Staff Bookshelf October

As we begin to fall into…well, fall, the staff cozies up to some chilling new reads! Featured is a delightful range of genres: post war novels, apocalyptic literature, translated Tolkien works, fantasy, and more. Just like a bowl of Halloween candy, you never know what you might just pick up!

Trevor C

It’s Booker season and I finished—reading the final 100 pages in a single sitting—the first ever Dutch entry into the competition, Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep. Though it’s the first of the Shortlist that I’ve read I don’t think it’s going to be topped. It’s the story of a reclusive, misanthropic woman in a post-War rural part of the Netherlands whose world is turned upside down when she has to host her brother’s awful girlfriend in her house with her for a month or so.

Rachel

I finally finished The Index of Self-Destructive Acts (and it was outstanding!), so I’ve just requested from the library a book that I’ve heard Christopher Beha recommend, Lucky Per, by Henrik Pontoppidan. From what I can glean, it’s a Danish modernist bildungsroman that plays on the two connotations of the Danish word for “lucky”—”luck” and “happiness”—and it’s supposed to be a well-kept secret. Looking forward to seeing what it’s all about!   

Amanda

I’m currently reading Intermezzo by Sally RooneyIt follows the life of 2 brothers after the death of their father. I am only a few chapters in but so far I’m enjoying it.

On audio, I am listening to Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. It’s set in fantasy setting where the protagonist, Violet Sorrengail, is forced by her mother (the commanding officer) to enlist in the dragon rider quadrant of the army. I also just started this one but it’s pretty good.

John

I checked out Index of Self-Destructive Acts on Rachel’s recommendation but never listened to it, as I instead got into A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), a trinity of novellas set centuries apart in a post-nuclear fallout world and published as a single book. Saint I. E. Leibowitz was an engineer who survived the “Fire Deluge” (nuclear war), sought refuge with monks, and started an order named for St. Albert the Great dedicating to preserving secretly what knowledge could be saved from the pre-fallout civilization, for not only did the bombs destroy much learning, but those who survived blamed science and sought to eradicate it from the earth (religious learning was somewhat spared). The author, Walter A. Miller, was a convert to Catholicism after World War II, and he beautifully captures the pre-Vatican II Catholic idiom. (The “papal encyclical: on whether genetically malformed humans—”monsters”—have a right to life is spot on.) I naturally thrilled to the themes of piety both for and against learning, and the degree to which human nature is perfectible or doomed, and the book can be alternatively hilarious and jarring, though also sometimes slow. It does largely lack female characters, and Protestantism disappears from post-apocalyptic America without a trace (to emphasize the revival of medievalism, I gather). Two main things date the book: the author didn’t anticipate the Second Vatican Council, and he didn’t anticipate the Internet. Of course, one can imagine that the Roman Catholic Church might return to its older patterns (e.g., praying in Latin) after a nuclear holocaust, and that the future which revives modern technology and achieves interstellar travel might not have an Al Gore to invent the Internet. In Miller’s apocalypse, it’s not AI that we have to fear, but ourselves.

I’m still plugging away at Yr Hobyd, from last month, which rather serves me right. It’s going to be a while… But I have Dorothy L. Sayer’s Thrones, Dominations out of the library, which is a Lord Peter Wimsey novel completed by Jill Paton Walsh. Wimsey, together with Harriet Vane and Mervyn Bunter, are a phenomenal trio from the Golden Age of British detective fiction, and the story is set after Wimsey and Harriet Vane have returned from their honeymoon. Will an unfinished Sayers novel completed by another writer be just as good? I’ll find out.

Brian

I’m reading Playground, by Richard Powers. I’ve read almost all of his books and they’re always excellent, in my humble opinion. He somehow manages to make “big ideas” into interesting stories and intriguing characters. This one has 4 main characters thus far, one is a female diver from WW II era, and the other 3 are connected in a number of ways, and I imagine the diver will interact with the other 3 as well at some point. Extremely well written and compelling!

Libby

 I only just finished Emily Henry’s Beach Read, which I started—you guessed it—while at the beach over the summer. It wasn’t my favorite of the Henry romances that I’ve read, as it dealt with some pretty heavy topics and I was looking for lighter fare. Now I’m resuming Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros, the second in the series that Amanda just started! I’ve been reading that one since May…don’t side-eye me! It’s a really good read and my slowness shouldn’t reflect poorly on it. I’m just tired, okay?!?

On the audiobook front, I’ve been listening to the Bridgerton books of the popular Netflix series on my commutes. I wouldn’t say they’re my favorite in all the land, but there have been some laugh out loud moments, which I wasn’t expecting. Julia Quinn is funny! Pivoting to some true crime podcasts now to get in the spooky spirit.

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