Category Archives: Books & Reading

Friday Reads – The Parliament by Aimee Pokwatka

Nothing catches my attention quite like seeing my own first name on a book cover, so naturally, I picked up Aimee Pokwatka’s “The Parliament” when I spotted it at my local library. I supposed I should feel lucky to have been able to leave my local library, unlike the characters in this novel, whose library is swarmed by thousands of tiny, murderous owls as the tale begins. This is the titular Parliament, a parliament of owls.

Pokwatka’s novel has been described as “The Birds” meets “The Princess Bride” – it’s a tale within a tale. First, the birds: we soon learn that Madigan (aka Mad), our protagonist, is only at her hometown library as a favor to an old friend. She has reluctantly agreed to come back to town to teach a group of tweens how to make bath bombs. She’ll teach the class and head back to her condo in the city, away from the traumatic past she left behind after high school. The owls, however, have other ideas; one owl breaks through the window of the classroom, sending glass flying and kids diving under tables.

It doesn’t take long for the library’s occupants to realize that the building is completely surrounded by the birds, and that they’ve lost all connection to the outside world – no cell phones, landline, or internet. One patron tries to exit…but is quickly consumed by the flock when she steps outside. With no way to leave and no way to call for help, Mad does her best to help her students stay calm. She locates her favorite childhood book, “The Silent Queen”, and reads aloud.

“The Silent Queen” is the tale of Princess Alala, the ruler of the mining kingdom of Soder. Every year on Enrichment Day, the 8-year-old girls of Soder journey up the mountain to trade some part of themselves to the monster, in exchange for a magical endowment, such as the ability to heal, or fly, or talk to plants. The monster takes what it wants – eyes, entire limbs, even the ability to speak. But this year, the monster is taking more and giving less, and Alala is forced to confront the beast to save the girls of Soder from it’s wrath.

Pokwatka alternates between the distraction of the Silent Queen’s journey, the escalating crisis in the rest of the library, and the resurrection of childhood memories Mad would rather leave buried. The author does an excellent job of joining these very distinct narratives into one cohesive tale of courage, loss, and healing. And her name is Aimee too, so I’ll add a star for that.

Pokwatka, Aimee. (2024). The Parliament. Tor Books.

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#BookFaceFriday “The Garden of Small Beginnings” by Abbi Waxman

This #BookFaceFriday is ready to sprout!

If you’re looking for a summer beach read without the beach, this #BookFace has you covered. “The Garden of Small Beginnings” (Berkley, 2017) by USA Today bestselling author Abbi Waxman is a slice-of-life romance following widowed Lilian Girvan as she’s starting to get back into the swing of life, starting with a vegetable-gardening class her newest boss has signed her up for. With help from her two daughters and her supportive sister, she faces a botanical challenge and discovers a group of quirky gardeners. It’s available as an eBook through Nebraska OverDrive Libraries and is currently featured in the “Beach Reads” curated collection that’s filled with captivating reads to fill your summer days.

“Waxman’s skill at characterization…lifts this novel far above being just another ‘widow finds love’ story. Clearly an observer, Waxman has mastered the fine art of dialogue as well. Characters ring true right down to Lilian’s two daughters, who often steal the show. This debut begs for an encore from Waxman.”

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 194 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 26,898 audiobooks, 36,794 ebooks, and 5,133 magazines. As an added bonus it includes 130 podcasts that are always available with simultaneous use (SU), as well as SU ebooks and audiobook titles that publishers have made available for a limited time. If you’re a part of it, let your users know about this great title, and if you’re not a member yet, find more information about participating in Nebraska Overdrive Libraries!

Love this #BookFace & reading? We suggest checking out all the titles available for book clubs at http://nlc.nebraska.gov/ref/bookclub. Check out our past #BookFaceFriday photos on the Nebraska Library Commission’s Facebook page!

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Friday Reads: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Did you know that kaiju are an endangered species? Just like pandas? It’s true! Well, in another dimension, not in our own, but they still need our help to ensure their protection and survival.

Enter ‘The Kaiju Preservation Society’, aka KPS.

Jamie Gray has just started working at a new food delivery company in New York City, but is demoted to delivery when the COVID-19 pandemic hits in early 2020. They end up making multiple deliveries to a former acquaintance, Tom Stevens, who offers them a job ‘lifting things’ with an animal rights organization, KPS. All Jamie is told is that they work with ‘large animals’ and the salary and benefits are too good to say no. So, Jamie and Tom head off first to Greenland, and then on to where KPS does their real work, an alternate dimension where life has evolved differently, and giant kaiju roam the world.

But, if they are in a different dimension, away from our own, why do we need a Kaiju ‘Preservation’ Society? Well, naturally, other nefarious folks (government types and shady billionaires) have also found there way there, and they don’t have the kaiju’s best interests at heart. Even though they were only hired to ‘lift things’, Jaime’s resourcefulness and previous education is just what might be needed to help save our world and the kaiju’s world.

John Scalzi is one of my favorite writers. As usual, his writing is fun and the science is easy to understand. This is truly escapist science fiction at its best. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, which was something Scalzi, and all of us, needed when it was written during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2021. It does take place at the same exact time, there are references to it. But, as most of the novel takes place in the alternate dimension, we and the characters are lucky in that we don’t have to deal very much with that trauma.

