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Library & Archives > Blog

No Graves As Yet by Anne Perry

June 9, 2014 by Amanda VerMeulen

No Graves as yetAnne Perry paints such realistic pictures regardless of the period she is writing about and this first novel of likable British characters who find themselves on the brink of war draws the reader into a very different world from what we have today–a world where war is unthinkable instead of almost commonplace. I wouldn’t call this light summer reading, but it certainly isn’t very taxing and does bog down at times. Still, the novel takes us back in time to a very different mindset and I found that curiously refreshing. Great for taking along on vacation!

Availability: COSMOS
Review Submitted by: Jane Kostenko
Rating: Highly Recommended

Filed Under: Summer Reading

Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson

June 9, 2014 by Amanda VerMeulen

Before I Go to SleepThis book is an intriguing twist on an old story; how do you live a life where you can only remember the current day? However, as the story continues, you begin to realize there’s a dark secret being hidden from Christine by the one’s around her. Just when you think you’ve figured it out, even more secrets are revealed you begin to despite S. J. Watson (author) for what she’s doing to you.

Availability: USMAI and SMCM Library
Review Submitted by: Matthew Lachkovic
Rating: Highly recommended

Filed Under: Summer Reading

Four to Score by Janet Evanovich

June 9, 2014 by Amanda VerMeulen

imgres It is the fourth book in a series about a female bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum. The book is a fast paced light-hearted read, even though it contains dead bodies and explosions. It is not necessary to have read any of the other books as the author introduces the main characters as they appear.

 

Availability: COSMOS
Review Submitted by: Sue Banaszak
Rating: Highly Recommended

Filed Under: Summer Reading

My Secret, Collected by Frank Warren

June 5, 2014 by Amanda VerMeulen

My SecretMy Secret is a collection of numerous secrets sent to the infamous PostSecret, particularly presenting secrets of younger participants. Each secret lets one see into the soul of the sender, seeing their fears, worries, regrets and joys. With each page, you read a secret. Sometimes they seem strange, and sometimes the secret touches you. As you read, you will reveal secrets that will never be shared with anyone else and, once in a while, reveal secrets about yourself.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Andrew Lachkovic
Rating: Recommended

Filed Under: Summer Reading

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

June 5, 2014 by Amanda VerMeulen

Dark PlacesTwenty-four years after her mother and two sisters are brutally murdered in their own home in the early hours of January 3, 1985, Libby Day is out of money and seemingly out of options. Being only seven-years-old at the time of the murders–giving a coached testimony that would convict and send her brother Ben to jail for the crime–Libby looks back into her painful past and uncovers secrets and twists that will change her life and her family forever. When Libby gets caught up with a “Kill Club,” a group of crime-obsessed locals, she is encouraged to investigate and eventually discover the unthinkable truth regarding her family’s deaths.

Dark Places is simply a gripping story that will take you for loops. A chilling portrayal of the human experience after such devastation such as losing your whole family, Gillian Flynn creates a haunting puzzle in which you won’t mind spending an entire weekend putting together. With clever writing full of twists and turns, Dark Places will not let you go until the very last page. It will certainly leave you thinking about it long after you’ve closed the book.

If you haven’t gotten the chance to read any of Gillian Flynn’s novels–not just Dark Places–you should take this summer as an opportunity to do so. In addition to Dark Places coming to the silver screen, one of her other critically acclaimed novels–Gone Girl–is being made into a movie this fall. Flynn’s writing already jumps off the page, her characters and story so real and vivid. Hopefully Hollywood will do the novels justice.

Availability: COSMOS
Review submitted by: Taylor Schafer
Rating: Highly Recommended

Filed Under: Summer Reading

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

June 5, 2014 by Amanda VerMeulen

The Hunger GamesThe Hunger Games (Book 1 of the Hunger Games trilogy) is a book that shows what one will do if they are truly faced with danger in order to save friends and family, what they will do to survive. Hallucinations, actual terrors, love and survival are all read in this book which creates a world unlike an other, one that you would not want to leave, but never want to live in. If you want to read a book for four hours non-stop, read this book.

