The Messy Lives of Book People by Phaedra Patrick

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When she has time around her three cleaning jobs and family, Olivia (Liv) Green is an avid reader. Her favorite character is Georgia Rory. She has read and reread all nineteen books in the series by Essie Starling and thinks she knows the character inside out. But, if given the chance, is that well enough to finish Georgia’s story? In The Messy Lives of Book People by Phaedra Patrick, Liv is about to find out.

In the Green household money is tight. One son is in college and the other will go in the fall. Also her husband Jake’s family owned book-binding business is struggling. To help finances Liv had to add a third cleaning job. It was with none other than her favorite author, Essie Starling.

Essie is a recluse and not exactly warm or friendly. She refuses to communicate with her agent and editor unless it is by email or text and her personal assistants don’t last long. However she and Liv have formed a sort of friendship. That bond is tested when Essie discovers Liv reading the unfinished draft of book twenty in the series.

Instead of being berated or fired Liv is asked to give her honest opinion of not only the draft but also of the latest Georgia Rory novel. That opinion, Essie has lost her passion for her character, results in a surprise offer. Essie wants to enlist Liv’s help in reviving the character.

Eager to learn details about what this new arrangement will mean, Liv rushes to Essie’s apartment on her normal cleaning day. However the apartment is empty and Liv is asked to meet Essie’s solicitor, Anthony Pentecost, at a coffee shop.

Pentecost has startling news. Essie has died and the solicitor is to pass on her last request to Liv. “Dear Olivia, if Anthony is speaking to you now, the worst has most likely happened. If you need to take a little time out from this job and your others, you will be paid. If I die, keep my passing a secret for six months. During this period, I want you to complete my latest novel.”

It is six months at double the salary and with a tidy sum for expenses. But is this something Liv can do? She aspired to be a writer when young but didn’t have the opportunity to go to university. Deciding the lack of a degree can be overcome she is inspired to try. There are thirty-two very rough lackluster chapters, eight chapters yet to be written (every Georgia Rory novel is forty chapters in length) and less than six months to meet the November 1st deadline.

As she begins the rewrite of the draft, Liv finds herself struggling with the direction Georgia should go and who will be her final love interest. Liv needs to channel Essie but writing in the apartment and wearing Essie’s clothes are not enough. Discovering more about Essie is the only way Liv can go forward with writing.

Revealing the author’s past proves difficult. It also adds strain to her marriage. Liv and Jake have grown apart and becoming empty nesters is showing the cracks in their relationship. Now she can’t tell him about Essie’s death, that she is finishing the novel, or about her quest to uncover Essie’s past.

Will discovering Essie’s secrets help or hinder the finish of the novel? One thing is certain, Liv is finding a new path forward. Can her marriage survive the changes that are coming?

If you are like me and love series fiction, would you want to step into Liv’s shoes and decide how your favorite series ends? The library has this title in both regular and large print. Suggested read-alikes are Sara Adam’s The Reading List and Beach Read by Emily Henry.

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Bicycling with Butterflies by Sara Dykman

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Full disclosure: I chose to review this book because author Sara Dykman is visiting the library. Better yet, you’re invited! Join us at the library on Tuesday, September 27th for Dykman’s presentation about her new book, Bicycling with Butterflies, which, plainly stated, recounts “[her] 10,201-mile journey following the monarch migration.”

Seriously, she rode 10,000+ miles on a bicycle from Mexico to Canada and back to travel with the beautiful, threatened monarchs. Further interesting is that she’s headed back to Mexico, though on motorcycle this time, stopping here in Joplin (among other places) along the way, to again follow the monarch butterflies to Canada and back.

Sara Dykman works in amphibian research, is an outdoor educator, and, as a handful of her trips illustrate, an adventurer. She’s walked from Mexico to Canada, canoed the Missouri River from source to sea, and cycled over 80,000 miles across North and South America. She founded beyondabook.org, “an adventure-linked education project that connects real-time adventures to classrooms [that creates] opportunities for real-life learning [that] inspires students to push their limits and explore the planet.” Through her adventures and projects, Dykman hopes “to empower young and old to dream big.”

Dykman begins by sharing how her idea of cycling the monarch migration came about. Like most ideas, it started as a seed that sprouted into something much larger and full of life. A simple desire to visit the butterflies at their overwintering grounds (in Mexico) morphed into a full-fledged plan to accompany them on their migration, via bicycle. But she didn’t just hop on a bike and go. She spent a year planning, researching, and otherwise preparing for the adventure. As she wrote in the first pages of her book, “Eventually, there was nothing left to do but start.” And start she did.