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#BookFaceFriday “Music is History” by Questlove

Put a record on this #BookFaceFriday!

Dive deep into the history of music with this #BookFace. The New York Times bestseller “Music is History” by multi-Grammy Award winner author Questlove (Harry N. Abrams, 2021) takes a look at contemporary America and its music starting from 1971. It’s available as an eBook through Nebraska OverDrive Libraries and is currently featured in the “Artistic Reads” curated collection, along with many other novels about art and artists.

“An entertaining, informative and far-reaching work, meticulously excavating American culture and history with the eye of a seasoned cratedigger.”

The Washington Post

Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 194 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 26,898 audiobooks, 36,794 ebooks, and 5,133 magazines. As an added bonus it includes 130 podcasts that are always available with simultaneous use (SU), as well as SU ebooks and audiobook titles that publishers have made available for a limited time. If you’re a part of it, let your users know about this great title, and if you’re not a member yet, find more information about participating in Nebraska Overdrive Libraries!

Love this #BookFace & reading? We suggest checking out all the titles available for book clubs at http://nlc.nebraska.gov/ref/bookclub. Check out our past #BookFaceFriday photos on the Nebraska Library Commission’s Facebook page!

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Book Club Spotlight – The Picture of Dorian Gray

Cover for The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. A close up view on a portrait of a young, pale man. Only his nose and lips are in frame. There are no blemishes, it is pleasing to the eye.

With languorous prose and the ramblings of the rich and bored, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is just the novel to usher in a hedonistically aesthetic summer heat. Now a classic piece of Gothic Literature, Oscar Wilde’s novel is praised for its writing style and daring characters but was considered vulgar, unacceptable, and lacking moral merit at the time of its publication. Even with all its poetic euphemisms and curtain-pulling, the work was too salacious for the Victorian audience and faced censorship for its ideals and morality. In the face of his detractors, Wilde, a prominent Aesthete, included in the 1891 published edition a preface concerning the morality and duty of art, in which he states: “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all”. 

A muse is a powerful creature. Love and praise may fall on deaf ears to an unrealized man. But whisper tales of mortality, fleeting beauty, and adoration, the desperation of the damned will overtake them. As it overtakes the young man, he, in a pit of panic, pledges his soul so the burden of time will be placed upon his mirrored self in portraiture. Young Dorian Gray. A beautiful muse and love of painter Basil Hallward, and the manipulated mentee of the hedonistic fast-talking Lord Henry, tears through the polite society of London, leaving all who approach ruined in his wake. While his portrait decays in his attic, exposing the monstrous degradation of his soul.

To the people of the Victorian era, perception was everything. The women had to be beautiful, charming, but unobtrusive. The men, stoic masculine providers with no time for frivolities or deviant behaviors. And Dorian Gray is the perfect young Victorian man. He is beautiful, charming, and has all the merits his class dictates. His impressionable mind is warped by voyeuristic Aesthete Lord Henry, into an existential crisis that leads to selfishness and cruelty all in the pursuit of pleasure. This is what made The Picture of Dorian Gray so subversive in its time. It held a mirror to society, forcing it to look at its faults and secrets, and even at Wilde’s beloved Aestheticism Movement. Book Club Groups can explore the themes of love, art, beauty, and influence through each unique character carefully crafted by Wilde, and the conflicting realities held within them. To help guide discussion, our copies include an introduction by Penguin Classics Editor, Robert Mighall, and a backmatter of notations to provide the modern reader with further context and knowledge for the novel.

Oscar Wilde in a letter to Ralph Payne (1894):

I am so glad you like that strange coloured book of mine: it contains much of me in it. Basil Hallward is what I think I am Lord Henry what the world thinks of me: Dorian what I would like to be – in other ages, perhaps.

If you’re interested in requesting The Picture of Dorian Gray for your book club, you can find the Request Form here. There are 16 copies. (A librarian must request items)

Wilde. Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Penguin Classics. (1891)

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#BookFaceFriday “The Art of Racing in the Rain” by Garth Stein

This #BookFaceFriday is man’s best friend!

If you’re a dog person, then this #BookFace is for you! “The Art of Racing in the Rain” by New York Times bestselling author Garth Stein (Harper Paperbacks; 2018) is an emotional but ultimately uplifting novel about life, love, and loyalty- but told as only a dog could.

We have 35 copies for your reading group to borrow in our Book Club Kit collection, and it’s available as both an eBook and audiobook on Nebraska OverDrive Libraries.

“The perfect book for anyone who knows that some of our best friends walk beside us on four legs; that compassion isn’t only for humans; and that the relationship between two souls…meant for each other never really comes to an end.”

Jodi Picoult

Book Club Kits Rules for Use

  1. These kits can be checked out by the librarians of Nebraska libraries and media centers.
  2. Circulation times are flexible and will be based upon availability. There is no standard check-out time for book club kits.
  3. Please search the collection to select items you wish to borrow and use the REQUEST THIS KIT icon to borrow items.
  4. Contact the Information Desk at the Library Commission if you have any questions: by phone: 800/307-2665, or by email: Information Services Team

Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 194 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 26,898 audiobooks, 36,794 ebooks, and 5,133 magazines. As an added bonus it includes 130 podcasts that are always available with simultaneous use (SU), as well as SU ebooks and audiobook titles that publishers have made available for a limited time. If you’re a part of it, let your users know about this great title, and if you’re not a member yet, find more information about participating in Nebraska Overdrive Libraries!

