Upcoming programs:
Wed 5/3 @ 6:30pm
Sound Café: Southern Music Research Center
More information: https://emmetoneal.libnet.info/event/7811224
Sun 5/7 @ 3pm
Short Story Matinee Film Series: Stagecoach
More information: https://emmetoneal.libnet.info/event/7869850
Sun 5/14 @ 7pm
Under the Mountain film screening: The Wicker Man
More information: https://emmetoneal.libnet.info/event/8036398
Tue 5/23 @ 6:30pm
Books & Beyond: Ancient Greece
More information: https://emmetoneal.libnet.info/event/6648594
Wed 5/31 @ 11am
Alabama Historical Association: Understanding Early Creek Life
More information: https://emmetoneal.libnet.info/event/8173132
The next Books & Beyond (BAB) meeting, listed
above, will be on Tuesday, May 23rd at 6:30pm.
If you’d rather attend online, register your email to receive the Zoom
link nearer to the meeting day. The
topic up for discussion is ancient Greece.
The book display is available at the 2nd floor service desk and you can peruse
it online on BAB’s row (7th row down the page) of Shelf Care here: https://oneallibrary.org/adults---reading-recommendations
BAB met last night to discuss essay collections:
The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
The Art of the Commonplace gathers twenty essays by
Wendell Berry that offer an agrarian alternative to our dominant urban culture.
Grouped around five themes―an agrarian critique of culture, agrarian
fundamentals, agrarian economics, agrarian religion, and geobiography―these
essays promote a clearly defined and compelling vision important to all people
dissatisfied with the stress, anxiety, disease, and destructiveness of
contemporary American culture.
My Life as a Villainess: Essays by Laura Lippman
In this collection of new and previously published
essays, New York Times best-selling author Laura Lippman offers her
take on a woman's life across the decades. Her childhood and school years, her
newspaper career, her experiences as a novelist - Lippman finds universal
touchstones in an unusual life that has as many twists as her award-winning
crime fiction.
ContraPoint youtube channel: The Witch Trials of J.K.Rowling
Natalie Wynn is an American YouTuber, political commentator,
and cultural critic. She is best known for her YouTube channel, ContraPoints,
where she creates video essays exploring a wide range of topics such as
politics, gender, ethics, race, and philosophy.
I Take My Coffee Black: Reflections on Tupac, Musical Theater, Faith, and Being Black in America by Tyler Merritt
In this powerful memoir, the creator of the viral videos
"Before You Call the Cops" and "Walking While Black", Tyler
Merritt, shares his experiences as a Black man in America with truth, humor,
and poignancy.
The Lyric Essay as Resistance: Truth from the Margins
edited by Zoe Bossiere et al.
Lyric essayists draw on memoir, poetry, and prose to push
against the arbitrary genre restrictions in creative nonfiction, opening up
space not only for new forms of writing, but also new voices and a new literary
canon. This anthology features some of the best lyric essays published in the
last several years by prominent and emerging writers. Editors Zoë Bossiere and
Erica Trabold situate this anthology within the ongoing work of resistance-to
genre convention, literary tradition, and the confines of dominant-culture
spaces. As sites of resistance, these essays are diverse and include
investigations into deeply personal and political topics such as queer and
trans identity, the American BIPOC experience, reproductive justice, belonging,
grief, and more.
More info on lyric essays: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/teacher_and_tutor_resources/writing_instructors/creative_nonfiction_in_writing_courses/lyric_essays.html
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess by
Andrei Codrescu
The Posthuman Dada Guide is an impractical handbook for
practical living in our posthuman world―all by way of examining the imagined
1916 chess game between Tristan Tzara, the daddy of Dada, and V. I. Lenin, the
daddy of communism. Taking the match as metaphor for two poles of twentieth-
and twenty-first-century thought, politics, and life, Andrei Codrescu has
created his own brilliantly Dadaesque guide to Dada―and to what it can teach us
about surviving our ultraconnected present and future.
See What Can Be Done: Essays, Criticism, and Commentary by
Lorrie Moore
This essential, enlightening, truly delightful collection
shows one of our greatest writers parsing the political, artistic, and media
landscape of the past three decades. These sixty-six essays and reviews, culled
from the pages of The New York Review of Books, The New York Times,
Harper’s, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker, among others, find
Lorrie Moore turning her discerning eye on everything from celebrity culture to
the wilds of television, from Stephen Sondheim to Barack Obama. See What
Can Be Done is a perfect blend of craft, brains, and a knowing, singular
take on life, liberty, and the pursuit of (some kind of) happiness.
Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing by Robert Caro
Caro recalls the moments at which he came to understand that
he wanted to write not just about the men who wielded power but about the
people and the politics that were shaped by that power. And he talks about the
importance to him of the writing itself, of how he tries to infuse it with a
sense of place and mood to bring characters and situations to life on the page.
Taken together, these reminiscences—some previously published, some written
expressly for this book—bring into focus the passion, the wry self-deprecation,
and the integrity with which this brilliant historian has always approached his
work.
Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris
From here the story could take many turns. When this guy is
David Sedaris, the possibilities are endless, but the result is always the
same: he will both delight you with twists of humor and intelligence and leave
you deeply moved.
The Mindfulness Revolution: Leading Psychologists, Scientists, Artists, and Meditation Teachers on the Power of Mindfulness in Daily Life edited by Barry Boyce et al.
A growing body of scientific research indicates that
mindfulness can reduce stress and improve mental and physical health. Countless
people who have tried it say it's improved their quality of life. Simply put,
mindfulness is the practice of paying steady and full attention, without
judgment or criticism, to our moment-to-moment experience. Here is a collection
of the best writing on what mindfulness is, why we should practice it, and how
to apply it in daily life, from leading figures in the field.
Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners by Alan
Emmins
Neal Smither doesn't hide his work. The side of his van
reads: "Crime Scene Cleaners: Homicides, Suicides and Accidental
Death." Whenever a hotel guest permanently checks out, the cops finish an
investigation, or an accidental death is reported, Smither's crew pick up the
pieces after the police cruisers and ambulances have left. Alan Emmins offers a
glimpse at this little-known aspect of America's most gruesome deaths. Filled
with details as fascinating as they are gory, Mop Men examines not
just the public fascination with murder but also how a self-made success like
Smither can make a fortune just by praying for death.
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul
Gawande
In his bestselling books, Atul Gawande, a practicing
surgeon, has fearlessly revealed the struggles of his profession. Here he
examines its ultimate limitations and failures―in his own practices as well as
others'―as life draws to a close. Riveting, honest, and humane, Being
Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life―all
the way to the very end.
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
If human beings disappeared instantaneously from the Earth,
what would happen? How would the planet reclaim its surface? What creatures
would emerge from the dark and swarm? How would our treasured structures--our
tunnels, our bridges, our homes, our monuments--survive the unmitigated impact
of a planet without our intervention? In his revelatory, bestselling account,
Alan Weisman draws on every field of science to present an environmental
assessment like no other, the most affecting portrait yet of humankind's place
on this planet.
Authors of note:
Ann Patchett
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage
Mary Roach
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War
Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places
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