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Fire and Fury and Wait Lists…

So, just in case you haven’t heard, there’s this book that’s just recently come out, written by Michael Wolffe, and titled Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.  It’s been getting a wee bit of attention lately.

Via The Hill

Demand for this book was already quite high when it’s publication date was set for January 9.   But then the rollout plan, organized by publisher Henry Holt, were overwhelmed the Guardian published highlights from the embargoed book on the morning of Wednesday, January 3.  That move prompted New York magazine, which has first serial rights, to post its excerpts early, mid-day on January 3.  They were originally supposed to run on January 9, the day of the book’s original release.

This drove demand for the book sky-high, even as a lot of readers voiced displeasure at spending money that would in any way contribute to, or validate the sources that Wolff used.  And thus, a lot of people pointed out that public Libraries provide a terrific solution to this problem: access to the book, without paying money for it.  It’s literally the premise of a public Library, but it’s nice to see how many people were realizing how important and spectacular that is.

Henry Holt Logo

Then the cease and desist letter came from the President’s lawyers.  To which Henry Holt responded:  “Henry Holt confirms that we received a cease-and-desist letter from an attorney for President Trump. We see Fire and Fury as an extraordinary contribution to our national discourse, and are proceeding with the publication of the book.”  They moved up the publication date to Friday, January 5 (For the record, Books don’t come out on Fridays.  Books come out on Tuesdays.  Movies come out on Fridays.)

But then, we got a big snowstorm.  And that prevented a lot of packages from being delivered in a timely manner all along the east coast, which slowed the departure of the book from New York (as it did a great many pieople, as well), and driving up anticipation even further.

This week, Publisher’s Weekly put out an article entitled “Librarians Scrambling to Meet Demand for ‘Fire and Fury,'” a title which I find immensely annoying, because we work really hard every day to anticipate your needs and meet those to the best of our budgetary capabilities.  We’re not scrambling, so much as we’re dealing with this enormous demand and limited supply, just like everyone else.  However, the article does mention Massachusetts Libraries, specifically citing Watertown Public Library and the Minuteman Library Network (hello, Friends!).  So that’s a plus.  Time also ran an article pointing out the huge demand at Libraries for the book, which almost sounds like the good people at Time just realized we’re here and loaning out books and being awesome.  Sigh.

Anyways, this is the very long way of letting you know that within the NOBLE network, we have 176 holds on the print book and 17 on the CD audiobook with no copies live yet.  We also have  9 copies of the OverDrive ebook and 3 of the audiobook, and there are a lot of holds on those already.  We are waiting for further copies, but those are slow in coming.  In the meantime, however, we have a display of books that can help tide you over, get you thinking, and entertain you until we are able to fulfill your hold request.  Here are just a few you can find on the display in the man reading room of the Main Library.  And be sure to check in with your friendly Library staff for even more great ideas in the meantime!

Just an aside: we tried to be as wide-ranging as possible in our selections, including books that speak to themes in the media coverage of this book and responses to it by individuals.  We hope you enjoy!

Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? : And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House: Written by President Obama’s  former deputy chief of staff Alyssa Mastromonaco, this book is a surprising, strangely informative, and startlingly funny look behind the scenes at what it really takes to keep the President and the country running (the answer is a lot of briefing binders, apparently).  But, as we learn, for every historic occasion-meeting the queen at Buckingham Palace, bursting in on secret climate talks, or nailing a campaign speech in a hailstorm-there were dozens of less-than-perfect moments when it was up to Alyssa to save the day. Like the time she learned the hard way that there aren’t nearly enough bathrooms at the Vatican.   Mastromonaco’s memoir also offers some great career tips, even for those not looking to make it in D.C.: tips about confidence, about being kind, and about dedication, that make it a great read on any number of levels.

