“A large book collection is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of”… Okay, so the quote is actually “A large income,” not book collection, but for us, that pretty much means the same thing. Our Book Club Kit collection has 2,491 titles, and is bolstered by generous donations from book clubs and libraries across Nebraska. This week’s pick is “Mansfield Park” by Jane Austen, it’s available, along with five other Austen titles in our Book Club Kit collection. “Mansfield Park” is also available as an eBook and Audiobook in Nebraska OverDrive Libraries.
In Mansfield Park, first published in 1814, when the author had reached her full maturity as a novelist, Jane Austen paints some of most witty and perceptive studies of character. Against a genteel country landscape of formal parks and stately homes, the gossipy Mrs Norris becomes a masterful comic creation; the fickle young suitor Henry Crawford provides an unequaled portrait of an unscrupulous young man; and the complexly drawn Fanny Price emerges as one of Jane Austen’s finest achievements–the poor cousin who comes to stay with her wealthy relatives at Mansfield Park and learns how the game of love can too easily turn to folly. More intricately plotted and wider in scope than Austen’s earlier works, Mansfield Park continues to enchant and delight us as a superb example of a great author’s craft.
— book jacket
Book Club Kits Rules for Use
These kits can be checked out by the librarians of Nebraska libraries and media centers.
Circulation times are flexible and will be based upon availability. There is no standard check-out time for book club kits.
Please search the collection to select items you wish to borrow and use the REQUEST THIS KIT icon to borrow items.
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. 196 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 30,262 audiobooks, 46,663 ebooks, and 6,506 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!
Wouldn’t it be great if kids all over Nebraska were talking about books? Hear about the Nebraska Library Commission & the Regional Library Systems’ program where kids can all read and discuss the same book on next week’s NCompass Live webinar on Wednesday, April 15 at 10am CT.
Join Sally Snyder, the NLC’s Coordinator of Children and Young Adult Library Services; and Bailee Juroshek, Office Specialist, to learn all about the One Book for Nebraska Kids and Teens program.
Our 2026 titles are: One Book For Nebraska Kids – Lucky Scramble by Peter Raymundo, and One Book For Nebraska Teens – Not Nothing by Gayle Forman.
Upcoming NCompass Live shows:
April 22 – Emergency Management in Libraries
April 29 – Pretty Sweet Tech: Computers in Libraries 2026 Highlights & Trends
May 6 – The 2026 Public Library Accreditation Process
May 13 – Play, Explore, Learn: Building Early Literacy Through Station-Based Programs
May 20 – Engaging New Voices in Advocacy: Youth, Trustees, and Everyday Patrons
May 27 – Pretty Sweet Tech
June 3 – Libraries and Friends of the Library: How to Stay Friends
June 10 – Law for Librarians
To register for an NCompass Live show, or to listen to recordings of past shows, go to the NCompass Live webpage.
NCompass Live is broadcast live every Wednesday from 10am – 11am Central Time. Convert to your time zone on the Official U.S. Time website.
The show is presented online using the GoTo Webinar online meeting service. Before you attend a session, please see the NLC Online Sessions webpage for detailed information about GoTo Webinar, including system requirements, firewall permissions, and equipment requirements for computer speakers and microphones.
Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown is a pretty amazing book, and it is narratively different than anything I’ve read before. Frequently described as satire or metafiction, much of it is formatted to resemble a screenplay, with scene headings, character cues, and dialogue blocks. Additional narration, which expands beyond what would typically be included in a screenplay, is presented from the rarely-used second person point of view (think “you” pronouns).
Interior Chinatown’s main character, Willis Wu, is a young Chinese-American man who lives in Chinatown. He works as an extra (Background Oriental Male) in various movies and TV shows filmed on location, and he occasionally gets small speaking parts (Generic Asian Man). His aspiration, however, is to work his way up to the top slot in the hierarch: Kung Fu Guy.
