The next Reader’s Advisory Roundtable meeting will be on Zoom on Wednesday, December 9th at 9am to discuss cookbooks. Our usual potluck coffee and snack meeting will be sorely missed!
Be on the lookout for a survey about the recent Staff
Appreciation Week (SAW). Please do share
your thoughts and opinions with the JCPLA Executive Council. We’ll likely be doing virtual/remote staff
training for a while yet, so let us know what you’d like to see/hear and how
you’d like to receive that content in the future.
The JCPLA is in the initial stages of sharing our SAW
content with the Alabama Library Association to benefit librarianship
statewide!
No one volunteered or nominated another candidate for moderator,
so Holley will continue as Reader’s Advisory Roundtable moderator for the
2020-2021 year. Meetings will continue on Zoom until further notice.
The dates and topics for 2021 meetings are as follows:
February 10 – Religious/Inspirational Fiction
April 14 – Podcasts and Other Not-a-Book Recommendations
June 9 – LGBTQ Fiction & Nonfiction
August 11 – #ownvoices
October 13 – Bookclub Possibilities
December 8 – Award Winners
We met this week, Wednesday October 14th, on Zoom to talk
about disability and mental health/illness in fiction.
11 in attendance:
Holley, O’Neal Library
Nicole, Tarrant Library
Shawn, Pinson Library
Nisha, Hoover/O’Neal libraries
Maura, Trussville Library
Laura, Homewood Library
Riana, Pinson Library
Alisha, Birmingham Public Library
Michelle, Irondale Library
Joi, Vestavia Library
Marsha, I did not record the location
The titles we discussed:
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick
No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends
to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully
timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated
by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply
unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an
elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of
friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been
living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find
the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.
Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor
Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story
of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit
make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .the only way to survive is
to open your heart.
Holley, O’Neal Library
Michelle, Irondale Library
Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019
NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2019 BY WOMAN’S DAY, NEWSDAY, PUBLISHERS
WEEKLY, BUSTLE, AND BOOK RIOT!
Bridget Jones’s Diary meets Americanah in this disarmingly
honest, boldly political, and truly inclusive novel that will speak to anyone
who has gone looking for love and found something very different in its place.
Queenie Jenkins is a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican British woman living in
London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at
a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her
white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white
boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several
hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of
affirming self-worth. As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to
another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing
it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a
world trying to answer them for her.
With “fresh and honest” (Jojo Moyes) prose, Queenie is a remarkably
relatable exploration of what it means to be a modern woman searching for
meaning in today’s world.
Shawn, Pinson Library
Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia
In the real world, Eliza Mirk is shy, weird, and friendless.
Online, Eliza is LadyConstellation, anonymous creator of a popular webcomic
called Monstrous Sea. With millions of followers and fans throughout the
world, Eliza’s persona is popular. Eliza can’t imagine enjoying the real world
as much as she loves her digital community.
Then Wallace Warland transfers to her school and Eliza
begins to wonder if a life offline might be worthwhile. But when Eliza’s secret
is accidentally shared with the world, everything she’s built—her story, her
relationship with Wallace, and even her sanity—begins to fall apart.
With pages from Eliza’s webcomic, as well as screenshots
from Eliza’s online forums, this uniquely formatted book will appeal to fans of
Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona and Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl.
Riana, Pinson Library
The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf
Melati Ahmad looks like your typical movie-going,
Beatles-obsessed sixteen-year-old. Unlike most other sixteen-year-olds though,
Mel also believes that she harbors a djinn inside her, one who threatens her
with horrific images of her mother's death unless she adheres to an elaborate
ritual of counting and tapping to keep him satisfied.
But there are things that Melati can't protect her mother from. On the evening
of May 13th, 1969, racial tensions in her home city of Kuala Lumpur boil
over. The Chinese and Malays are at war, and Mel and her mother become
separated by a city in flames.
