Tag Archives: Book Suggestions

Books

Book Suggestion Series: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown

We love talking about books with our members, and on our weekly library podcast Linking Our Libraries. So we began this series as just another way to share what books we are reading or want to recommend!

Daring Greatly by  Brené Brown is a book  I listened to from Overdrive a little while ago, and I remember being surprised how much I liked it. I don’t read a ton of nonfiction and this one seemed like it could potentially have a preachy or self-help feel. However, this was not the case! I liked the experience of listening to this book because it allowed me to think about the concepts instead of just flying past them like I might do while reading.

Dr. Brown has done a ton of research in the areas of shame and vulnerability and how we can work to change the way we relate to these things in order to be a more productive, creative, and happier person. She makes the point in the book that it’s actually brave to be vulnerable enough to take a chance or try something new, even though we could fail miserably.

From Goodreads:
“Researcher and thought leader Dr. Brené Brown offers a powerful new vision that encourages us to dare greatly: to embrace vulnerability and imperfection, to live wholeheartedly, and to courageously engage in our lives.

Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable, or to dare greatly. Whether the arena is a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation, we must find the courage to walk into vulnerability and engage with our whole hearts.”

Check out Brené Brown’s other books:

The Gifts of Imperfection
Rising Strong
Braving the Wilderness

Watch her Ted Talk about the Power of Vulnerability:

 

 

 

Books, CMLE

Book Suggestion Series: The Signal and the Noise

I saw this book on Overdrive, and thought I should check it out. I am a fan of data, and I like to know things. So a book about figuring out information, and knowing about useful information is right in my area!  The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t, by Nate Silver

I follow Nate on Twitter:  @NateSilver538, and also his company FIveThirtyEight: @FiveThirtyEight. This is one of the fun things about social media – you can follow the ideas authors are sharing all the time. And when the author is someone like Nate Silver, he has a constant stream of ideas and research to share. 

Check out the description below; and if it sounds interesting, you can click on the book cover above to go to Amazon. CMLE gets a small percentage of the sale (thanks Amazon!) if you use our link; so feel free to our link to do all your Amazon shopping!

“Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger—all by the time he was thirty. He solidified his standing as the nation’s foremost political forecaster with his near perfect prediction of the 2012 election. Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight.com.

Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the “prediction paradox”: The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.

In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He explains and evaluates how these forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are they good—or just lucky? What patterns have they unraveled? And are their forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition. In other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary—and dangerous—science.

Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise.”

Books

Book Suggestions: Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older

Books are one of our favorite topics both at CMLE Headquarters and on our weekly podcast Linking Our Libraries. 

Since this has been so popular with our readers and listeners, we decided to talk about books even more, in additional formats! This includes a second podcast about books coming out later this fall, and also includes some regular book suggestions here on our site.

(Books below have links to Amazon; if you follow them and make a purchase Amazon will donate a small percentage of your sale to CMLE! We appreciate it!!)

I’ve been listening to the YA book Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older and have really been enjoying it. It’s an urban fantasy that takes place in Brooklyn and it’s easy to imagine yourself running around with the main character Sierra, listening to music, painting murals, and dodging zombies. Sierra is piecing together a mystery that involves her grandfather’s connection with the spirit world and a rising threat that is placing her family in danger.

From Goodreads:

“Cassandra Clare meets Caribbean legend in SHADOWSHAPER, an action-packed urban fantasy from a bold new talent. Sierra Santiago was looking forward to a fun summer of making art, hanging out with her friends, and skating around Brooklyn. But then a weird zombie guy crashes the first party of the season. Sierra’s near-comatose abuelo begins to say “Lo siento” over and over. And when the graffiti murals in Bed-Stuy start to weep…. Well, something stranger than the usual New York mayhem is going on.”

If you are interested in YA urban fantasy, YALSA has this genre guide and Kirkus has this list of books with reviews.  Or explore some of the titles below:

Books

Book Suggestions: Liesl & Po by Lauren Oliver

We love books at CMLE Headquarters!

On our weekly podcast, Linking Our Libraries, we always have a book segment so we can share some of the books we are reading. Since this has been so popular with our listeners, we decided to talk about books even more, in additional formats! This includes a second podcast about books coming out later this fall, and also includes some regular book suggestions here on our site.

(Books below have links to Amazon; if you follow them and make a purchase Amazon will donate a small percentage of your sale to CMLE! We appreciate it!!)

