Category Archives: Friday Reads

I read my first Margaret Atwood books in college in the mid-1980s—most memorably The Edible Woman, Bodily Harm, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Forty years later, in November 2025, I had the pleasure of listening to Atwood narrate Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, published in her eighty-fifth year. It felt like a full-circle moment.

I expected this memoir to include Atwood’s keen insights into events past and present, literary and otherwise, and I wasn’t disappointed. What I didn’t expect, but ended up being delighted by, were her family stories about growing up in Canada in the years before, during, and after World War II. They were personal, unique, and self-reflective, but also provided historical, cultural, and sociological context.

As one would expect, Atwood (1939- ) took her memoir-writing assignment seriously. Not content to limit her scope to just her own life, she describes her mother’s and father’s experiences growing up in rural Nova Scotia in the early 20th century, providing information on their parents and siblings, education, early jobs, and admirably egalitarian marriage. She characterizes her mother’s background as genteel-rural and her father’s as backwoods-rural, but notes that as adults “they could switch back and forth between country and city with hardly any effort…” (56).

Atwood then moves on to her own childhood, significant portions of which were spent in the Canadian wilderness where her entomologist father conducted field research. Atwood tells great stories about these early years, detailing not only what “roughing it” was like for the family, but also sharing the idiosyncratic ways she and her slightly older brother, Harold, entertained themselves (manufacturing “poison,” conducting mold-growing experiments, creating illustrated superhero stories, etc.).

Writerly pursuits begin to figure more prominently in Atwood’s life during her high school years, and she publishes her first book of poetry in 1961, the year she graduates from Victoria College at the University of Toronto. From this point on her trajectory is that of a writer and participant in Canada’s burgeoning literary and publishing scene, where she will eventually cross paths with her future life partner, Graeme Gibson.

Prior to Gibson’s official introduction into the narrative, in chapter twenty-four, however, Atwood inserts three “Graeme, The Prequel” chapters (19, 21, and 23) to fill readers in on what this significant person in her life “was getting up to before I knew him” (462). Reminiscent of how she handled her parents’ stories early on, Atwood begins with Gibson’s birth in 1934. She doesn’t just provide formative stories from his early life, though; she also includes background on his parents and grandparents.

I’m convinced it’s these biographical digressions, during which Atwood extends her narrative to include the stories of loved ones’ lives prior to their intersecting with her own, that make this memoir feel more expansive than one would typically expect. I also believe it is what leaves me feeling like I’ve read a really good case study about Canadian life in the 20th century!

“Every writer is at least two beings; the one who lives, and the one who writes,” Atwood states in her introduction. If true, I’d argue this memoir is largely about the Atwood who lives. Writing certainly features prominently—many chapters are named after the books Atwood was working on during the covered time periods; and when describing exploits and artifacts in her life she often mentions where they later show up in her writing—but I wouldn’t say the focus ever lingers for long on “the writing process.” Given my decades-long interest in Atwood, I think I would have loved this memoir even if it focused more exclusively on the craft of writing; but truly, I don’t think I could have loved any alternate version more than I love the one she wrote, with its focus on lives lived!

Atwood, Margaret. Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts. Doubleday, 2025.

What happens in the days following a great cosmic event?

An event in which memories and history are lost to mortals across the galaxy?

Chaos. Power struggles. Starfinder’s greatest mystery — the Gap.

“Era of the Eclipse” follows two timelines, told through alternating perspectives. Dae and Chk Chk, both novice Starfinders, discover notes related to the Gap and the lost world of Golarion. This discovery sets them off on an adventure to unravel the truth. (But of course, there’s danger and a mysterious figure following every step.)

The memoir/notes follow Tyrcell, the android, on Absalom Station as they seek answers, survival, and party members during the earliest days following the Gap. The undead reality show host Zo! and the Hellknights work to extend their own power and control of information during this time as well, taking advantage of the confusion.

I’m not terribly familiar with the Starfinder roleplaying universe. This seemed like a pretty good place to start, as it explores not only the Gap, but also the founding of both the Starfinder Society and the Order of the Eclipse of Hellknights. The characters and setting are interesting and well written enough that I don’t feel like I’m missing anything beforehand (though I’m sure there are plenty of “easter eggs” for experienced players). The audiobook is narrated by Mike Dent who is great with the narration and the characters’ voices.

Pratt, Tim. Era of the Eclipse. Paizo Inc., 2025.