Like the monarchs, Dykman’s journey began and ended in El Rosario, Mexico. She arrived there in January 2017, though she (and the butterflies) did not head north until March. A wonderful map illustrates the basics of their route. March, April, and May took them up north through Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota. June carried them farther north, then eastward across Michigan and Canada, reentering the United States on the east coast in July. Late July through August took them westward then south, crossing New York, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, then down into Kentucky. September swept them westward across Illinois and Missouri, then started them on their homestretch south. October and November took them farther south, through Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Mexico, back to their starting point in El Rosario.

Dykman’s upcoming visit will not be her first stop in Joplin. She stopped here, as did some of the monarch butterflies, in October 2017, on her way back south to the starting point. She pedaled into Joplin under cover of night and stayed over at local master naturalist Val Frankoski’s house. Like Dykman, Val cares deeply for the monarchs and has worked tirelessly, alongside others in our community, to plant milkweed and otherwise provide a habitat for and raise awareness about the monarchs and their migration, as well as their importance. This work, along with Dykman’s visit, culminated in a mayoral pledge, which declared April through October 2017 as the Mayors’ Monarch Pledge Days in Joplin (http://joplinmo.org/1001/Mayors-Monarch-Pledge).

While here, Dykman presented to 1,000 enthusiastic school children, as she describes in her book: “Val saw me hopeful, telling kids about the joy of monarchs, adventure, and science, and how everyone can be a part of the solution.” After Joplin, Dykman pedaled off to nearby Neosho, Missouri, before heading farther south. She wrote that she “left Joplin just as [she] had arrived, in the cover of night.”

Now, about the book’s arrangement and layout (which is one of my favorite things to include in reviews, as I think it’s important, particularly in nonfiction). As one might expect, this book is organized chronologically, recounting Dykman’s journey starting in January 2017 through November of that same year. Each chapter begins with the number of days it is during the migration, as well as the dates and the miles covered. For example: Days 142-153 / July 31-August 11, Miles 5518-6005. For this particular stretch, that’s about 40 miles a day, which, to my surprise, takes cyclists about 4 hours to complete (according to Google, that is). Still, that’s a lot of mileage, especially day after day after day.

Bicycling with Butterflies is as much a 10,000+ mile memoir as it is an account of the monarchs’ migration. In addition to recounting the actions and observations of, as well as her interactions with, the butterflies, Dykman describes her exchanges with those she meets along the way, some more positive and inspiring than others. I like that she doesn’t hold back, that she doesn’t weed out the less-than positive aspects of the narrative. Moreover, I appreciate her social commentary.

I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in adventure stories, the environment (specifically, saving it), the monarch butterflies, and memoir. A word on Dykman’s writing: excellent. She has a keen eye for drawing parallels between us and the world in which we live. If you’re not able to join us for her upcoming author visit, then I encourage you to check out her book–literally!

As always, happy reading.

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Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult

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Diana O’Toole has her life completely mapped out – educational aspirations, career goals, engagement and marriage plans, timeline for kids, when to move out of the city to the suburbs – but when the COVID-19 pandemic hits things start to become unpredictable and move far beyond Diana’s control. 

First, her new high-profile client decides to postpone a big art sale, one that would have earned Diana a big promotion at Sotheby’s, the large auction house where she works.  Second, her boyfriend Finn, a surgical resident at a hospital in New York, is unable to go on a pre-planned trip to the Galapagos with Diana because all medical personnel are needed at the hospital.  Since it is very early days in the 2020 pandemic timeline, the couple have no idea how bad things will soon get, but Finn encourages Diana to go ahead with the trip, solo.  

Apprehensively she does, but things continue to be unpredictable.  First, her luggage is lost, then as soon as she arrives at the island, it is placed under a quarantine order, and will close for two week.  All other tourists are leaving the island, trying to catch flights home, but Diana, committed to taking this once in a lifetime trip, gets off the ferry only to quickly discover that her hotel is closed and she has no place to stay.  

Fortunately for Diana, a local woman named Abuelita, takes pity on her and puts her up in a small apartment, but Diana’s stay continues to be a difficult one.  She has to navigate an unfamiliar town, where most everything is closed, lack of cell phone or internet service, and a language barrier.  She is forced to abandon all her pre-made plans, and not only try new things, but create some local connections. These connections turn out to be life changing for Diana and she is soon evaluating her former life with a more critical eye and wondering how things will be when she returns home.

