Staff Picks: August 2020
We are halfway through September, so we figured we’d better share our Staff Picks from August. We hope you find something new to add to your reading list.
AVAILABLE AT THE LIBRARY
LISA G’s PICK: Too Much and Never Enough- Mary Trump, Ph.D
GENRE: Nonfiction, Biography
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: I chose this book because it’s the viewpoint from a member of the Trump family. Mary is also a doctor, giving her a unique and informed opinion on his psychology.
THE SYNOPSIS: Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, New York, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald.
A firsthand witness to countless holiday meals and interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for regifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.
Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have sought to parse Donald J. Trump’s lethal flaws. Mary L. Trump has the education, insight, and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider’s perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world’s most powerful and dysfunctional families.
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “Too Much and Never Enough” by Mary Trump
RACHEL’S PICK: Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
GENRE: Graphic Novel
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: I chose it because it was a quick, easy read that drew me in almost immediately and had me hooked until the very end. I blew through the whole book in one sitting and even after finishing it, the story lingered in my mind.
THE SYNOPSIS: Nemeses! Dragons! Science! Symbolism! All these and more await in this brilliantly subversive, sharply irreverent epic from Noelle Stevenson. Featuring an exclusive epilogue not seen in the web comic, along with bonus conceptual sketches and revised pages throughout, this gorgeous full-color graphic novel has been hailed by critics and fans alike as the arrival of a “superstar” talent (NPR.org).
Nimona is an impulsive young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy. Lord Ballister Blackheart is a villain with a vendetta. As sidekick and supervillain, Nimona and Lord Blackheart are about to wreak some serious havoc. Their mission: prove to the kingdom that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his buddies at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren't the heroes everyone thinks they are.
But as small acts of mischief escalate into a vicious battle, Lord Blackheart realizes that Nimona's powers are as murky and mysterious as her past. And her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit.
LISA S’ PICK: The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
GENRE: Fiction, Historical Fiction
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: I initially picked this up because we are living through a pandemic right now, so reading about the 1918 Spanish Flu was appealing. However, the book sucked me in right from the beginning, and while the flu was a part of the story, it wasn’t the focus. I read it in one sitting, and enjoyed every single page.
THE SYNOPSIS: In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia’s regimented world step two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.
In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other’s lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.
CLICK HERE TO BORROW “The Pull of the Stars” by Emma Donoghue
AVAILABLE ON THE LIBBY APP
ABBEY’S PICK: The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Universe by Douglas Adams
GENRE: Science Fiction, Comedy
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: I chose this book because everything that happens is so absurd that you have to keep reading to see where it goes.
THE SYNOPSIS: It's an ordinary Thursday lunchtime for Arthur Dent until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly afterwards to make way for a new hyperspace bypass and his best friend has just announced that he's an alien. At this moment, they're hurtling through space with nothing but their towels and an innocuous-looking book inscribed with the big, friendly words: DON'T PANIC. The weekend has only just begun...Volume one in the trilogy of five.
CLICK HERE TO BORROW “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams
ELIZABETH’S PICK: Night by Elie Wiesel
GENRE: Memoir, Autobiography
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: “Night” by Elie Wiesel (b 1928 - d 2016). My recommendation is available on Libby as both an audiobook and an e-book (for which I see there is a 14-week waiting list). Note: While both audio versions are on Libby, I highly recommend waiting for the 2018 version (narrated by George Guidall - because he does a far superior job) rather than listening to the 2006 version (narrated by Jeffrey Rosenblatt).
Ten years after the end of WWII, Wiesel wrote, in Yiddish, a 900-page memoir, “Un di velt hot geshvign” (“And the World Remained Silent”). In 1955 he rewrote, in French, a shortened version of his manuscript, “La Nuit” and that version was later translated into English as “Night” in 1960. The version available on Libby is a new translation that Wiesel’s wife, Marion Wiesel, translated from Wiesel’s original French memoir, “La Nuit”. This version, which includes a new preface by Wiesel, sat at number one on “The New York Times” bestseller list for paperback non-fiction for 18 months from February 13, 2006, until the newspaper decided to remove it. Translated into 30 languages, “Night” ranks as one of the bedrocks of Holocaust literature (12 years ago it had already sold over 10 million copies around the world).
If you’ve been resistant to listening to an audiobook, the 2018 version of “Night” is one I think you should borrow as Guidall brings a depth to Wiesel’s story that reading alone simply cannot convey. This is a book I am going to be thinking about for a long, long time.
THE SYNOPSIS: Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man.
Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.
That wraps up our August Staff Picks. Is there anything that caught your eye?
-Lisa S., Library Clerk/Evening Supervisor
