May's Middletown Book for Discussion: Hamnet (May 31)

 

The MUM Book Discussion group will next meet on Tuesday, May 31.  Our title is Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet: a Novel of the Plague.  Here is a brief summary of this imagined backstory of a well known dramatist:

"A thrilling departure: a short, piercing, deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare's 11 year old son Hamnet--a name interchangeable with Hamlet in 15th century Britain--and the years leading up to the production of his great play. England, 1580. A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a hypnotic recreation of the story that inspired one of the greatest masterpieces of all time, Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down--a magnificent departure from one of our most gifted novelists."  

Here is where you can find the book:

• There are several copies available through Miami, OhioLINK, and SearchOhio.  I am happy to note that our statewide delivery service should start accepting requests on May 2.
  
• Amazon has the hardcover, 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.  In addition to discussing Their Eyes Were Watching God, the group also shared these titles for consideration at their April 26 meeting:

• Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney
• Breathe, Joyce Carol Oates
• Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell
• Upstart Crow (sitcom about Shakespeare)
• The Dead Fathers Club, Matt Haig
• The Venice Sketchbook, Rhys Bowen
• Where You Once Belonged, Kent Haruf
• Maus, Art Speigelman
• Elm Creek Quilts series, Jennifer Chiaverini
• The Women's March, Jennifer Chiaverini
• Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a  Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best, Neal Bascomb
• Every Fifteen Minutes, Lisa Scottoline
• Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach
• Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami

We will meet at 12 pm on the 31st both in Room 123 in the Library and in Zoom at 

Join Zoom Meeting

Passcode: 171616

‬

Add this event to your Google Calendar!  (which includes the Zoom 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

"Shakespeare's birth place. Stratford upon Avon" by elvis_payne is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

April's Middletown Book for Discussion: Their Eyes Were Watching God (Apr. 26)

 

The MUM Book Discussion group will next meet on Tuesday, April 26.  Our title is Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God.  Here is a brief summary of this tale of a thrice-married woman in Florida:

"This luminous and haunting novel about Janie Crawford, a Southern Black woman in the 1930s, whose journey from a free-spirited girl to a woman of independence and substance has inspired writers and readers for close to 70 years. This poetic, graceful love story, rooted in Black folk traditions and steeped in mythic realism, celebrates boldly and brilliantly African-American culture and heritage. And in a powerful, mesmerizing narrative, it pays quiet tribute to a Black woman who, though constricted by the times, still demanded to be heard."  

Here is where you can find the book:

• There are several copies available through Miami, OhioLINK, and SearchOhio.  However, our statewide delivery service is interrupted during the month of April, so only in-person travel to OhioLINK or SearchOhio libraries would be a possibility to find the book at those locations.
  
• Amazon has the hardcover, 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.  

We will meet at 12 pm on the 26th both in Room 123 in the Library and in Zoom at 

Join Zoom Meeting

Passcode: 473137

‬

Add this event to your Google Calendar!  (which includes the Zoom 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

"Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Sharon Gerald is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

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

 

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We add many new items to the collection each month, and we hope you'll check some out.  We've come a long way in growing the collection since this photo was taken in in the early 1970s (and the trees have grown, too)! Take a look at our New Books shelves or skim down our new materials list of items we added to the collection in March! We had a bumper crop this month, adding 324 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: 

• China and the Uyghurs : a concise introduction / Morris Rossabi
• Can we unlearn racism? : what South Africa teaches us about Whiteness / Jacob R. Boersema
• There is nothing for you here : finding opportunity in the twenty-first century / Fiona Hill
• Who's Black and why? : a hidden chapter from the eighteenth-century invention of race / edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Andrew S. Curran
• The devil never sleeps : learning to live in an age of disasters / Juliette Kayyem
• Persuading with data : a guide to designing, delivering, and defending your data / Miro Kazakoff
• Woman running in the mountains / Yūko Tsushima
• Zoo ethics : the challenges of compassionate conservation / Jenny Gray
• The invisible kingdom : reimagining chronic illness / Meghan O'Rourke
• Russian 'hybrid warfare' and the annexation of Crimea : the modern application of Soviet political warfare / Kent DeBenedictis

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.

If you have a suggestion of something to order, please use our "Tell GHL to Buy It" form, email Alan Kelley (kelleya@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!

National Park Talk: Denali National Park (Apr. 19)

 

Join us for an overview of Denali National Park and its geology on Tuesday, April 19 at 4:45pm, either in the Gardner-Harvey Library SPACE (Room GRD 014 on the library's lower level) or on Zoom (Join us in Zoom). 

Dr. Tammie L. Gerke, Associate Teaching Professor in Geology at Miami University, will share the geology and other interesting information about the national park. Get your questions answered and participate in a lively discussion on this national treasure.

Add this event to your Google Calendar!

"Denali national park" by Domen Jakus is marked with CC BY-NC 2.0.