Spinecrackers (12/02/2022): The Story of Arthur Truluv

November 12, 2022

For the past six months, Arthur Moses’s days have looked the same: He tends to his rose garden and to Gordon, his cat, then rides the bus to the cemetery to visit his beloved late wife for lunch. The last thing Arthur would imagine is for one unlikely encounter to utterly transform his life.

Eighteen-year-old Maddy Harris is an introspective girl who visits the cemetery to escape the other kids at school. One afternoon she joins Arthur—a gesture that begins a surprising friendship between two lonely souls. Moved by Arthur’s kindness and devotion, Maddy gives him the nickname “Truluv.” As Arthur’s neighbor Lucille moves into their orbit, the unlikely trio band together and, through heartache and hardships, help one another rediscover their own potential to start anew.

Wonderfully written and full of profound observations about life, The Story of Arthur Truluv is a beautiful and moving novel of compassion in the face of loss, of the small acts that turn friends into family, and of the possibilities to achieve happiness at any age. […]

Celebrate Native American Heritage Month

November 10, 2022

November marks National Native American Heritage Month– a time when we recognize the rich cultural heritage, traditions, and contributions of North America’s Indigenous people. Algonquin Area Public Library invites everyone to take part in these fun and informative activities, that run throughout the month. This challenge runs November 1 – 30 and includes both reading and activities that explore the […]

Unicorns and Spaceships (12/13/2022): Project Hail Mary

November 9, 2022

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.
And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone. Or does he?

An irresistible interstellar adventure as only Andy Weir could deliver, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going. […]

Write Your Story This November

November 3, 2022

November is National Novel Writing Month, when writers of all experience levels craft a 50,000 word novel or non-fiction work in 30 days. It might sound like a daunting challenge, but many NaNoWriMo projects have gone on to become best-sellers, including The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes, The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory, […]

Stranger than Fiction (12/06/2022): Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

November 2, 2022

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return. […]

Discover November’s Library Reads

November 1, 2022

Every month, librarians and library staff throughout the country select their top ten favorite new releases. Library Reads celebrate both established authors and exciting newcomers writing in a variety of genres. We’ll highlight a few notable Library Reads picks for the month, which you can check out from AAPLD. Find the complete list of November’s Library Reads here. A […]

Oh, the Horror! (11/29/2022): The Only Good Indians

October 26, 2022

From New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones comes a novel that is equal parts psychological horror and cutting social commentary on identity politics and the American Indian experience. Fans of Jordan Peele and Tommy Orange will love this story as it follows the lives of four American Indian men and their families, all haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. Years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way. […]

Library Reads (11/17/2022): Anxious People

October 21, 2022

Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can’t fix their own marriage. There’s a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can’t seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment’s only bathroom, and you’ve got the worst group of hostages in the world.

Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.

Rich with Fredrik Backman’s “pitch-perfect dialogue and an unparalleled understanding of human nature” (Shelf Awareness), Anxious People is an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope—the things that save us, even in the most anxious times. […]

VOTE! (at your library)

October 20, 2022

Mid-term elections are just a few weeks away. Illinois voters will elect a new governor and lieutenant governor, State Treasurer, Secretary of State, three Illinois Supreme Court justices, one U.S. Senator, new representatives to the U.S. House, plus numerous state senators and representatives, judges, county and local officials. Voters will also decide on an amendment to the Illinois State Constitution […]

Enjoying the Classics (11/16/2022): McTeague

October 20, 2022

A couple’s life and love are destroyed when they win the lottery in this tragic tale of turn-of-the-century San Francisco.

McTeague and Trina are in love, and with the modest income from McTeague’s dentistry office, their needs are few. But when Trina wins a small fortune from a lottery ticket, jealousy and distrust begin to unravel their happy home. As tension erupts between McTeague and Trina’s cousin Marcus, Trina’s impulse to save her winnings slowly gives way to a pathological obsession with hoarding money. Betrayed and destitute, the couple embarks on a journey down a path of violence, theft, and murder.

Considered transgressive for its brutality and sordid subject matter upon first publication in 1899, McTeague has since served as the basis for the films Greed (1924) by Erich von Stroheim and Slow Burn (2000), starring Minnie Driver and James Spader. Widely acclaimed as Frank Norris’s masterpiece, the novel was hailed as “a literary masterpiece” by the New York Times. […]

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Year: 2022