Love this #BookFace & reading? Check out our past #BookFaceFriday photos on the Nebraska Library Commission’s Facebook page!

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Friday Reads: All Better Now by Neal Shusterman 

Covid-19 is over but now there is a new virus called Crown Royale.  It kills 1 person out of 25 or 4% of those infected, which isn’t too bad.  Those who recover feel completely happy and have empathy for everyone.  They have no negative feelings – jealousy, hatred, selfishness, racism – all are gone. The people in power feel this threatens “economic and political stability” and want to eradicate it. 

Mariel (about 15) and her mother are living in their car at the book’s beginning.  Mariel’s mom dies from the virus, but later Mariel learns she, herself, is naturally immune. Tiberón (16 or so), who goes by Rón, is the youngest son of the third richest man in the world.  Rón turns out to be a super spreader of the virus.

Soon there are plots for spreading the virus to save the world; and plots to eradicate the virus to save the world.  Mariel and Rón are at the center of everything.  Misinformation is being spread, and countered by others.  Some people lock themselves up in their homes to avoid the virus and its effects.  Many people aren’t sure what to believe.

Kirkus (12/1/24) says, “In his trademark, darkly witty, wonderfully over-the-top style, the author meanders through interesting ethical questions as the action plays out globally with a cast of diverse background characters, eventually leading to a conclusion that leaves things wide open for a sequel.”

Shusterman, Neal. All Better Now. ‎ Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2025.

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Folklore Book Available on BARD!

Febold Feboldson: Tall Tales from the Great Plains” compiled by Paul Robert Beath is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service. BARD is a service offered by the Nebraska Library Commission Talking Book and Braille Service and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Library of Congress.

This novel is a collection of stories featuring the Swede immigrant Febold Feboldson, a giant who attempts to homestead in Nebraska. These stories, primarily collected and edited by Paul R. Beath, are humorous takes on the challenges faced by early pioneers on the Great Plains.

TBBS borrowers can request “Febold Feboldson: Tall Tales from the Great Plains” DBC02030 or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.

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#BookFaceFriday “The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents” by Terry Pratchett

Cat got your #BookFace!?

This #BookFaceFriday has more than nine lives! Check out “The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents” by bestselling fantasy author Terry Prachett (HarperCollins; 2001), it’s number 28 in Prachett’s Discworld series.

This is a standalone Discworld novel retelling the classic fairytale of the Pied Piper. We have 14 copies for your reading group to borrow in our Book Club Kit collection, and you can read more about it in our Book Club Spotlight series!

“An astonishing novel. Were Terry Pratchett not demonstratively a master craftsman already, The Amazing Maurice might be considered his masterpiece.”

Neil Gaiman

Book Club Kits Rules for Use

  1. These kits can be checked out by the librarians of Nebraska libraries and media centers.
  2. Circulation times are flexible and will be based upon availability. There is no standard check-out time for book club kits.
  3. Please search the collection to select items you wish to borrow and use the REQUEST THIS KIT icon to borrow items.
  4. Contact the Information Desk at the Library Commission if you have any questions: by phone: 800/307-2665, or by email: Information Services Team

Love this #BookFace & reading? Check out our past #BookFaceFriday photos on the Nebraska Library Commission’s Facebook page!

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Friday Reads: The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson

My favorite true-crime stories are the ones I consider “niche” crimes.

Tree crime. Book crime. Mushroom crime. Dinosaurs! Fish! Birds!

By my standards, in order be considered a “niche” crime, a true-crime account must meet the following criteria:

  1. It must, first and foremost, be niche. It must be a small, specialized crime. It cannot be ordinary. Most of us will never be in a position where we can steal moon rocks.
  2. Very few — if any — people should be hurt; although murder is not an immediate disqualifier. However, I’m not interested in sensationalized and exploitative details of tragedies. If we are drawn to tales of crime for the same reason we crane our necks as we drive past an accident, then niche crime must resemble the collision between a clown car and a hijacked Oscar Meyer weinermobile.

The Feather Thief is, in my opinion, the crème de la crème of niche crime. I first read it about 8 years ago and I have never been able to stop thinking about it.

The crime? A theft. The location? The British Museum of Natural History. The culprit? A twenty-year old American flute-prodigy named Edwin. And what he stole — hundreds of irreplaceable, priceless bird skins — is as interesting as his motivation for stealing them, and as interesting as the confluence of man’s limitless capacity for obsession and nature’s finiteness.

Kirk Wallace Johnson is our intrepid journalist/historian/detective. He begins his saga in a river, fly-fishing. This origin is important. Edwin’s motivation for the heist? His obsession with fly-tying.

Wallace Johnson not only explores the details of the crime and its perpetrator; he also delves into the history of the feather-obsessed (“feather fever,” as he calls it). Somewhat reminiscent of the “tulip mania” of 17th century Netherlands, the 19th and early 20th century decimated exotic bird populations in pursuit of status. The more feathers/literal bird corpses affixed to your garments, the more wealth it signified — after all, rare birds had to be sought out from distant, difficult-to-reach islands and rain-forests. While women wore hats bearing plumes of feathers or one — or more! — stuffed birds, men competed to tie more and more elaborate flies with increasingly exotic materials. Public outcry eventually led to the disfavoring of real feathers in fashion, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act helped to cut off the fly-tiers’ supply.

