Homestead Village Library Committee Promotes Monthly Book Additions
The Homestead Village Library is constantly changing and evolving thanks to a wonderfully active group of resident volunteers. In addition to book sales, fundraising initiatives, and donations, the library committee helps to sort, organize, and maintain the hundreds of diverse publications that our residents enjoy. Our campus woodworkers are also building new shelves for the library, making it an even better place to settle down and read a great book. Read on to learn about our recently added publications as well as enjoy book reviews by our library volunteers!
RECENT LIBRARY ADDITIONS – July 2023
by Mark Johnson
I’ve never understood why this time of year we’re hit with lists of best “summer reads” and “beach reads.” What does that even mean? Says here that a good book is good any time of year. If you want to read about the Battle of Midway while sipping a tropical drink at Cape May, I wouldn’t worry about the local authorities confiscating your book (though I can’t be so sure about the beverage).
Now that I got that off my chest, let’s return to a familiar theme in this space: the generosity of Homestead Village residents. We received another flood of book donations in April, highlighted by a batch of 10 mysteries and some newsworthy nonfiction titles.
Among the mysteries: David Baldacci’s “Simply Lies” (2023), John Grisham’s “The Reckoning” (2018), Lisa Jewell’s “The Family Upstairs” (2019), and Chris Bohjalian’s “The Lioness” (2022). Prolific mystery writer Steve Hamilton joins our collection of authors with his most recent novel in the Alex McKnight series, “Dead Man Running” (2018). And finally there’s “Clive Cussler’s Dark Vector” (2022) by Graham Brown, continuing the NUMA Files series popularized by Cussler, who died in 2020.
Nonfiction donations included “Solito: A Memoir” (2022), the author’s story of his harrowing journey from El Salvador as a 9-year-old to reunite with his parents in the U.S.; “Growing Up Biden” (2022) by Valerie Biden Owens, a longtime political strategist and the president’s younger sister; and “The Queen: Her Life” (2022) by Andrew Morton, a timely biography of the late Elizabeth II.
Happy beach/summer/wherever-and-whenever reading!
LIBRARY VOLUNTEER PICK – July 2023
The book: “Small Things Like These”
The author: Claire Keegan
The reviewer: Lin Carvell
In 1985, in the fictional town of New Ross, Ireland, Bill Furlong, a lumber and coal merchant, is married with five daughters. He considers himself fortunate but ruminates on his precarious economic situation and wonders what really matters in life. He wants to sustain a better life for his family, unlike his own as an impoverished child of an unwed mother.
When he makes a delivery to the Good Shepherd Convent, he discovers a disheveled, barefoot girl trapped in a freezing coal shed. He is shaken by the cruelty rampant in the convent, modeled on the Magdalen laundries that operated for 200 years with a complicit Irish government. These convents imprisoned “fallen” girls and women, forced them to work and often took their babies. Set during the Christmas celebrations, the 116-page Booker Prize finalist has a distinct Dickensian spirit.
Furlong’s crisis of conscience involves his own internal struggle and the political and social issues of Ireland.
RECENT LIBRARY ADDITIONS – June 2023
by Mark Johnson
It’s hard to overstate the generosity of Homestead Village residents. Thank you to all who have donated books to the library, including the 40-plus that were gifted to us (and to you) in April. There are too many titles to list them all, but several that caught my attention.
In May, two novels were awarded Pulitzers for fiction, and both were among our recent donations: “Trust,” a mystery page-turner by Hernan Diaz, and “Demon Copperhead,” Barbara Kingsolver’s reimagination of the Charles Dickens classic “David Copperfield.”
Then there’s “American Ramble,” Neil King’s account of his 26-day, 330-mile walk from Washington, D.C., to New York that took him through Lancaster County in 2021. King, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal, weaves historical anecdotes into his deeply researched travelogue. “I really become an evangelist for attentiveness I think more than anything,” King told the LNP before an April appearance in Lancaster. “Attention is almost a religious practice.”
