Books @ Noon--September 2021 Picks

1) Three days in January: Dwight Eisenhower's final mission

Author

Series

Notes

This is the Young Reader's Edition, but Mike read and recommends the original book, as written for adults. It covers the final days of the Eisenhower administration, his advice and warnings for the future.

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook

Description

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In January 1961, three days before President Dwight D. Eisenhower passed the torch to John F. Kennedy, the president had one final mission. In the young readers? edition of his New York Times bestselling book, Fox News anchor Bret Baier examines the historic transition and Eisenhower?s last chance to lead the country he loved through his legendary farewell address and his personal appeals to Kennedy.

2) Straight Man: A Novel

Author

Russo, Richard

Notes

Bill enjoyed this funny book, comparing it favorably to the TV series "The Chair."

Formats:

eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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Hilarious and true-to-life, witty, compassionate, and impossible to put down, Straight Man follows Hank Devereaux through one very bad week in this novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls. • Now the AMC Original Series Lucky Hank.

William Henry Devereaux, Jr., is the reluctant chairman of the English department of a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Devereaux's...

3) World travel: an irreverent guide

Author

Bourdain, Anthony

Notes

Wendy read this posthumous collection of travel stories but found it disappointing.

Formats:

Book - Hardback, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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"A guide to some of the world's most fascinating places, as seen and experienced by writer, television host, and relentlessly curious traveler Anthony Bourdain"--

4) Early novels and stories

Author

Baldwin, James

Notes

Carolyn recommends that those interested in understanding the African American experience in the 1950s-1980s should read James Baldwins' difficult but important work. She recommends his essays, short stories, and plays, and specifically mentioned the collection of short fiction called "Going to Meet the Man."

5) A river runs through it and other stories

Author

Maclean, Norman

Notes

Wendy was inspired to read this 1976 title after a recent mention in the New Yorker. She learned a lot about fly fishing, but it is a sweet story about more than fish.

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook

Description

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Two novellas and one short story, based on the author's own experiences, center on a young man's discovery of life and art in the woods of western Montana.

6) The dreamers: a novel

Author

Walker, Karen Thompson

Notes

Bill read this story of a sickness that causes residents of a college dorm to fall asleep for long periods of time and dream in a way that gets tangled up with reality. He called it a fun and interesting read.

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD

Description

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One night in an isolated college town, a first-year student falls asleep and doesn't wake up. When a second girl falls asleep, and a third, panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town.

7) Just as I am: a memoir

Author

Tyson, Cicely

Notes

Several people in the group have read this book, some who were fans already and some who has not followed her closely. Joan was happy to learn more about this remarkable woman.

Formats:

Audiobook CD, Book - Hardback, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print - Hardback

Description

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"In her long and extraordinary career, Cicely Tyson has not only succeeded as an actor, she has shaped the course of history." –President Barack Obama, 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony

"Just as I Am is my truth. It is me, plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside. In these pages, I am indeed Cicely, the actress who has been blessed to grace the stage and screen for six decades. Yet I am

...

8) Homeland elegies

Author

Akhtar, Ayad

Notes

Sandra appreciated this fiction book about being Muslim in America and wondered how much of the story reflected experiences from the author's life. She said she got just a little way in before she decided that she couldn't read it by herself so instead she and her husband read it together and finished it in four days. Oh, and we learned the word sesquipedalian, which means a long, multisyllabic words.

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, Large Print

Description

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"A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home. Ayad Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless...

9) The sweetness of water

Author

Harris, Nathan

Notes

Someone asked Carolyn if she had read this book, and she said she had but was not too impressed.

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, Book - Hardback, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print - Hardback

Description

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"In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry, freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother,...

10) Project Hail Mary: a novel

Author

Weir, Andy

Notes

Bill read this book and recommended it as a good science fiction read, a bit like Isaac Asimov, clever and full of logic puzzles.

Formats:

Audiobook CD, Book - Hardback, eBook, Kindle, Large Print - Paperback

Description

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Martian, a lone astronaut must save the earth from disaster in this “propulsive” (Entertainment Weekly), cinematic thriller full of suspense, humor, and fascinating science—in development as a major motion picture starring Ryan Gosling.
HUGO AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST BOOKS: Bill Gates, GatesNotes, New York Public Library,...

11) Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Author

Kimmerer, Robin Wall

Notes

Ellie mentioned that JCLS' winter programming will focus on this book and the themes of gratitude, reciprocity with the land, and indigeneity found in it. Joan mentioned that she had listened to the audiobook and enjoyed it.

Formats:

Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook

Description

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As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth...

12) Lies my teacher told me: everything your American history textbook got wrong

Author

Loewen, James W

Notes

Nina told the group that every American should read this book to counter the view of American history taught in schools. The book challenges assumptions many people have about our country. It is well written, but slow going because it is very thought provoking.

Formats:

Book, eBook, Kindle

Description

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Criticizes the way history is presented in current textbooks, and suggests a fresh and more accurate approach to teaching American history.

13) Dark tides

Author

Gregory, Philippa

Series

Fairmile novels volume 2

Notes

Nina recommended this title as a departure for the author. Gregory is known for her historical fiction focused on European royalty and this book brings us across the Atlantic to Colonial Massachusetts.

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, Large Print - Hardback

Description

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"#1 New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory's new historical novel tracks the rise of the Tidelands family in London, Venice, and New England. Midsummer Eve 1670. Two unexpected visitors arrive at a shabby warehouse on the south side of the River Thames. The first is a wealthy man hoping to find the lover he deserted twenty-one years before. James Avery has everything to offer, including the favour of the newly restored King Charles II,...

14) Deacon King Kong: a novel

Author

McBride, James

Notes

Mary C recommended this book, calling it very funny and very moving. She particularly appreciated the relationship between two of the main characters, one an aging man - a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood - and the other a young man who he was convinced would do great things but now is involved with the local drug scene.

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print - Hardback

Description

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"From James McBride, author of the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, comes a wise and witty novel about what happens to the witnesses of a shooting. In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .45 from his pocket, and in front of everybody shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this...

15) The girls who stepped out of line: untold stories of the women who changed the course of World War II

Author

Eder, Mari K

Series

Thorndike Press large print history fact and fiction

Notes

Mary M recommends this book that profiles fifteen women who made a difference for the better during WWII. Each chapter discusses a different remarkable woman.

Formats:

Book - Hardback, Large Print - Hardback

Description

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"For fans of Radium Girls and history and WWII buffs, The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line takes you inside the lives and experiences of 15 unknown women heroes from the Greatest Generation, the women who served, fought, struggled, and made things happen during WWII--in and out of uniform, for theirs is a legacy destined to embolden generations of women to come. The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line are the heroes of the Greatest Generation that you hardly...

16) The brothers Karamazov

Author

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

Series

Easy Classics Epic Collection

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook

Description

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His final and greatest work, Dostoyevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published serially in The Russian Messenger from January 1879 to November 1880. Set against a modernizing 19th-century Russia, the characters experience moral struggles of faith, judgment, and reason amid a patricidal murder which forms the center of the plot. The novel is full of ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. Dostoyevsky...

17) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Author

Shaffer, Mary Ann

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, Book - Paperback, eBook, Kindle

Description

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A NETFLIX FILM • A remarkable tale of the island of Guernsey during the German Occupation, and of a society as extraordinary as its name.
“Treat yourself to this book, please—I can’t recommend it highly enough.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

“I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is...

18) Transformations of myth through time

Author

Campbell, Joseph

Notes

Joan recommended this historical look at the myths we know and which shape our common narrative.

19) The Venice sketchbook: a novel

Author

Bowen, Rhys

Notes

Joan recommends Rhys Bowen's books. She mentioned this title, as well as the series the next book on the list is part of.

Formats:

Book, Large Print - Hardback

20) On her majesty's frightfully secret service

Author

Bowen, Rhys

Series

Royal Spyness mysteries volume 11

Formats:

Book - Hardback, eBook, Kindle, Large Print - Hardback

Description

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"In the new Royal Spyness Mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of Crowned and Dangerous, Lady Georgiana Rannoch juggles secret missions from the Queen, Darcy, and her mother. But it's all in a day's work when you're thirty-fifth in line to the British Crown. When Darcy runs off on another secret assignment, I am left to figure out how to travel to Italy sans maid and chaperone to help my dear friend Belinda, as she awaits the birth...