So, if you are absolutely obsessed with fly-tying — particularly recreating the ties of the Victorian era — but those birds are either extinct or illegal to have in whole or in part…what do you do?

You could use synthetic materials to mimic the classic ties. After all, the fish don’t care. But this isn’t about the fish, of course — Edwin never waded into a river — it’s about status.

So, you go where the feathers are already neatly collected and preserved…

And since the British Natural History Museum isn’t just going to hand over specimens so that you can destroy them…

Well, that’s when you become The Feather Thief.


Johnson, Kirk Wallace. The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century. Penguin Books, 2019.

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Book Club Spotlight – Room

Cover for Room by Emma Donoghue. The word "Room" is spelled out in childish handwriting in four different colors of crayon. Orange, red, green, and blue

Creative, resilient, and bitter. When discussing heroic mothers in fiction, any list would be empty without “Ma” from the 2010 novel, Room, by Irish-Canadian Author Emma Donoghue. As a college freshman, Ma was abducted and locked in a shed for 7 years. Despondent in her confinement, it’s not until her son is born that Ma is renewed and dedicates her life not only to their escape but to providing the naïve Jack with a full and healthy life, unaware that he is in captivity. Inspired by the real-life determination of mothers and women in the face of impossible circumstances, Room is the winner of the Alex Award, a New York Times Best Book of the Year, and 2010’s Irish Novel of the Year.

Five-year-old Jack lives with Ma in Room. There, they play, learn, brush their teeth, exercise, and look out Skylight. Every night, he goes to sleep in Wardrobe while a mysterious man comes to visit. Ma doesn’t seem to like Old Nick, but Jack likes it when he brings them new things like clothes, food, and sometimes candy! To Jack, Room is all there is, and he wants everything to stay the same forever. But now that Jack is 5 years old, his curiosity is harder to contain, he gets in fights with Ma, and Old Nick gets so upset that their power is off for days! Maybe he should have just stayed 4. Ma is changing too. She decides it’s time to tell Jack a story, a real story this time, about a place called Outside. And about a plan where Jack must be brave, get to Outside, and save Ma.

“I’m not in Room. Am I still me?”

Emma Donoghue

Engaging for Mature Teen and Adult readers, Room is a sociological exploration of what makes our reality, and the persistence of the human race to thrive against all odds. From discussing faith, the sensationalism of tragedy, and the spirit of motherhood, love is at the forefront of this novel. Narrated by Jack’s unusual and childish voice, Room’s language will take a second to get used to and is not for everyone. We follow his malleable young mind as it opens up and tries to process this place that was previously far beyond his understanding. But once the reader is enveloped in his unique world, it’s hard to leave and return to Outside.  

Room was adapted by Emma Donoghue into an academy award winning movie of the same name starring Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay.

If you’re interested in requesting Room for your book club, you can find the Request Form here. There are 11 copies and an Audio CD. (A librarian must request items)

Donoghue, Emma. Room. Little, Brown and Company. (2010)

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Friday Reads, Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, Ancillary Mercy (The Imperial Radch Trilogy) by Ann Leckie

The Ancillary series had been recommended to me years ago, so when I came across the boxed set, I took a chance, and bought it.  And it just as good as the awards make it out to be—the first book, Ancillary Justice won the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. There is no mid series slump, and the action keeps going. The story is what is considered “hard” science fiction, occurring on planets, stations, ships and space.

The Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie

Breq is an ancillary, the human form of an artificial intelligence that ran a troop carrier star ship, of the Radch military fleet.  She’s alone now, and in the first book comes across a body in the snow on the planet she’s currently on, identifies it as male, and a former lieutenant of hers from the ship Justice of Toren) This is Seirvarden, who had been lost a thousand years ago. His escape capsule had been found and he had been awakened—to find his family, and his world gone, a person out of place.  The first book sets up the situations that lead to the rest of the series, in forward motion, and in flashbacks.

The Radch is a human culture that doesn’t have genders—the author uses she to refer to everyone, rather than using zie or he.  Clothing, jewelry, positions, are all gender neutral.  It does disorient at first. But there are occasional hints. I and at least one reviewer got over the need to gender everyone.  The author also based the Radch Empire on the Roman Empire, and a reviewer saw resemblance to the Greeks spreading out and conquering “uncivilized” groups of humans.  All human civilizations that aren’t Radch are uncivilized. But conquering civilizations and occupying them is as bloody thousands of years in the future, as it was in the past. 

The idea of an imperial culture isn’t new, but an emperor who takes over, clones himself, and spreads clones of himself (herself) throughout the empire, is a new idea. In many ways, the technology is much like what is used for making an ancillary, except that the clone grows up connected. And, of course, is one person. Until there is a split.

Enter the Presger, an alien race that enjoys taking apart ships and space stations (and people), in the most destructive, bloody way possible.  Plus they can’t be stopped.   Eventually there is a treaty with the Presger and the Radchaai, (with actually the human race, but the Radchaai don’t really understand this…), but there are two incidents that make waves and cause a split in the emperor’s minds. The Presger sell a civilization guns with ammo that travels 1.11 meters.  (Spoiler alert–the gun can destroy Radchaai military ships.) In addition, the discovery of humans with another alien race.  That’s not exactly the problem, but there’s so much packed in three volumes!