Bunk : the rise of hoaxes, humbug, plagiarists, phonies, post-facts, and fake news: In an interview about his 2017-National-Book-Award nominated work, poet and critic Kevin Young explained “I wanted to look at the bad side of lying. But the more I read the more I saw both that hoaxes aren’t about what people say they are and how often they were really about race.”  In every instance and example in his book–and there are many, and they are all fascinating–Young doesn’t just laugh about the American public’s willingness to swallow “fake news” stories, or about their inability to trust the truth when it’s illuminating.  Instead, he looks at the fears, the prejudices, and the suspicions that allowed the lies to grow, and prevents the acceptance of the truth.  The book is an insightful and well-written bit of history, but it’s also a powerful lesson about what makes us cry “fake” when we hear a particular story–and why we believe what we believe from the news and sources around us.

Lies my teacher told me : everything your American history textbook got wrong: And while we’re on the subject of fake stuff, let’s look at James W. Loewen’s book about American history textbooks, and the stories they tell.  After surveying eighteen leading high school American history texts, Professor Loewen concluded that not one does a decent job of making history interesting or memorable. Marred by an embarrassing combination of blind patriotism, mindless optimism, sheer misinformation, and outright lies, these books are just generally bad history…and lead to a lot of the misconceptions we have about American history and its peoples.  This is a thought-provoking, compelling, and nonpartisan texts that doesn’t pull its punches anywhere, providing the lessons we all probably should have known by now.

Who can you trust? : how technology brought us together and why it might drive us apart: In this revolutionary book, world-renowned trust expert Rachel Botsman reveals that we are at the tipping point of one of the biggest social transformations in human history–with fundamental consequences for everyone. A new world order is emerging: we might have lost faith in institutions and leaders, but millions of people rent their homes to total strangers, exchange digital currencies, or find themselves trusting a bot. This is the age of “distributed trust,” a paradigm shift driven by innovative technologies that are rewriting the rules of an all-too-human relationship.

If we are to benefit from this radical shift, we must understand the mechanics of how trust is built, managed, lost, and repaired in the digital age. In the first book to explain this new world, Botsman provides a detailed map of this uncharted landscape–and explores what’s next for humanity…

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What Are You Doing (at the Library)?

As many of you know, dear readers, we strive to provide plenty of quality classes, events, and activities here at the Library, and though Winter keeps trying to thwart our plans, we have yet to be deterred from our goal!  Here’s a look at some of the events we have coming up in February for your delectation.  You can see the full list of events by checking out our Adult Events Calendar, our Children’s Room Calendar, and our Creativity Lab Calendar.

And, as always, our events are free for all.

At the Main Library:

iPad & iPhone Basics
Tuesday, February 13: 3:00pm – 5:00pm
Second Floor Tech Lab

In this 2-hour class, we’ll cover some of the basic functions of the Apple iPad & iPhone, including current operating system features and those on previous versions. We will explore basic set up of the device, touch screen gestures, your home screen, managing settings, privacy, and notifications, along with taking and storing/sharing photos, messaging, e-mail, apps, and additional functions as time allows.

Note: Please bring your iPhone or iPad if you want to follow along in class, as the library cannot provide devices to attendees.

At the Creativity Lab:

Digital Embroidery
Wednesday, February 24: 6:30pm – 8:30pm

Learn how to create your own custom embroidery with the Creativity Lab’s digital embroidery machine. This machine can take any digital image and stitch it into fabric. You can embroider a design of your own during the class, and afterward, you will be able to use the machine during any Open Lab session.

For ages 13-adult. Space is limited; please sign up in advance.

At the West Branch:

Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life of Art, Lecture and Slide Presentation with Meg Dall
Tuesday, February 6: 7:00pm – 8:00pm

For seven decades Georgia O’Keeffe was a major figure in American art. Remarkably she remained independent in her vision and finding the essentials in form, color, shape and light that illuminated her canvases. The images were drawn from her life experiences to places where she lived. The very landscape outside her window was the inspiration she drew from.  Come and see slides of O’Keeffe’s work as well as photographs of the artist and learn more about her life and work with Meg Dall.  Meg Dall is a teaching artist, who studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She is
Director of Young @Art, an art appreciation program, and a former docent at the Guggenheim Museum’s LEARNING THROUGH ART program, the Boston Public Library and at Boston College’s McMullen Museum (Klee exhibit). In the past she has taught an Enrichment program at the Marblehead Community Public School.
This program is generously sponsored by The Friends of the Peabody Institute Library. Please register in advance to reserve a space.

