Hi everyone, here are our five suggested reads of the week!
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1776 by David McCullough
Bestselling historian and two-time Pulitzer winner McCullough follows up John Adams
by staying with America’s founding, focusing on a year rather than an individual: a momentous 12 months in the fight for independence. How did a group of ragtag farmers defeat the world’s greatest empire? As McCullough vividly shows, they did it with a great deal of suffering, determination, ingenuity—and, the author notes, luck.
Although brief by McCullough’s standards, this is a narrative tour de force, exhibiting all the hallmarks the author is known for: fascinating subject matter, expert research and detailed, graceful prose. Throughout, McCullough deftly captures both sides of the conflict. The British commander, Lord General Howe, perhaps not fully accepting that the rebellion could succeed, underestimated the Americans’ ingenuity. In turn, the outclassed Americans used the cover of night, surprise and an abiding hunger for victory to astonishing effect. Henry Knox, for example, trekked 300 miles each way over harsh winter terrain to bring 120,000 pounds of artillery from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston, enabling the Americans, in a stealthy nighttime advance, to seize Dorchester Heights, thus winning the whole city.
Luck, McCullough writes, also played into the American cause—a vicious winter storm, for example, stalled a British counterattack at Boston, and twice Washington staged improbable, daring escapes when the war could have been lost. Similarly, McCullough says, the cruel northeaster in which Washington’s troops famously crossed the Delaware was both “a blessing and a curse.” McCullough keenly renders the harshness of the elements, the rampant disease and the constant supply shortfalls, from gunpowder to food, that affected morale on both sides—and it certainly didn’t help the British that it took six weeks to relay news to and from London. Simply put, this is history writing at its best from one of its top practitioners. – Starred Publishers Weekly Review
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Deep Beneath Us by Catriona McPherson
The murder of her cousin moves a Scottish woman to explore her past.
When her husband divorced her, Tabitha Lawson lost not only her marriage but her job, since he anonymously told her employer about a schizophrenia diagnosis she hadn’t revealed to them. Her son chose to live with his father; Tabitha moved in with her mother, Zelda, whose dark paintings give her nightmares. So do the dark waters of the loch she’s lived nearby most of her life. Her cousin Davey Muir, a coder and collector, and his friend Gordo spend a lot of time with Barrett, a divorced gardener with two teen girls, picking up litter near the loch. It’s all very routine until Gordo reports a mysterious underwater explosion at the loch, which is set to be drained and turned into parkland. When Davey doesn’t answer his door, Tabitha gets the police to investigate just as Barrett and Gordo arrive to find Davey dead. Although he’s left what looks like a suicide note, his friends can’t believe he’d kill himself. Neither can Tabitha, who’s inherited everything he owned. When she, Barrett, and Gordo clean out his house, which is packed to the rafters with junk, they start uncovering long-hidden family secrets. Tabitha and her sister, Jocasta, and Davey and his brother, Johnny, all grew up together, children of a pair of brothers who both died by suicide. The marriage of Jo and Johnny puts even more pressure on the turbulent family dynamics. Tabitha, Davey’s friends, and their teenage children launch an investigation that will reveal that everything Tabitha thought she knew about her childhood is based on false memories.
A tense, beautifully written page-turner with a truly unsettling denouement. – Kirkus Review
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I’ll Be Right Here by Amy Bloom
Bloom returns to fiction after her bestselling memoir In Love (which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist) with the decades-spanning story of four friends in New England who spin in and out of each other’s lives over the years. The novel opens during World War II, when young Gazala and her brother Samir—orphaned Algerian immigrants living in poverty in France—must do whatever it takes to survive. Forced to split up, they each make their way independently to New York City after the war and ultimately reunite. While in New York, Gazala meets a pair of sisters named Anne and Alma and forges a lifelong bond with them. Relationships are truly at the heart of this slim novel, and readers are rewarded with Bloom’s signature empathetic writing style as she explores the many ways that there are to love and care for other people. As the novel slips back and forth in time, narrated from the perspectives of each of the main characters, readers will find themselves continually surprised and moved by the choices they make, the secrets they keep, and how they show up for one another.
VERDICT Bloom’s (White Houses) insightful new novel is a quick and affecting read. Recommended for all collections. – Library Journal Review
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Summer of the Big Bachi by Naomi Hirahara
In chapter one of Hirahara’s seamless and shyly powerful first novel, a Japanese PI unsettles prickly, stubborn Mas Arai, Hiroshima survivor, widower and estranged father, and the other elderly Japanese-American gardeners who hang out at Wishbone Tanaka’s Lawnmower Shack in the seedy L.A. suburb of Altadena. The PI’s disturbing questions concern a nurseryman called Joji Haneda, reported dead in the atomic blast that leveled Hiroshima in August 1945, but who was actually still alive in California in June 1999. A month later, Haneda is brutally murdered. Mas must revisit his past and open old, still festering wounds in order to solve the crime, while the specter of bachi, akin to instant bad karma, hovers over him like the black clouds of his recurring nightmares. In his cherished 1956 Ford truck, unlikely sleuth Mas pursues a trail that leads him to an all-night noodle shop, an illegal gambling loft and a chow-mien bowling-alley/cafe. After his truck and dignity are stolen, Mas enlists the help of two lovingly rendered, all-too-human friends: Haruo Mukai, whose long white hair hides a false eye and shocking keloid scar, and Tug Yamada, a gentle, honorable giant willing to put his own life on the line for others. Peppered with pungent cultural details, crisp prose and credible, fresh descriptions of the effects of the A-bomb, this perfectly balanced gem deserves a wide readership. – Starred Publishers Weekly Review
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This Fierce People: The Untold Story of America’s Revolutionary War in the South by Alan Pell Crawford
So much of Revolutionary War history focuses on battles fought in the North: Lexington, Concord, Boston, Saratoga, New York, Valley Forge. But key to the Revolution’s ultimate success were the soldiers who kept British troops tied down in skirmishes in the southern colonies. Crawford (Twilight at Monticello, 2008) details how Generals Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter and their bands of partisans helped drive Cornwallis and his loyalists out of the Carolinas, which were key to British supply lines. Crawford details the often desperate efforts and guerrilla tactics of the ragtag troops against the usually superior numbers of the British. He devotes useful attention to the role of enslaved fighters, whom both the British and the Americans tried to woo with promises of future freedom. The “final” battle at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, as Crawford points out, did not itself bring an end to the struggle–but by then, Parliament had turned against the war. Crawford’s achievement is a valuable addition to Revolutionary War history that adds useful detail and perspective.
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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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Weekly Suggested Reading Five posts are published on Wednesdays.
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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.
Tech & Book Talk at SSCL 