This past year, Kazakhstan entered into the Marrakesh Treaty, becoming the 100^th country to ratify the treaty.

Nations that enter into the Marrakesh Treaty agree to allow the import and export materials in accessible formats so that visually impaired people all over the world have increased access to books. The Marrakesh treaty has enabled the United States’ National Library Service to offer Talking Books in more than 50 different languages.

Perfect time for reading Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan by Joanna Lillis.

While it’s quite a salacious title, it reads more like a post-Soviet history of the nation. Lillis aptly names the largest section of her work “identity crisis,” because in several ways, Kazakhstan is at odds with itself.

Kazakhstan officially gained statehood in the carving of the soviet union, according to Russia. Kazakhs, however, trace their lineage much further back–to the origination of the Kazakh Khanate in 1465. There has been a modern national effort to “reclaim” this history that many Kazakhs feel has been distorted. Lillis shows clearly the ways that Kazakhs work to uphold their culture in the aftermath of Russification.

Some in Kazakhstan disagree with any distancing from Russia. One reason is that Kazakhs only make up about 40% of the nation and its nationalist push has marginalized other ethnic groups. Another is that some view Russia as a necessary protector from other threats like China. Some do not want to poke the bear after the invasion of Ukraine.

The leader of Kazakhstan from its post-soviet foray until 2019, Nursultan Nazarbayev, made a frequent talking point of Kazakhstan’s goal of democratizing. That position, according to Lillis, got his party access to UN committees and invitations to summits and conferences. Nazarbayev never got less than 90% of the vote. All the while, protests were being violently shut down, protesters and political opponents arrested, disappeared or killed, critical newspapers banned, journalists threatened and beat up. Running throughout, there’s a strong questioning of Kazakhstan’s political identity.

Lillis interviewed a huge range of people and her writing is well-organized and engaging. She reported in Russia and Uzbekistan before moving her work to Kazakhstan. I’d recommend this to anyone interested in international politics or to anyone who is still quoting Borat.

Lillis, Joanna. Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan. I.B. Tauris, 2018.

If you judge a book by its cover, it may also be true you can choose a book by the blurbs on the back. In this case:  Marilynne Robinson (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), Alison Bechdel (recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Award), Andrew Solomon (winner of the National Book Award), and Andy Borowitz (winner of the first National Press Club award for humor).  Schulz is a staff writer at The New Yorker and was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for her article, “The Really Big One,” about seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest.

As the title suggests, the book balances the emotions of grief and discovery. She artfully discusses the etymology of the word “loss” and the word “and.” If you are a reader who reads for writing? This book is for you. There are passages I read, and read again. It’s the kind of book you want to take a highlighter to for future reference. Kathryn describes losing her father while finding the woman who became her wife. Extreme sorrow with the endorphins of new love. The kind of feelings we can relate to with words we never thought to use.

While there were many parts of the book I found moving, this section near the end reflects my favorite takeaway.

“This is all we have, this moment with the world. It will not last, because nothing lasts. Entropy, mortality, extinction: the entire plan of the universe consists of losing, and no matter how much we find along the way, life amounts to a reverse savings account in which we are eventually robbed of everything. Our dreams and plans and jobs and knees and backs and memories; the keys to the house, the keys to the car, the keys to the kingdom, the kingdom itself; sooner or later, all of it drifts into the Valley of Lost Things.”

This resonated with me in a way that reveals my age like the rings on the trunk of a tree. And paired with the final sentence in the book—“We are here to keep watch, not to keep”—it epitomizes what the work as a whole offers: a poetic view on grief I’ve never discovered with any other writer. It is a balm.

Schulz, Kathryn. Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness. Random House, 2022

Karen Russell’s The Antidote is set in “Uz,” a fictional Nebraska town during the Dust Bowl era. This historical novel unfolds against the backdrop of two actual weather catastrophes: the Black Sunday dust storm of April 14, 1935, and the Republican River flood that occurred a month later following a 24-inch rainfall. These disasters swept through the plains, damaging farmland and deepening the economic effects of the Great Depression. The story begins with Uz already in decline, suffering from both the Great Depression and the prolonged Dust Bowl drought.

Throughout the book, Russell blends real historical experiences with magical elements. The central character is Antonina, a prairie witch known as “the Antidote.” Acting as a healer, she claims the ability to treat her customers by removing the memories that torment them with grief and regret.

