Hi everyone, here are our five suggested reads of the week; this month our focus in on books that complement the Autumn reading season.
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The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
In this sweeping saga, Brown (Under a Flaming Sky; The Indifferent Stars Above) vividly relates how, in 1936, nine working-class rowers from the University of Washington captured gold at the Berlin Olympics. Mentored not just by their coach but by legendary boat-builder George Pocock, these athletes overcame the hopelessness common during the Great Depression by learning to trust themselves and one another, and by rowing with grace and power. The crew’s camaraderie and unmatched precision surpassed expectations, shocking the sporting world. Brown faithfully conveys rowing’s stoic persistence, passion, and pain. He captures how and why this team rowed in flawless harmony. The story’s depth comes from the memories that rower Joe Rantz shared with Brown shortly before his death as well as from Brown’s interviews with crewmates’ friends and family and their archives. In a brief epilog, Brown comments on the rowers’ post-Olympic accomplishments.
VERDICT Those who enjoy reading about Olympic history or amateur or collegiate sports will savor Brown’s superb book, much as they would enjoy David Halberstam’s The Amateurs: The Story of Four Young Men and Their Quest for an Olympic Gold Medal, which examined the 1984 single scull trials. –Starred Library Journal Review
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The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl
Renkl’s book of 52 short essays written in the style of religious breviaries is designed to cover a year. She focuses largely on the flora and fauna around her Tennessee home, where she encounters an owl pellet, only to discover it is merely discarded vacuum fluff. At times, she casts back to the natural world of her Alabama childhood, when she picked berries amidst the rattlesnakes. While full of memories, her essays also fixate on the present–the COVID era, and the political landscape in particular. Renkl recalls feeling overwhelmed by child-rearing while she also mourns her currently empty nest, making for her assertion that one can “”want two contrary things at once.”” Sprinkled liberally throughout are “”praise songs””–little sub-essays–one of which describes spying exquisite mole hands in a mound of coyote scat. These little extras, just like the epigrams at the beginning of each essay, pack an extra punch into this tidy volume billed as a “”literary devotional.”” Indeed, readers can return to these pages often, through the seasons of their own lives. — Booklist Review
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The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
On his forty-second birthday, poet Gay (Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, 2015) began a yearlong project to write, every day, about something that delighted him. The 100 of these “essayettes” shared here in chronological order?and which are most delightfully read that way?consider things as contained as a high five from a stranger and concepts as vast as existence itself. The longhand in which Gay first wrote these (one of the project’s rules) seems to uncurl on the typed page, in winding meanders and meaningful digressions that share a life-spanning spectrum of emotions and experiences. Gay discovers that his delights begin to compound and embed in one another. Stacking delights, saving up several to write about another day, is technically against the rules, but he does it anyway; and occasionally blowing off the project is its own delight. While Gay’s delights embrace the darkness of racism and death, en masse they share a profound capacity for joy and belief in humankind. This stunning self-portrait of a gardener, a teacher, and a keen observer of life is sure to inspire. –Booklist Review
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The Darkest Evening by Ann Cleeves
CWA Diamond Dagger Award winner Cleeves’s superb ninth novel featuring astute, irascible Det. Insp. Vera Stanhope (after 2017’s The Seagull) finds Vera driving home late one night through rural Northumberland in a blizzard when she comes upon a car that’s slewed off the road. The driver is gone, but Vera discovers a toddler strapped into a car seat. Soon after she transfers the child to her own car, she realizes that she’s close to Brockburn, the once grand family home of the Stanhopes, and decides to go there. She last visited the place with her father when she was 15, and remembers that “the family had been unfailingly polite. That branch of the clan used politeness as a weapon of mass destruction.” At Brockburn, the abandoned car’s driver, a young woman, is found murdered behind the house. Vera assembles her loyal, if at times exasperated, homicide team to investigate, and comes to realize that the “whole case… was about families, about what held them together and what ripped them apart.” This fair-play mystery brims with fully developed suspects and motives that are hidden in plain sight. Skillful misdirection masks the killer’s identity. This page-turner is must reading for fans as well as newcomers. — Starred Publishers Weekly Review
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The Drift by C. J. Tudor
FINALIST FOR THE ITW THRILLER AWARD • AN ESQUIRE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
Hannah awakens to carnage, all mangled metal and shattered glass. After she was evacuated from a secluded boarding school during a snowstorm, her coach careered off the road, trapping her with a handful of survivors. They’ll need to work together to escape—with their sanity and secrets intact.
Meg awakens to a gentle rocking. She’s in a cable car stranded high above snowy mountains, with five strangers and no memory of how they got on board. They are heading to a place known only as “The Retreat,” but as the temperature drops and tensions mount, Meg realizes they may not all make it there alive.
Carter is gazing out the window of an isolated ski chalet that he and his companions call home. As their generator begins to waver in the storm, something hiding in the chalet’s depths threatens to escape, and their fragile bonds will be tested when the power finally fails—for good.
The imminent dangers faced by Hannah, Meg, and Carter are each one part of the puzzle. Lurking in their shadows is an even greater danger—one with the power to consume all of humanity.
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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 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.
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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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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).
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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.