Since reading Jodi Picoult’s mega hit MY SISTER’S KEEPER, I have been a big fan. This newest addition to her extensive title list is excellent. It is the only title that I have read so far that is written in the present day, with the pandemic as a central focus of the plot. Plus, readers are sure to appreciate the author’s attention to detail and the amount of time she must have spent researching the various topics to create a cohesive, believable tale. 

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The Happy Inbox by Maura Nevel Thomas

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I have over 3,000 emails in one (of four) of my work-related inboxes, with at least a few hundred of those being unread. An informal, off-the-cuff poll of sorts of a handful of colleagues and friends revealed inboxes that ranged from containing only 17 emails (Congratulations!) to 20,000+, with 39, upwards of 6,000, and 10,000+ being the in-between numbers. That’s a lot of emails, folks. And most folks, like me and the majority I “polled,” have inboxes full of oodles of emails. 

It’s no wonder then – regardless of whether the amount of emails in your inbox falls in the tens or tens of thousands range – that exorbitant time is spent on reading, writing, and sorting electronic correspondence. Frankly, it’s overwhelming! Fortunately, practical advice is offered in Maura Nevel Thomas’ The Happy Inbox: How to Have a Stress-free Relationship with Your Email and Overcome Your Communication Clutter, a book that’s part of her Empowered Productivity series.

Before getting practical about cutting the email clutter, a word about the publisher. Published by Simple Truths, this book, like other of their IGNITE READS titles, is meant to be read in an hour or less. An hour or less for what’s essentially an email self-help book is just about right, especially when considering time spent reading this book is less time spent contending with the inbox. All books in the IGNITE series, including the three Empowered Productivity titles, are readable in less than an hour, written by an expert, and fall into the “trending business and personal growth” categories. 

Now, let’s talk about email! Arranged with an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion, Thomas starts by saying that “our biggest productivity hurdle today might just be our communication–our crazy inboxes, our constant phone notifications.” She goes on to discuss how today’s professionals are in a constant state of “task switching” due to being tethered to our emails, phones, and social media. 

Imagine: You’re working on a project that requires lengthy, in-depth attention. Your computer starts to “ping” with incoming emails. Your phone starts buzzing with work-related text messages. Your (work-related) Facebook, Instagram, and other social media accounts blow up with likes, comments, and messages. Perhaps you don’t have to imagine. Thomas describes this as “communication overload” that leads to what entrepreneur Henry Poydar dubbed “communication debt.” 

According to Thomas, the first step of getting out of communication debt and regaining control, while being active and intentional rather than reactive, is to get your email under control. It’s helpful to have an understanding of how our inboxes impact our productivity (“attacks” is the word she uses), as well as the different types of emails we receive, before assessing our habits. Thomas describes a “skim and skip” behavior that is, admittedly, how I (and likely most people I know) check email. Then she tells us why that’s not effective. Foremost, “your inbox is for receiving messages, not storing them.” She further discusses how to make use of filters, unsubscribing from unwanted robomail, and how to create controls in your email application that would better help you stay on top of things (e.g. emails from certain domains could be automatically filtered to your trash folder). 

Most of us tend to think of email as an in-between task, something that takes time away from “real work.” But, Thomas argues, email is real work. It’s not meant to be something we give partial focus to, but something that we have to allow time for and address in a thoughtful manner. Afterall, our board members, bosses, colleagues, customers, friends, etc. took the time to craft the email. The least we could do is give it our focused attention so that we may keep and/or strengthen our commitments. This is, however, easier said than done, especially on a jam-packed schedule and, these days, it seems everyone’s schedules are jam-packed. Nonetheless, I think recognizing email as real work is an accurate, if interesting, perspective.

In chapter two, “Being Reactive vs. Being Responsive,” Thomas discusses what we shouldn’t do with email, such as marking or flagging messages to come back to: “It’s not efficient to read the same email more than once.” Another tactic to avoid is leaving your inbox open so that new messages distract you from what you’re working on. She admits that if you’re accustomed to constantly checking your email – and many of us are – that it’ll be challenging to break that habit, especially if we’ve trained people to believe they’ll get an immediate response from us. (And if we have, then Thomas suggests we retrain them.) She offers advice on “reviewing” email, how often to review, and how to avoid getting stuck in “review mode.”

Chapter three discusses processing email in “done for now” fashion, meaning you don’t have to do all of the tasks associated with your emails, but take the steps to get them out of your inbox. Thomas outlines the specific steps necessary to process your email effectively–the TESST method: “Take immediate action; Empower others and yourself (delegate); Suspend it to your task list to take the required action later; Store it for future reference; or Trash it.” She describes each step in detail and includes a flowchart to better illustrate how to “Put [Your Emails] To The TESST.”

