Hi everyone, here are our five suggested reads of the week!
Weekly Suggested Reading Five postings are published on Wednesdays.
And the next Suggested Reading posting will be published on Wednesday, September 25, 2024.
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Entitlement: A Novel by Rumaan Alam
Thirtysomething Brooke Orr is hoping for a career reboot as program coordinator for the Asher and Carol Jaffee Foundation. A billionaire many times over, Asher wants to give away his money before he dies and Brooke’s job is to help find causes worthy of financial support. Brooke decides that a local New York City children’s art nonprofit is deserving of charity, even if its Black owner remains unconvinced. When her best friend and younger brother begin to settle into comfortable lives, Brooke wonders: Can Asher Jaffee rescue her too, while he’s at it? After all, as one character questions, “what we were taught–get a job, work hard, save, be prudent, buy a little place of your own, contribute to the goddamn economy, do the thing that makes the world go round–is that even possible for us?” Alam follows his best-selling Leave the World Behind (2021) with this visceral and absolutely mesmerizing novel of power plays and capitalism. He gives a shout-out to Sylvia Plath, who once said, “How we need that security. How we need another soul to cling to.”” Brooke, however, doesn’t quite buy that argument. She knows we can find security through other paths, even if we risk flying too close to the sun. – Booklist Review
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Good Lookin’ Cookin’: A Year of Meals – A Lifetime of Family, Friends, and Food [A Cookbook] by Dolly Parton
Legendary singer-songwriter Parton (Behind the Seams) teams up with her sister, debut author George, for this cheery guide to entertaining. The sisters provide 12 themed menus, each devoted to one month of the year, with recipes for drinks, appetizers, mains, sides, and desserts. July’s menu, inspired by Fourth of July cookouts, starts with sweet tea and hot wing dip with celery sticks, features barbecue spare ribs as the main, includes grilled corn with spicy mayo and layered salad as the sides, and ends with apple pie with crumb topping. Throughout, the authors share endearing anecdotes (“This is one of Dolly’s favorite dishes, so I usually make it for her birthday,” George writes of the rustic chicken and dumplings) and family recipes, including their mother’s banana pudding and their sister Willadeene’s witches’ brew cider. Instructions are uncomplicated, with prep times and cook times listed to help readers plan ahead and sidebars with handy tips: for the watermelon fruit salad, they suggest adding the dressing (made of citrus, herbs, and champagne) to individual servings instead of the entire bowl to help leftovers last longer. This tasty and heartfelt outing is a gift for Parton’s fans. – Publishers Weekly Review
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I Dreamed of Falling: A Novel by Julia Dahl
After suffering severe postpartum depression, yoga instructor Ashley Lillian has just gotten back on her feet when she’s found dead, plunging her already-dysfunctional family into a maelstrom of grief, guilt, and recriminations, in this moving psychological thriller from Dahl (The Missing Hours). As police in the tiny Hudson Valley town of Adamsville, N.Y., investigate how Ashley’s body ended up on the slope below the home where she’d been partying with her estranged ex-lover, Bella Abernathy, Ashley’s current partner, Roman Grady—the sole reporter for the local newspaper—can’t help but start asking questions of his own. Roman, who spent the fateful night in Manhattan, wonders when Ashley reconnected with Bella, what happened to her phone, and what accounts for a bizarre discrepancy in the cash-strapped couple’s finances. As Roman takes a fresh look at the people in his orbit—including his domineering mother, Tara, with whom he and Ashley had been living—he begins to fear he may not have known them at all. Dahl’s gift for suspense will keep readers flipping pages, but in the end, it’s her finely wrought characters they’ll remember. It’s an impressive leap forward from the author’s previous, more plot-driven efforts.
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The Library Thief: A Novel by Kuchenga Shenjé
In Victorian London, Florence Granger is the daughter of a bookbinder and a bookbinder herself. After spending years learning the trade at her father’s feet, she is sent to the house of Lord Francis Belfield, whose library is in a state of extraordinary disrepair. Upon her arrival, Florence’s presence is rejected and then reluctantly accepted. What Lord Belfield doesn’t know is that Florence is Jamaican, passing as a white woman, and that the secrets hidden in his library will change this bookbinder’s life and viewpoint permanently. Fans of Kate Morton’s books and Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale (2006) will devour this novel easily. What makes the book unique, however, is the shifting perspective of the main character, who walks a thin line as a woman trying to build a life for herself despite and because of her hidden identity. In her debut novel, The Library Thief: A Novel by Kuchenga Shenjé rightfully joins a distinguished line of authors who love books and secrets and know exactly how to combine the two.
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A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg
Attenberg sets up her entertaining and empathic eighth work of fiction around a Scrabble board in the Chicago suburbs in 1971. “”This whole family was nervous.”” Teenage sisters Nancy and Shelly Cohen are formidable players, but their mom, Frieda, plans to win and knows Shelly is her only competition. Dad Rudy just wants everyone to have fun. Then it’s 1976 and Rudy, after already surviving so much, including the Holocaust, is gone from cancer. With Frieda’s drinking out of control and Nancy away at college, Shelly can’t wait to escape, too, and with her brain it won’t be a problem. The novel advances like this, years at a time, as Nancy gets pregnant and marries her college boyfriend; Shelly gets a Seattle tech job working on newfangled cellular phones; and Frieda moves to Miami with a friend. Attenberg (All This Could Be Yours, 2019) knows how to imperil her characters and love them at the same time. Quite a lot happens–careers begin and flourish, love affairs start and end, addictions meet their match–and, as time ticks up to the late aughts, those little phones start to change everything. But much remains the same, too, and readers will happily sit with these women through it all. – Starred Booklist Review
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Happy reading!
Linda Reimer, SSCL
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Note: Book summaries are from the respective publishers unless otherwise specified.
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Information on the three library catalogs
The Digital Catalog: https://stls.overdrive.com/
The Digital Catalog, is an online catalog containing eBooks, eAudiobooks, and digital magazines. You can use your library card and checkout content on a PC; you can also use the companion app, Libby, to access titles on your mobile devices; so you can enjoy eBooks and eAudiobooks on the go!
All card holders of all Southern Tier Library System member libraries can check out items from the Digital Catalog.
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Hoopla Catalog: https://www.hoopladigital.com/
The Hoopla Catalog features on demand checkouts of eBooks, eAudiobooks, comic books, albums, movies and TV shows. Patron check out limit is 10 items per month.
Hoopla is a Southeast Steuben County Library service available to all Southeast Steuben County Library card holders.
The Hoopla companion app, also called Hoopla is available for mobile devices, smart TVs & media streaming players.
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StarCat: The catalog of physical/traditional library materials: https://starcat.stls.org
Card holders of all Southern Tier Library System member libraries can access StarCat to search for and request materials available at libraries through out the Southern Tier Library System.
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Have questions about how to access Internet based content (i.e. eBooks, eAudios)? Feel free to drop by the Reference Desk or call the library and we will assist you! The library’s telephone number is: 607-936-3713.
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Tech & Book Talk is a Southeast Steuben County Library blog.
Tech & Book Talk at SSCL 