To Do List: Read More! by Annie Gagne

Let's talk books! One of my goals last year was to read at least 12 books over the course of the year. Should be an easy task right? I only needed to read one book a month (and during a pandemic when activities are limited no less). Well, as life goes, I didn't make the goal so I'm trying again. Don't get me wrong, I read plenty of information throughout the day between work, online posts and so on, but actually sitting with a good book means time I sometimes do not have. I'm determined though! I own far too many books that will not be ignored. Here are a handful of titles I've added to my list and others that may feed your own reading habit. If you have any suggested titles, send them my way, I've got two down and at least 10 to go!

 

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is angry and humiliated. Alix wants make things right. 

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Two men, an architect and a murderer, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America's rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair's brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country's most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his "World's Fair Hotel" just west of the fairgrounds - a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium.

Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake.

Notes on a Silencing by Lacy Crawford

In this searing book, Crawford tells the story of coming forward during the state investigation of the elite New England prep school decades after her assault, only to find for the first time evidence that corroborated her memories. Here were depictions of the naïve, hardworking girl she'd been, as well as astonishing proof of an institutional silencing. The slander, innuendo, and lack of adult concern that Crawford had experienced as a student hadn't been imagined; they were the actions of a school that prized its reputation above anything, even a child.
 
This revelation launched Crawford on an extraordinary inquiry deep into gender, privilege, and power, and the ways shame and guilt are used to silence victims. Insightful, arresting, and beautifully written, Notes on a Silencing wrestles with an essential question for our time: what telling of a survivor's story will finally force a remedy?

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

When you read this book, you will make many assumptions.

You will assume you are reading about a jealous ex-wife.
You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement - a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love.
You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle.
Assume nothing.

Twisted and deliciously chilling, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen's The Wife Between Us exposes the secret complexities of an enviable marriage - and the dangerous truths we ignore in the name of love.

 

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.  

Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from--a place to which she vowed she'd never return.
 
With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present.
 

In Celebration of Women's History Month

March is Women’s History Month and it is a great time to read up on some of the fantastic women who have helped shaped the world.  From the famous to the lesser known, these women have touched everyone’s lives in a significant way.

Making Marie Curie: Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information by Eva Hemmungs Wirtén

Not only was Marie Curie the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, she did it twice!  She was the first woman to earn a doctorate degree in Europe and was the first female professor of the University of Paris.  Making Marie Curie explores what went into the creation of this icon of science.  Eva Hemmungs Wirt, traces her career providing an innovative and historically grounded account of how modern science emerges in tandem with celebrity culture under the influence of intellectual property in a dawning age of information. She explores the emergence of the Curie persona, the information culture of the period that shaped its development, and the strategies Curie used to manage and exploit her intellectual property. This book explores what special conditions bore upon scientific women, and on married women in particular an how, and with what consequences, a scientific reputation secured.

Code Girls:  The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II by Liza Mundy

Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them. A strict vow of secrecy nearly erased their efforts from history; now, through dazzling research and interviews with surviving code girls, bestselling author Liza Mundy brings to life this riveting and vital story of American courage, service, and scientific accomplishment.

 

Code Name: Lise: The True Story of World War II’s Most Highly Decorated Woman by Larry Loftis

In Code Name: Lise, Larry Loftis paints a portrait of true courage, patriotism, and love--of two incredibly heroic people who endured unimaginable horrors and degradations.

The year is 1942, and World War II is in full swing. Odette Sansom decides to follow in her war hero father's footsteps by becoming an SOE agent to aid Britain and her beloved homeland, France. Five failed attempts and one plane crash later, she finally lands in occupied France to begin her mission. It is here that she meets her commanding officer Captain Peter Churchill.

As they successfully complete mission after mission, Peter and Odette fall in love. All the while, they are being hunted by the cunning German secret police sergeant, Hugo Bleicher, who finally succeeds in capturing them. They are sent to Paris's Fresnes prison, and from there to concentration camps in Germany where they are starved, beaten, and tortured. But in the face of despair, they never give up hope, their love for each other, or the whereabouts of their colleagues.

 

Ada Lovelace: The Making of a Computer Scientist by Christopher Hollings

Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852), daughter of romantic poet Lord Byron and his highly educated wife, Anne Isabella, is sometimes called the world's first computer programmer and has become an icon for women in technology. But how did a young woman in the nineteenth century, without access to formal school or university education, acquire the knowledge and expertise to become a pioneer of computer science?  Featuring images of the 'first programme' and Lovelace's correspondence, alongside mathematical models, and contemporary illustrations, this book shows how Ada Lovelace, with astonishing prescience, explored key mathematical questions to understand the principles behind modern computing.

 

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life by Lori D. Ginzberg

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a brilliant activist-intellectual. That nearly all of her ideas-that women are entitled to seek an education, to own property, to get a divorce, and to vote-are now commonplace is in large part because she worked tirelessly to extend the nation's promise of radical individualism to women.  Few could match Stanton's self-confidence; loving an argument, she rarely wavered in her assumption that she had won. But she was no secular saint, and her positions were not always on the side of the broadest possible conception of justice and social change. Elitism runs through Stanton's life and thought, defined most often by class, frequently by race, and always by intellect. Even her closest friends found her absolutism both thrilling and exasperating, for Stanton could be an excellent ally and a bothersome menace, sometimes simultaneously. At once critical and admiring, Ginzberg captures Stanton's ambiguous place in the world of reformers and intellectuals, describes how she changed the world, and suggests that Stanton left a mixed legacy that continues to haunt American feminism.

The list of women that own a spot in Women’s History Month is long; some such as Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Katherine Johnson, one of the women mathematicians of NASA, have been mentioned in previous blogs, but there are so many more.  From Catherine the Great to Mother Theresa, Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks women’s contributions to history are as great as they are varied.  Do a quick search of the Library’s catalog on our webpage and treat yourself to a great read.