The Adult Summer Reading Finale is Wednesday, July 30th at 6pm. Register for the event and come on in to work on DIY reading journals, spin the prize wheel for those last minute goodies, and enjoy the company of other readers after an epic summer filled with fantastic books! We’ll be drawing for the grand prize the first week of August, so time is winding down to log your reading!
The next Books & Beyond (BAB) meeting is on Tuesday, August 26th at 6:30pm and the topic up for discussion is Women in Translation Month, an annual celebration of women writers from around the world, writing in languages other than English.
Looking ahead to September, we’ll be exploring the work andlife of Agatha Christie! Mark your calendars and plan to join us!
This week, BAB met to discuss travel writing, journeys, and really anything with a great sense of movement. We chatted for well over an hour about a tremendous variety of titles and had a great time. Peruse our discussion list and get ready for your TBR to explode!
On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making ofa Travel Writer by Rick Steves
Stow away with Rick Steves for a glimpse into the
unforgettable moments, misadventures, and memories of his 1978 journey on the
legendary Hippie Trail.
Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy
by Nathaniel Philbrick
Does George Washington still matter? Bestselling author
Nathaniel Philbrick argues for Washington’s unique contribution to the forging
of America by retracing his journey as a new president through all thirteen
former colonies, which were now an unsure nation. Travels with
George marks a new first-person voice for Philbrick, weaving history and
personal reflection into a single narrative.
Following Caesar: From Rome to Constantinople, the PathwaysThat Planted the Seeds of Empire by John Keahey
A travel narrative following three ancient roads and looking
at more than two thousand years of history of Ancient Rome through the modern
eye.
Traveling Blind: Adventures in Vision with a Guide Dog by MySide by Susan Krieger
Although an intensely personal account, Traveling
Blind is not simply memoir, for it extends beyond one person's
experience to illuminate our understandings of vision informed by the academic
fields of disability studies, feminist ethnography, and the study of
human-animal bonds.
Grave Situation by Louisa Masters
With a ridiculously attractive healer (who may or may not
hate him), his sister (who he miiiight have a forbidden telepathic link with),
a sentient god-like rock (that can only communicate via yes/no vibes), a
disdainful dragon, and a rude matchmaking horse by his side, Talon just might
be able to save the world. He’s not the hero they deserve, but he’s the hero
they’ve got.
Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine
Join bestselling author Douglas Adams and zooligist Mark
Carwardine as they take off around the world in search of exotic, endangered
creatures. Hilarious and poignant--as only Douglas Adams can be—Last Chance
to See is an entertaining and arresting odyssey through the Earth's
magnificent wildlife galaxy.
The Museum of Whales You Will Never See: And OtherExcursions to Iceland’s Most Unusual Museums by A. Kendra Greene
Mythic creatures, natural wonders, and the mysterious human
impulse to collect are on beguiling display in this poetic tribute to the
museums of an otherworldly island nation, for readers of AtlasObscura and fans of the Mütter Museum, the Morbid Anatomy Museum, and the
Museum of Jurassic Technology.
Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin
Dickey
With boundless curiosity, Dickey conjures the dead by
focusing on questions of the living—how do we, the living, deal with
stories about ghosts, and how do we inhabit and move through spaces that have
been deemed, for whatever reason, haunted? Paying attention not only to the
true facts behind a ghost story, but also to the ways in which changes to those
facts are made—and why those changes are made—Dickey paints a
version of American history left out of the textbooks, one of things left
undone, crimes left unsolved.
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco
Polo—Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of
his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities
he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory, cities and
desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading
cities, hidden cities. As Marco Polo unspools his tales, the emperor detects
these fantastic places are more than they appear.
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Originally published in 1979, Italo Calvino's singular novel
crafted a postmodern narrative like never seen before—offering not one novel
but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each
interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together, the stories form a labyrinth of
literature known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers
pursue the story lines that intrigue them and try to read each other. Deeply
profound and surprisingly romantic, this classic is a beautiful meditation on
the transformative power of reading and the ways we make meaning in our lives.
A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, andShipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst
Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He’s a loner,
awkward and obsessive; she’s charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror
of wasting their lives. And they dream – as we all dream – of running away from
it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and
sailed away? Taut, propulsive, and dazzling, A Marriage at Sea pairs
an adrenaline-fueled high seas adventure with a gutting love story that asks
why we love difficult people, and who we become under the most extreme conditions
imaginable.