Chapter four offers advice for how to manage specific types of communication, such as email vs. text, team communication, phone, etc. and when to handle them (i.e. during business hours vs. outside of business hours). This chapter also touches on email composition and best practices. 

Rather than deal with email management, chapter five discusses another drain on most professionals’ productivity: meetings. Thomas offers advice on how to kindly decline meetings that are not necessary, better prepare for meetings that are, setting goals and agendas, and choosing the right time of day, deciding who should attend, honoring the clock, and post-meeting tactics. 

Although this is not typically the type of book I would read, I thought it could prove helpful in my professional life. Although I think that putting these tactics into practice would, in fact, be helpful, I wonder whether it’s practical – possible even – to take the time necessary to implement them. Thomas promises us, however, that the time it takes to implement is well worth the more efficient productivity level and, perhaps most importantly, a largely stress-free relationship with communication overload that betters the work/life balance. If you’re a professional experiencing communication overload, perhaps even burnout, then I recommend this title, especially since it’s not a lengthy read. Speaking of, I better get back to my emails. 

As always, happy reading.         

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Back to School Picture Books

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For most area kids, school starts this week. In light of that, I would like to share a few of my favorite back-to-school picture books.

My first two titles feature the unofficial symbol of going back to school: the school bus. Grant Snider’s One Boy Watching takes a quiet approach, following the first bus rider of the day as he rides from his country home to school. As he rides, the sun rises, with the colored pencil-sketched sky going from dark blue to purple to red and then, finally, to yellow. The text is minimal, an effect that matches the quiet scene through the window. As he gets closer to town, more houses appear and the bus fills up. Finally, at ten ‘til eight, the boy arrives at school. Both the text and the illustrations strongly evoke the quiet of the early morning, making this a soothing bedtime read in preparation for the real thing.

Find One Boy Watching in our catalog. 

My second bus-related title may feature the same mode of transportation, but the similarities end there. Josh Lieb and Hannah Marks’ The Monster on the Bus is an interactive read along that will not help anyone calm down before bed. On the contrary, this slapstick take on “The Wheels on the Bus” will make the audience giggle and give them much to talk about afterward. The book begins tamely, with brown-skinned Angelique waiting for the bus with her mom and waving to a friend. After the first verse of the song, however, the situation becomes increasingly outlandish. Subsequent verses include a hungry monster, an evil villain, a wizard, and a ride through outer space. Eventually, the children band together and demand to be taken to school. Marks’ monsters are cute instead of scary, and the cartoonish illustrations lend to the book’s humorous tone. What a ride.

Find The Monster on the Bus in our catalog. 

One of my favorite back to school books is Derrick Barnes and Vanessa Brantley-Newton’s 2019 title The King of Kindergarten. Thankfully, the self-esteem boosting book has a sequel of sorts just in time for the ‘22-23 school year. The Queen of Kindergarten follows MJ Malone, a young Black girl, as she hypes herself up for the first day of school. She is all confidence as she gets ready, and her mom deftly channels that confidence into a list of “royal duties.” A queen brightens every room, her mom tells her. A queen is always kind, caring, and helpful to others. As MJ goes throughout her day, tiara proudly atop her head, she seeks out opportunities to cheer up new friends, help classmates, and find joy in the small moments. Whether or not your kindergartener is as confident as MJ, they will likely walk away with lessons on kindness and the fun that can be had at kindergarten. Brantley-Newton’s illustrations, as ever, exude joy. Her use of bright colors and ability to portray love between characters affirms Barnes’ joyful story. The Queen of Kindergarten would be an excellent solo read or group read aloud for any child.

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The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World by Riley Black