The book includes a serial killer murder mystery, basketball, an institution for unwed mothers, and much more. It also explores themes of immigration, settlement, the abuse of Native peoples, and environmental damage.

Other prominent characters include a teenage basketball star and witch’s apprentice whose mother was murdered by a serial killer; the girl’s uncle, a wheat farmer whose land was mysteriously spared from the drought and dust that plagued the region; and a New Deal Resettlement Administration photographer who arrives in Uz to document rural poverty and whose magical camera captures visions of the past and future. Memory serves as a central theme connecting the book’s four eccentric narrators.

The Antidote is Karen Russell’s second novel and a finalist for the National Book Award. Her earlier novel, Swamplandia!, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.

Russell, Karen. The Antidote. Knopf. 2025.

Travel can be complicated. Where does one start when there are countless websites, podcasts, and social media resources for tips and deal alerts? It can be very overwhelming! Enter Brian Kelley’s book, How to Win at Travel. Kelley, who started The Points Guy in 2010, is mostly known for points and miles travel. The book covers plenty of points and miles matters, but he also dives into dozens of other topics including insurance, safety, traveling with kids, loyalty programs, search tools, and more. If you are interested in learning the basics of points and miles travel, or want to make traveling easier, this book may be of interest to you.

 “While the internet and social media are helpful resources, we’ve gotten to a point where there is just too much information, and rampant misinformation, making it difficult to figure out how to win at travel. If you are hoping to build a solid foundation for travel, and learn how to travel better, more affordably and savvier, this book is for you.” –Brian Kelley

Kelley shares bits and pieces of his travel origin story, beginning at the age of twelve when he planned a family vacation with points his father earned through business travel. Lavish vacations were not the norm for the Kelley family, but Brian wanted to dream big, and he loved a challenge. Using his internet savvy, he successfully booked a vacation to the Cayman Islands for the family of six. His family was thrilled, and he was officially hooked on the points and miles game.

By the time Kelley entered the workforce, he was booking travel for friends and coworkers, and earning massive numbers of points and miles. Eventually he started sharing his knowledge through The Points Guy travel blog, which blossomed into a thriving business. Although Kelley has since sold The Points Guy, he remains as a spokesperson. Today, the website primarily pushes their credit card affiliate links, and shares basic travel news and deals.

In How to Win at Travel Kelley breaks down the basics of points in miles travel, and shares many tips for earning and redeeming points. But if points and miles aren’t your thing, there are plenty of other tips. As a new father, Kelley has lots of advice about flying with infants and toddlers. He discusses boarding strategies, packing, strollers, car seats, and other safety issues. Other chapters cover tactics to avoid lines, the in the ins and outs of stopovers and layovers, and how to expedite passports. I found the chapters on how to manage travel stressors, and what to when things go wrong particularly interesting. Kelley covers jet lag, fear of flying, lost luggage, cancelled flights, and more. Clearly, Kelley covers a lot of information in this book, so not all topics may apply or be of interest to every traveler. Although you can listen to it as an audiobook, you might find it easier to navigate in printed form, so you can easily find the topics of interest to your travel style, and skip over the rest. Like The Points Guy website, Kelley places a lot of value on luxury travel and securing amazing points redemptions. This style of travel and the effort it takes to obtain a large stash of points won’t appeal to everyone, but most readers will likely find some good tips to make reaching their destination a little easier and less stressful.

Kelley, Brian. How to Win at Travel. Simon & Schuster, 2025.

If you’re looking for a serious baking cookbook of well known, classic recipes, Baking Yesteryear is not the cookbook for you. And I mean that in the best way.

You may have heard of some of these recipes, they might be your own family favorites. But, you will also find flavor and ingredient combinations that you would never have thought of yourself. Luckily, B. Dylan Hollis has done the experimenting for us.

Baking Yesteryear, The Best Recipes from the 1900s to the 1980s was born out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic hit while Hollis was in college studying music. Classes at the university he attended went completely online and like many of us, he was stuck at home. To pass the time, he started posting non-baking videos to TikTok.

Looking for other video ideas, he went to his vintage cookbook collection of community cookbooks from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Bermuda. In August 2020, Hollis uploaded his first baking video: Pork Cake. Yes, the recipe is in the book, on page 50. Yes, there is ground pork in it. No, I haven’t been brave enough to try it.

With no baking or cooking experience, he learned as he went. And the internet loved it – he has millions of followers on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. Sometimes, he tries out recipes and taste tests them for the first time on camera. Some are good, some are terrible. But, it’s all entertaining.

