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Washtenaw Reads 2017!

by valerieclaires

Fans of our annual Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads program will be delighted to learn that the Reads has expanded and is now called Washtenaw Reads! For the first time, libraries in Ann Arbor, Chelsea, Dexter, Milan, Northfield Township, Saline, and Ypsilanti have teamed up to share, read, and discuss one book throughout our communities. Washtenaw Reads will take place in January and February 2017, and will include book discussions, events, handy resources, and more. You can get ready now by checking out the two finalist titles.

A Selection Panel made up of representatives from all seven communities will choose between Orhan's Inheritance, a work of fiction by Aline Ohanesian, and $2.00 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, a work of non-fiction by Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer. Copies of both books are available at the participating libraries as well as at local bookstores. After you're finished reading, you can also leave comments and feedback on each book's page on the Washtenaw Reads website. Get ready to read!

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Eating in Bowls: Veggie Style

by manz

Bowls! Eating a big pile of delicious food from a bowl is simply amazing. You basically toss in a grain, a veg, a protein, and a sauce and you’re all set. With this combo there are limitless options of scrumptious wonders to be scooped up. There are a few new vegetarian and vegan cookbooks that focus on bowls!

Bowl: Vegetarian Recipes for Ramen, Pho, Bibimbap, Dumplings, and Other One-dish Meals is one such book, and offers up some tasty dishes. For even more bowls upon bowls upon bowls, Vegan Bowl Attack!: More Than 100 One-dish Meals Packed With Plant-based Power is sure to get you going. Many non-bowl specific cookbooks also feature sections on bowls now!

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Mother Teresa: Her Legacy of Joy

by mansii

On September 4th Pope Francis canonized beloved Mother Teresa as a saint. Founder of the Missionaries of Charity organization, Teresa sought out the most destitute individuals she could find in the slums of Calcutta and lived to meet their physical and spiritual needs. Teresa died in 1997, but her society continues on in 133 countries, caring for those with various ghastly diseases.

AADL’s collection maintains many resources to learn about this selfless woman (click here to find them!), but one of the most tender and moving accounts is Father Paul Murray’s I Loved Jesus In the Night which follows her internal journey of both joy and darkness. He bases his account on his own meetings with Teresa, as well as her journal entries and letters. A vibrant woman, full of humor, and blessing all those who met her with contagious joy, Teresa yet experienced a ten year season of internal darkness where she felt abandoned by God. Despite this harrowing period, Teresa saw herself as God's dear one, and received the darkness as a gift: a refining outpouring of God's presence, and an opportunity to understand the poverty of spirit of those she was serving in Calcutta. A woman of humble faith, and joy sourced deeper than her trials, she provides great perspective and hope to any who have struggled with a crisis of faith or emotional darkness.

In honor of Mother Teresa's canonization, a brand new book to hit the shelves this month is A call to mercy: hearts to love, hands to serve. Rather than being biographical, these previously unpublished excerpts from Teresa's writings revolve around the theme of what mercy looks like in our day to day lives. Compiled by Brian Kolodiejckuk, M.C, who has been in charge of advocating Mother Teresa's canonization, this theme is not only central to Teresa's mission, but corresponds with the current Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis. This book gives the opportunity to honor St. Teresa's legacy by putting into practice, in small ways, the compassion that she demonstrated.

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Award Winning Author's Dissection of a Family

by mansii

In this dissection of a family, award winning author Ann Patchett's newest novel, Commonwealth, follows fifty years of life in the Cousins and Keating households. From the first glimpses of unraveling marriages, to the aftereffects of divorce, to children now grown with families of their own, she examines the effects of time and the ties of family. In an interview for Bookpage Patchett describes fusing families as the experience of being forced into a group of strangers and forming alliances with them by necessity. How does time effect the dynamics between siblings, between fathers and daughters, mothers and sons? How does the lens of the past effect how we see one another? What might forgiveness look like, or healing from dysfunction? Is this even possible? Digging into the starkness of isolation and wrongdoing, while celebrating our unquenchable capacity for love and redemption, Patchett’s semi-autobiographical work is poignantly human. A highly anticipated work just about to hit the shelves, it’s time to re-discover Ann Patchett.

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Eleven Hours

by Lucy S

Pamela Erens’ new novel, Eleven Hours, is the story of two pregnant women whose lives cross paths for a brief time, less than a day. This short book (165 pages) begins with Lore, in the last month of her pregnancy, taking herself to the hospital as she feel the stirrings of labor, a very detailed birth plan in hand. She arrives alone and is attended to by a nurse, Franckline, who is also pregnant, and has seen her fair share of birth plans. In the ensuing eleven hours, Pamela Erens takes us through the moments of a woman’s labor, from start to finish, with precision. Fiction has rarely provided readers such a true account of childbirth.