The Poppy Fields by Nikki Erlick
Here, in a remote stretch of the California desert, lies an
experimental and controversial treatment center that allows those suffering
from the heartache of loss to sleep through their pain...and keep on
sleeping. A high-concept speculative novel about heartache, hope, and
human resilience, The Poppy Fields explores the path of grief
and healing, a journey at once profoundly universal and unique to every person,
posing the questions: How do we heal in the wake of great loss? And how far are
we willing to go in order to be healed?
Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal
Racing toward Vladivostok, we meet the young Aliocha, packed
onto a Trans-Siberian train with other Russian conscripts. Soon after boarding,
he decides to desert and over a midnight smoke in a dark corridor of the train,
he encounters an older French woman, Hélène, for whom he feels an uncanny
trust. In mysterious, winding sentences gorgeously translated by Jessica Moore,
De Kerangal gives us the story of two unlikely souls entwined in a quest for
freedom with a striking sense of tenderness, sharply contrasting the brutality
of the surrounding world.
The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse,and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America by Elizabeth Letts
In 1954, sixty-three-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins
embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family, she had just
lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie
wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She ignored her doctor’s
advice to move into the county charity home. Instead, she bought a cast-off
brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men’s dungarees, and headed south in
mid-November, hoping to beat the snow. Annie, Tarzan, and her dog, Depeche Toi,
rode straight into a world transformed by the rapid construction of modern
highways. Between 1954 and 1956, the three travelers pushed through
blizzards, forded rivers, climbed mountains, and clung to the narrow shoulder
as cars whipped by them at terrifying speeds. Annie rode more than four
thousand miles, through America’s big cities and small towns. Along the way,
she met ordinary people and celebrities—from Andrew Wyeth (who sketched Tarzan)
to Art Linkletter and Groucho Marx.
Annie appears on Groucho Marx's tv show, You Bet Your Life, in 1956. In this clip, she comes out for her interview at around the 12:20 mark.
Tramps Like Us by Joe Westmoreland (Not available in the JCLC, but you may be able to request this title from Interlibrary Loan)
A treasured cult classic following a young gay man
crisscrossing 1970s and ’80s America in search of salvation. Now reissued with
an introduction from Eileen Myles and an afterword from the author. Told with
openhearted frankness, Joe Westmoreland’s Tramps Like Us is an
exuberantly soulful adventure of self-discovery and belonging, set across a
consequential American decade. Back in print after two decades and with an
introduction by Myles and an afterword by the author, Tramps Like Us is
an ode to a nearly lost generation, an autofictional chronicle of America
between gay liberation and the AIDS crisis, and an evergreen testament to the
force of friendship.
Long Way documentary series staring Ewan McGregor &
Charley Boorman (consists of the following seasons: Long Way Round, Long WayDown, Long Way Up, and Long Way Home) Explore the complete series at https://www.longway.tv/
This collection of shows is a fascinating, frank and highly
entertaining adventure about two friends riding round the world together and,
against the odds, realizing their dreams. Riding motorcycles the entire way,
exhaustion, injury and accidents tested their strength, while treacherous
roads, unpredictable weather and turbulent politics challenged their stamina.
General discussion, not travel related:
A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889 by Frederic Morton (Not available in the JCLC, but you may be able to request this title from Interlibrary Loan)
On January 30, 1889, at the champagne-splashed hight of the
Viennese Carnival, the handsome and charming Crown Prince Rudolf fired a
revolver at his teenaged mistress and then himself. The two shots that rang out
at Mayerling in the Vienna Woods echo still. Frederic Morton deftly tells the
haunting story of the Prince and his city, where, in the span of only ten
months, "the Western dream started to go wrong."
The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of
resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply
dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and
charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics,
geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was
dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea
of domesticity and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family. The
Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and
protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their
parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children
prospered. The Glass Castle is truly astonishing—a memoir permeated
by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.
Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time by Mark Adams
In 1911, Hiram Bingham III climbed into the Andes Mountains of Peru and “discovered” Machu Picchu. While history has recast Bingham as a villain who stole both priceless artifacts and credit for finding the great archeological site, Mark Adams set out to retrace the explorer’s perilous path in search of the truth—except he’d written about adventure far more than he’d actually lived it.
Title descriptions pulled from Amazon.com and p
hoto by Julentto Photography on Unsplash
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