Not only is there politics on the grand scale but also on the personal scale.  The characters are well drawn, and often sympathetic.  The plotlines tie up neatly, and there are even nods to other authors—Anne McCaffrey’s The Ship Who Sang, Ursula le Guinn’s The Left Hand of Darkness, and C.J. Cherryh’s the Foreigner series. There is even a grumpy medic who reminds me of McCoy.

In addition, if you are interested in the military view of the book, there is a review  by a site called DEFENSE.info, with a  take from a current military viewpoint, including ship sizes, crews, and officers in graphics.  He also covers some thoughts on AI developing feelings and personalities.  (Remember, this book is thousands of years in the future…) My only complaint, it looks like he forgot the medical teams.   The Imperial Radch Trilogy | Defense.info

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#BookFaceFriday “Songs in Ursa Major” by Emma Brodie

Listen to the rhythm of #BookFaceFriday!

This week’s #BookFace is all about chasing your dreams. “Songs in Ursa Major” is a scintillating debut by Emma Brodie (Knopf, 2021), a love story that’s all about music and the trappings of fame. Filled with the heart and vibes of the early 70’s music scene, the novel has a powerful core that asks how much are you willing to sacrifice for your dreams? You can listen to the audiobook yourself through Nebraska OverDrive Libraries!

“Entrancing… This superbly crafted debut novel immerses readers in a story of family, love, and music from the first page. Brodie makes a point about the destructive force of drug abuse, and bears witness to unsavory business practices in the music industry. This book would make a wonderful movie; readers will long for an album of Jane’s songs to go with it.”

Library Journal, starred

Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 194 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 26,898 audiobooks, 36,794 ebooks, and 5,133 magazines. As an added bonus it includes 130 podcasts that are always available with simultaneous use (SU), as well as SU ebooks and audiobook titles that publishers have made available for a limited time. If you’re a part of it, let your users know about this great title, and if you’re not a member yet, find more information about participating in Nebraska Overdrive Libraries!

Love this #BookFace & reading? We suggest checking out all the titles available for book clubs at http://nlc.nebraska.gov/ref/bookclub. Check out our past #BookFaceFriday photos on the Nebraska Library Commission’s Facebook page!

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Nebraska Book Available on BARD!

Vigilante Days: Frontier Justice Along the Niobrara” by Harold Hutton is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service. BARD is a service offered by the Nebraska Library Commission Talking Book and Braille Service and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Library of Congress.

Covering a period of 15 to 20 years during the late 1800s and mostly focusing on the activities of noted horse thief, Kid Wade, Hutton expands his scope to include all vigilante activity in the lower and middle Niobrara region. This volume tries to present an unbiased factual study. Hutton does not depict the vigilance committees as always right or always wrong, nor does he attempt to glamorize or create sympathy for the thieves. 

TBBS borrowers can request “Vigilante Days: Frontier Justice Along the Niobrara” DBC02021 or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.

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#BookFaceFriday “The Lola Quartet” by Emily St. John Mandel

Get inspired with #BookFaceFriday!

Let #BookFace be your muse and check out what’s being showcased on the Nebraska OverDrive Library home page, you’ll find titles like this week’s #BookFace, “The Lola Quartet” by Emily St. John Mandel (Vintage, 2015) which follows disgraced journalist Gavin Sasaki, as he goes back home to regroup after being fired for plagiarism and finds out he may have a daughter he never knew about. You can check out the ebook yourself through Nebraska OverDrive Libraries!

“Compelling. . . . Perhaps all novelists can be said to wrestle with morality; Mandel seems to wrestle with it at greater length and in greater depth than most. . . . First-rate fiction.”

— Dallas Morning News

This week’s #BookFace model is Ethan Nelson, the new Director of the Western Library System! Ethan is a native Nebraskan who grew up on a farm about forty miles south of Scottsbluff. He loves a good book with his favorite genre being fantasy, and is currently reading Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga. He now lives in Scottsbluff with his adorable cat Tails. If you get a chance send him a note and welcome him to Nebraska’s Regional Library systems!

Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 194 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 26,898 audiobooks, 36,794 ebooks, and 5,133 magazines. As an added bonus it includes 130 podcasts that are always available with simultaneous use (SU), as well as SU ebooks and audiobook titles that publishers have made available for a limited time. If you’re a part of it, let your users know about this great title, and if you’re not a member yet, find more information about participating in Nebraska Overdrive Libraries!

Love this #BookFace & reading? We suggest checking out all the titles available for book clubs at http://nlc.nebraska.gov/ref/bookclub. Check out our past #BookFaceFriday photos on the Nebraska Library Commission’s Facebook page!

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Friday Reads: There is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone

I went on a ghost tour in Seattle several years ago. We walked down a steep set of stairs and explored the damp underground. Every nook and cranny had a dark story of fire, greed, insanity, and murder most foul. The guide was good enough to make us all jump at shadows.

As our little group walked back into the light I considered how each person’s life could change in an instant. The gift shop was an oddly bright place to sell murder and chaos. The tent city across the street seemed to fit the theme better, so I found myself staring out the window at rows and rows of tents. In my mind, each tent was another dark story.

Over the years, I saw more massive tent cities across the nation. I wondered about the real stories behind all those tents, then I stumbled upon Brian Goldstone’s There is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America in a free book talk webinar through The Aspen Institute. He spoke with passion and conviction, dispelling the myth that homeless people are all mentally unstable or unwilling to work. There’s more to the story.