In these eleven hours, we are exposed to both the exciting and the dull stretches of labor, the ups and downs. Just as one’s mind might wander during any eleven hour period, especially one so full of ebbs and flows as the process of labor, so wander the minds of Franckline, recalling her family in Haiti, her new, second pregnancy; and of Lore, thinking of the failed relationship that has ended in her pregnancy and her being here, alone. Erens’ dexterous writing takes us down different, winding paths to reveal some of each woman’s story. While the lines of their accounts run parallel within the framework of Erens’ novel, these two women, who go through this incredibly intense experience together, never really know each other. Erens combines their narratives beautifully, yet maintains their separateness. They are each important to the other in some way and travel together on this one journey, on this one day, but at the same time, they are alone, with their thoughts, their worries, their histories.

Lore thinks, “how again and again she was caught up short by the discovery that other people had stories they didn’t tell, or told stories that weren’t entirely true. How mostly you got odd chunks torn from the whole, impossible truly to understand in their damaged form.”

Erens does not shy away from the mess and panic that childbirth can elicit and so this book is not for the feint of heart, nor, probably, for expectant parents. But Erens is unfailingly honest in giving us a candid picture of this one woman’s experience of childbirth. Despite the fact that certain passages evoke the visceral pain of childbirth, the novel is so well written, the flow of Franckline’s and Lore’s tandem eleven hours so well described, that the book is hard to put down, a striking and gratifying read.

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Crafts

Happy Birthday Doctor Dolittle!

Saturday January 7, 2017: 2:00pm to 3:00pm
Malletts Creek Branch: Program Room
Grade K-5

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Chuck Klosterman's latest: But What If We're Wrong?

by eapearce

Chuck Klosterman is a prolific writer and reporter whose quick wit and unique perspective have made his work—usually on some aspect of the entertainment industry—beloved by fans for several decades. Klosterman’s latest book, But What If We’re Wrong? takes a step away from the musicians, actors and other famous figures that he usually writes about and instead takes a look at the present day as if it were the past. Through simple questions (for example, how sure are we about gravity?), Klosterman drives home the point that people have been “sure” about things for centuries, but then are proven wrong through further scientific discovery or a simple shift in belief systems. He doesn’t just focus on science; he also explores how we really have no idea what ideas and works from our time period will survive into the future, who will be remembered, or how our actions will effect the way that the world of the early 21st century is viewed hundreds of years into the future. He urges readers to “think about the present as if it were the past,” which is, of course, an entirely difficult thing to do, although it’s made slightly easier with Klosterman’s aid. Through interviews with various scientists, artists and thinkers, Klosterman uses his signature humor and twisted analysis to present to readers a fun, eye-opening and vaguely mind-bending series of concepts about how we live today, once today is yesterday.

Klosterman’s other works include his road trip story, Killing Yourself To Live, in which he travels around the nation visiting sites where famous rock stars have died, seeking some sort of greater meaning in it all, Chuck Klosterman IV, his book of essays and interviews on pop culture, and Eating the Dinosaur, which analyzes modern day expectation versus reality. He has also written several novels.

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Books Made Into New Movies!

by manz

Three new movies that came out this year were based on books and are now coming out on DVD and just hit the catalog! They are all great adventures for kids and families to enjoy together.

The BFG
This new animated film is based on the novel by Roald Dahl. A young girl named Sophie accidentally sees a giant out her window, and he then whisks her away to the land of giants. At first afraid, she soon learns that he is a Big Friendly Giant and not one who eats children like the other giants do.

Alice Through the Looking Glass
Loosely based on the classic Lewis Carroll novel, and is the sequel to the 2010 film, Alice in Wonderland. The film is produced by Tim Burton and once again stars Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. Alice slips through a looking glass and finds herself back in the Underland and on more wild and trippy adventures.

The Jungle Book
Based on Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 book The Jungle Book. There have been many adaptations and this newest animated film features voices of Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, Sir Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, and Christopher Walken. It’s a continuing adventure of Mowgli deep in the jungle with a band of animals with personality.

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Post Olympic Gymnastics

by Lucy S

You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott

In her thrilling new novel, You Will Know Me, the world that Megan Abbott's characters inhabit will be familiar to her regular readers. This world of teenaged girls is truly Abbott’s domain, though the teenagers in this story are anything but typical. They spend most of their waking hours in the BelStars Gymnasium, opening a window to a second, equally fascinating world, that of competitive female gymnastics. As an explanation for why she chose this setting, Megan Abbott explained, in an interview on Electric Literature, that after watching the 2012 Olympics “I started to think about a novel centered on a pair of parents so devoted to their child’s talent. I started watching gymnastics obsessively, especially practices, and reading memoir after memoir — by gymnasts, former gymnasts and gymnast parents. And I started spending a lot of time in online forums devoted to parents, hearing their fears, anxieties, their pride and love.”

In You Will Know Me, Devon Knox is the star gymnast, a child prodigy headed for elite competition and possibly the Olympics. Her mother, Katie, is the closest thing we have to a narrator. Katie and her husband Eric have made Devon their world. Even Devon’s little brother, Drew, spends more time at the gym than anywhere else. Being Devon’s parents has provided the Knoxes with purpose and direction, “After all, who wouldn’t do anything for one’s child? Especially when that child worked harder and wanted something more than either of them ever had? Who wanted in ways they’d long forgotten how to want or had never known at all?”