Heritage Films presents Revere Beach Story and Pleasure Island Park History
Wednesday, February 14: 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Come join us for a 40 minute film presentation by local historian and film maker Dan Tremblay of Heritage Films! This particular film will focus on the history of Revere Beach and Pleasure Island Park.

 

As always, if there is a program, event, or class you’d like to see at the Library, let us know!  We are, after all, here because of and for you!

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Five Book Friday!

The Library is closed today, beloved patrons, thanks to the Nor’easter yesterday…pardon, the ‘Bomb Cyclone’ that left two-foot drifts outside my house, and caused plenty of other headaches and heartaches around the state.  We sincerely hope you are all safe, warm, and enjoying a little pillow-fort book time.  We’re looking forward to welcoming you back to the Library tomorrow!  And if you’re eager for some new reading material, check out this selection of new books that braved the elements to settle onto our shelves this week:

 

J.K. Lasser’s Your Income Tax 2018: Yeah, yeah, we know.  It’s no fun, and it’s super stressful.  But if you’re looking to do your own taxes this year, we’re here to help.  Check out the rest of our useful information on Tax Season help, too…tax forms should be here shortly, and our West Branch is accepting calls for people looking for help filling out their taxes.  Give them a call as soon as possible to secure a spot on the schedule: (978) 535-3354.

Green: A Novel: Sam Graham-Felsen is a former Obama campaign staffer, but his career as a novelist seems to be off to a terrific start.  His debut coming-of-age novel opens in Boston, in 1992.  David Greenfeld is one of the few white kids at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Middle School. Everybody clowns him, girls ignore him, and his hippie parents won’t even buy him a pair of Nikes, let alone transfer him to a private school. Unless he tests into the city’s best public high school—which, if practice tests are any indication, isn’t likely—he’ll be friendless for the foreseeable future.  Nobody’s more surprised than Dave when Marlon Wellings sticks up for him in the school cafeteria. Mar’s a loner from the public housing project on the corner of Dave’s own gentrifying block, and he confounds Dave’s assumptions about black culture: He’s nerdy and neurotic, a Celtics obsessive whose favorite player is the gawky, white Larry Bird. Before long, Mar’s coming over to Dave’s house every afternoon to watch vintage basketball tapes and plot their hustle to Harvard. But as Dave welcomes his new best friend into his world, he realizes how little he knows about Mar’s. Cracks gradually form in their relationship, and Dave starts to become aware of the breaks he’s been given—and that Mar has not.  Charming, fun, startlingly insightful and unflinchingly honest, this is a book that is as heart-warming as it is eye-opening, and was an Editor’s Pick by Library Journal, who raved that it “poignantly captures the tumultuous feelings of adolescence against the historical backdrop of a racially segregated city and country.” 

The Annotated African American Folklore: In this stunning book, Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Maria Tatar have assembled a groundbreaking collection of folktales, myths, and legends that reveals and revitalizes the vibrant details of African American culture.  Arguing for the value of these deceptively simple stories as part of a sophisticated, complex, and heterogeneous cultural heritage, Gates and Tatar show how these remarkable stories deserve a place alongside the classic works of African American literature, and American literature more broadly.  Beginning with the figure of Anansi, the African trickster, master of improvisation―a spider who plots and weaves in scandalous ways―The Annotated African American Folktales then goes on to draw Caribbean and Creole tales into the orbit of the folkloric canon. It retrieves stories not seen since the Harlem Renaissance and brings back archival tales of “Negro folklore” that Booker T. Washington proclaimed had emanated from a “grapevine” that existed even before the American Revolution, stories brought over by slaves who had survived the Middle Passage.   This work is being hailed as the comprehensive and ambitious collection of African American folktales ever published in American literary history, and is a fascinating read for folklore, culture, and history fans alike.  Library Journal also wrote a terrific review for this book, noting that “Survival, both physical and spiritual, is the reality that underpins these stories, as is resilience in the face of unimaginable adversity. This valuable and much-needed anthology is highly recommended for readers interested in folklore and African American history.”

