Librarian’s Pick: Gravity Is The Thing – Jaclyn Moriarty
“The invitation seems a bit silly to Abigail Sorenson: attend an all-expenses-paid retreat on an island off the coast of Tasmania to learn about a self-help book. But it’s an opportunity she can’t refuse, even if she does expect a catch in the form of a sales pitch.
This retreat isn’t about any old self-help book. The invitation promises to reveal the mystery behind The Guidebook, a tome Abi has received by mail, one chapter at a time, for 20 years. The first chapter arrived when Abi was 15, just before her slightly younger brother, Robert, also 15, disappeared. Although the events didn’t seem to be connected, they’re inextricably bound in Abi’s mind. So what’s the worst that could happen? The retreat might be a sales pitch scam, or it could solve the mysteries that have defined Abi’s life.
Abi couldn’t have predicted the retreat’s reveal, and the experience stays with her as she returns to life in Sydney. Abi begins to reflect on her life, the end of her marriage, the fact that she runs what she’s dubbed a happiness café. Has her light attitude toward life been an effort to turn from the gravity of her experiences? The Guidebook examined another meaning of the word: “Of course, gravity is not a thing. It’s just a way of describing the fact that things fall.” Perhaps Abi has been resisting that fall for decades.”
Librarian’s Pick: Haben – Haben Girma
“Haben Girma was born deafblind in California, to refugee parents forced to flee war-torn Eritrea. While her mother and father struggled to cope as immigrants, Girma simply yearned to belong—“a deafblind girl in a sighted, hearing world.” As her vision and hearing continued to fade and her parents grew increasingly cautious, Girma fought for her independence. Against their wishes, she went to Mali to help build a schoolhouse, left home for college in Portland, Oregon, and moved across the country for Harvard Law School. Along the way, she found new ways to manage her disabilities, through technology, teamwork and self-education that included a “blindness boot camp.” Today Girma speaks from a global stage, advocating for improved access to education and services for disabled people. In her often hilarious and utterly inspiring memoir, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law, she shares her trials and triumphs.”
Click here for availability- Book on CD
Librarian’s Pick: A Pure Heart – Rajia Hassib
“A Pure Heart grapples with the question of how to be many things at once—a condition that afflicts everyone but requires only some to justify their complexities.
Rajia Hassib’s novel follows the divergent lives of two Egyptian sisters, Rose and Gameela Gubran. Rose, an Egyptologist, falls for an American journalist and moves with him to New York. Gameela remains in Egypt, embraces Islam and marries a much older man. The story begins in the aftermath of Gameela’s death due to a suicide bombing during the chaotic years following Egypt’s failed revolution. Slowly, Hassib charts the events leading up to this conclusion, working her way backward through a series of intertwined lives in both Egypt and America.
Hassib is especially talented at rendering the small details of daily Egyptian life—not in some exoticized fashion but rather as a foundation on which to lay the wide variety of experiences, ideologies and aspirations of the country’s citizenry. These details, found throughout the book, shine. A description of habitual lateness, for example: “What are a few minutes here or there in a country that’s been around for seven thousand years?” There is some hand-holding—not a single Arabic phrase or idiom goes unexplained for the benefit of the Western reader—but for the most part, it works.”
Librarian’s Pick: Don’t Wait Up – Liz Astrof
“What kind of mom is Liz Astrof, who, when her son was born, quipped, “Don’t take the tags off—we may not be keeping him”? She’s a hilariously honest one who shares a series of personal essays in Don’t Wait Up: Confessions of a Stay-at-Work Mom. A TV comedy writer (“The King of Queens,” “2 Broke Girls” and more), she describes how endless hours in the writing room fill her with guilt about her family (strong-willed daughter; anxious, fact-spewing son; supportive husband), leaving her to wonder how much of her children’s early years she’s going to watch on an iPhone.
Interspersed with Astrof’s domestic tales are moving, fascinating and, of course, amusing essays that explore her troubled upbringing. Her mentally unstable mother left when Astrof was 5. Amid the abuse, Astrof and her older brother, Jeff, would hide under the bed, murmuring “safe-safe” to each other. As an adult, Astrof constantly questions her parenting skills, fearing she might turn into her mother. In a stunning essay called “Happy New Year,” Astrof finds herself coming to the rescue of her son in the midst of a meltdown, noting, “If I ever feared I was anything like my mother—which I did, every moment of every day—it was moments like this, moments of knowing what to do for my child and wanting to do them, that proved to me that I wasn’t anything like her.”
Don’t Wait Up is a funny, fascinating memoir of mothering that will definitely keep readers up way past their bedtime, laughing and sometimes crying page after page.”
Librarian’s Pick: The Oysterville Sewing Circle – Susan Wiggs
“Caroline Shelby’s life has been turned upside down. First, scandal destroys the promising clothing designer’s budding career in New York. Then, Caroline’s close friend dies suddenly, leaving her the legal guardian of her friend’s two young children, Flick and Addie, a task for which she feels totally unprepared.
With nothing to keep her in New York, Caroline drives cross-country with her two grieving charges to Oysterville, Washington, the hometown she left years earlier and to which she never envisioned returning. There, she finds her family and town both familiar and changed. She must also face her first love, Will, who married her then-best friend, Sierra. Returning to the fabric shop where she discovered her love of design, Caroline slowly begins to rebuild her life and career and even discovers her mothering skills. She also assuages her guilt in failing to help her late friend by creating the Oysterville Sewing Circle, a group for women who’ve experienced abuse.”
Librarian’s Pick: They Called Us Enemy – George Takei
“In They Called Us Enemy, pop culture icon and social activist George Takei harks back to his childhood, several years of which were spent in internment camps during World War II. He was 4 when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and 120,000 Japanese Americans were subsequently removed from their homes and sent to prison camps along the West Coast.
Takei and co-writers Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott capture the terror, fear and frustration of those years, and Harmony Becker’s art masterfully conveys the harsh violence of warplanes and bombs, as well as the sweet sadness of kids playing within barbed-wire fences.
They Called Us Enemy is an important read for anyone who wants to learn the full truth of our country’s history of institutionalized racism and gain greater context for our present. A tribute to Takei’s parents, this meditation on citizenship and community will educate, challenge and inspire.”