(Hunger Games trilogy in order: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay)

Availability: USMAI, COSMOS and SMCM Library
Review Submitted by: Andrew Lachkovic (still Matt’s brother)
Rating: Highly Recommended

Read more reviews of The Hunger Games series.

Filed Under: Summer Reading

Frog Music by Emma Donoghue

June 4, 2014 by Amanda VerMeulen

imgresFrog Music, Emma Donoghue’s latest novel, is a delightful, tragic, and hilarious journey through 1870s California. Jumping between the months of August and September 1876, Donoghue weaves a tale of four French émigrés trying to survive in a rapidly growing San Francisco suffering from a simultaneous heat wave and smallpox epidemic.

Readers familiar with Donoghue’s 2010 book, Room, might be surprised with this work of historical fiction. Frog Music represents a thematic return to Donoghue’s earlier books, such as Life Mask, Astray, and Slammerkin – including questions of independence, female sexuality, and same sex attraction. As in many of her novels, Donoghue uses historical fiction to discuss the lives and experiences of women outside the realm of perceived propriety.

Frog Music opens with a murder. Jenny Bonnet, an “eccentric” young woman who catches frogs for a living, is shot dead in a roadhouse just outside of the city. Her friend and companion, Blanche Beunon, goes on to chronicle her brief friendship with Bonnet and her search for the murderer. Beunon, a burlesque dancer known to admirers as “The Lively Flea,” is a compelling narrator as she records a life of domestic abuse, forced prostitution, and baby farming.

With Frog Music, Emma Donoghue gives us historical fiction as it should be – fun, inventive, and entirely believable. Extensive research of Bonnet’s real-life murder in 1876 and details such as the lyrics for historic burlesque songs enriches this enthralling murder mystery. Frog Music is a must-read for any fans of historical fiction!

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Kaitlyn Grigsby
Rating: Highly Recommended

Filed Under: Summer Reading

Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich

June 3, 2014 by Amanda VerMeulen

Odds Against TomorrowOdds Against Tomorrow (2013) is a story of Mitchell Zukor, a man obsessed with 21st century cultures of fear and the “worst case scenarios” which may strike at any time. After graduating college, Zukor begins to work on the “cutting edge of corporate irresponsibility” in order to indemnify large financial firms against liability in the event of large-scale disasters. Tapping into the anxiety that has defined the early 2000s (i.e. 9/11, Katrina, Financial Meltdown), author Nathaniel Rich places Zukor and Alec Charnoble at the epicenter of geopolitical power and fear: New York City. Zukor acts as a “natural terrorist” and a “Old Testament avenger” to scare companies into retaining expensive consulting services of “FutureWorld” which dubiously act in a court of law to indemnify these companies against suits by staff and clientele killed through corporate negligence. But Zukor, would up in his ornate doomsday prophecies, fails to see the all-too-predictable and real-life worst case scenario of an unseasonable hurricane before it crashes into Manhattan. Alongside the hilarious and calculating Jane Eppler, Zukor is forced to put aside his imagined fears to survive the storm and the FEMA-led recovery.

Although Odds never once mentions the phrase, “climate change,” the book is clearly contributing to the swelling tsunami of fiction which treats and takes climate change seriously (fans call it “cli fi”!). In the book, the apocalyptic hurricane Tammy is augmented by warmer-than-normal seas and the drought-hardened earth that cannot absorb Tammy’s deluge. In 2012, workers at the publishing facilities of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux eerily uncovered advanced copies of this novel when they re-opened their offices after “superstorm” Sandy slammed the Eastern Seaboard. Rich made the final proofs to his novel just following the storm he inadvertently foretold. He discusses this and cli-fi in a NPR interview with Angela Evancie: “So Hot Right Now: Has Climate Change Created a New Literary Genre?”