Mean:  Myriam Gurba is a queer spoken-word performer, visual artist, and writer from Santa Maria, California, and is also building an impressive career as a writer, artist (her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach), and as an eighth-grade social studies teacher.  This new release combines true crime, memoir, and ghost story, to create a wholly original, thought-provoking, and starltingly comedic story of Gurba’s coming of age as a queer, mixed-race Chicana. Blending radical formal fluidity and caustic humor, Gurba takes on sexual violence, small towns, and race, turning what might be tragic into piercing, revealing comedy. This is a confident, intoxicating, brassy book that takes the cost of sexual assault, racism, misogyny, and homophobia deadly seriously.  This is by no means an easy read, but it’s a necessary one.  The New York Times agrees, saying “Mean calls for a fat, fluorescent trigger warning start to finish — and I say this admiringly. Gurba likes the feel of radioactive substances on her bare hands.”

The Wine Lover’s Daughter: Anyone who has settled in with a nice glass of red (or white) during this tough stretch of winter will appreciate Anne Fadiman’s memoir of growing up with one of the beverage’s most devoted aficionados.   An appreciation of wine–along with a plummy upper-crust accent, expensive suits, and an encyclopedic knowledge of Western literature–was an essential element of Clifton Fadiman’s escape from lower-middle-class Brooklyn to swanky Manhattan. But wine was not just a class-vaulting accessory; it was an object of ardent desire–from the glass of cheap Graves he drank in Paris in 1927 through the Château Lafite-Rothschild 1904 he drank to celebrate his eightieth birthday, when he and the bottle were exactly the same age, to the wines that sustained him in his last years, when he was blind but still buoyed, as always, by hedonism.  Wine is the spine of this touching memoir; the life and character of Fadiman’s father, along with her relationship with him and her own less ardent relationship with wine, are the flesh.  Ultimately this is a book about love, and the journeys on which it can take us that earned a starred review from Booklist, who said in its review, “In this crisp, scintillating, amusing, and affecting memoir, Anne incisively and lovingly portrays her brilliant and vital father and brings into fresh focus the dynamic world of twentieth-century books and America’s discovery of wine.”

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Tax Forms and Assistance at the Peabody Library

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January has arrived, bringing freezing temperatures, resolutions, and, whether we like it or not–tax season.

Fret not, the Library is here to help you!

The Peabody Institute Library has a helpful page chock-full of resources to assist you in making taxes as painless and safe as possible. Find out where to get local services, downloadable forms and instructions, free online filing, updates and more.

Forms

Every year, as online filings increase, the library receives fewer and fewer tax forms and instruction booklets from Massachusetts and the IRS. Unfortunately, this year will be no exception. Mass resident forms will be reduced by 10% and non-resident forms by about 40%, according to the Commonwealth Department of Revenue. We expect these by the last week of January.

IRS federal forms are expected to arrive mid-to-late January. This year, the library will have a limited supply of basic 1040, 1040A, and 1040EZ forms and instructions.

But don’t worry! Even though supplies will be limited, the library staff will be here to offer you assistance in photocopying or printing necessary items online, as well as accessing important sites and reference guides to help you get started filing.

Tax Assistance

The Peabody South Branch was unfortunately unable to secure AARP volunteers for its free tax help this year, and will not be offering free filing assistance. The Peabody West Branch will offer appointments on a first-come, first-serve, limited basis. Call (978) 535-3354 or stop by the West Branch at 603 Lowell Street to find out more.

Several other area agencies, including the Torigian Senior Center, will be offering assistance too. Check out our resource page for more information.

Did you know the IRS works with efile.com to offer free tax assistance for your important questions? Call the hotline Monday through Friday, 7:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m. during filing season: 1-800-829-1040

More info here.