Because of how this book is written, it’s often hard to tell whether actions are taking place on set or in real life. Willis and his neighbors, who are also cast in bit parts, share whispered commentary in the midst of scripted dialogue. And more significantly, dialogue between Willis and the stars of Black and White—the TV cop show they are currently filming—sometimes devolves into overt sniping about roles, stereotypes, and complicity with the system.
Text, subtext, and action blur. But the confusion serves a purpose. It opens up space for readers to interrogate the ways cultural tropes affect individuals—limiting how others see them as well as how they see themselves. It reminds us that everything is real life—even cliched cop shows.
This chaos is especially evident in the penultimate chapter: “Act VI: The Case of the Missing Asian.” Written as a courtroom scene, Willis is the defendant accused of “an internalized sense of inferiority.” According to testimony provided by Miles Turner, the Black detective from Black and White, “[Willis] thinks he can’t participate in this race dialogue, because Asians haven’t been persecuted as much as Black people.”
The trial is a wild ride. It provides Willis’s lawyer, Older Brother, whose recent absence from Chinatown is treated as a suspicious plot point in the latest Black and White episode but in reality is a function of his leaving to attend law school, an opportunity to share real case law pertaining to the historical treatment of minorities in the United States. It leads to Willis finally understanding that Kung Fu Guy is just another form of Generic Asian Man. And ironically, despite the main character’s epiphany, it ends in a giant Kung Fu battle—Wu and Older Brother vs. waves of cops—culminating in the freeing death of Kung Fu Guy
While Interior Chinatown’s plot is often bitingly funny, it never treats its subject matter lightly. That’s the brilliance of Yu’s work. It doesn’t offers easy answers, but it provides a crystal clear depiction of the dilemma confronting all of us: how to break free of the limiting roles and racial characterizations we’re steeped in.
Interior Chinatown was awarded the National Book Award in Fiction in 2020. It’s also been turned into a 10-episode miniseries available to stream on Hulu.
Yu, Charles. Interior Chinatown: A Novel. New York: Vintage Books, 2020.
Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 196 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 30,262 audiobooks, 46,663 ebooks, and 6,506 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!
“Photography throughout this coffee-table-sized book is stunning, and you can’t help but get lost in the images of flowers in the field and in the vase. If you are thinking about a cutting garden for next year, or just want to create arrangements for your home, A Year in Flowers is a helpful guide.”
When Pierce Brown signed on for the three-book deal with Random House, he was 23, living above his former political science professor’s garage. Propelled by the ancient play Antigone and inspired by the sight of the planet Mars, Brown, a down-on-his-luck aspiring writer, wrote a novel that would change his life, Red Rising. The first of the main trilogy whose world includes a four-part follow-up saga, a number of comic books, and even a board game set in the same world, Red Rising is one of those novels that, despite being marketed as “YA”, find their stride in engaging the adult audience far beyond the last page.
All Darrow knows is the mines. Ever since humans came to Mars his people, the Reds, are a part of the dangerous, and often fatal, mining helium-3 which will help in preparing the world for habitation by the rest of humanity. It’s just them down below, watched over by the supervisory colors, sacrificing their short lives for the sake of a better future. While the Reds are a proud people, an undercurrent of discontent runs through small factions and rumors of their subjugation heighten around Darrow until he is forced to face the unthinkable. Mars is already inhabited. Generations of Reds have died long before their time in the hope of humanity’s prosperous future, when all along, the surface is thriving on the corpses of their ancestors. The young, fearless miner is enlisted by a resistance group to become the next step in their plan to overturn the corrupt rule of the Golds. And to do that, Darrow must become one himself.
“Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.”
Pierce Brown
In Red Rising, the reader explores a violent world and its caste system in which our protagonist must claw his way through the ranks to gain power and justice for his people. Though our hero, Darrow, goes through an incredible and harrowing Captain America-like transformation to become an elite “gold”, he still must do the internal and emotional work it takes to become the leader his people need him to be. While in an elite training institute which turns out to be a front for a deadly war simulator, Darrow meets and must gain the trust of his classmates and “fellow” Golds. Despite everything in him wanting to get revenge as quickly and ruthlessly as possible, he must grapple with his growing bonds between his classmates and their humanity amidst the bloodshed. Red Rising is great for older YA readers and Adult Book Club Groups, and has all the hallmarks of a great Dystopia novel. A close reading of the text is a good way to introduce themes like castes and class divide, gender equality in fantasy, societal instance on conformity, and the weight of responsibility into your group discussions.
