“Stay-At-Home” Reads
Are your days in COVID-19 quarantine starting to feel endless and boring? To fill the void, the Washington State Law Library staff shares here some of our favorite recent reads. While public libraries are closed for the duration of Governor Inslee’s Stay Home — Stay Healthy order, every book here is available to Olympia locals, in a downloadable format, from Timberland Regional Library. Timberland, as well as some other public libraries in the state, are offering online registration for library accounts. You can search the Washington State Library’s directory of libraries database for your local public library. Here is what we have been reading.
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Ove: Social Distance in the Extreme
Ove is a man who lives alone, so much alone that you might call him the original social distancer. His life is organized around his own rigid set of rules and very high standards, which leaves him very isolated from other people. Backman does a fantastic job of building sympathy in a humorous way as Ove interacts with his new neighbors and some old acquaintances. While this is something of a tear jerker, the poignant changes in Ove’s life make it a heartwarming story as well. There is also an award winning Swedish language film adaptation of the book available on Amazon Prime.
Available in e-book, audiobook or print formats at Timberland Regional Library
Magic Ex Libris series by Jim Hines
Magic in the Library!
Jim Hines has written a series featuring a librarian using magical books to save the world. What’s not to love?! The book-related magic is called Libriomancy and it uses “the collective belief of readers and the Libriomancer’s love of the story” to pull items from books and make them real. What would you retrieve from your favorite book? The premise might sound like young adult fiction but these are not kids’ books. They are fun and light and full of clever adventures. The four books in the series, Libriomancer, Codex Born, Unbound, and Revisionary, are all available in e-book format from Timberland Regional Library
A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression by Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe
This book, written by married food historians Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe, won the James Beard Foundation Book Award for Nonfiction in 2017. It is a marvelously told story of the nation’s response to the hunger caused by the Great Depression. Some of the issues were caused by the Dust Bowl, but most were caused by economic disruption and extremely low crop prices that left farmers destroying crops. Ziegelman and Coe trace the New Deal’s response to these problems, including the ascendency of home economists and nutritionists pushing such delicacies as liver loaf, prune whip, and broiled onions with peanut butter. As we face tough times that focus our attention on food security and vegetable gardens, it is heartening to read of the successes and failures of American ingenuity during a previous hard time.
Available in e-book and print formats at Timberland Regional Library
The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore by Kim Fu
I really enjoy reading books by regional authors, which is one of the reasons why I voted to read The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore by Seattle’s own Kim Fu for my last book club meeting. In this story, a group of young women embark on an overnight kayaking trip in the Pacific Northwest with their summer camp counselor. When the counselor decides to take an unexpected detour, she inadvertently sets off a chain of events that will have a dramatic impact on the lives of the campers long after they head home. Running parallel to the camping-trip-gone-wrong storyline is a chronicle of the lives of each character, from their childhood to adulthood. The novel poses an important question for the reader to ponder: Does your life shape your experiences, or do your experiences shape your life? The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore is a quick and enjoyable read (with the appropriate moody feel of the PNW) and made for a great book club discussion.
Available in e-book, audiobook or print formats at Timberland Regional Library
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
This is a great book about a woman who finds herself in charge of two spontaneously combustible children that speaks volumes on the relationships we build. You might even find some inspiration on how to pass the time in quarantine. Winner of the 2020 Audie Award® for Best Female Narrator, the audiobook, read by Marin Ireland, is well worth the listen. AudioFile magazine reports, “Drawing from a seemingly endless supply of character voices, Ireland immerses listeners in this magical yet weird family, exquisitely capturing every unusual layer of the story.”
Available in e-book, audiobook or print formats at Timberland Regional Library
One Day: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America by Gene Weingarten
What happens when someone decides to write a book about a random day in America? Something wonderful, that’s what! Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Gene Weingarten has put together a riveting account of the seemingly ordinary. From Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin, John Hinckley’s, first family visit outside his psychiatric hospital home, to lead singer Jerry Garcia’s fifth Grateful Dead concert since coming out of a coma, to less famous Americans surviving a helicopter crash or the discovery of murdered loved-ones, it turns out Sunday, December 28, 1986 was indeed closer to extraordinary. Slate picked the title for its list of The 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years. The book reminds us that on a routine quarantine day, while some work quietly from home, others are desperately looking for their next meal, and still others are working tirelessly to save lives.
Available in e-book or print formats at Timberland Regional Library (SC)
