Book Video

Happy Holidays everyone! Please check out the video I created with KCPL Young Adult Programmer Eden Rassette featuring books that you'll enoy reading around the holidays (or anytime!). It's our first video and we plan to make more in the future. Thoughts, comments, and helpful suggestions welcome :)

Leigh & Eden's Holiday Book Talk

A number of years ago, I spent a day in Salt Lake City. I did not get to hear the famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but I did walk my dog around the city's Temple Square. It's a really beautiful area and I was highly impressed with the amazing Salt Lake Temple.

I recently finished reading The Book of Mormon Girl: Stories from an American Faith by Joanna Brooks. Brooks was raised in Orange County, California at a time when girls aspired to be like Marie Osmond. Drinking root beer was approved and being part of the Mormon community felt good. But while attending Brigham Young University, Joanna became aware that being feminist and liberal were also important to who she was. I really like that she realizes she is all of these things, and doesn't have to give up pieces of her self or what she believes in to do it. Brooks struggles to reconcile her beliefs and feelings, but never shirks putting in the work. The book is interesting, funny, and shines a bright light on what it means to have faith.

Guest Blogger!

Andrew Smith has a peculiar way of writing: he defines Young Adult as a genre in itself, not as just an audience type. He is adamant in his expression of YA as genre so that teens are treated as adults. This is apparent in his recent work, The Marbury Lens. The main characters, their friends, lovers, and rivals are all teenagers. However, the content and situations they find themselves in are most definitely not typical for modern YA. The book is edgy, gritty, raw, graphic, violent, sexual, explicit, and apologetically honest. The protagonist, Jack, must lie, cheat, steal, murder, and worse in order to survive. He often finds himself face to face with his enemies over and over again, and sometimes those enemies are his best friends. At this point you’re probably wondering why you should even pick this book up, right?

It will change you. It will get inside your head and make you feel like Jack feels. Paranoia will unexpectedly creep into the back of your mind; you’ll hear Seth’s “Tap, tap, tap” in the middle of the night. You’ll keep asking questions, the same ones Jack is asking, and when you don’t get the answers you’ll want to read the sequel. Trust me. You won’t be able to escape Marbury. Pick it up, read the first page. Get sucked into Jack’s world, into his head, and then with him into the hell that is Marbury.

If you don’t believe me, check out what some critics, experts, and such have to say about it: "The Marbury Lens"

Read more about author Andrew Smith, his books and his views on writing and publishing on his website: http://ghostmedicine.blogspot.com/

~Written by guest blogger Eden Rassette, our Young Adult Programmer at Erlanger

Right Now I'm Reading:

A couple of weeks ago I went to see the movie Argo (which was great by the way), and there was a preview for the greatly anticipated film Lincoln which opens on November 16th. I had been intending to read Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin which inspired the film for some time now and I finally picked up my copy at the library last week. Right now we're waiting to find out who will be the Republican nominee for 1860 - William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, or a fellow named Abraham Lincoln. It's a good sign to me when I know how a book is going to end up, but I enjoy the story and facts of how it will get there.

If you've read Team of Rivals and want to know even more about Lincoln, here are some great suggestions from Bill Lucy at The Huffington Post:

The Abraham Lincoln Reading List: Recommendations and Suggestions