If you’re interested in requesting Red Rising for your book club, you can find the Request Form here. There are 8 copies. (A librarian must request items)
We hope everyone had a good April Fool’s Day, unless you’re the indomitable Dolly Parton, who ain’t nobody’s fool. “Ain’t Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton” by Martha Ackmann (St. Martin’s Press, 2025) is available as an eBook and audiobook in Nebraska OverDrive Libraries. Ackmann is a journalist who writes about women who have changed America. Find this title and many more through Nebraska OverDrive. Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 196 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 30,262 audiobooks, 46,663 ebooks, and 6,506 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!
“This smart, sparkly, and fun biography is as irresistible as Parton herself.”
Much of contemporary science fiction examines how humans will react to emerging technologies, explore the solar system, and establish colonies on new planets. Think The Martian by Andy Weir or Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey. I enjoy reading about the political battles, technological advances, and ethical issues that might arise in the near future. But one of my favorite branches of the genre looks much farther ahead—to futures where Earth has faded into myth and science has advanced so far that it is indistinguishable from magic. This vision of humanity’s distant future is what compelled me to read Black Sun Rising by C. S. Friedman, the first novel in her Coldfire Trilogy.
Black Sun Rising takes place on the mysterious planet Erna, colonized centuries ago by settlers from an advanced Earth civilization. But on Erna, things are not quite what they seem. The planet is governed by the Fae, a powerful force that adepts can wield to bend reality to their will. Throughout the novel, the reader is never quite sure what is real, what is imagined, or even what constitutes reality on Erna.
Civilization on Erna has developed into a feudal society ruled by religious sects. The story follows Damien Vryce, a priest and warrior of the Church of Human Unification, who is on a mission to understand the Fae and learn how to control it. Is the Fae magic, or a natural force that can ultimately be explained by science? This question lies at the heart of the political and philosophical tension on Erna.
During his travels, Damien meets Ciani, an adept who has been brutally attacked by mysterious beings that used the Fae to strip her of her memories. Determined to help her recover them, Damien follows rumors that lead him to a dark forest, home to a powerful sorcerer known as the Hunter. After a perilous journey, Damien discovers that the sorcerer is Gerald Tarrant—a revered saint of his own religion who has become something far darker, sustaining himself on the life force of Erna’s inhabitants.
Faced with a threat more powerful than he can confront alone, Damien reluctantly enlists Tarrant’s help. Tarrant’s motives remain unclear, and his very existence is an affront to everything Damien believes in. Where Damien is guided by faith and moral conviction, Tarrant has sacrificed his humanity for power and survives only in darkness. Yet for Ciani’s sake, Damien forms a fragile and uneasy alliance.
Friedman offers few concrete explanations of the Fae or Erna’s underlying nature. Instead, the reader is immersed in a dreamlike world where the boundaries between belief and reality blur. One of the most striking scenes occurs when Damien, Tarrant, and Ciani discover an ancient Earth telescope in a region where the Fae has no influence. Looking through it, they are astonished to find a reality untouched by will or belief. On Earth, science was grounded in observation; on Erna, it is shaped by perception, emotion, and intent.
While the landscapes of Erna are vivid and compelling, it is the characters who make the novel truly stand out. The dynamic between Damien and Tarrant—light and dark, idealism and pragmatism, hero and anti-hero—drives the narrative forward, with several surprising revelations along the way.
This is a challenging yet deeply fascinating read—unlike anything I’ve encountered before. For readers willing to venture into the strange and unsettling world of Erna, and to grapple with the complex characters of Damien and Tarrant, Black Sun Rising is well worth the journey.
Friedman, C. S. Black Sun Rising. DAW Books, 1991.
