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:

Himself by Jess Kidd: Having been abandoned at an orphanage as a baby, Mahony assumed all his life that his mother wanted nothing to do with him. That is, until one night in 1976 while drinking a pint at a Dublin pub, he receives an anonymous note implying that she may have been forced to give him up. Determined to find out what really happened, Mahony embarks on a pilgrimage back to his hometown, the rural village of Mulderrig. Neither he nor Mulderrig can possibly prepare for what’s in store.  From the moment he arrives, Mahony’s presence completely changes the village.  The real and the fantastic are blurred as eager books fly and chatty ghosts rise from their graves with secrets to tell, and local preacher Father Quinn will do anything to get rid of the slippery young man who is threatening the moral purity of his parish.
From our Staff: This book is indefinable in the best of ways: it’s part murder mystery, part ghost story, with a love story and some small-town shenanigans built in for good measure.  There’s literally something here for everyone, and the storytelling is pure magic.

From the Teen Room:

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness: Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him — something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn’t she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd’s gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is.
From Our Staff: It’s an incredible beginning to a very exciting series. Honestly the world building is incredible and immersive to the point that you feel part of the story. I also think it’s an important book to read because it has a lot of parallels to today’s political climate.

From the Upstairs Offices:

The Library at the Edge of the World by Felicity Hayes-McCoy: As she drives her mobile library van between villages of Ireland’s West Coast, Hanna Casey tries not to think about a lot of things. Like the sophisticated lifestyle she abandoned after finding her English barrister husband in bed with another woman. Or that she’s back in Lissbeg, the rural Irish town she walked away from in her teens, living in the back bedroom of her overbearing mother’s retirement bungalow. Or, worse yet, her nagging fear that, as the local librarian and a prominent figure in the community, her failed marriage and ignominious return have made her a focus of gossip. With her teenage daughter, Jazz, off traveling the world and her relationship with her own mother growing increasingly tense, Hanna is determined to reclaim her independence by restoring a derelict cottage left to her by her great-aunt. But when the threatened closure of the Lissbeg Library puts her personal plans in jeopardy, Hanna finds herself leading a battle to restore the heart and soul of the Finfarran Peninsula’s fragmented community. And she’s about to discover that the neighbors she’d always kept at a distance have come to mean more to her than she ever could have imagined.
From Our Staff:  The audio book recording of this novel is terrific, as well, so fans of either format will be able to savor this story!

Let the Great World Spin by Collum McCann: In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground.  In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary: Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth.  Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the “artistic crime of the century.”

Until next week, beloved patrons–happy summer reading!

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!

From Circulation:

Mr. g by Alan Lightman: Once before time existed, Mr g woke up from a nap and decided to create the universe. In the shimmering Void, where he lives with his Aunt Penelope and Uncle Deva, he creates time, space, and matter. Soon follow stars, planets, animate matter, consciousness,and intelligent beings with moral dilemmas. But the creation of space and time has unintended consequences, including the arrival of Belhor, a clever and devious rival. Belhor delights in needling Mr g, demanding explanations for the inexplicable, offering his own opinions on the fledgling universes, and maintaining the necessity of evil. As Mr g’s favorite universe grows, he discovers how an act of creation can change everything in the world—including the creator himself.  This is a book that eschews traditional creation stories and religious dogma, instead choosing to marvel at the wonders around us, and the stunning beauty of even chaos itself.
From our Staff: I am halfway through “Mr. g” and I can already tell this is going to be one of my favorite books of all time. This was the one I sent Mo’s way and they have been bugging me to read it ever since. I’ve never read read a piece fiction that spoke so beautifully about physics and nature.

From the Upstairs Offices: 

Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich: Set on and around a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation,Louise Erdrich’s first novel tells an epic story of the intertwined fates of two families: the Kashpaws and the Lamartines.  Told in a number of real, empathetic voices, this is a book where black humor mingles with magic, injustice bleeds into betrayal, and bonds of love and family marry the elements into a tightly woven whole that pulses with the drama of life.  This specific edition has been updated by Erdrich herself.  As she notes, “I have worked over a few small sections that were added in 1995, but the biggest change is this: I have deleted one of the chapters (“Lyman’s Luck”) added in the 1995 expanded edition, and moved another (“The Tomahawk Factory”) to the P.S. section at the back of the book”–a fascinating opportunity for fans of the book to enjoy it anwew!

