Staff Picks: July 2021
Here’s a look at what our staff read and loved in July. Let us know if you see anything you like in the comments.
GABBIE: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
GENRES: Young Adult, Adventure Fiction
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson is a favourite of mine. It is one of those books I read at least once a year. The story follows Jim Hawkins, after a pirate takes up a room at his parents' inn, Jim finds himself with a map to a famous pirate's buried treasure. With the help of some friends and some swashbuckling pirates, Jim disembarks on the seafaring adventure of a life time. This story is filled with action, friendship, betrayal, and good old fashioned adventure. I highly recommend it as a must-read classic, but be warned, once you begin it is nearly impossible to put down.
THE SYNOPSIS: From the moment young Jim Hawkins first encounters the sinister Blind Pew at the Admiral Benbow Inn until the climactic battle for treasure on a tropic isle, the novel creates scenes and characters that have fired the imaginations of generations of readers. Written by a superb prose stylist, a master of both action and atmosphere, the story centers upon the conflict between good and evil - but in this case a particularly engaging form of evil. It is the villainy of that most ambiguous rogue Long John Silver that sets the tempo of this tale of treachery, greed, and daring.
AVAILABILITY: The Library and the Libby App (eBook and audiobook)
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FROM THE LIBRARY
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LISA G.: In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Mate
GENRES: Nonfiction, Self-Help
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: This book will expand your thinking on addictions and trauma as their source. Dr. Mate works in East Vancouver's most challenging neighborhood for addiction, homelessness, as well as other social issues. This book will open your eyes to how the people you pass on the street ended up there.
THE SYNOPSIS: He would probably dispute it, but Gabor Maté is something of a compassion machine. Diligently treating the drug addicts of Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside with sympathy in his heart and legislative reform in mind can't be easy. But Maté never judges. His book is a powerful call-to-arms, both for the decriminalization of drugs and for a more sympathetic and informed view of addiction. As Maté observes, "Those whom we dismiss as 'junkies' are not creatures from a different world, only men and women mired at the extreme end of a continuum on which, here or there, all of us might well locate ourselves." In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts begins by introducing us to many of Dr. Maté's most dire patients who steal, cheat, sell sex, and otherwise harm themselves for their next hit. Maté looks to the root causes of addiction, applying a clinical and psychological view to the physical manifestation and offering some enlightening answers for why people inflict such catastrophe on themselves.
Finally, he takes aim at the hugely ineffectual, largely U.S.-led War on Drugs (and its worldwide followers), challenging the wisdom of fighting drugs instead of aiding the addicts, and showing how controversial measures such as safe injection sites are measurably more successful at reducing drug-related crime and the spread of disease than anything most major governments have going.
AVAILABILITY: The Libby App (eBook and audiobook)
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ABBEY: The John Lennon Letters by John Lennon
GENRE: Biography
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: I love knowing more about celebrities lives outside of what made they’re famous for. This book made me feel like someone who personally knew John Lennon despite him having died so many years before I was even born. It was really cool being able to actually see the handwritten letters and all the art that went with them.
THE SYNOPSIS: John Lennon was one of the greatest songwriters the world has ever known, creator of "Help!", "Come Together", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Imagine", and dozens more. But it was in his correspondences that he let his personality and poetry flow unguarded. Now, gathered for the first time in book form, are his letters to family, friends, strangers, and lovers from every point in his life. Funny, informative, wise, poetic, and sometimes heartbreaking, his letters illuminate a never-before-seen intimate side of the private genius.
This groundbreaking collection of almost 300 letters and postcards has been edited and annotated by Hunter Davies, whose authorized biography The Beatles (1968) was published to great acclaim. With unparalleled knowledge of Lennon and his contemporaries, Davies reads between the lines of the artist's words, contextualizing them in Lennon's life and using them to reveal the man himself.
AVAILABILITY: Library
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RACHEL: Master of One by Jaida Jones & Dani Bennett
GENRES: Young Adult, Fantasy
WHY THEY CHOSE IT: I haven’t picked up a YA novel in quite some time, but boy, am I ever glad I chose this one. Master of One made me laugh out loud, made me cry, and on several occasions made me want to scream incoherently into a pillow. The entire cast of characters is so fun and likeable that I couldn’t help but get hopelessly attached to them immediately, and now that I devoured the book in record time, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a sequel.
SYNOPSIS: Rags the thief has never met a pocket he couldn’t pick, but when he’s captured by a sorcerer with world-ending plans, he realizes even he is in over his head. Forced to use his finely honed skills to nab pieces of an ancient fae relic, Rags is stunned to discover that those “relics” just happen to be people:
A distractingly handsome Fae prince,
A too-honorable Queensguard deserter,
A scrappy daughter of a disgraced noble family,
A deceptively sweet-natured prince,
A bona fide member of the Resistance,
And him. Rags.
They may all be captives in the sorcerer’s terrible scheme, but that won’t stop them from fighting back. And, sure, six unexpected allies against one wicked enemy doesn’t make for generous odds, but lucky for him, Rags isn’t generous—he’s smart. And he has a plan that just might get them out of this alive.
AVAILABILITY: Library
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “Master of One” by Jaida Jones & Dani Bennett FROM THE LIBRARY
ELIZABETH: The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey
GENRES: Science Fiction, Dystopian Fiction
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: I am, once again, recommending an end-of-the-world book. I loved M.C. Carey’s novel, “The Girl with all the Gifts” and with the sequel set in the same world, I had to borrow it and start listening. I wouldn’t have wanted to start “The Boy on the Bridge” without first reading “The Girl with all the Gifts” and since I did (and I don’t want to give away spoilers if you haven’t), when you start reading the sequel, you already know what’s going on in the world Carey has created. I don’t think it’s as good as the first book in the series, but it definitely held my interest for the entire 13 hours of the audiobook.
AVAILABILITY: Libby (eBook and audiobook)
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LISA S.: Falling by T.J. Newman
GENRE: Thriller, Suspense
WHY SHE CHOSE IT: When the first line of a book is “When the shoe dropped into her lap, the foot was still in it.", you know it’s gonna be good. Falling didn’t disappoint, the first line reeled me in and the book didn’t let go. I read it in one sitting because I couldn’t put it down.
THE SYNOPSIS: You just boarded a flight to New York.
There are one hundred and forty-three other passengers onboard.
What you don’t know is that thirty minutes before the flight your pilot’s family was kidnapped.
For his family to live, everyone on your plane must die.
The only way the family will survive is if the pilot follows his orders and crashes the plane.
Enjoy the flight.
AVAILABILITY: Library
CLICK HERE TO RESERVE “Falling” by T.J. Newman FROM THE LIBRARY