Looking for a delightful story for middle-grade readers? I loved listening to Liesl & Po by Lauren Oliver, narrated by Jim Dale (he also narrated the US version of the Harry Potter series). The story had a definite fairy-tale vibe, plus great villains, development of unlikely friendships, and using teamwork to overcome obstacles. Even though it is technically a book for middle grade readers, the story was easily enjoyed by an older reader as well!

From Amazon: “Liesl lives in a tiny attic bedroom, locked away by her cruel stepmother. Her only friends are the shadows and the mice—until one night a ghost named Po appears from the darkness.

That same evening, an alchemist’s apprentice named Will makes an innocent mistake that has tremendous consequences for Liesl and Po, and it draws the three of them together on an extraordinary journey.”

Lauren Oliver has written many other books, some of which include:

What do you think? Have you read any of these books? Do you have other suggestions? We want to hear all about it in the comments section!
Books, CMLE

Book Suggestions: The Supernatural Enhancements

At CMLE Headquarters, we love books!

This is likely the most popular and most unifying statement you can possibly make when chatting with library people – but it’s true! On our weekly podcast, Linking Our Libraries, we always have a book segment so we can share some of the books we read. This is always popular with our listeners, so we are expanding that into other formats including a second podcast coming out this fall, and in some regular book suggestions here on our site.

(Books below have links to Amazon; if you follow them and buy stuff from Amazon, Jeff Bezos and his crew will donate a small percentage of your sale to CMLE! It can really help us out, so thank you! And if you want to use our Amazon link anytime you shop, it helps us out. Check it out here for all the info!)

I stayed up late last night to finish this book – I couldn’t put it down! Usually, I really like audio books; and this is available in that format. But in this case, I would recommend reading the paper copy. Much of the story is told in journals, descriptions of video recordings, codes, and other formats easier to read than to hear.

The Supernatural Enhancements, by Edgar Cantero “The mesmerizing English debut from the bestselling author of Meddling Kids—what begins as a gothic ghost story soon evolves into a wickedly twisted treasure hunt.

Months after the last of the Wells sons jumped out of his bedroom window in Axton House (incidentally forgetting to open it first), a strange couple of Europeans arrive in Virginia to take possession of the estate. A. is the 23-year-old unforeseen scion; Niamh is the mute punk teen girl he refers to as his associate or his bodyguard. Both are ready to settle into their new cushy lifestyle, and the rumors about the mansion being haunted add to their excitement. But ghosts are not in any way the deepest secret of the house.

Through journals, letters, security footage, audio recordings, and ciphers, we follow A. and Niamh as they delve into Wells’ dubious suicide, the secret society he founded and its mysterious Game —a “bourgeois pastime” of global proportions— in Edgar Cantero’s dazzling and original gothic adventure.”

 

You might also like his newer book: Meddling Kids. I listened to this one, and laughed out loud at  points while walking. For pop culture fans, like me, it was fun to read for all the nods to assorted icons.  I liked it overall; for me, it kind of trailed off  as it got closer to the end and less pop-fun. But I did still enjoy it, and if you like mysteries and stories that turn tropes on their heads – this maybe  the book for you!

Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero “With raucous humor and brilliantly orchestrated mayhem, Meddling Kids subverts teen detective archetypes like the Hardy Boys, the Famous Five, and Scooby-Doo, and delivers an exuberant and wickedly entertaining celebration of horror, love, friendship, and many-tentacled, interdimensional demon spawn.

SUMMER 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon’s Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster—another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboën Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids.

1990. The former detectives have grown up and apart, each haunted by disturbing memories of their final night in the old haunted house. There are too many strange, half-remembered encounters and events that cannot be dismissed or explained away by a guy in a mask. And Andy, the once intrepid tomboy now wanted in two states, is tired of running from her demons. She needs answers. To find them she will need Kerri, the one-time kid genius and budding biologist, now drinking her ghosts away in New York with Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the club. They will also have to get Nate, the horror nerd currently residing in an asylum in Arkham, Massachusetts. Luckily Nate has not lost contact with Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star who was once their team leader . . . which is remarkable, considering Peter has been dead for years.

The time has come to get the team back together, face their fears, and find out what actually happened all those years ago at Sleepy Lake. It’s their only chance to end the nightmares and, perhaps, save the world.

A nostalgic and subversive trip rife with sly nods to H. P. Lovecraft and pop culture, Edgar Cantero’s Meddling Kids is a strikingly original and dazzling reminder of the fun and adventure we can discover at the heart of our favorite stories, no matter how old we get.”

 

 

What do you think? Have you read any of these books? Do you have other suggestions? We want to hear all about it in the comments section!