From the Children’s Room: 

The Milk Lady of Bangalore: An Unexpected Adventure by Shoba Narayan:  When Shoba Narayan—who has just returned to India with her husband and two daughters after years in the United States—asks whether said cow might bless her apartment next, it is the beginning of a beautiful friendship between our author and Sarala, who also sells fresh milk right across the street from that thoroughly modern apartment building. The two women connect over not only cows but also family, food, and life. When Shoba agrees to buy Sarala a new cow, they set off looking for just the right heifer, and what was at first a simple economic transaction becomes something much deeper, though never without a hint of slapstick.
From our Staff:This is great for a bit of summer escapism. Narayan moved back to her native India and found an unexpected acquaintance in a woman who sells fresh milk and keeps cows. This is a story about their friendship, but Narayan also examines Indian culture with humor and sensitivity as she parses what led these two women together but also to lead vastly different lives.

From Reference:

Beneath a Ruthless Sun : A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found by Gilbert King: In  December 1957, Blanche Bosanquet Knowles, the wealthy young wife of a citrus baron, was raped in her home while her husband was away.  She described her attacker as a “husky Negro” , and the sheriff, the infamous racist Willis McCall, did not hesitate to arrest every Black male in the area.  Within days, McCall turned his sights on Jesse Daniels, a gentle, mentally impaired white nineteen-year-old.  Jesse was incarcerated in the state hospital for the insane, locked away without trial.  But crusading journalist Mabel Norris Reese refused to stop questioning over the case and its baffling, unjust outcome. Who was protecting whom, or what? She pursued the story for years, chasing down leads, hitting dead ends, winning unlikely allies. Bit by bit, the unspeakable truths behind a conspiracy that shocked a community into silence begin to surface.
From our Staff: King does an impressive job creating a world in this book, discussing all the characters, relationships, secrets, and prejudices that shaped this world.  As a result, readers can’t help but feel both infuriated and utterly heartsore over the crimes that ruined Jesse Daniels’ life–and the lives of so many other Black men and women, as well. The parallels and connections to our own historic moment are chilling, as well.

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!

From the Reference Desk:

The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson: On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London’s Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History   g. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins—some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin’s, Alfred Russel Wallace, who’d risked everything to gather them—and escaped into the darkness.  Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins?
From our staff: This is a fascinating book about the lengths people will go to for their passions and obsessions.  It’s also a book about privilege and power, and how much damage people with both can inflict.  It’s also a really fun look into what I would describe as a very quirky hobby (19th century salmon fly-tying).  If you have a chance to listen to Macleod Andrews’ narration, the audiobook is sensational!

From the Circulation Desk: 

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness: Kabi Nagata’s emotional auto-biography is an honest and heartfelt look at one young woman’s exploration of her sexuality, mental well-being, and growing up in our modern age. Told using expressive artwork that invokes both laughter and tears, this moving and highly entertaining single volume depicts not only the artist’s burgeoning sexuality, but many other personal aspects of her life.  Nagata created the work when a lack of jobs in manga led to her writing down her own life story–and we are very, very glad she did.
From our staff: Regardless of how you may find the title, this book is not titillating. If anything, it painfully and sharply documents the author’s experiences with severe anxiety and depression.

From the Upstairs Offices:

Behind Her Eyes: Sarah Pinborough’s latest novel features Louise, a single mom, a secretary, stuck in a modern-day rut. On a rare night out, she meets a man in a bar and sparks fly. Though he leaves after they kiss, she’s thrilled she finally connected with someone. When Louise arrives at work on Monday, she meets her new boss, David. The man from the bar. The very married man from the bar…who says the kiss was a terrible mistake, but who still can’t keep his eyes off Louise.  And then Louise bumps into Adele, who’s new to town and in need of a friend. But she also just happens to be married to David. And if you think you know where this story is going, think again, because Behind Her Eyes is like no other book you’ve read before.
From our staff:  This is a book with an ending that you’ll never see coming…in fact, you might have to read the book twice to see the trick that Pinborough is pulling off here!

Phantom Thread: Set in the glamour of the 1950’s post-war London, renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) are at the center of the British fashion, dressing royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites, debutants and dames with the distinct style of The House of Woodcock. Women come and go through Woodcock’s life until he comes across a young, strong-willed woman, Alma (Vicky Krieps), who soon becomes a fixture in his life as his muse and lover. Once controlled and planned, he finds his carefully tailored life disrupted by the scariest curse of all…love. And so begins a Gothic Romance of twists, turns and power struggles that is both wonderfully, subversively humorous, as well as sensual and compelling!

Happy Summer, Beloved Patrons–and Happy Reading!

We truly enjoyed our series featuring some of the Peabody Library Staff’s Summer Reading Selections–so much so that recommendations are still coming in!  So, while there are still a few days of summer left (officially), we thought we’d bring you another list of books personally recommended by our staff!

We are a staff of diverse reading/listening/viewing habits, which makes these posts so much fun.  There is such a wide range of books and media that our staff enjoy that there is bound to be something in here to help make your summer that much more entertaining!  And so, without further ado, here is our fifth round of Staff Selections:

From the Upstairs Offices:

Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake by Sarah Maclean