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It’s something we know without recalling perhaps when and where we learned it: The dinosaurs were taken out by an asteroid. (Well, the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. The avian dinosaurs—birds—made it.) The most famous of the Earth’s mass extinction events (its fifth), it happened around 66 million years ago. Without it, this very day could very easily still be in the age of the dinosaurs.
In The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World, Riley Black not only takes us back to the impact event but also briskly carries us forward, from the first hour after the asteroid slammed into what is now known as the Yucatán Peninsula to one million years later. She shows us just what exactly the earth’s flora and fauna experienced, and would continue to experience, during this cataclysm. While other mass extinctions may have eliminated a higher percentage of the earth’s species, it took much longer (millions of years) to do so. The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction that Black details happened remarkably fast. It’s about as wild a ride as you can imagine: millions of years of evolution “undone in mere moments.”
Black notes that it’s important to understand the role the phenomenon known as contingency played. “Not all impacts are equal,” she says. The asteroid that smacked into Siberia about 35 million years ago was larger than the one from K-Pg. Yet it didn’t spur world-wide devastation. Impact angle and the type of rock receiving the space-punch mattered. So had the dinosaur-killing asteroid landed somewhere else on earth, conceivably the opportunities for mammals to climb atop the evolutionary ladder would not have materialized.
But it landed where it did. A “deadly crag,” it spanned about 7.5 miles across. And, traveling in excess of 44,000 mph, it was exceptionally fast. “If we were to stand at a single point and try to watch its passage, we would feel it rather than see it,” states Black. To make matters worse, it landed at a lethal 45-degree angle. There was instant vaporization where it hit coastal water. Tsunamis resulted, hundreds of feet high. Earthquakes spread. In present day Montana, dinosaurs there would have felt the impact in about fifteen minutes.
The earth, so violently shook, tossed up unfathomable amounts of dust and debris, darkening the sky. Billions of tons of sulfur and carbon dioxide were flung into the atmosphere. Then the debris started its descent, igniting fires. Any animal that could take shelter did of course. And if it could burrow, all the better. Climate change was almost immediate. Within the first day, fires engulfed the earth, a pure hellscape.
Already, just finding shelter above ground was proving futile. If an animal couldn’t dive into soil or water, it was in desperate straits. Temperatures climbed. This was a big problem for the gargantuan non-avian dinosaurs who were already prone to overheating. Black says it well and succinctly: “Evolution prepared them for the world of tomorrow, and perhaps the day after, but not for this.”
As the world burned, the debris created “a vast dome over the atmosphere.” Sunlight became scarce. This was the “impact winter,” a period of endless night. The days turned into years and then the acid rain started, slowly degrading the nutrients vegetation needs to grow.
One thousand years later the earth’s biodiversity was (surprise) greatly compromised, “shot through with gaps.” However, this created opportunities for the surviving organisms clinging to the happenstances they were dealt. Here’s one: Algae kept the oceans alive. Another one, going back to the first days after impact: The first primates could have perished (but did not of course) in the ubiquitous tree fires. (Black also notes that ferns, “a disaster taxon,” did very well during the recovery.)
One hundred thousand years after impact the earth was shaking off the coldness of winter, the forests growing higher. As we move to one million years, flowering plants proliferated, which in turn burgeoned insects. And as Black points out, such insects were a boon to primates, as they provided a source of nourishment.
Throughout the book, Black’s fascination with dinosaurs is palpable. She strikes me as a dinosaur-loving kid who grew up never having lost her wonder. And it’s as though she feels guilty they had to perish in order for her to exist and subsequently long for them. While most of us stop short of such longing, she does explain our collective intrigue of dinosaurs very well. We try to wrap our minds around the fact that such colossal creatures once ruled the earth and for such a long period of time. Whether gazing at their remains in a museum or watching a T-Rex redux chase down some poor human on screen, we can’t get enough. And to Black, it’s more than that. “Dinosaurs live again where our imagination touches bone, the consequences of impact creating a great, constantly unfolding puzzle in which the discovery of every new fossil feels like a victory. Against the odds, this creature was fossilized. And against the odds, we found it.”
Black soberly reminds us that, in the end, “extinction comes for all species,” the dinosaur fossils a “memento mori.” Dinosaurs were on earth for over 165 million years, yet they are long gone. And as we gaze up at their erected fossils, it’s natural to wonder what will become of us. Will we end by chance or by our own undoing? Either way, we know life, some form of life, will persist. Here’s Black, once again sharing her awe: “From the time life originated on our planet over 3.6 billion years ago, it has never been extinguished. Think about that for a moment.”

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The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life by J. A. Jacobs

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In a Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle, the clue “A.J. ___________, author of The Know-It-All” was the greatest moment in the answer’s life. That is until his brother-in-law pointed out that it was the Saturday puzzle – the hardest one of the week with the most obscure clues. So maybe it wasn’t the greatest moment in Jacobs’ life but it was still pretty cool and it reignited his love of crosswords.

That love turned into a passion, not just for crosswords but all kinds of puzzles, and to the book “The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life”.

The author explores all kinds of puzzles beginning with crosswords. From interviewing The New York Times puzzle creator Peter Gordon to the surprisingly recent history of the form, Jacobs not only informs but challenges you with crosswords you can solve.  The first wordcross (crossword), published in the New York World in 1913, is included. The puzzle quickly gained in popularity and was picked up by numerous publications. However The New York Times, now famed for their puzzles, considered the form too lowbrow and frivolous for publication.