What constitutes a “natural disaster” in the 21st century? In a world of climate change and extensive risk analyses, do the old “acts of god” still fit the bill? Jeffrey Klueger penned an op-ed in Time magazine titled, “Is Global Warming Fueling Hurricane Katrina” on August 29th, 2005, when Katrina’s winds still battered New Orleans homes. Over a decade earlier, author and climate activist Bill McKibben asked if we have arrived at “the end of nature.” He argued, in his 1991 book by the same title, that there is no terrestrial ecosystem on the planet that lacks the fingerprint of human activity. As humans pump green house gas pollution into the atmosphere, McKibben and Kleuger at least implicitly argue that human beings have become responsible for “nature” and its “disasters.” When the heat from our engines contributes to the dynamo of hurricanes, we trouble the (perhaps always flawed) distinctions between the realms of “culture” and “nature.” If one accepts that natural disasters must affect people to be considered a “disaster” instead of a “hazard,” do the cities and businesses placed in risky environments construct future violence even in times of peace? Are all natural disasters really just human disasters naturalized in a denial of our collective agency?

Odds Against Tomorrow explores the pits of American anxiety in a profoundly tumultuous world while depicting a massive, human catastrophe. From foresight, to preparation, to response, Odds Against Tomorrow propels the reader forward through a literary thriller that also stands as a clinic on the uneven vulnerability people face in an era of climate change and high finance run amuck. Who stands to lose and win in this brave new world? Its hard to know: “the future is not what it used to be.”

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Shane D Hall
Rating: Category 5 Summer Read. Not to be read in Manhattan during a storm!!!

Filed Under: Summer Reading

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh

June 3, 2014 by Amanda VerMeulen

Hyperbole and a HalfThis book made me laugh so hard that my family made me read it aloud in the living room. This book goes into both the hilarious and the depressing parts of Allie’s life, but it often delves into the strange parts of her life, like when she ate an entire cake herself or when she dug up a letter that she had written to herself as a child. Read this book somewhere that it is acceptable to laugh loud because you will be doing a lot of it.

Availability: SMCM Library
Review Submitted by: Andrew Lachkovic
Rating: Highly Recommended

Filed Under: Summer Reading

Transition, Transformation, Tradition

June 2, 2014 by Amanda VerMeulen

This is my last post to Beyond the Bookshelves as Director of the Library and Media Center at SMCM.  At the end of the month I begin a journey north to New Hampshire where I will start work as Dean of Mason Library at Keene State College.  After 22 years here in Maryland I have been asked many times why I am making the change.

This morning my view of the St. Mary’s River is obscured by the lush green of the trees outside my window.  I won’t be here in the fall when the leaves fall and the vista changes.  Or to see the next step in slowly reducing our shelving so we can create more flexible spaces for our students.  Or to look up from my desk to see a student coming through to ask for help with a project, to ask if we can let her display artwork, or want to know why it’s so cold/hot/noisy in the library.

So I am packing up, doing my own version of deaccessioning, and feeling the same mixture of excitement and terror as the other graduates of the class of 2014.  Why move to a new position now at this stage in my career with retirement still double digits away, but within sight?  Why leave an amazing library, even more amazing colleagues, and this beautiful place?

Well, I’ll admit that there are some parts of my job I wouldn’t mind doing a bit less of.  I still have a heavy teaching load and don’t think I am devoting enough time to being a really good teacher.  I don’t want to give it up altogether, but doing less might help me teach better and give me time for other things like that research project which I have been trying to work on for the last couple of years.  And I’ll admit I am a bit relieved that I won’t have to upgrade all of my LibGuides to the new version.

New leadership in the St. Mary’s Library will build on the strong foundation we have, on the traditions and culture of the campus and the library.  And a new leader will participate in advocating for the continued transformation of the library.  And I am guessing that she/he will help move the library forward in ways that I might not even think of.

I will have the opportunity to learn the traditions of a new library and campus, and to participate in building on them and envisioning transformation for the future.  New challenges will push me to change, to think in new ways about what we do and why it is so important.

Even as I write this and look around at the boxes in my office I realize how much I will miss this place where I really became a librarian.  I hope I will make the SMCM library faculty and staff proud.  I will be watching to see what happens next.  I’ll be reading the blog.  And I will be getting to know and love a new place which will help me become an even better librarian.

 

Filed Under: Musings

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