Posts

Peter Wohlleben, in his book, The Hidden Life of Trees goes to great length to show how important trees are.  Not only do they help with managing weather, they also help produce oxygen and provide food and homes for woodland creatures.  Forest trees also look out for each other and care for other trees that are sick or dying.  Trees also prevent top soil from

How often do you stop to think about commonplace urban sights like traffic lights, fire escapes, and manhole covers? After you read this book, your answer will probably be “all the time”. Written by the creators of the podcast '99% Invisible', The 99% Invisible City (2020) explores the history and purpose of frequently overlooked objects in the urban landscape.

After his grandfather's death, a young man must prove how deep his love of books really is when a strange cat asks for his help to save books that are being abused. As the young man journeys with the cat, he not only finds the courage to stand up to the adversaries that bar his path, but also to start living life again.

The Curious Nature Guide by Clare Walker Leslie is a short and sweet read full of eye-catching illustration.

If "ghost ship in space" sounds like a fun premise to you, then you should definitely check out Dead Silence (2022), by S. A. Barnes.

Thanks to WPL’s Fiction Book Group, I was able to read Maggie O’Farrell's most recent novel,

I Hear the Sunspot (2017) is a touching, heartwarming manga about the relationship between two male college students. Kohei, who is hard of hearing and knows he may eventually become deaf, deliberately keeps everyone at arm’s length because he is tired of the insensitive ways people often react to his disability. Taichi, who is struggling to make ends meet, sees Kohei’s ad looking for a notetaker to help him in class and agrees to take the job in exchange for lunch every day.

Little Danny from The Shining is all grown up now. Still haunted though. 

Reading Deacon King Kong reminded me of listening to a rich and soulful jazz composition played by a brilliant ensemble that improvises playfully like nobody's business and in doing so takes my breath away. I won't even try and extend this metaphor.

I loved this new time travel novel from Emily St. John Mandel. Covering a span of several hundred years from 1912 onwards, we are taken to moments in time connected to a mysterious time slip or glitch.

In 2021, poet, scholar, and Atlantic Magazine staff writer Clint Smith published his first major work of nonfiction,

The Sparrow (1996), by Mary Doria Russell, opens in 2059, in the aftermath of a disastrous Jesuit mission to make first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. Emilio Sandoz, a priest and linguist who is the only survivor among the mission’s crew, has just returned to Earth physically mutilated and spiritually broken.