The cookbook is arranged by decade, one chapter for each decade from the 1900s to the 1980s. There are also introductory sections for novice bakers, explaining common baking terms, equipment, and ingredients. Each recipe starts with a commentary by Hollis about the history of the item or his experience with it.

Hollis is funny, irreverent, sometimes outright raunchy. His online personality is perfectly reflected in his writing – it’s obvious that he was intimately involved in creating his cookbook. This is one of my favorite cookbooks to just sit down and read through. One classic example of his style of humor: the section on the 1960s starts off with, “In many ways, the 1960s were just like the 1950s – they were both decades.”

And, for those of you looking for a real adventure, there is a small Worst of the Worst section. Bake at your own risk!

I have always loved books about animals: wild, domesticated, or imaginary.  This book would have been right up my alley when I was in fourth or fifth grade.  

It is about Lucy (12), who wanted desperately to join the Wildlands Ambassadors at their nearby Wildlands Safari Park. But there was an incident with something she couldn’t do during her interview for the position (panic attack due to fear of heights).  

Now she has another chance.  She has been invited to join a team of others her age for the Wildlands Safari Escape Challenge.  They will help test the clues and systems in the park before the event goes public. 

The clues are interspersed in the book and are a variety of puzzles and brain challenges for animal lovers – a mystery is also thrown in when it looks like some of the systems have been tampered with.  The electronics fizzle, the gates don’t work, the walkie-talkies are on the fritz, and some enclosures are empty or have the wrong animals in them.  

Can they beat the puzzles and find out what is going on?  Get yourself a pencil and paper to help out!

Richards, Natalie D.  Survive This Safari. Delacorte Press, 2025.

Lovers of literature have surely all heard the question, “do audiobooks count as reading?”  

As a Talking Book librarian, even my patrons – comprised of those who are blind, low vision, and otherwise print-disabled — are prone to correct themselves. “I need some more books to read—I mean, to listen to,” is a common refrain.  

Rubery arranges The Untold Story of the Talking Book into three parts, which reflect on the evolution of the recorded word: from Edison’s cylinders and phonographs, to the founding of National Library Service (NLS)  and its cousin Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) in the 1930s, to the boom of the commercial audiobook industry in  the 20th century ^{(pg. 20-24)}. 

But Rubery does not simply recount the history of the talking book. While he favors reiteration to the point of repetition, his writing is accessible and well-structured. It is undoubtably an academic work (the book was published by Harvard University Press), but Rubery is as enamored with his subject as he seems to be with audiobooks themselves.  

He quickly abandons the “reductive debate” about whether audiobooks count as reading and instead explores “what it means to read a book in the first place” ^{(pg. 276)}. Rather than focus on physiological evidence ^{(pg. 14-16)}, he reaches back into historical sources to let patrons of talking book libraries (NLS and RNIB) speak to their own experiences.

The quotations from those readers were the highlight of the book for me. There was not a single comment from a historical patron that felt out of place for 2025; I have heard almost everything from my own contemporary patrons. The only comment I have yet to hear is that talking books allow patrons to “lie down, put on my head phones, light a cigarette or pipe, and enjoy the world’s finest drama” ^{(pg. 84)} — although I do understand the sentiment.    

I read this book both in print and in audio: in print, because it was available to me and because it is easier to cite from print, and in audio because I could listen at 1.5x speed and finish it quickly (necessary, because I confess I’d forgotten that it was my turn for a write-up).   

Because this is an academic text, in-text citations are prevalent. In the print, Rubery does not use footnotes. Instead, one needs to flip back and forth to the Notes at the end of the book to get the full story. However, in the NLS-produced audiobook, the notes (where they are not simply citations) are included directly in the narrative stream. 

This highlighted what Rubery emphasizes about talking books, and what historical and modern patrons champion: access to the same information, regardless of whether one is blind or sighted. Although Rubery probably had little to do with the audiobook’s production, it felt like a little wink. Another wink comes from the fact that John Lescault narrates instead of Rubery; in the Introduction, Rubery comments that “authors who are mediocre readers can be especially disillusioning,” and “professionals are nearly always superior readers to the book’s author and—I’m reluctant to admit—to me” ^{(pg. 10)}. Lescault, I think Rubery would likely agree, is the perfect fit for this book.  

If you are a patron of the Nebraska Talking Book and Braille Service, you can borrow the audiobook from our collection or download it  — and many of the books mentioned in it — on BARD. It is also available in braille.  

