What book(s) can’t you get out of your mind? That’s the question we asked library staff this month. Their responses, ranging from 19th-century classics to a 2019 burial guide,

may inspire you to revisit your own top titles or make the acquaintance of theirs.

Rhonda Hall (Library Assistant):

Passing by Nella Larsen (1929); available as an eAudiobook

This novel about two women living in Harlem in the 1920s is based on the real lives of many mixed-race women in the post-slavery era. It could almost be the story of my grandmother, who could pass as white and move between worlds during segregation. Another memorable book is No Name in the Street by James Baldwin (1972). Baldwin's experiences in the 1950s and ’60s resemble those of my parents as a young couple navigating life during the civil rights movement.

Steven Dunlap (Head of Technical Services):

Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1851); available as an eAudiobook

I started to read this as I was about to turn 40. It took me over a year and a half to finish, because I found some chapters and passages so breathtakingly beautiful that I had to read them several times. When I stumbled into the ER one day, this was the book I had on my person and therefore what I read in the hospital while recovering from surgery. When I told a colleague about my difficulty making my way through the novel while on a morphine drip, he pointed out that Moby Dick is a morphine drip in its way. I can think of no more apt description of the novel and my experience reading it.

Deb Hunt (Library Director):

Everything in its Place: First Loves and Last Tales by Oliver Sacks (2019)

This final volume of essays by the well-known neurologist covers everything from Alzheimer’s disease to a fern-seeking expedition in New York City to touring North America with someone with Tourette’s.

My favorite essays here focus on nature and mental illness. In one, Sacks describes how mental health institutions used to offer valuable work for the mentally ill—farming, milking cows, etc.—so their lives had a purpose and they were not just locked away. And I really like the essay “Why We Need Gardens.” Over the years, my own gardens have kept me sane and provided a safe haven when life felt very stressful.

Reimagining Death: Stories and Practical Wisdom for Home Funerals and Green Burials by Lucinda Herring (2019)

I had been considering cremation, but it is toxic to the environment, so I am looking at alternatives such as a green burial. This is a great follow up to the classic American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford.

Celeste Steward (Library Supervisor):

Blue Highways: A Journey into America by William Least Heat-Moon (1982)

This is the autobiographical account of an unemployed English professor, newly separated from his wife, who travels only on back roads as he embarks on a circular journey around the U.S.

The author coined the term “blue highways” based on old Rand McNally atlases indicating in blue the small, forgotten, and rural roads. What appeals to me most about these roads less traveled is the cast of characters he meets on his journey, including a teenage runaway, a Hopi medical student, an evangelist hitchhiker, a monk, a maple syrup farmer, a boat builder, a Nevada prostitute, and owners of Western saloons and remote country stores.

Heat-Moon’s contemplative and mindful journey helped shape my own philosophy when traveling. In general, I try to explore the routes less traveled for the most inspirational and educational experiences.

In case you are looking for something good to read during our continuing shelter-at-home order, here are a few more suggestions from our staff:

Autumn (Library Assistant):

Some of my prime pandemic reads:

The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon : the diary of a courtesan in tenth century Japan (2011), a literary memoir of court life by an aristocratic Japanese lady-in-waiting circa 1000 A.D.  Shōnagon uses narrative, poetry (mostly her own), and, famously, her short poem-like lists to describe her esoteric, aesthetically-obsessed world. Dreamy escapist reading.

Susan Orlean’s The Library Book (2018). Who knew that a work of nonfiction about a library closure could be a page-turner? Orlean writes with verve, imagination, and a keen instinct for building suspense about the devastating 1986 fire that shut down the Los Angeles Public Library for seven years—as well as the importance of libraries in American lives, and the people who are passionate about them.

Poems of the day, every day! Poetry Daily, Poetry Foundation, American Life in Poetry, Academy of American Poets…somehow I’ve signed up to receive daily infusions from them all. Mostly, the poems are delicious, even the downbeat ones (lots of pandemic poetry coming out right now, not surprisingly). Plus, most are bite-size—perfect for this mass moment of scattered attention.

Steven (Librarian, Head of Technical Services) recommends:

Fantasyland: how America went haywire : a 500-year history (2017) by Kurt Andersen

I'm not sure how much I can say this is a pandemic favorite but it does provide an explanation for some of the more bizarre and outlandish behavior we have seen in many people's reactions to the shelter-in-place orders and the inexplicable refusal to accept the advice of scientists and medical professionals. Andersen traces the credulity and the resistance to evidence-based information back to colonial times, when people sailed to North America in search of gold in North America because the Spanish found gold among the Aztecs and Incas -- in Central and South America. You cannot argue with reasoning like that. Given the vast parade of examples in his book, I find it hard to argue with Andersen's central thesis: that believing in whatever nonsense most appeals to you does not come about in recent years as a result of television, or Star Wars or other recent popular culture. Instead, it's baked into the cake as part of the origins of the U.S. 

Enjoy and stay healthy!

EAUDIOBOOKS

FICTION
Anne Enright Actress
Emma Straub All adults here
Ovidia Yu Aunty lee's delights
Susan Howatch Cashelmara
Thornton Wilder Heaven's my destination
Alka Joshi The henna artist
Luke Jennings Killing eve: die for me
Kathleen Rockwell Lawrence The last room in Manhattan
Patricia Harman The midwife of Hope River
PatriciaHarman Once a midwife
Jessica Ruben Reckoning
Cassandra Clark Murder at whitby abbey

NONFICTION
Barry Sonnenfeld Barry Sonnenfeld, call your mother : memoirs of a neurotic filmmaker
Jennifer Worth Call the midwife: farewell to the east end
Jennifer Worth Call the midwife: shadows of the workhouse
Jennifer Worth The midwife: a memoir of birth, joy, and hard times
Leo Tolstoy War and Peace

EAUDIOBOOKS

FICTION
Ruth Rendell Death notes
Patrick W Carr The end of the magi
Elizabeth Musser The sweetest thing
Sarah Loudin Thomas When silence sings