Hi everyone, here are our five suggested reads of the week; we are still running with a books that complement fall season; so we’ve got five recommended reads that fall within that theme.
–
–
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson
In this latest work, best-selling author Isaacson (Steve Jobs) takes a close look at how scientific collaboration actually happens in the modern age, in particular the tension between academic institutions and industry. The author does an admirable job of explaining science in accessible terms and also focusing on the human side of the story. Throughout the work, he sketches quick portraits of the dozens of researchers, scientists, and business people involved with CRISPR from the beginning. Also, given Jennifer Doudna’s recent Nobel Prize win for CRISPR, readers will doubtless want to hear more about her life and the attribution controversy that often attends such awards. One person who reappears frequently is molecular biologist James Watson. Isaacson seems determined to create a connection between Doudna and Watson, but, although Dounda read The Double Helix as a child and met Watson several times, their personalities and attitudes toward genetic manipulation could not be more different. Color photographs of all the key players are extremely helpful and break up the text into bite-sized pieces.
VERDICT: Similar to his previous works, Isaacson’s latest is another absorbing story of scientific discovery. The final section on the use of CRISPR to combat COVID-19 will only widen the appeal. — Library Journal Review
–
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
Abandoned by her wanderlusting husband, stoic Pearl raised her three children on her own. Now grown, the siblings are inextricably linked by their memories—some painful—which hold them together despite their differences.
Hardened by life’s disappointments, wealthy, charismatic Cody has turned cruel and envious. Thrice-married Jenny is errant and passionate. And Ezra, the flawed saint of the family, who stayed at home to look after his mother, runs a restaurant where he cooks what other people are homesick for, stubbornly yearning for the perfect family he never had.
Now gathered during a time of loss, they will reluctantly unlock the shared secrets of their past and discover if what binds them together is stronger than what tears them apart.
–
The Eighth Detective by Alex Paves
This inventive debut sees editor Julia Hart visit a reclusive author, mathematician Grant McAllister, whose self-published work, The White Murders, she hopes to release. Grant is also the author of a mathematical paper in which he explains the rules of whodunits?there must be a victim or victims, one or more suspects, one or more detectives, etc. The seven stories in the book illustrate permutations made possible by changing the mix of these character types. There’s a problem, however: the stories include inconsistencies, and Hart begins to notice that they also feature allusions to an infamous real-life case called the White Murder. As the tales within a tale unfold, readers are treated to wonderful mini-mysteries that are interspersed with the author and editor’s conversations and followed by Hart’s ingenious sleuthing into Grant’s background and the truth behind The White Murders. Pavesi’s language immerses readers in mid-twentieth-century England and in the struggles, cruelties, and oddities of his multitude of carefully portrayed characters. Give this atmospheric puzzle to fans of short stories and of the American Mystery Classics series. –Booklist
–
The Great Mistake: A Novel by Jonathan Lee
The ‘Father of Greater New York’ is dead. Shot outside his Park Avenue mansion in the year of our Lord, 1903. In the hour of his death, will the truth of his life finally break free?
Born to a struggling farming family in 1820, Andrew Haswell Green was a self-made man who reshaped Manhattan, built Central Park and turned New York into a modern metropolis. Now, at eighty-three, when he thought the world could hold no more surprises, he is murdered. As the detective assigned to the case traces his ghost across the city, other spectres appear: a wealthy courtesan; a broken-hearted man in a bowler hat; and an ambitious politician, Samuel, whose lifelong friendship was a source of joy and frustration
In a life of industry and restraint, where is the space for love?
–
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award
A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother.
The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town “chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere.”
Ruth and Lucille’s struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience.
–
Happy reading!
Linda Reimer, SSCL
–
Note: Book summaries are from the respective publishers unless otherwise specified.
–
Information on the four library catalogs
The Digital Catalog aka Libby: 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.
–
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.
–
Kanopy Catalog: https://www.kanopy.com/en
The Kanopy Catalog features thousands of streaming videos available on demand.
The Kanopy Catalog is available for all Southern Tier Library System member library card holders, including all Southeast Steuben County Library card holders!
You can access the Kanopy Catalog through a web browser, or download the app to your phone, tablet or media streaming player (i.e. Roku, Google or Fire TV).
–
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.
–
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.
–
Tech & Book Talk is a Southeast Steuben County Library blog.