Two Steven King novels, “Billy Summers” (a 2021 mystery) and “Fairy Tale” (2022), are now on the shelves. So are the Taylor Jenkins Reid best-sellers “Malibu Rising” (2021) and “Carrie Soto Is Back” (2022).
If you’re looking for a fun summer read, it’s hard to go wrong with Carl Hiaasen, whose 2020 mystery “Squeeze Me” was among the donations. And if you want something meatier, you can dig into Jonathan Franzen’s “Crossroads” (592 pages) or Honoree Fanonne Jeffers’ “The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois (816 pages). Both were among The Washington Post’s top-10 books of 2021.
One last note: My fellow library volunteer Evadna Bartlett points out that many residents might be unaware of our literature collection, featuring books that many may remember from their youth. One recent donation certainly fits that description: “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” Betty Smith’s semi-autobiographical 1943 novel. Just one thing: You won’t find it in on the literature shelves. Instead, look for it in our large-print section, along with a recently purchased 2023 work of history by Brad Meltzer – “The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill.”
LIBRARY VOLUNTEER PICK – June 2023
The book: “Harlem Shuffle”
The author: Colson Whitehead
The reviewer: Mark Johnson
Try as he might to succeed as an upstanding businessman, Ray Carney has to cut a few corners to make it in 1960s Harlem. Unlike his late father, a notorious local hoodlum, Ray sees himself not as crooked but as “slightly bent.” That means not asking too many questions about the pieces he receives on consignment for his furniture store, or about the used jewelry that he passes on to a downtown dealer who also turns a blind eye.
But while trying to cover for a wayward cousin, Ray is forced to engage with a sordid cast of neighborhood characters, threatening himself and his young family as well as his lofty ambitions.
Whitehead, winner of the National Book Award and two Pulitzer prizes for fiction, delivers what New York Times reviewer Karan Mahajan called “a sweet, sweaty, authoritative, densely populated portrait of a Harlem in near perpetual summer.” I wouldn’t call it a light read, but it’s vividly imagined and fun throughout.
RECENT LIBRARY ADDITIONS – May 2023
by Mark Johnson
Bonnie Garmus’s highly praised 2022 debut “Lessons in Chemistry,” a rollicking feminist novel about a scientist-turned-cooking TV show host, is among the list of March book donations. Also look for mysteries by David Baldacci (“Dream Town”), Brad Thor (“Black Ice”) and John Banville (“Snow”), as well as three nonfiction books: “In the Lions’ Den: The Penn State Scandal and a Rush to Judgment” by Graham Spanier; “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America” by Jonathan Martin; and “Will’s Red Coat: The Story of One Old Dog Who Chose to Live Again” by Tom Ryan.
March purchases include “The Other Family Doctor: A Veterinarian Explores What Animals Can Teach Us About Love, Life and Mortality” by Karen Fine, DVM (featured in a recent episode of NPR’s “Fresh Air”), and mysteries by C.J. Box (“Storm Watch,” in large print, and “Dark Sky”), Michael Connelly (“Desert Star”), Stuart Woods (“Double Jeopardy”) and Brad Meltzer (“The Lightning Rod”). We also purchased a pair of related mysteries by William Ken Kruger (“Fox Creek” and “Lightning Strike”) based on the recommendations of a volunteer at the Marshall Street Book ReSort. And in case you’re wondering what’s with all the lightning, black ice, snow, storms and dark skies? We’ll have to get back to you on that one!
LIBRARY VOLUNTEER PICK – May 2023
The book: “Extra Life:
A Short History of Living Longer”
The author: Steven Johnson
The reviewer: Mark Johnson
In 1660, the average British person lived to about age 30. Today, a child born in Britain can expect to live past 80. How did it happen?
The story behind the explosion in human lifespan involves original thinkers like John Snow, who demonstrated that cholera was caused not by foul air but by contaminated water supplies. But the familiar tales of the lone genius saving the day obscure the true story.