Turns out, a good number of people are working full time but still can’t afford rent. Some lost their homes due to unexpected fire or natural disaster and weren’t able to find new housing in their budget. Goldstone humanizes the homeless crisis through real stories of people who landed in tents or cars after unexpected events. Each story represents a significant portion of the population.

In many cases, insanity doesn’t lead to homelessness, but homelessness can drive people insane. People are working full-time and striving towards work that pays a living wage, but are caught in a loop of trying to afford the schooling to build new skills while paying for rising childcare costs and trying to find an address to put on forms.

When cities make it illegal to live in your car and homeless shelters run out of beds, you get tents. The real story is that people are just trying to survive in a broken world. Life on the streets is hard, but people don’t want to become just another ghost on a tour of the city. All people should have the opportunity to survive and thrive.

Read this book if you ever walked past a homeless person and wondered about their story, but were too afraid to ask. You’ll never look at a tent the same way again.

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Book Club Spotlight – House of Sticks

Cover of House of Sticks by Ly Tran. An outline of red manicured hands are steepled against a blue background.

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and this year, as marked by the Federal Asian Pacific American Council, is for celebrating the “Legacy of Leadership and Resilience” of the wide-reaching diaspora. Today, for our Book Club Spotlight, we celebrate author Ly Tran and her family’s story of resilience, as Chinese-Vietnamese (Tang Dynasty Teochew) refugees to the United States. Her memoir, House of Sticks, was a New York City Book Awards Winner, and one of Vogue and NPR’s Best Book of the Year.

“We arrive in the blizzard of 1993, coming from rice paddies, mango trees, and the sun to February in the Empire State.” At three years old, Ký Lý and her family of 6 are sent to the United States, as part of a humanitarian effort to relocate South Vietnamese prisoners of war. Though she doesn’t quite understand it, Ly’s father was one of those men, confined in the Viet Cong re-education camps of torture and indoctrination. However, America was not the fresh start they were sold. The family struggles in poverty, resorting to endless nights of sewing garments in their cramped and dirty apartment to barely make ends meet. As she grows, Ly recognizes the dour circumstances around her, and her parent’s ceaseless effort to create a life for their children- free from the horrors of the past. In an attempt to protect her family from more hardship, Ly learns to hide the cruelty of others from her parents and to hide herself as well.

 “Even the most monstrous of faces that I could conjure always had the same pained look in their eyes. And I imagined that they feared the dark just as much as I did.”

– Ly Tran

For Adult Book Club Groups who are fans of moving family memoirs like Educated and The Glass Castle, House of Sticks is a story of filial piety, and how the trauma of our parents move within us and propel our lives. How pressures of helping support a family, and neglect can weigh on a child into their adult years. Though Tran spends much of her memoir away from her family, they are a part of her and influence every step she takes. She was especially her traumatized father, but her ability for compassion and understanding helped bridge the long-worn gaps between them. Reading stories like House of Sticks can open us up to new perspectives and peoples. When we celebrate the melting pot of the United States, like with AAPI month, it’s important to take the time and learn about our history together. Even before we were a country, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Hawaiians have been a part of our legacy.

If you’re interested in requesting House of Sticks for your book club, you can find the Request Form here. There are 8 copies and an Audio CD. (A librarian must request items)

Tran, Ly. House of Sticks. Scribner. 2022.

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#BookFaceFriday “The Last Story of Mina Lee” by Nancy Jooyoun Kim

Don’t turn your back on #BookFaceFriday!

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (AAPI), and we want to help you celebrate by highlighting just one of the many Asian authors in our collections. “The Last Story of Mina Lee” by Nancy Jooyoun Kim (Park Row, 2021) is a fictional novel recounting the fraught mother daughter relationship between first and second generation Korean immigrants. It’s available as an Audiobook through Nebraska OverDrive Libraries and is also available as a book club kit through the Nebraska Library Commission. You can find more AAPI stories to explore in our book club collection or Asian/Pacific authors here.

“Haunting and heartbreaking, troubled threads between a mother and daughter blend together in a delicate and rich weave… With both sadness and beauty, [Kim] describes grief, regret, loss, and the feeling of being left behind. Fans of Amy Tan and Kristin Hannah will love Kim’s brilliant debut.”

Booklist, STARRED review

Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 194 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 26,898 audiobooks, 36,794 ebooks, and 5,133 magazines. As an added bonus it includes 130 podcasts that are always available with simultaneous use (SU), as well as SU ebooks and audiobook titles that publishers have made available for a limited time. If you’re a part of it, let your users know about this great title, and if you’re not a member yet, find more information about participating in Nebraska Overdrive Libraries!

Book Club Kits Rules for Use

  1. These kits can be checked out by the librarians of Nebraska libraries and media centers.
  2. Circulation times are flexible and will be based upon availability. There is no standard check-out time for book club kits.
  3. Please search the collection to select items you wish to borrow and use the REQUEST THIS KIT icon to borrow items.
  4. Contact the Information Desk at the Library Commission if you have any questions: by phone: 800/307-2665, or by email: Information Services Team

Love this #BookFace & reading? We suggest checking out all the titles available for book clubs at http://nlc.nebraska.gov/ref/bookclub. Check out our past #BookFaceFriday photos on the Nebraska Library Commission’s Facebook page!