And get help with Massachusetts State taxes, too, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m. at the Commonwealth Department of Revenue: (617) 887-6367 or (800) 392-6089 (toll-free in Massachusetts)

We’re here to get you through tax season, and while we can’t offer financial advice, the library is always happy to help you find resources that can get you from start to finish. Have questions? Give us a call!

Main Library: (978) 531-0100

West Branch: (978) 535-3354

South Branch: (978) 531-3380

And just a friendly reminder, Federal Tax Day this year is APRIL 17.  This is not a typo.  The regular tax return filing deadline is April 15. However, due to April 15 being on a Sunday and the Washington D.C. Emancipation Day holiday being observed on April 16 instead of April 15, 2018, Tax Day is on the following Tuesday.

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The Romance Garden

Happy New Year, readers, and welcome to our first Romance Garden post of 2018!

John White Alexander, Repose, 1895

We sincerely hope your new year is full of love, intrigue, and happily-ever-afters, and, to that end, we bring your our genre experts’ favorite reads from the past month.  We hope they get your year started off on the right foot, and give you the chance to explore a new author, a new trope, or a whole new genre!

Bridget: Stealing Mr. Right by Tamara Morgan

Every time I read a description of Tamara Morgan’s romances, my initial reaction is “that…that can’t work!”.  And every single time, she proves me wrong.  Without fail, her romances are smart, funny, insightful, and genuinely touching in a way I never expected, and thoroughly enjoyed.

This first in her new Penelope Blue series features a world-renowned (or most-wanted) jewel thief, Penelope Blue, and her husband, a dedicated and extraordinarily resourceful FBI agent.  Penelope got involved with Grant Emerson simply so that she could keep her enemies close, and make sure he wouldn’t get too close to her and her fellow thieves.  But the longer she spent with the ultra-handsome, whip-smart agent, the more she finds herself falling for him.  And that will never do…he’s supposed to be her worst enemy, right?  Things only get worse when Penelope embarks on a new jewel heist…and finds out that her husband has been assigned to track her down.

I normally loathe stories where the protagonists keep secrets from each other.  In this case, however, Morgan somehow manages to make it work.  Her characters are wonderfully vibrant and driven, ensuring that readers are somehow rooting for both of them, even though it seems there is no way for them to win without losing everything.  And, despite all the odds, this is a book with an absolute, total, complete winner of an ending that had me cheering for this most unlikely of couples.  Readers looking for a snarky, fast-paced, steamy romance need look no further than this book, and the series to follow!

Kelley: Wilde in Love by Eloisa James

Readers of historical romance know that you can almost never go wrong with a title by Eloisa James. High quality writing, nods to Shakespeare, humor, and just plain good stories are hallmarks of her work, and her latest book, Wilde in Love, doesn’t disappoint.

Lord Alaric Wilde is an adventurer just arrived home to England after years of traveling the world. While away, the books he wrote about his adventures became London’s best sellers, so unbeknownst to Alaric many admirers eagerly await the return of the highly eligible son of the Duke of Lindow. It seems every young woman in London has read his books and posted his picture on their bedroom walls; there is even a long running play (written by an anonymous playwright) about his life called, of course, Wilde in Love.

Appalled by his newfound celebrity, Alaric finds himself drawn to the only woman in England who hasn’t read of his adventures, Miss Willa Ffynche. Of course, Willa is a private woman who prefers a suitor with far less notoriety. Unlike most women in Alaric’s circle, Willa is well-read and easily holds her own in conversations of business and the world. She fascinates him and, much as Willa hates to admit it, the feeling is mutual.

Watching the couple come together, surrounded by an enjoyable cast of friends and Wilde family members, is fun as well as heartwarming. Readers should look forward to the upcoming stories of The Wildes of Lindow Castle.

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From the Teen Room!

Read Before You Watch! (Books Coming Soon To Theaters Near You!)

 

 

Bonus novels with an unspecified release date:

 

 

 

 

What novel would you want to see be made into a movie?