As with most of the puzzle forms explored, an appendix is included to the chapter with puzzles for you to try (solutions are in the last part of the book). Also included are puzzles created for this title by Greg Pliska, founder of the Exaltation of Larks puzzle company. Twenty puzzles are included plus if you find the secret passcode in the introduction you can unlock more puzzles at thepuzzlebook.com.

The Rubik’s Cube and its 43 quintillion possible arrangements came along much later than the crossword, 1974. Jacobs’ parents bought him one but he didn’t get more than one side done. Determined to rectify this gap in his puzzle resume, he spends a Saturday determined to finish and 41 years after his first attempt he completes the cube. Of course Yusheng Du who can complete the puzzle in 3.47 seconds would not be impressed with Jacobs’ time.

Anagrams, rebuses, and all manner of word games are explored.  Then it’s on to jigsaws. Jacobs admits he wasn’t a fan of this particular puzzle. During his research he discovered jigsaw fans included Bill Gates, Queen Elizabeth II, and Hugh Jackman. He also found the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship. It was to be held in Spain with 40 countries represented, one of which was not the U.S. Thinking he would surely be turned down, Jacobs filled out the entry form. Alas, a day later he was confirmed as Team USA. Now he just needs 3 teammates and to actually finish a jigsaw puzzle.

He recruits his family and they begin training. It is satisfying to put pieces together and get that aha moment when things fit – when chaos becomes order. On the day of the competition they find themselves led to 1 of 86 tables which contains 4 unpublished 1000-2000 piece puzzles.  They have 8 hours to complete all 4 puzzles. Team USA goal? Don’t finish last!

Mazes, math and logic puzzles have the author tackling puzzles that require you to think outside the box and sometimes to reverse your thinking to find a solution. Next is ciphers and secret codes. Jacobs was granted permission to enter the CIA headquarters to view a famous unsolved puzzle, Kryptos. Jim Sanborn was commissioned to create a sculpture for the expanded headquarters in 1988. The wavy wall of copper contains a secret message. It’s been over 30 years and Sanborn is still the only one with the solution.

Jacobs also covers visual puzzles (Where’s Waldo), Sudukos, KenKen and chess problems which includes an entertaining interview with Garry Kasparov. His coverage of Riddles starts with Alice in Wonderland as Lewis Carroll who was a big fan.  He touches on historical riddles and riddles in other works of literature including the Book of Exeter. Created by monks the book is famous for having some really naughty riddles and for having no answer key.

Japanese puzzles boxes, cryptics, scavenger hunts (including the MIT Mystery Hunt) and infinite puzzles round out Jacobs puzzle journey. Along with those aha moments when a solution was found or 2 pieces fit, Jacobs found that we can all learn some lessons from puzzle solving.

This is a fun, informative read you’ll find on the New Nonfiction shelves in the lobby. Just one caveat – if you want to try solving any of the puzzles please make photocopies. We don’t one to deprive the next reader of their own aha moment.

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

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Nell Young’s whole life is maps, it always has been. Her father is a world-renowned expert in mapmaking and cartography at the New York Public Library, and he raised her to love maps as much as he does.

She followed in his footsteps through college: studying cartography and earning a highly-competitive internship in the NYPL’s Maps Division. All signs pointed to her earning a full position there when she graduated.

Until the Junk Box Incident. Nell and her father had a very public fight over a map and he fired her in front of the entire office. With her reputation as an up-and-coming academic ruined, and all her connections in the field broken by the loss of her father’s support. Nell was sentenced to a maps-adjacent career designing decorative maps for people’s living rooms.

After the fight, Nell wanted nothing more to do with her father. Although he had fostered her love of maps, he was a somewhat inattentive parent. He had done his best as a single father after her mother’s death, but he always felt distant.

Nell stayed away from him, and from the NYPL, for years. But she finds herself back in the library after hearing the news that her father has passed away at his desk. Looking through her father’s papers, Nell is shocked to find the map that she and her father fought about all those years ago – the catalyst of the Junk Box Incident. A nondescript, mass produced gas station map of New York’s highways.

During her internship, Nell discovered the junk box in the storage room of the Maps Division. Inside she had found some very rare and valuable maps, and – inexplicably – the gas station map. When she ran back to the office with her discovery, her father claimed that the maps in the box were fakes and fired her on the spot. What she cannot understand is why he seems to have held onto that worthless gas station map until the day he died.

As she looks into the history of the map, Nell discovers that every other copy has been claimed by a mysterious group called The Cartographers. Whether by purchase or theft, every copy of this map – in museums, libraries, archives, private collections, and antique shops – has disappeared.

