Wednesday, May 26, 2021

June's Middletown Book for Discussion on Zoom: The Widow's War

 


The MUM Book Discussion group will next meet on Tuesday, June 29.  Our title is Sally Gunning's The Widow's War.  Here is a brief summary of this tale of a woman seeking freedom in a whaling village:

"Married for twenty years to Edward Berry, Lyddie is used to the trials of being a whaler's wife in the Cape Cod village of Satucket, Massachusetts—running their house herself during her husband's long absences at sea, living with the daily uncertainty that Edward will simply not return. And when her worst fear is realized, she finds herself doubly cursed. She is overwhelmed by grief, and her property and rights are now legally in the hands of her nearest male relative: her daughter's overbearing husband, whom Lyddie cannot abide. Lyddie decides to challenge both law and custom for control of her destiny, but she soon discovers the price of her bold "war" for personal freedom to be heartbreakingly dear."  

Here is where you can find the book:
  • There are several copies available through SearchOhio (we also have a copy on order).  
  • Amazon has the paperback, Kindle, and audiobook available, and Bookshop.org has links to purchase the title from independent booksellers.
Our group is always finding interesting titles to share, and we look forward to the new things you'll bring to the table.  On May 25th, the members of the group had a spirited discussion of The Lost Man, and also shared these titles to add to your reading/viewing lists:
  • Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
  • Black Widows, Cate Quinn
  • The Widow's War, Sally Gunning
  • Anxious People, Frederik Backman
  • Eventide, Kent Haruf
  • Behold the Dreamers, Imbolo Mbue
  • Giver of Stars, Jojo Moyes
  • The Motion of Light in Water, Samuel Delany
  • I Am, I Am, I Am, Maggie O'Farrell
  • The Beautiful Mystery, Louise Penny
  • The Searcher, Tana French
We will meet at 12 pm on the 29th in Zoom at 

You may also join by calling +1 253-215-8782‬
Passcode: 893374
Add this event to your Google Calendar!  (which includes the Zoom and calling information)

Please come along to our discussion to share what you've been reading/watching/listening to/experiencing!

If you're looking for something interesting to read, check out our page of past and future reads at http://www.mid.miamioh.edu/library/bookdiscussion.htm

John

Monday, May 03, 2021

New books (and more) added to the Gardner-Harvey Library in April!

 

If you've been thinking about reading a book, we have many new ones (plus a lot of older ones) ready to go!

Take a look at our New Books shelves or skim down our new materials list of items we added to the collection during April 2021! We added 163 books, e-books, DVDs, and other items during that time, thanks to your selections and suggestions. The list can be sorted by call number, area of our collection, or by title.  There is definitely something here for everyone!

Here are ten titles from the list, to give you an idea of what we've been buying: 

  • Reopening Muslim minds : a return to reason, freedom, and tolerance / Mustafa Akyol
  • The ravine : a family, a photograph, a Holocaust massacre revealed / Wendy Lower
  • Management as a calling : leading business, serving society / Andrew J. Hoffman
  • Breaking the social media prism : how to make our platforms less polarizing / Chris Bail
  • Beyond the gender binary / Alok Vaid-Menon
  • Why the innocent plead guilty and the guilty go free : and other paradoxes of our broken legal system / Jed S. Rakoff
  • Out of many, one : portraits of America's immigrants / George W. Bush
  • Atlas of AI : power, politics, and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence / Kate Crawford
  • The man who lived underground : a novel / Richard Wright
  • Good talk : a memoir in conversations / Mira Jacob

This tag will show you all of the prior lists of new materials, in reverse chronological order. We are eager to hear from you about individual items you would like us to buy, or types of items we should be on the look out for, or general subject areas we should build up in the collection.

Thank you for all of your suggestions and requests!  If you have a suggestion of something to order, please use our "Tell GHL to Buy It" form, email Amy Carmichael (carmicae@miamioh.edu), or drop by the library with your request. And pass your general suggestions or comments about the collection to us in those same ways.

Thanks again for keeping our collection vibrant and your information needs met!