With a 24-hour curfew in place and all lines of communication down, it will
take the help of a Chinese boy named Vincent and all of the courage and grit in
Melati's arsenal to overcome the violence on the streets, her own prejudices,
and her djinn's surging power to make it back to the one person she can't risk
losing.
Riana, Pinson Library
What Comes After by Steve Watkins
After her veterinarian dad dies, sixteen-year-old Iris Wight
must leave her beloved Maine to live on a North Carolina farm with her
hardbitten aunt and a cousin she barely knows. Iris, a vegetarian and animal
lover, immediately clashes with Aunt Sue, who mistreats the livestock, spends
Iris’s small inheritance, and thinks nothing of striking Iris for the smallest
offense.
Things come to a head when Iris sets two young goats free to
save them from slaughter, and an enraged Aunt Sue orders her brutish son, Book,
to beat Iris senseless - a horrific act that lands Book and his mother in jail.
Sent to live with an offbeat foster family and their "dooking"
ferrets, Iris must find a way to take care of the animals back at the farm,
even if it means confronting Aunt Sue. Powerful and deeply moving, this
compelling novel affirms the redemptive power of animals and the resilience of
the human spirit.
Holley, O’Neal Library
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist,and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
Now being developed as a television series with Eva Longoria and ABC!
*An O, The Oprah Magazine's Best Nonfiction Book of 2019*
*A People Magazine Book of the Week*
*An Apple Best Books Pick for April*
*An April IndieNext Pick*
*A Book of the Month Club Selection*
*A Publishers Marketplace Buzz Book*
*A Newsday, Apple iBooks, Thrive Global, Refinery29,
and Book Riot Most Anticipated Book of 2019*
One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles
practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter
Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands.
With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight
from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.
As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a
self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal
illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if
nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the
wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the
very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.
With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both
clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and
others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and
mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering
a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the
rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and
a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and
our power to transform them.
Michelle, Irondale Library
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Frye by Rachel Joyce
Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small
English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost
everything he does, even down to how he butters his toast. Little
differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning the mail arrives, and
within the stack of quotidian minutiae is a letter addressed to Harold in a
shaky scrawl from a woman he hasn’t seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie
Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye.
Harold pens a quick reply and, leaving Maureen to her chores, heads to the
corner mailbox. But then, as happens in the very best works of fiction, Harold
has a chance encounter, one that convinces him that he absolutely must deliver
his message to Queenie in person. And thus begins the unlikely pilgrimage at
the heart of Rachel Joyce’s remarkable debut. Harold Fry is determined to walk
six hundred miles from Kingsbridge to the hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed
because, he believes, as long as he walks, Queenie Hennessey will live.
Still in his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold embarks on his urgent quest
across the countryside. Along the way he meets one fascinating character after
another, each of whom unlocks his long-dormant spirit and sense of promise.
Memories of his first dance with Maureen, his wedding day, his joy in
fatherhood, come rushing back to him—allowing him to also reconcile the losses
and the regrets. As for Maureen, she finds herself missing Harold for the first
time in years. And then there is the unfinished business with Queenie Hennessy.
A novel of unsentimental charm, humor, and profound insight into the thoughts
and feelings we all bury deep within our hearts, The Unlikely Pilgrimage
of Harold Fry introduces Rachel Joyce as a wise—and utterly
irresistible—storyteller.
Michelle, Irondale Library
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated by
Ginny Tapley Takemori
Shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award
Longlisted for the Believer Book Award
Longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation
A Los Angeles Times Bestseller
The English-language debut of one of Japan’s most talented
contemporary writers, selling over 650,000 copies there, Convenience Store
Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old
Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura. Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family,
nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the
Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,” she finds peace and purpose in her life.
In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the
rules of social interaction―many are laid out line by line in the store’s
manual―and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her
colleagues, playing the part of a “normal” person excellently, more or less.
Managers come and go, but Keiko stays at the store for eighteen years. It’s
almost hard to tell where the store ends and she begins. Keiko is very happy,
but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly
pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to
take desperate action…
A brilliant depiction of an unusual psyche and a world
hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed
look at contemporary work culture and the pressures to conform, as well as a
charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.