Unable to stop digging into a mystery that is quickly taking over her life, Nell begins to chase down the people her father was in contact with before his death – people who turn out to be her parents’ college friends. They give her new insight into her family history and show her the real potential that maps hold, if you know where to look.

THE CARTOGRAPHERS by PENG SHEPHERD hops back and forth between Nell’s story and the first-person recollections of this older group of map enthusiasts. They tell her about events she was too young to remember and the truth behind lies that she has been told to protect her. The reader listens alongside Nell as she hears these stories from her past.

The book itself is a compelling blend of realism and fantasy. While much of the story is designed as a straight-laced mystery, there is magic here. It is a magic that feels almost plausible – and, if you read the author’s note, you will find that it is a magic that is very nearly real.

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A Knock at Midnight by Brittany K Barnett

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I had the pleasure of getting to hear lawyer, criminal justice reform advocate, and author Brittany K. Barnett speak at the 2022 Public Library Association Conference in Portland, Oregon, in March.  She was one of the conference’s “Big Ideas” speakers.  Speakers that were invited to share information and ideas that would take the 4,000+ conference members outside of their comfort zones.  

I had not heard of Barnett before, but after her noteworthy, moving speech, I will not soon forget her.  I was so inspired by the content of her talk that I just finished reading her book, A KNOCK AT MIDNIGHT. 

A KNOCK AT MIDNIGHT is Barnett’s story, but also one of others who have greatly impacted her life. Barnett grew up in Texas, the daughter of a loving mother, but one that struggled with addiction. Struggled so much that she ended up going to prison because of it.  Barnett uses the first part of the book to share this deeply personal story and the lasting effect that it has had on her and her family.   

Despite her mother’s addiction, or maybe because of the trials associated with it, Barnett had big dreams. Since childhood she dreamed of being a lawyer, like Clair Huxtable, the only lawyer she “knew” who looked like her, but her path took her to the world of banking and finance first, but eventually, she attended law school.  

Her plan was to become a corporate lawyer; however, while in law school she took a class where she studied legal injustices, and became familiar with the Sharanda Jones case.

Sharanda Jones was a young entrepreneur, in her early twenties, when she became a casualty of America’s War on Drugs campaign and sentencing disparities. In what she and her attorney, thought was an easily won case, due to a lack of evidence, she was convicted to serve life in prison without parole. 

In researching Jones’ case, Barnett saw herself in the young woman. In fact, if circumstances were different, she thought she could have been Jones.  It soon became her mission to do everything she could to get Jones released from prison.  So in addition to working as a busy corporate lawyer during the day, she started working tirelessly on Jones’ case, pro bono, in her limited free time.

And soon, it was not only Jones that Barnett was trying to help; she had a group of people who had been harshly or wrongly convicted of drug-related offenses. All of which involved sentencing disparities. 

Barnett’s book is a powerful work. Devastating and difficult to read, because it is told in such a manner that readers get to intimately know Barnett and the individuals that she works with so closely. These individuals become just more than names on a page or numbers assigned to a prison system. They become someone’s parent, someone’s child, or someone’s friend.  And if like me,  readers will be shocked upon understanding the sentencing disparity between those individuals sentenced for crack cocaine and powder cocaine drug offenses. Barnett’s debut memoir is a must read.

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WE: A New Translation by Yevgeny Zamyatin (translated by Bela Shayevich)

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Some words are worth repeating. If repeated enough and over an elongated amount of time, these words might even be worth refining, reshaping, and repurposing for a new age and for a new context. In Bela Shayevich’s new translation of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s classic dystopian, WE, words have undoubtedly been refined, given a new shape and purpose, and in some cases, just flat out repeated.

This latest translation of a science fiction standard is both refreshing and brilliant. It is refreshing in that it revitalizes a work of literature that was written over a century ago in a foreign tongue–between the years of 1920 and 1921 in the midst of the Russian Civil War–by using contemporary English prose that is both captivating and thought provoking. It is brilliant in that it uses said prose to bewitch the postmodern reader into believing that this work was written for them. Detach Zamyatin’s name and context from this work, and remove the hundred year gap between today and the work’s original audience, and one is left with a beautifully written novel about the perils of totalitarian authorities, the dystopian reality of a utopic vision, and the consequence of dissent. Shayevich’s translation is written for “us,” or for the “we” of today.