“Real change,” Johnson writes, “often requires a first step of convincing people that the existing problem is not inevitable; and devising a solution requires a diverse network of talents, building on one another’s work.”
Consider the story of the seatbelt. For years, domestic car manufacturers fought any attempt to make their vehicles safer, and the public didn’t seem to care. Progress came only after a Swedish aeronautical engineer named Nils Bohlin began tinkering with seat belts (seldom used at the time) in the mid-1950s and came up with the three-point design still in use today. And even then, it took the muckraking talents of Ralph Nader and a 1966 act of Congress before U.S. auto makers were compelled to feature seat belts in every new car sold, sparing the lives of untold millions in the years to come.
This book, by the way, was adapted into a four-part TV series of the same name that can be streamed at PBS.org.
Ah, spring. The days are getting longer and warmer. Leaves are returning to the trees.
The great outdoors beckons. But never mind all that. From our perspective, it’s always perfect weather for reading.
That’s especially true for mystery lovers with our most recent acquisitions. Nine newly purchased large-print books are on the shelves, and six of them are mysteries, including “Storm Watch” by C.J. Box, “Mad Honey” by Jodi Picoult, “Long Shadows” by David Baldacci and “The Boys From Biloxi” by John Grisham. (The Grisham book is also available in standard print, thanks to a recent donation.) The other three large-print additions include Michelle Obama’s “The Light We Carry,” the 2022 follow-up to her immensely popular memoir “Becoming,” and the 2020 novel “Dreamland” by Nicholas Sparks.
Among our recently donated books are mysteries by Lee and Andrew Child (“No Plan B”), Janet Evanovich (“The Bounty”), Scott Turow (“The Last Trial”), Stuart Woods (“Turbulence”) and two more by Baldacci (“A Minute to Midnight” and “Dream Town”).
Other donations include two nonfiction titles (“The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race” by Walter Isaacson and “The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds” By Michael Lewis); two novels by Danielle Steel (“Without a Trace” and “The Whittiers”); and Julia Baird’s “Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire.”
Happy reading!
RECENT LIBRARY ADDITIONS – April 2023
by Mark Johnson
Ah, spring. The days are getting longer and warmer. Leaves are returning to the trees.
The great outdoors beckons. But never mind all that. From our perspective, it’s always perfect weather for reading.
That’s especially true for mystery lovers with our most recent acquisitions. Nine newly purchased large-print books are on the shelves, and six of them are mysteries, including “Storm Watch” by C.J. Box, “Mad Honey” by Jodi Picoult, “Long Shadows” by David Baldacci and “The Boys From Biloxi” by John Grisham. (The Grisham book is also available in standard print, thanks to a recent donation.) The other three large-print additions include Michelle Obama’s “The Light We Carry,” the 2022 follow-up to her immensely popular memoir “Becoming,” and the 2020 novel “Dreamland” by Nicholas Sparks.
Among our recently donated books are mysteries by Lee and Andrew Child (“No Plan B”), Janet Evanovich (“The Bounty”), Scott Turow (“The Last Trial”), Stuart Woods (“Turbulence”) and two more by Baldacci (“A Minute to Midnight” and “Dream Town”).
Other donations include two nonfiction titles (“The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race” by Walter Isaacson and “The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds” By Michael Lewis); two novels by Danielle Steel (“Without a Trace” and “The Whittiers”); and Julia Baird’s “Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire.”
Happy reading!
LIBRARY VOLUNTEER PICK – April 2023
The book:
“The Hidden Life of Trees,” Illustrated edition
The author: Peter Wohlleben
The reader: Evadna Bartlett
Trees as social beings? Who would have thought?
As in his original international bestseller, also titled “The Hidden Life of Trees,” forester Peter Wohlleben made the case that trees feel, communicate and thrive in families.
This subsequent edition, written to engage the lay reader, incorporates large, stunning photographs. It’s almost a coffee table book but with a sometimes startling message: Tree families share nutrients, support each other and even warn of impending dangers. It explains why solitary tree plantings fade and die much sooner than those in groups.