Every year, we at the Free For All ask the Peabody Library staff about the books, films, and music recordings that they would like to recommend to you for your summer reading/viewing/listening pleasure, and every year, we are delighted with the variety, the diversity, and the genuinely excellent recommendations that we receive. We will be offering suggestions over the course of the summer, beloved patrons, in the hopes of helping you find a new favorite story to savor over the coming summer months. Feel free to share your favorites with us, as well! As our public services desk model has changed, you’ll note the headings on our recommendations has changed, as well. Please feel free to speak with any Library staff member about finding a book to brighten your summer.
From the Public Service Desk:
Wylding Hall: Elizabeth Hand’s short novel won last year’s Shirley Jackson award in that category, and for good reason–this is a weird, haunting, and unsettling story about memory, loss, and a disappearance that can’t be explained. When the young members of a British acid-folk band are compelled by their manager to record their unique music, they hole up at Wylding Hall, an ancient country house with dark secrets. There they create the album that will make their reputation, but at a terrifying cost: Julian Blake, the group’s lead singer, disappears within the mansion and is never seen or heard from again. Now, years later, the surviving musicians, along with their friends and lovers—including a psychic, a photographer, and the band’s manager—meet with a young documentary filmmaker to tell their own versions of what happened that summer. But whose story is true? And what really happened to Julian Blake?
From Our Staff: This book defied all my expectations from the first page in the most beautiful way. It’s weird, yes, but it’s a wonderfully human story that I find myself remembering months after I returned it to the library!
Flat Broke With Two Goats: A Memoir: Jennifer McGaha never expected to own a goat named Merle. Or to be setting Merle up on dates and naming his doeling Merlene. She didn’t expect to be buying organic yogurt for her chickens. She never thought she would be pulling camouflage carpet off her ceiling or rescuing opossums from her barn and calling it “date night.” Most importantly, Jennifer never thought she would only have $4.57 in her bank account. When Jennifer discovered that she and her husband owed back taxes—a lot of back taxes—her world changed. Now desperate to save money, they foreclosed on their beloved suburban home and moved their family to a one-hundred-year-old cabin in a North Carolina holler. Soon enough, Jennifer’s life began to more closely resemble her Appalachian ancestors than her upper-middle-class upbringing. But what started as a last-ditch effort to settle debts became a journey that revealed both the joys and challenges of living close to the land. This is a hilarious, touching novel, not only about the homesteading movement, but about discovering the true meaning of home.
From the Upstairs Offices:
The Lacuna: Barbara Kingsolver’s books are always ambitious in their scope and depth, and this book is no exception. Spanning the the North American continent and its history, this is a moving insightful study of one man and the history of the world around him. Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd has never known a real sense of home. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence. Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America’s hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. But as he journey back and forth from North to South, Harrison finds the layers of his life torn apart, rather than mended, making for a book that is both heart-wrenching and historically insightful.
Lady Bird: One of the best-reviewed films of 2017, this look into one young woman’s senior year at a Catholic high school in Northern California, and her quest for her own identity was also among the highest-rated films on the site Rotten Tomatoes. Christine ”Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Roman) fights against but is exactly like her wildly loving, deeply opinionated and strong-willed mom (Laurie Metcalf), a nurse working tirelessly to keep her family afloat after Lady Bird’s father (Tracy Letters) loses his job. The result is an affecting look at the relationships that shape us, the beliefs that define us, and the unmatched beauty of a place called home.
The Apartment: A classic comedy, Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray are superb in this tale of love and ambition in the world of big business that went on to garner a Best Picture Oscar. C.C. ”Bud” Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a lowly Manhattan office drone with a lucrative sideline in renting out his apartment to adulterous company bosses and their mistresses. When Bud enters into a similar arrangement the firm’s personnel director, J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), his career prospects begin to look up… and up. But when he discovers that Sheldrake’s mistress is Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), the girl of his dreams, he finds himself forced to choose between his career and the woman he loves. Here’s another multi-Academy-Award-winning film, sure to keep your summer full of laughs!
Until next week, beloved patrons, happy summer!