That said, not even a snake could writhe or contort out of Zamyatin’s contextualized grip on this work; and rightfully so, as WE was written for, to, and in a very specific time and context. While the idea of disassociating this work from its proper context in order to reveal the timelessness of its themes and meanings is enticing, it is also somewhat futile. For, the contextual background surrounding the composition and publication history of this novel is part of what makes this work so intriguing and impactful. Written in the throes of the Russian Revolution, Zamyatin and his works were suppressed by Soviet authorities. Though the novel was completed in 1921, it wasn’t published until 1924; and that publication was an English translation of Zamyatin’s work. After its original completion, WE became the first banned book by the Soviet censorship board. A Russian edition of the book wasn’t formally published in the Soviet Union until 1988–fifty one years after the author’s death. Thus, while a primary thread in the novel’s plot deals with chains of events caused by a dissident’s actions, this novel’s fictionalized happenings serve as a metanarrative of Zamyatin’s real-life circumstances, as the consequences of his actions mirror the themes of suppression and “unfreedom” described in the novel.

Shayevich’s translation is bolstered by a well written introduction by Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale, whereby she eloquently situates this novel within its historical and literary context. Add the two essays that are tacked on to the back end of this new translation, and one is in for a rather enjoyable read. The first essay is a review of Zamyatin’s original work, written by George Orwell, the author of 1984. The second essay imagines Zamyatin as his own primary protagonist fending off the forces of Stalinsim. This essay was written by famed sci-fi and fantasy writer, Ursula K. Le Guin. These three reading materials are treasures in their own right. Place a genre defining work of art in the middle of them, and one is in for a real treat.

The primary protagonist of Zamyatin’s WE is D-503. Born within a world whereby individuality is a criminal offense and “unfreedom” is the ultimate goal of existence, D-503 is an exemplary cog in the autocratic machine he serves. In this state of being–known as the One State–rationality reigns supreme. While detailing the mathematical calculations involved in designing the One State’s “table of sex days”–a scheduled hour of time whereby each member of society is allowed to engage in intercourse with an assigned member of the oppsite gender–D-503 suggests that “[f]rom this, you can see how the powerful force of logic purifies everything that it touches. Oh, if only you, unknown readers, could also come into the light of this sacred force, if only you could also learn to follow it to its conclusion.”

Detailed through a series of log entries, D-503 acts as the story’s narrator while he describes the completion of the INTEGRAL, a massive ship that will be used to transport the message of the One State to the far reaches of outer space. Serving as one of the builders in charge of mathematics for this project, D-503 makes use of every opportunity given to explain the One State’s superiority over all other civilizations. Beginning with the One State’s decimation of all but .2 percent of the world’s population, thus putting an end to the the infamous Two Hundred Years War, and ending with his extremely personal struggle between the superiority of cognitive freedom and the allure of human emotions, D-503 paints a vivid picture of what it is like to serve the One State.

Throughout his story, readers surmise the impact that this fictional society has upon its individuals, even when said society is attempting to squeeze individuality out of its members. In D-503’s logs, readers encounter the ever present eyes and ears of the Benefactor–the One State’s all powerful, supreme ruler. This omnipresent awareness of the Benefactor is aided by the One State’s civic infrastructure. All of the buildings in this society, with very few exceptions, are made entirely of glass. Blinds are placed within living quarters, but are prohibited from use outside of “the sex times” mentioned above. Additionally, citizens are subjected to forced curfews and are only allowed to deviate from their “table of hours”–a detailed schedule that all citizens must follow–if given permission via a government appointed doctor.

At the start of his log entries, D-503 is paired with O-90, his appointed female counterpart who is just as happy with her place in society as he is. “O,” as he affectionately calls her, is registered as a non-child bearing female due to her being “10 centimeters shorter than the required Maternal Norm.” D-503 and O-90 are paired together due to logic and rationality. This is a stark contrast to D-503’s relationship with a woman he is introduced to early on his logs, I-330. The inconsistent emotions and lack of logical, calculated awareness D-503 displays whilst in I-330’s company produces the conflict needed to make this story work. While “O” is a conformed member of society throughout most of the novel, “I” is rebellious and serves as the primary instigator of dissent within “D-503’s” world.

As D-503 and his companions discover secret truths concerning the One State and the mysterious Green Wall that marks its borders, a seed of revolt begins to grow within. The budding of this seed, coupled with some engaging translation work on Shayevich’s part, provides the readers with an engaging and well developed story. However, be fair warned. This is classic science fiction. Ideological and philosophical musings are laced throughout D-503’s log entries. Thus, if one finds Asimov’s Foundation series off-putting, this might not be the book for them. Yet, if one is into classic dystopian tropes and storylines, this story might be the perfect fit, as it serves as one of the primary forbearers of such tropes and storylines, alongside Jack London’s The Iron Heel.

For those interested, this fantastic new translation is located in the New Fiction section of the Joplin Public Library.

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