Nicole, Tarrant Library
Joi, Vestavia Library
The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce
In this poignant parallel story to Harold’s saga, acclaimed author Rachel Joyce
brings Queenie Hennessy’s voice into sharp focus. Setting pen to paper, Queenie
makes a journey of her own, a journey that is even bigger than Harold’s; one
word after another, she promises to confess long-buried truths—about her modest
childhood, her studies at Oxford, the heartbreak that brought her to
Kingsbridge and to loving Harold, her friendship with his son, the solace she
has found in a garden by the sea. And, finally, the devastating secret she has
kept from Harold for all these years.
A wise, tender, layered novel that gathers tremendous emotional force, The
Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy underscores the resilience of the human
spirit, beautifully illuminating the small yet pivotal moments that can change
a person’s life.
Michelle, Irondale Library
All the Greys on Greene Street by Laura Tucker
SoHo, 1981. Twelve-year-old Olympia is an artist--and in her neighborhood, that's normal. Her dad and his business partner Apollo bring antique paintings back to life, while her mother makes intricate sculptures in a corner of their loft, leaving Ollie to roam the streets of New York with her best friends Richard and Alex, drawing everything that catches her eye. Then everything falls apart.
Ollie's dad disappears in the middle of the night, leaving her only a cryptic note and instructions to destroy it. Her mom has gone to bed, and she's not getting up. Apollo is hiding something, Alex is acting strange, and Richard has questions about the mysterious stranger he saw outside. And someone keeps calling, looking for a missing piece of art. . . Olympia knows her dad is the key--but first, she has to find him, and time is running out.
Laura, Homewood Library
The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan
A stunning, heartbreaking debut novel about grief, love, and
family, perfect for fans of Jandy Nelson and Celeste Ng.
Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died
by suicide, she turned into a bird. Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal
grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother,
the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family
secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. And as she
grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her
best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own
life.
Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance,
hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a stunning and
heartbreaking novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief,
and love.
Nisha, Hoover/O’Neal libraries
Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close by Aminatou Sow
and Ann Friedman (and podcast)
A close friendship is one of the most influential and
important relationships a human life can contain. Anyone will tell you that!
But for all the rosy sentiments surrounding friendship, most people don’t talk
much about what it really takes to stay close for the long haul.
Now two friends, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, tell the story of their equally
messy and life-affirming Big Friendship in this honest and hilarious book that
chronicles their first decade in one another’s lives. As the hosts of the hit
podcast Call Your Girlfriend, they’ve become known for frank and intimate
conversations. In this book, they bring that energy to their own friendship—its
joys and its pitfalls.
Aminatou and Ann define Big Friendship as a strong, significant bond that
transcends life phases, geographical locations, and emotional shifts. And they
should know: the two have had moments of charmed bliss and deep frustration, of
profound connection and gut-wrenching alienation. They have weathered
life-threatening health scares, getting fired from their dream jobs, and one
unfortunate Thanksgiving dinner eaten in a car in a parking lot in Rancho
Cucamonga. Through interviews with friends and experts, they have come to
understand that their struggles are not unique. And that the most important
part of a Big Friendship is making the decision to invest in one another again
and again.
An inspiring and entertaining testament to the power of society’s most
underappreciated relationship, Big Friendship will invite you to
think about how your own bonds are formed, challenged, and preserved. It is a
call to value your friendships in all of their complexity. Actively choose
them. And, sometimes, fight for them.
Laura, Homewood Library
Aminatou and Ann have a podcast called Call Your Girlfriend,
described as “a podcast for long distance besties everywhere.” https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/call-your-girlfriend/id881487725
The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes
up with algorithms to predict customer purchases—a job that has given her more
money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating
department than the average thirty-year-old.
It doesn't help that Stella has Asperger's and French kissing reminds her of a
shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots
of practice—with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan.
The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can't afford to turn down Stella's offer,
and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan—from foreplay
to more-than-missionary position...
Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses, but crave all of
the other things he's making her feel. Their no-nonsense partnership starts
making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince
Stella that love is the best kind of logic...
Shawn, Pinson Library
The Bride Test by Helen Kwang
Khai Diep has no feelings. Well, he feels irritation when
people move his things or contentment when ledgers balance down to the penny,
but not big, important emotions—like grief. And love. He thinks he's defective.
His family knows better—that his autism means he just processes emotions
differently. When he steadfastly avoids relationships, his mother takes matters
into her own hands and returns to Vietnam to find him the perfect bride.
As a mixed-race girl living in the slums of Ho Chi Minh City, Esme Tran has
always felt out of place. When the opportunity arises to come to America and
meet a potential husband, she can't turn it down, thinking this could be the
break her family needs. Seducing Khai, however, doesn't go as planned. Esme's
lessons in love seem to be working...but only on herself. She's hopelessly
smitten with a man who's convinced he can never return her affection. With
Esme's time in the United States dwindling, Khai is forced to understand he's
been wrong all along. And there's more than one way to love.
Joi, Vestavia Library
A Child Called It: One Child’s Courage to Survive by Dave
Pelzer
This book chronicles the unforgettable account of one of the
most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave
Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable,
alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games--games that
left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order
to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave; and no
longer a boy, but an "it."
Dave's bed was an old army cot in the basement, and his clothes were torn and
raunchy. When his mother allowed him the luxury of food, it was nothing more
than spoiled scraps that even the dogs refused to eat. The outside world knew
nothing of his living nightmare. He had nothing or no one to turn to, but his
dreams kept him alive--dreams of someone taking care of him, loving him and
calling him their son.
Shawn, Pinson Library
Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
Talia Hibbert, one of contemporary romance’s brightest new
stars, delivers a witty, hilarious romantic comedy about a woman who’s tired of
being “boring” and recruits her mysterious, sexy neighbor to help her
experience new things - perfect for fans of Sally Thorne, Jasmine Guillory, and
Helen Hoang!
Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal,
a plan, and a list. After almost - but not quite - dying, she’s come up with
seven directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the
first: finally moving out of her glamorous family’s mansion. The next items?
Enjoy a drunken night out.
Ride a motorcycle.
Go camping.
Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex.
Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage.
And...do something bad.
But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job. Redford "Red" Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than 10,000 Hollywood heartthrobs. He’s also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit.
But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns
things about him that no spy session could teach her. Like why he clearly
resents Chloe’s wealthy background. And why he never shows his art to anyone.
And what really lies beneath his rough exterior....
Joi, Vestavia Library
Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert
One of Oprah Magazine's 21 Romance Novels That Are Set
to Be the Best of 2020
Danika Brown knows what she wants: professional success,
academic renown, and an occasional roll in the hay to relieve all that
career-driven tension. But romance? Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt.
Romantic partners, whatever their gender, are a distraction at best and a drain
at worst. So Dani asks the universe for the perfect friend-with-benefits -
someone who knows the score and knows their way around the bedroom.
When big, brooding security guard Zafir Ansari rescues Dani
from a workplace fire drill gone wrong, it's an obvious sign: PhD student Dani
and former rugby player Zaf are destined to sleep together. But before she can
explain that fact to him, a video of the heroic rescue goes viral. Suddenly,
half the internet is shipping #DrRugbae - and Zaf is begging Dani to play
along. Turns out, his sports charity for kids could really use the publicity.
Lying to help children? Who on earth would refuse? Dani's plan is simple: fake
a relationship in public, seduce Zaf behind the scenes. The trouble is, grumpy
Zaf is secretly a hopeless romantic - and he's determined to corrupt Dani's
stone-cold realism. Before long, he's tackling her fears into the dirt. But the
former sports star has issues of his own, and the walls around his heart are as
thick as his...um, thighs.
The easy lay Dani dreamed of is now more complex than her
thesis. Has her wish backfired? Is her focus being tested? Or is the universe
just waiting for her to take a hint?
Joi, Vestavia Library
