
By Hand
Pompom Quarterly
Laine
Koel
Making Stories

No time for but they’re really great:

The Paper Hat Book by Alyn Carlson
Every Day’s a Holiday: Year-Round Crafting with Kids by Heidi Kenney
The Geometry of Hand-Sewing by Natalie Chanin
Knitalong: Celebrating the Tradition of Knitting Together by Larissa Brown and Martin John Brown
Socks Appeal: 16 Fun & Funky Friends Sewn from Socks by Brenna Maloney

Jill’s Picks

(You’ll notice that Kellie and I had lots of overlap!)

Cattastic Crafts by Mariko Ishikawa
Crafts By the Sea by Larissa Costello
Art and the Seafarer: a historical survey of the Arts and Crafts of Sailors and Shipwrights. General editor Hans Jürgen Hansen.
Cræft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts by Alexander Langlands
Book Art by Clare Youngs
BiblioCraft by Jessica Pigza
D.I.Y. Dollhouse by Alexia Henrio
Out of the Box by Jemma Westing
15 Minutes of Flame: a Nantucket Candle Maker Mystery by Christin Brecher
Craftfulness: mend yourself by making things by Rosemary Davidson and Arzu Tahsin

 



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!