When I wandered into the bookstore, I really didn’t know anything about John Green or anything he had written; after all, his target audience as a novelist has been geared toward young adults (think The Fault in Our Stars), and I am certainly not one of those. But this book is not a novel. It is a work of nonfiction, and I’ve always been fascinated by epidemiology and how it affects human history.
Author John Green learned about the western African struggle with tuberculosis when he spent time in Sierra Leone as a volunteer with Partners in Health, an international nonprofit public health organization. We are introduced to young Henry Reider; he has tuberculosis, and he is severely ill. Green met him as a patient in 2019 at Lakka Government Hospital in the west African country, and his story forms the book’s human core. Appearing much younger due to his emaciated frame, the 17-year-old Henry greets Green with infectious energy, a big goofy smile, and enthusiasm despite years of undiagnosed or mismanaged symptoms starting in childhood. Fatigue, weight loss, and night sweats had led to misdiagnoses and delayed treatment. Unfortunately, his is not a rare story. His condition had deteriorated over time into drug-resistant TB, worsened by treatment interruptions, poverty, malnutrition, and limited access to effective drugs in an under-resourced setting.
The book tracks Henry’s severe decline as doctors sought to secure harder-to-obtain medications. Through advocacy and Green’s involvement, Henry ultimately survived, recovered, and returned home healthier, displaying resilience as TB persists due to systemic inequities in healthcare access and global priorities. Henry’s story serves to humanize the statistics of a curable yet deadly disease.
Green integrates Henry’s experiences with a vivid and enlightening examination of one of humanity’s oldest and most persistent diseases. The author frames tuberculosis not merely as a medical condition but as a historical force that has shaped societies, economies, and cultures across centuries. This perspective immediately sets the tone for a book that is as much about human resilience and vulnerability as it is about science. Green suggests that “The problem is not that people with tuberculosis are poor. The problem is that people are poor, and that poverty makes them vulnerable to tuberculosis.”
Green’s book is rich in detail, and his writing is balanced by accessible language and vivid examples that make complex concepts understandable as he traces TB’s influence from ancient civilizations to the industrial revolution. Living conditions, poverty, and social structures contributed to its spread, underscoring the interconnectedness of health and society, and reminding readers that disease is never just a biological phenomenon—it is deeply tied to human economic and societal conditions.
Green’s narrative does not shy away from contemporary challenges, as it addresses the resurgence of TB in certain regions, the rise of drug-resistant strains, and current global efforts to eradicate the disease. These discussions are sobering, emphasizing that TB is far from a relic of the past. Instead, it remains a pressing issue that demands sustained attention and innovation. As Green writes, “the cure is where the disease is not, and the disease is where the cure is not.”
Overall, Everything is Tuberculosis is an insightful and thought-provoking work that blends science, history, and culture into a cohesive narrative. It is a reminder that understanding TB is not just about curing an illness—it is about confronting the conditions that allow it to flourish.
Green, John. Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of our Deadliest Infection. Crash Course Books. 2025.
Join us in celebration on this #BookFaceFriday! Today the Nebraska Library Commission is marking a major milestone with 125 years of strengthening libraries, expanding access to information, and supporting lifelong learning across the state. Established by an act of the Legislature on March 27, 1901 as the Nebraska Public Library Commission, the Commission has grown from a small state agency into a statewide leader in library development, training, and resource sharing.
Sharing in our old age, we’re highlighting “The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules” by internationally-bestselling author Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg (HarperCollins, 2017), a witty and insightful comedy about a group of delinquent seniors who decide to rob a nearby luxury hotel as a way to regain their independence and improve their quality of life. What was supposed to be a simple robbery quickly spirals into something much more wild! It’s available as a as an ebook and audiobook through Nebraska OverDrive Libraries.
“This good-natured outing will appeal to readers interested in a story about spirited seniors determined have fun, raise some hell, and cause more than a little menace during their so-called ‘mature’ years.”
— Booklist
Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 196 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 29,164 audiobooks, 45,416 ebooks, and 6,269 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!