It is, ironically, a little less accessible to print readers – WorldCat suggests that its holdings are mostly limited to academic libraries.  

Rubery, Matthew. The Untold Story of The Talking Book. Harvard University Press, 2017. 

It’s the Friday before Labor Day weekend and I’ve had a number stuck in my head for quite some time: 287,240. That’s how many people are facing hunger in Nebraska. Lots of libraries already work closely with their local food bank, or grow food in a community food garden. This is good, rewarding labor.

Seeing a headline about a community garden or partnership with a local university to grow a love of the land gives me the warm fuzzies. But sometimes if feels like we’re barely making a dent in the number as whole. I wanted to know why this number is that high, and what it takes to solve food insecurity and erase that number.

That’s when I found Building Community Food Webs by Ken Meter. He’s been exploring food systems for 20+ years, and it shows. This book digs deep into the problem, looking at it through multiple lenses. Pairing stories with data, he puts the big picture together and offers a path towards a comprehensive solution.

He traveled the country and the world to understand how food is grown and moves through food production, distribution, waste, and reuse. Along the way, he found what worked in different states, syncing up the role of agriculture, food processing, government programs, safety and regulation, education and training, and a wide range of organizations. He explored what it takes for all these organizations to work together in a community food web to make sure everyone can put good, healthy food on the table. Right now, that’s not always happening. 287,240 means the web has gaps and spoilage.

Meter concludes that: “at the heart of every effective community food web is a group of people who trust each other. They share information openly, discuss differences respectfully and honestly, and learn together over time”. I read that and began to understand why that number is so high in Nebraska, and around the nation. More importantly, I grew hope that there is a solution if we dig deep. I’ll spare you the poetic seed, growth and root system phrasing.

You get the idea. Give it a read. I’d love to hear if your library is already embedded in a food web. It’s the Midwest, I know food webs aren’t new. They also go by many names. Share the seeds.

On November 18, 1978, when the Jonestown massacre occurred in Guyana, I was in 8th grade. I was aware it happened and probably even read about it in my parents’ Newsweek magazine, but details remained hazy. I recently rectified that by checking out Candace Fleming’s Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown, which did a good job filling in the gaps.

Published earlier this year, Death in the Jungle is written for a young adult (YA) audience. That doesn’t mean it’s not substantive though. The hardback edition is over 350 pages long, and the narrative is chronologically comprehensive: Fleming begins in 1931, with Jim Jones’ birth, and ends in 1979, with the burial of over 400 caskets in a single mass grave in California. (In total, 918 people died in Guyana, including over 300 children.) Although in-text citations are minimal, making for a faster, more immersive reading experience, Fleming’s book is clearly well researched. There is a lengthy Sources section at the end, pointing back to each page containing referenced material, followed by an extensive bibliography.

Fleming’s writing is engaging, emphasizing the personal stories of people who got caught up in Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple. By humanizing followers in this manner, she makes it harder for readers to dismiss members as a monolithic, unrelatable group of individuals with whom they have nothing in common. As their stories demonstrate, there were many reasons people joined the Temple and wound up in Jonestown–religious, political, and familial. Not all were true believers, but because of their unique circumstances they remained involved until it was too late.

In terms of subject matter, Fleming doesn’t hold back. She details Jones’ drug abuse, his sexual infidelities, and the multiple acts of deception he perpetrates against his followers. She also describes how followers demonstrate loyalty to Jones by either facilitating the deceptions, suspending disbelief, or, if the fakery is obvious to them, concluding that the ends justify the means. This ultimately culminates in Jones commanding Peoples Temple members in Jonestown to commit mass suicide (in many cases coerced) and murder:

As the nurses filled syringes from the vat, the guards trained their weapons on the residents. No one would be allowed to choose between living and dying. The only decision left to them was death by poison or by gunshot.

While not written to be gratuitous or exploitative, some parents might not want their younger teens exposed to this book’s disturbing subject matter. Older teens should be better equipped to wrestle with the implications of events depicted, which include the dangers of ceding control to a charismatic, narcissistic leader. This will be especially true if they engage with the book’s thoughtful Prologue, with its discussion of cults and list of characteristics that distinguish destructive groups (the phrase Fleming prefers to use in lieu of the word “cult”) from those that are constructive or neutral.

Fleming, Candace. Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown. Anne Schwartz Books, 2025.