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Book Briefs: New University of Nebraska Press Books at the Nebraska Publications Clearinghouse

The Nebraska Publications Clearinghouse receives documents every month from all Nebraska state agencies, including the University of Nebraska Press (UNP).  UNP books, as well as all Nebraska state documents, are available for checkout by libraries and librarians for their patrons.

Here are the UNP books the Clearinghouse received in March and April, 2025:

The Bears of Grand Teton: a Natural and Cultural History, by Sue Consolo-Murphy. Series: America’s Public Lands

The Bears of Grand Teton is the first comprehensive history of bears, black and grizzly, and their interactions with people in Grand Teton National Park and the surrounding area of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It is also a personal account by Sue Consolo-Murphy, who spent thirty years as a wildlife manager for the National Park Service.

Consolo-Murphy focuses on the natural, cultural, and administrative histories of bears in and around Grand Teton National Park and the nearby John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway, paying particular attention to bears’ interactions with livestock. Entertaining and educational, The Bears of Grand Teton also explores the phenomenon of social media celebrity bears—such as Grizzly 399, the world’s most famous bear—and the challenges of listing and removing grizzly bears from Endangered Species Act protection.

A Grammar of Nakoda (Assiniboine), by Linda A. Cumberland. Series: Studies in the Native Languages of the Americas

A Grammar of Nakoda (Assiniboine) is the first complete grammar of the Native American language Assiniboine, also known by the endonym Nakoda, a member of the Siouan language family. It addresses all major grammatical categories, including phonology, nouns, verbs, adverbs, enclitics, determiners, syntax, and kinship terminology. It also includes groundbreaking analysis of motion verbs of coming and going, demonstrating that such verbs compose a closed system that is consistent in varying degrees across all Siouan languages.

Over the past century and a half, the classification of the Assiniboine language has suffered due to a complicated history regarding the Dakotan branch of the Siouan language family. Once spoken over a vast contiguous area of the northern plains, Assiniboine/Nakoda is used today among the Assiniboine people in and around Fort Belknap and Fort Peck in Montana and in five reserves in Saskatchewan. A Grammar of Nakoda (Assiniboine) establishes the singular basis of the language while also relating its unique features to other Great Plains American Indian languages.

Locomotive Cathedral, by Brandel France de Bravo. Series: The Backwaters Prize in Poetry Honorable Mention

With wit and vulnerability, Brandel France de Bravo explores resilience in the face of climate change and a global pandemic, race, and the concept of a self, all while celebrating the power of breath as “baptism on repeat.” Whether her inspiration is twelfth-century Buddhist mind-training slogans or the one-footed crow who visits her daily, France de Bravo mines the tension between the human desire for permanence and control, and life’s fluid, ungraspable nature. Poem by poem, essay by essay, she builds a temple to the perpetual motion of transformation, the wondrous churn of change and exchange that defines companionship, marriage, and ceding our place on Earth: “not dying, but molting.”

Memories of Buffalo Bill, by Louisa Frederici Cody. Series: The Papers of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody

Written with the help of Courtney Ryley Cooper, Memories of Buffalo Bill offers an idealized account of William F. Cody’s life from the perspective of his wife, Louisa. True to its origins, this account offers many more details about Cody’s domestic life, including his children, than any other preceding work. Although William and Louisa’s real-life marriage was marred by some high-profile scandals, it endured until her husband’s death in 1917.

Memories of Buffalo Bill, the first biography of William F. Cody to appear after his death, strikes a celebratory tone in narrating highlights of his life and enterprises. Through its introduction, notes, and appendixes, this edition offers a broader context for the Codys’ marriage, evidencing its private realities and the collaboration required to preserve the Buffalo Bill image in the public eye. Out of print since its first publication, Louisa Cody’s memoir highlights the processes involved in crafting and preserving a national myth. Both for what it does and does not say, it was the first step in laying a foundation for the enduring legacy of Buffalo Bill as an American icon.

Nebraska Government and Politics, edited by Robert Blair, Christian L. Janousek, and Jerome Deichert. Series: Politics and Governments of the American States

Nebraska Government and Politics offers an in-depth examination of the connection between the political culture, traditions, and heritage of Nebraska and its governmental institutions. This new edition discusses federalism, constitutionalism, and the continuing American frontier, paying special attention to the effects and frameworks of Nebraska’s political culture. The contributors emphasize enduring trends and issues through Nebraska’s history as they examine the cultural foundations of the state’s political institutions, the major governmental structures in the state, and the political and administrative relationships at play. The chapters cover periodic populism, the state constitution, nonpartisanship and direct democracy, budgeting and financial policies, the unicameral, the executive branch, local government, political culture, and capital punishment.

Robert Blair, Christian L. Janousek, and Jerome Deichert provide a long view of Nebraska, a state whose unique political culture is reflected in its institutions.

Old Rags and Iron: New and Selected Poems, by R.F. McEwen. Series: Ted Kooser Contemporary Poetry

Old Rags and Iron is a collection of narrative poems about the life experiences of working-class people with whom the author, R. F. McEwen, is not only acquainted but whose lives he has shared. McEwen supplemented his income as a teacher while working as a professional logger and tree trimmer, and he writes with great love and respect for blue-collar families.