Norwegian anthropologist, Erika Fatland, travels the entire Russian border in one go, over the course of 8 months in 2016-2017. While the structure of the book is based around interviews and her travel, the bulk of it is historical and political context.
She travels through not only globally-recognized sovereign nations, but also through nations with partial recognition status like Abkhazia (recognized as sovereign only by Russia and its allies), through self-declared breakaway states like Nagorno-Karabakh, and through no man’s lands like the Ili Valley between Kazakhstan and Xinjiang.
At times, her route is unexpected but the excursions are for good reason. For example, once she crosses the border from North Korea to China, she travels south to the city of Harbin–nowhere near the border. But as she walks the underground shopping mall (originally a bomb shelter) noting the mix of Chinese and Russian goods, she describes Harbin’s start as a town for the Russian railway workers, building a shortcut through China for a more direct route to Vladivostok.
The interviews are layered–showing personality and at times, the tragic absurdity of circumstance. One standout is a short interview with a man who woke up one day to realize the border had silently moved overnight and his home was no longer in Georgia, but in South Ossetia–without the proper papers and money.
Because it can be so heavy, Fatland takes the opportunity to lighten the mood where she can. She describes her maritime adventure on the Northeast Passage with a bunch of octogenarian bucket-listers. She successfully lies about her occupation to get a North Korean visa and unsuccessfully tries to ditch her mandatory guides. Her guide in Kazakhstan takes her on a wild goose chase of distractions rather than tell her that the rocket-launch facility tour she was scheduled for would not be happening. She discusses conspiracy theories in Georgia, she hitchhikes in Latvia and accidentally trespasses an Old Believer’s church in Estonia.
She started out asking: what’s it like to have Russia as a neighbor? But the question became one of displacement, homeland, and enduring. Fittingly, she ends her journey in her own homeland of Norway.
Fatland, Erika. The Border: A Journey Around Russia Through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway and the Northeast Passage. Translated by Kari Dickson. London: MacLehose Press, 2021.
Gimme gimme gimme gimme the ball, because I’m gonna, dunk it! This week’s #BookFaceFriday was the perfect choice for March Madness. “Rebound” by Kwame Alexander (Clarion Books, 2021), is the prequel to Alexander’s Newbery Award–winning novel The Crossover. You can find it as an eBook on Nebraska OverDrive Libraries. Kwame Alexander is a New York Times bestselling author and along with the Newbery Award has also received the Coretta Scott King Award. You can find the entire Crossover series in the Nebraska OverDrive collection, along with six other titles by Kwame Alexander.
As in his previous novels in verse, Alexander shows off his expert command of the format, employing staccato breaks with smooth rhymes that mimic the bounce and flow of the sport.”
— School Library Journal, STARRED review
Find this title and many more through Nebraska OverDrive! 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 26,174 audiobooks, 36,611 ebooks, and 5,210 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!
“Ceremony in Lone Tree” by Wright Morris 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.
Although Tom Scanlon would just as soon spend it alone, his ninetieth birthday becomes the occasion for a family gathering in the Midwestern town of Lone Tree. The unlikely celebrants take this opportunity to reconceive their visions of past, future, and family in their own grotesque and ultimately liberating ways. Ceremony in Lone Tree is a spare and beautiful work by one of America’s great postwar authors.
TBBS borrowers can request “Ceremony in Lone Tree” DBC02170 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.
I started to teach myself how to crochet last year and have fallen in love with the craft. It’s amazing how many resources are out there to help teach a new craft, including your local library which is where I picked up a copy of Crochet Every Way Stitch Dictionary: 125 Essential Stitches to Crochet in Three Ways by Dora Ohrenstein. At the title suggests, the book is packed to the brim with different types of stitches. However, it goes further than just teaching you the stitch itself, also making sure you understand the anatomy of the stich and how to shape it, as well as an introduction on how to read a stitch chart and what common abbreviations mean, making the book perfect for even those starting crochet for the first time.