Yet despite all the time they spend watching her, observing her, there remains something in Devon that is unknowable to the Knoxes, an innate determination and steeliness. “There Devon stood, on the competition floor. Four feet ten inches tall, nary a curve on her, but her dark eyes heavy with history, struggle. Squinting down, body pressing forward, Katie wondered at those eyes, that face. It was as if this weren’t her teenage daughter but a woman deepened by experience, a war-battered refugee, a KGB spy.” The core mystery that Abbott is offering is this idea of how well you can truly know somebody, and it is presented to us right away in Abbott’s apt and/or ironic title, almost as an imperative, You Will Know Me.

Parents may feel that they know their children and have difficulty recognizing when that intimacy diminishes. “‘Isn’t is a strange day, when you realize you have no idea what’s going on in your kid’s head? One morning you wake up and there’s this alien in your house. They look like your kid, sound a little like them, but they are not your kid. They’re something else that you don’t know. And they keep changing. They never stop changing on you.” When the Knoxes son Drew gets sick, he recovers from his illness as someone unfamiliar to Katie. He seems to possess an adult understanding of his surroundings that he didn’t have before. As the rash caused by his illness peels off, he even looks different to Katie. Her children grow apart from her, and Katie is asked to redefine her role in their lives. Abbott nicely provides us with other families representing a range of parental sensibilities. The forceful parents of the booster club stand out in particular. We, as readers, are left to wonder what urges drive these parents, if they are propelled by love, competition, a desire to do what’s right, or a need to defend family honor. “All three of them becoming as one. A united front. Confederates. That’s what families were, weren’t they? The strong ones, the ones that last. Not supporters or enablers so much as collaborators, accomplices, co-conspirators.” How important to Katie and Eric is Devon’s success, how much does it help them define their own? To what lengths will they go to ensure it?

Abbott’s writing throughout the book keeps us on edge. Her sentences are tightly wound, pointedly descriptive and fluid, like a well executed floor routine. We don’t care too much about any one character, nor or we meant to. We aren’t overly concerned with who committed the murder (yes, there is a murder). That’s not the point. We are meant to be left asking how we know one another, as parents, spouses, and teammates. Do we always want to know everything? What do we do with the knowledge we have? Abbott’s answers to these questions offer the real revelation of You Will Know Me. The mystery is in the secrets these characters are keeping. In her review of You Will Know Me in The New York Times, author Sophie Hannah shrewdly states, “Here the truth is no gold medal, no ace waiting to be played; first it’s a dark haze of menace circling out of sight, and later it’s an ordeal to be survived, possibly even a punishment.”

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Brilliant Band Biography: Trouble Boys: the true story of The Replacements

by eapearce

There’s no doubt in my mind that the Replacements are one of the most fascinating rock’n’roll bands of the 80s (maybe of the entire last century), first and foremost because—despite their talent—they never really got that famous. I myself am not a lifelong fan; but after being introduced to the ‘Mats earlier this summer, I haven’t stopped listening to them, and just had to read their recently published biography. Trouble Boys, by Bob Mehr, is an intricately researched book about the band that explores not only the roots of all the band members, but carries readers through their years together, breakup, and ultimate reunion in 2012.

The four original band members—guitarist and lead singer Paul Westerberg, guitarist Bob Stinson, bassist Tommy Stinson and drummer Chris Mars—are all Minnesota natives with troubled childhoods that haunted them throughout their careers. The band formed in Minneapolis in 1979 and began performing locally, gaining attention not only for their sound but because bassist Tommy was only 12 years old at the time. Alcoholism and mental health issues plagued the band, and Paul is quoted as once saying that “there isn’t a high school diploma or a drivers’ license among us,” but that didn’t stop them from rising up within the underground rock scene of the early 80s. One of the best things about the Replacements is the drastic dichotomy in the types of songs they wrote. Their second album, Hootenanny, opens with a song of the same name involving a seemingly drunken Westerberg yelling only “It’s a hootenanny” over and over, accompanied by vaguely coherent drums and guitar. On the same album though, is a deeply sensitive song called “Within Your Reach.” A fan favorite song is “Alex Chilton,” a tribute to the lead singer of Big Star, whom the Replacements were heavily influenced by and worked with at various points. The band inexplicably decided to name their first major-label album Tim, which was well-received but lead to a disastrous performance on Saturday Night Live, after which the Replacements were banned from ever playing the show again. Time marched on, Bob Stinson was fired dramatically, more albums were made (including the beautiful Pleased To Meet Me), the band broke up, and then the Replacements finally set out on a reunion tour in 2012 that concluded with their supposed “final show ever” in Portugal on 2015.

Trouble Boys tells this wild story and more of it in much greater, more vivid detail and draws on hundreds of interviews from the band members themselves, and others who knew them and worked with them over the past decades. Reading it, it’s hard not to have a soft spot for these, indeed, troubled boys from the Midwest who just wanted to play music and drink beer, but perhaps did both of those things a little too well.

Want to hear some of the Replacements’ music before reading? Try Let It Be, Tim or Pleased To Meet Me.