Set primarily in the back-of-the-yard neighborhood of South Side Chicago, where McEwen grew up, as well as Pine Ridge, South Dakota, western Nebraska, Ireland, and elsewhere, the poems celebrate many voices and stories. Utilizing tree-trimming as a central metaphor, these poems of blank verse fictions reverberate like truth.

Silence in the Quagmire: The Vietnam War in U.S. Comics, by Harriet E.H.Earle. Series: Encapsulations: Critical Comics Studies

Old Rags and Iron is a collection of narrative poems about the life experiences of working-class people with whom the author, R. F. McEwen, is not only acquainted but whose lives he has shared. McEwen supplemented his income as a teacher while working as a professional logger and tree trimmer, and he writes with great love and respect for blue-collar families.

Set primarily in the back-of-the-yard neighborhood of South Side Chicago, where McEwen grew up, as well as Pine Ridge, South Dakota, western Nebraska, Ireland, and elsewhere, the poems celebrate many voices and stories. Utilizing tree-trimming as a central metaphor, these poems of blank verse fictions reverberate like truth.

Tell Me About Your Bad Guys: Fathering In Anxious Times, by Michael Dowdy. Series: American Lives

Michael Dowdy perceives the world as a poet, one with an anxiety disorder. As a result he has rarely experienced fathering or his relationship with his daughter, A, as a linear narrative. Rather, his impressions of fathering coalesce in encounters with the conditions of our time, producing intense flashes of awareness and emotion. Critiquing his own fathering practices, Dowdy’s essays move between simplicity—being present for his daughter—and complexity—considering the harrowing present of entrenched misogyny, school shootings, climate change, and other threats to childing and fathering with love, optimism, and joy.

The essays in Tell Me about Your Bad Guys do not provide easy answers. They follow instead an interrogative mode, guided by A’s unruly questions and Dowdy’s desire to avoid fatherhood literature’s traps: false modesty, antic ineptitude, and defensive clowning. This means understanding fathering not as an ironclad identity or a cohesive story but as a process of trial and error, self-reflection, and radical openness. With measures of dark humor, the essays take seriously the literary, material, and political stakes of fathering and in doing so challenge patriarchal norms and one-dimensional accounts of fatherhood.

Thank You for Staying with Me: Essays, by Bailey Gaylin Moore. Series: American Lives

Urgent, meditative, and searching, Thank You for Staying with Me is a collection of essays that navigates the complexities of home, the vulnerability of being a woman, mother-daughter relationships, and young motherhood in the conservative and religious landscape of the Ozarks. Using cosmology as a foil to discuss human issues, Bailey Gaylin Moore describes praying to the sky during moments of despondency, observing a solar eclipse while reflecting on what it means to be in the penumbra of society, and using galaxy identification to understand herself. During a collision of women’s rights, gun policy, and racial tension, Thank You for Staying with Me is a frank and intimate rumination on how national policy and social attitudes affect both the individual and the public sphere, especially in such a conservative part of the United States.

Turning the Power: Indian Boarding Schools, Native American Anthropologists, and the Race to Preserve Indigenous Cultures, by Nathan Sowry. Series: Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology

In Turning the Power Nathan Sowry examines how some Native American students from the boarding school system, with its forced assimilationist education, became key cultural informants for anthropologists conducting fieldwork during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Salvage anthropologists of this era relied on Native informants to accomplish their mission of “saving” Native American cultures and ultimately turned many informants into anthropologists after years of fieldwork experience.

Sowry investigates ten relatively unknown Native American anthropologists and collaborators who, from 1878 to 1930, attended a religiously affiliated mission school, a federal Indian boarding school, or both. He tells the stories of Native anthropologists Tichkematse, William Jones, and James R. Murie, who were alumni of the Hampton Institute in Virginia. Richard Davis and Cleaver Warden were among the first and second classes to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Amos Oneroad graduated from the Haskell Indian Industrial Training School in Lawrence, Kansas, after attending mission and boarding schools in South Dakota. D. C. Duvall, John V. Satterlee, and Florence and Louis Shotridge attended smaller boarding and mission schools in Montana, Wisconsin, and Alaska Territory, respectively.

Turning the Power follows the forced indoctrination of Native American students and then details how each of them “turned the power,” using their English knowledge and work experience in the anthropological field to embrace, document, and preserve their Native cultures rather than abandoning their heritage.

**Pictures and Synopses courtesy of University of Nebraska Press.

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New Essay Book Available on BARD!

Best of Prairie Schooner: Personal Essays” edited by Hilda Raz and Kate Flaherty, is now available on cartridge and for download on BARD, the Braille and Audio Reading Download service. BARD is a service offered by the Nebraska Library Commission Talking Book and Braille Service and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Library of Congress.

This powerful anthology collects some of the best personal essays from the poets, novelists and critics who have appeared in the journal’s pages. Readers will explore a kaleidoscope of memories and experiences, including the power of a planting season, the catharsis that fishing holds for an adolescent boy, the literary fallout from a cousin’s death, the lessons learned in the parlor of a Puerto Rican grandmother, the impact of discovering an identical twin’s homosexuality, and the revelations of a homecoming.

TBBS borrowers can request “Best of Prairie Schooner: Personal Essays” DBC02025 or download it from the National Library Service BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. If you have high-speed internet access, you can download books to your smartphone or tablet, or onto a flash drive for use with your player. You may also contact your reader’s advisor to have the book mailed to you on cartridge.

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