Ohrenstein breaks the stitches down into categories, starting with “The Basics”, foundational stitches to understand and build off of. Each other category has a unique quality about them: “Closed Stitches”, “Mesh Filet, and Easy Laces”, “Popping Out: Textures Stitches”, “Exploding Shells”, “Classic Laces”, and “Undulating Stitches: Ripples and Waves”. Each entry includes a stitch chart and a photo of a swatch to show what a finished piece might look like, and some have notes if there’s something particular to look out for when repeating the stitch pattern.
I’m excited to dig further in and find a few stitches to really try out and build with, and definitely recommend checking it out if you’re looking to learn how to crochet and build pieces on your own without needing a pattern
Ohrenstein, Dora. Crochet Every Way Stitch Dictionary: 125 Essential Stitches to Crochet in Three Ways. Abrams, 2019.
Nobody in this week’s #Bookface is going to get pinched! Part of our reading challenge for March is to read a book with Green in the title. So we picked, “The Girl in the Green Dress: A Mystery Featuring Zelda Fitzgerald” by Mariah Fredericks (St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2025) a 1920s murder mystery featuring Zelda Fitzgerald and Morris Markey. It’s available as a as an ebook and audiobook through Nebraska OverDrive Libraries. We’d love to know what titles you picked to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
“[A] riveting standalone… Fredericks brings the period to life beautifully, and the often-caricatured Zelda never feels less than three-dimensional. Add in an enthralling investigation and a complex, fame-hungry lead, and it’s undeniable: Fredericks has struck gold.”
— Publishers Weekly (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. 196 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 29,164 audiobooks, 45,416 ebooks, and 6,269 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!
Language is more than words we use to communicate with each other. Language helps us organize our reality, and shared language can create and reinforce shared perspectives and emotional experiences. Complicated, nuanced concepts can be described in single words rich with meaning, when people need this to happen–when their lives depend on it, or when they just want to share a laugh. If you’re interested in how language and culture and humanity and the natural world all interact (and especially if you’re also interested in the history of Ireland), I’m recommending Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape by Manchán Magan. Short, punchy, informative chapters reel easily from tragedy to comedy, as Magan contextualizes his family’s stories (and Ireland’s stories) in ways that will intrigue and enlighten any reader.
The 2026 paperback I am reading was published after Magan’s untimely death in 2025. (The book originally came out in 2020.) Magan was passionate about the Irish language that he grew up speaking, and you can easily find many online interviews and podcasts about his books and writings on this topic–as well as many other topics he wrote and posted about, like travel and indigeneity. His own page about the book, including many interviews, is here.
There is also a preview of the audiobook here if you’d like to hear some of the words pronounced (I definitely wanted this audio information). The narrator is his brother, a frequent collaborator on many projects.
Magan, Manchán. Thirty-Two Words for Field : Lost Words of the Irish Landscape. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2026.
“Wait a minute, #BookFace. Are you telling me that you built a time machine…!
We’re springing forward through time this weekend with daylight savings, but this week’s #BookfaceFriday is going much further!
“The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells (The Perfection Form Company, 1979) is a dystopian, post-apocalyptic, science fiction novella about a time traveler’s firsthand account of his journey 800,000 years into the future where he discovers two separate human species. It’s available as a Book Club Kit from the Nebraska Library Commission, with 12 copies for your reading group to borrow. You can also find “The Time Machine” as both an eBook and an audiobook with other stories through Nebraska OverDrive Libraries, along with several other novels from H.G. Wells.
“This book being one of the forerunners in time traveller genre throws light on a completely different kind of future from the conventional techie high-fi version. This book introduced me to a unique possibility.
H.G Wells has done an excellent job by describing the minute details about the future earth and making us imagine the world he envisioned. His creativity and attention to detail amazed me. The book was written in the 1890s and yet is still a masterpiece and relevant now.”
— Medium
Book Club Kits Rules for Use
These kits can be checked out by the librarians of Nebraska libraries and media centers.
Circulation times are flexible and will be based upon availability. There is no standard check-out time for book club kits.
Please search the collection to select items you wish to borrow and use the REQUEST THIS KIT icon to borrow items.
