Tune in for this quick mini Reading With Libraries episode all about Harry Potter!
This episode will get you excited for our full Harry Potter Reading With Libraries episode coming in September (on Hermione’s birthday).
We discuss Hogwarts Houses, how we first discovered Harry Potter and favorite side characters.
Join us!
Book Bites are quick looks at a book from our Guest Host readers. Try a new book this week!
Today’s book is The Dreamers, by Karen Thompson Walker. “One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep—and doesn’t wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, Mei finds herself thrust together with an eccentric classmate as panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. A young couple tries to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. Two sisters turn to each other for comfort as their survivalist father prepares for disaster.”
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Join us today for a special episode of Book Bites, where we look at a topic for a little longer than usual.
This week, we look at books to celebrate the Tour de France. It will last from Jul 6 to Jul 28, 2019, covering 3,460 km (2,150 mi).
The First Tour de France: Sixty Cyclists and Nineteen Days of Daring on the Road to Paris, by “Starting in the Parisian suburb of Montgeron, the route took the intrepid cyclists through Lyon, over the hills to Marseille, then on to Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Nantes, ending with great fanfare at the Parc des Princes in Paris. There was no indication that this ramshackle cycling pack would draw crowds to throng France’s rutted roads and cheer the first Tour heroes. But they did; and all thanks to a marketing ruse, cycling would never be the same again.”
French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France, by Tim Moore “French Revolutions gives us a hilariously unforgettable account of Moore’s attempt to conquer the Tour de France. “Conquer” may not be quite the right word. He cheats when he can, pops the occasional hayfever pill for an ephedrine rush (a fine old Tour tradition), sips cheap wine from his water bottle, and occasionally weeps on the phone to his wife. But along the way he gives readers an account of the race’s colorful history and greatest heroes: Eddy Merckx, Greg Lemond, Lance Armstrong, and even Firmin Lambot, aka the “Lucky Belgian,” who won the race at the age of 36. Fans of the Tour de France will learn why the yellow jersey is yellow, and how cyclists learned to save precious seconds (a race that lasts for three weeks is all about split seconds) by relieving themselves en route. And if that isn’t enough, his account of a rural France tarting itself up for its moment in the spotlight leaves popular quaint descriptions of small towns in Provence in the proverbial dust. If you either love or hate the French, or both, you’ll want to travel along with Time Moore.”
Lanterne Rouge: The Last Man in the Tour de France, by Max Leonard ” Froome, Wiggins, Mercks―we know the winners of the Tour de France, but Lanterne Rouge tells the forgotten, often inspirational and occasionally absurd stories of the last-placed rider. We learn of stage winners and former yellow jerseys who tasted life at the other end of the bunch; the breakaway leader who stopped for a bottle of wine and then took a wrong turn; the doper whose drug cocktail accidentally slowed him down and the rider who was recognized as the most combative despite finishing at the back. Max Leonard flips the Tour de France on its head and examines what these stories tell us about ourselves, the 99% who don’t win the trophy, and forces us to re-examine the meaning of success, failure and the very nature of sport.”
Subscribe to our newsletter, our social media, and our podcasts to stay up to date on all kinds of great stuff! We serve 300+ libraries of all types, and are always ready to talk about libraries and books.
We are going to talk about stress management at work. No matter where you work and what you do, there is stress to manage. While we can’t fix it all for you, we have some sympathy to offer and suggestions for working to reduce your stress levels.
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If you want to talk about other library skills (useful in all kinds of organizations!), subscribe to us at Linking Our Libraries. We will also have Book Bites there each week, with new book suggestions for you to enjoy!
This week we have another special longer episode, with three of us each chatting and sharing a book we are reading. Enjoy a quick look at some fun books!
Sofia Khan is Not Obliged: A heartwarming romantic comedy, by Ayisha Malik. “Sofia Khan is single once more, after her sort-of-boyfriend proves just a little too close to his parents. And she’d be happy that way too, if her boss hadn’t asked her to write a book about the weird and wonderful world of Muslim dating. Of course, even though she definitely isn’t looking for love, to write the book she does need to do a little research . . .”
My Name is Asher Lev/The Gift of Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok
“Asher Lev is a Ladover Hasid who keeps kosher, prays three times a day and believes in the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. Asher Lev is an artist who is compulsively driven to render the world he sees and feels, even when it leads him to blasphemy. In this stirring and often visionary novel, Chaim Potok traces Asher’s passage between these two identities, the one consecrated to God, the other subject only to the imagination.”
“Twenty years have passed. Asher Lev is a world-renowned artist living with his young family in France. Still, he is unsure of his artistic direction. Success has not brought ease to his heart. Then Asher’s beloved uncle dies suddenly, and Asher and his family rush back to Brooklyn—and into a world that Asher thought he had left behind forever.”
Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over, by Nell Painter “Following her retirement from Princeton University, celebrated historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter surprised everyone in her life by returning to school―in her sixties―to earn a BFA and MFA in painting. In Old in Art School, she travels from her beloved Newark to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; finds meaning in the artists she loves, even as she comes to understand how they may be undervalued; and struggles with the unstable balance between the pursuit of art and the inevitable, sometimes painful demands of a life fully lived. “