Back in the Stacks

Sure, you’ve heard of the current bestsellers, but what about books from previous years that you never had a chance to read? Rediscover some great titles you may have missed.

You're Not From Around Here, Are You?

You’re Not From Around Here, Are You? : a Lesbian in Small-Town America by Louise A. Blum (University of Wisconsin Press, 2001)

I’d never consider living in a small town, and when my wife and I drive past or through one, I usually comment that I’d go crazy if I lived there. I’d miss the diversity of race, religion, sexual orientation, the cultural events, and relative tolerance for lesbians and gays. A lot has changed since Blum wrote her book in 2001, notably the ability for me to say “my wife” legally, but I’m sure the attitudes in her small town are still slow to catch up.

jh81, 20.06.2018 | Posted in 0 comment

Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles M. Blow

Book cover image for Fire Shut Up in My Bones

Fire Shut Up in My Bones opens with the author driving down the highway, crying, screaming, with a gun on the car seat beside him, headed toward revenge. Then we’re pulled back into the childhood of that wounded man, a story told so well that by the time we come to that scene’s resolution, we’ve almost forgotten it.

jh81, 17.05.2018 | Posted in 0 comment

Blue Horses by Mary Oliver

Blue Horses (New York: Penguin Press, 2014) is a slight book of deceptively simple poems, “something/inexplicable/made plain” as Mary Oliver says in “What We Want.” It’s only when you think further into them that you realize these poems have a lot to say. Oliver’s spirituality, like her imagery, springs from the natural world and the senses.

jh81, 19.04.2018 | Posted in 0 comment

Two Views of Columbine

Book cover images for A Mother's Reckoning and Columbine

A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold

I didn’t plan to review this book, but halfway through my reading, news broke of the Parkland, Florida shooting. So, sadly, the topic is freshly relevant.

jh81, 07.03.2018 | Posted in 0 comment

Trumpet by Jackie Kay

Trumpet by Jackie Kay

How much of our gender shows in the way we act, dress, move, speak? How much comes from others’ perceptions? How many of our life choices are constrained by sexism and racism? As I read Jackie Kay’s novel Trumpet, these questions swirled in my head.

jh81, 09.02.2018 | Posted in 0 comment

They May Not Mean To, But They Do

They May Not Mean To, But They Do by Cathleen Schine

Growing older, taking care of an aging spouse, learning to live alone -- I don’t know how Cathleen Schine wrings humor from these experiences, but she does. They May Not Mean To, But They Do is filled with hilarious and very human details, and it is a novel I savored.

jh81, 17.01.2018 | Posted in 0 comment

Hanukkah in America

Hanukkah in America: a history by Dianne Ashton

jh81, 12.12.2017 | Posted in 0 comment

From Book to Movie, 1853 and 1974

Books covers for 12 Years a Slave and If Beale Street Could Talk

12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

jh81, 21.11.2017 | Posted in 0 comment

The Witches: Salem, 1692

The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff is an exhaustive (and at times, exhausting) account of the accusations, imprisonment, trials and executions of fourteen women and five men. It’s a story we all think we know, but Schiff places us in this world so completely, we can feel the chilly air and hear the howling of dogs at night.

jh81, 24.10.2017 | Posted in 0 comment

Uncovered History/ Filmed at CMU

Sometimes a new bestseller leads to older books. Reading Michael Eric Dyson’s Tears We Cannot Stop led me to browse for his recommended reading, which led me to Douglas A. Blackmon’s Slavery By Another Name: the Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. The book won a Pulitzer in 2009, and PBS made a documentary in 2012.

jh81, 06.09.2017 | Posted in 0 comment

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