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. 196 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 29,164 audiobooks, 45,416 ebooks, and 6,269 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!
“With Custers’ Cavalry” by Katherine Gibson Fougera 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.
“From the memoirs of the late Katherine Gibson, widow of Captain Francis M. Gibson of the Seventh Cavalry, U.S.A. (retired).” This book describes a phase of army life during the 1870s and 1880s from the perspective of the army wives who were left behind by the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
TBBS borrowers can request “With Custers’ Cavalry” DBC02138 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.
In Nine Persimmons Kerry James Evans traces a geography both intimate and far-flung—Tuscaloosa and Biloxi, Charleston and New Orleans, the Cloisters above Washington Heights, a banana orchard in the Azores, a journey to Rome. The poems move with the gravity of pilgrimage, their compass set between wandering and witness, as they cross from ballfields and shipyards into the charged realms of myth and ritual. Evans’s gift lies in how the ordinary gathers its own divinity: persimmon seeds split to forecast winter, a grandmother’s weed-eater gospel, Camaro burnouts paired with tarot, psalms rising as pelicans wheel into sudden sky. In this light Nine Persimmons reveals how the most unassuming corners of existence sometimes hold the deepest truths.
A Question of Justice: Criminal Trials, Notorious Homicides, and Public Opinion in Twentieth-Century Mexico, by Elisa Speckman Guerra. Series: Confluencias.
Mexico is a country beset by violence and insecurity, with 98 percent of violent crimes unsolved and 94 percent of crimes unpunished. These staggering statistics illustrate the critical need to understand the history of Mexico’s penal law and justice system, from its evolution and development to its public image and effects on Mexican society.
In A Question of Justice Elisa Speckman Guerra elucidates Mexico’s penal law and justice system in the twentieth century from the disciplinary perspectives of both history and law. Looking at the critical period from 1929 to 1971, Speckman Guerra investigates the democratic rule of law and to what extent it was followed within the justice system, as well as judicial proceedings considering the role of gender, class, and race. For that reason, Speckman Guerra also delves into homicides involving very well-known victims, like the famous singer Guty Cárdenas, and notorious murderers, such as the Olympic medalist Humberto Mariles; the public image of police, judges, defendants, lawyers, and other actors involved in penal processes; and the representations of crime and justice in print and on film. This extensively researched study illuminates the evolution of Mexico’s penal laws, institutions of justice, and sensationalist media and violence, thereby addressing issues that are critically relevant today.
The Raymond D. Fogelson Papers: Essays on Ethnohistory, Ethnology, and Native American Studies, edited by Sergei A. Kan and Michael E. Harkin. Series: Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology.
Raymond D. Fogelson was a luminary theoretician in the interdisciplinary field of ethnohistory who advocated for Indigenous-centered theory and ethnographic writing in the field of Cherokee studies and ethnohistory. Fogelson’s unique methodology was to look for institutions that Cherokees and Native peoples themselves considered traditional and to carefully study them.
Fogelson taught in the anthropology department at the University of Chicago and trained leading ethnohistorians of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Dedicated to his graduate students, the corpus of his influential scholarship resides in journal articles, academic presentations, and public lectures. In this essential collection, Sergei Kan and Michael E. Harkin have assembled Fogelson’s pioneering articles as a resource for ethnohistorians in the twenty-first century.
They Are Dead and Yet They Live: Civil War Memories in a Polarized America, edited by John M. Kinder and Jennifer M. Murray. Series: Studies in War, Society, and the Military.
The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in 2020 reignited a passionate nationwide debate over Confederate memorials and flags as symbols of white supremacy in our public landscape. Controversies about Confederate monuments, however, have overshadowed more consequential battles over Civil War memory taking place in American politics, popular culture, and civil society today.
Integrating the voices of Civil War historians, public historians, and scholars of contemporary America, They Are Dead and Yet They Live explores the use (and abuse) of Civil War memory in the modern era, from the Civil War Centennial and the civil rights era through the political turmoil of the present day. Moving the conversation of Civil War memory beyond Confederate monuments to crucial debates about the Civil War’s usefulness as a frame for understanding America’s recent struggles, these essays show how Civil War memory is as politically urgent and socially relevant today as it was a half century ago.
Celebrate Black History Month with this week’s #BookFaceFriday, “Notes of a Native Son” by James Baldwin with an introduction by Edward P. Jones (Beacon Press, 2012.) You can find this title in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries curated collection “Black History: Paying tribute to black history, culture, and contributions” created to help users find great reads to celebrate Black History Month. Its over 100 titles consist of literature, fiction, nonfiction, autobiographies, and biographies. Nebraska OverDrive has several James Baldwin titles available for readers, in both ebook and Audiobook format. You can also browse the Nebraska Library Commission’s Book Club Kits collections for African American voices!
“The wonderful thing about writers like Baldwin is the way we read them and come across passages that are so arresting we become breathless and have to raise our eyes from the page to keep from being spirited away.” ―Edward P. Jones
“He named for me the things you feel but couldn’t utter . . . articulated for the first time to white America what it meant to be American and a black American at the same time.” ―Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Libraries participating in the Nebraska OverDrive Libraries Group currently have access to a shared and growing collection of digital downloadable audiobooks and eBooks. 196 libraries across the state share the Nebraska OverDrive collection of 29,164 audiobooks, 45,416 ebooks, and 6,269 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!
Like so many others, I was laid low by the tragic news of Rob and Michelle Reiner’s deaths. I responded by watching movies Rob directed, including This is Spinal Tap (1984) and its recently released sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025). For the uninitiated, both films focus on Spinal Tap, a fictional heavy metal English band consisting of Christopher Guest (Nigel Tufnel) on lead, rhythm guitar, and vocals; Michael McKean (David St. Hubbins) on vocals, rhythm, lead, and acoustic guitar; and Harry Shearer (Derek Smalls) on bass guitar and vocals. Their repertoire consists of songs they wrote together from their early classic, Gimme Some Money to the wildly popular Big Bottom. Continuing to blur the lines between fiction and reality, the trio of actor-musicians actually toured as Spinal Tap, playing at venues like Wembley Stadium, Glastonbury, and Carnegie Hall.
After watching both movies, I listened to, the audio book edition of A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap, narrated by Rob, Christopher, Michael, and Harry. The first part of the book explains how the quartet came up with ideas for the film by gathering ridiculous situations observed from real heavy metal bands. It also covered how difficult it was for the movie studio to understand the concept of the first ever mockumentary and the craft of “schnadle” or “schnäedling,” a term Christopher Guest invented to describe the specific brand of improvised acting performed by the cast. The second part of the book is a conversation with the characters from Spinal Tap schnäedling the origin story of the band.
Most impressive is the fact that Christopher, Michael, and Harry are bonafide musicians and song writers. It’s the question they are most often asked, leading Michael to wonder why the general public cannot understand or appreciate that comics can also be accomplished musicians. Their musical talents were also showcased in the film, A Mighty Wind (2003) featuring more of their originally written folk songs displaying their instrumental versatility. This is Spinal Tap has entered our popular culture in many ways, most notably in our vocabulary. The well-known phrase “these go to 11” was even included in the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018 to signify something turned up to maximum volume or capacity beyond the maximum standard. This Is Spinal Tap was added to the Library of Congress Film Registry in 2002. To be nominated for the LC Film Registry, films must be at least 10 years old, and have “cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance.” The hardest part of the book to listen to was the four men speculating how the movie Spinal Tap would figure into their obituaries. For Rob, it was in the first line.
If it weren’t for Spinal Tap, we wouldn’t have shows like The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Arrested Development.Ricky Gervais created The Office after he fell in love with Spinal Tap. Then he sold something created in America back to America. If laughter is good like a medicine, introduce yourself to Spinal Tap or any of the mockumentary movies created by Reiner or Christopher Guest and discover the comic tonic of schnadling.
A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap by Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer, with David Kamp. Gallery Books. 2025
