Friday Reads: Barbarian Days, A Surfing Life

We're going to get back to semi-regular Friday Reads now that we're into a new academic year! To kick us off, our Cataloging & Acquisitions Librarian, Adam Pellman, tells us about trying something different for him -- Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, by Willam Finnegan.

It seems a bit strange to me that I would choose to read a memoir focused on surfing. I don't read many memoirs, and I've never tried surfing, or ever really had any interest in it. I do, however, love great writing, so this book turned out to be the perfect choice. Finnegan has spent time all over the world chasing waves and working as a war journalist, and he is, unsurprisingly, an avid reader, so the book is as much a travelogue and intellectual history as it is a book about his devotion to surfing. Or, perhaps "obsession" is a better word than "devotion." Finnegan writes evocatively about the places he's traveled and the waves he's surfed, and he writes just as beautifully about surfing's undiminished attraction for him:


"A bruise-colored cloud hung over Koko Head. A transistor radio twanged on a seawall where a Hawaiian family picnicked on the sand. The sun-warmed shallow water had a strange boiled-vegetable taste. The moment was immense, still, glittering, mundane. I tried to fix each of its parts in memory. I did not consider, even passingly, that I had a choice when it came to surfing. My enchantment would take me where it would."

Catalog passwords reset

 

If you have a borrowing account set up in the library CATALOG (HillCat) for renewing books & DVDs, your password has been reset to 4321. (This does NOT affect the databases.) Sorry for the inconvenience!

September-October DVD Spotlight: Horror Movies

 Although it's still technically summer, the Halloween candy displays are already popping up in stores across the country.  That means it's unofficially horror movie season!  Once again, we're taking two full months to spotlight the many horror films in our DVD collection.  If chills and thrills are your thing, Reeves Memorial Library has got you covered.  We've got horror movies about all manner of things that go bump in the night, from vampires and zombies to mutant animals and murderous aliens.  Not to mention the scariest monster of all: humankind.

Featured titles include:

Audition (1999)

This cringe-inducing Japanese film, surely one of the most disturbing movies ever made, is both an extremely unsettling piece of revenge horror and a surprisingly affecting examination of loneliness.

The Exorcist (1973)

This horror classic, about a possessed teenage girl, is considered by many to be the scariest movie ever made.

Get Out (2017)
Jordan Peele's acclaimed hit, about a young African-American man's nightmarish weekend visit to his white girlfriend's parents' house, is the perfect combination of slowly-escalating unease, disturbing horror, and brilliant social commentary.

Nosferatu (1922)

This silent, expressionistic adaptation of the Dracula story features some of the most haunting imagery in all of cinema.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

With equal parts horror and humor, this wildly entertaining film tells the story of a slacker who tries to win back his ex-girlfriend amid the chaos of a zombie apocalypse.

The Thing (1982)
Tension and paranoia abound in John Carpenter's gory horror classic, about an Antarctic research station that comes under attack by a shapeshifting alien.

Stop by the library and check one out today ... if you dare.

Fall 2021 Library Newsletter

(c) 2021 Reeves Memorial Library

Fall semester is just about here! Take a few minutes and check out the Library's Fall 2021 Newsletter. We're especially excited to be adding a much-requested video streaming service this year!

Friday Reads

We'll be doing Friday Reads sporadically throughout the summer. Adam said his current read, The Overstory by Richard Powers, was worth featuring!

I love this book. I want to begin by saying that.

This is a novel about trees. Well, it's about people, at least in terms of its plotting and characters, but it's the ways in which trees impact and inform those human characters' personal and collective histories that serve as the focus of the story. It's a big, sprawling epic of a novel, beautifully written, and with such rich characterization that even minor side characters who only appear in a single chapter feel like the protagonists of an entire novel. The book follows nine Americans over the course of decades in their lives. Many of them will come together as part of an environmental activist movement in the Pacific Northwest, where ancient forests are being cut down by large timber companies.

Most great nature writing, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, reminds us that there's an entire non-human world all around us, bursting with activity and intelligent life that many of us never notice. The term "overstory" refers to the topmost layer of foliage in a forest, the layer which acts as the forest canopy. This novel reminds us that there is indeed an entire story unfolding above our heads, among the trees that we so often take for granted, and that we would all do well to pay attention to it.

Summer Newsletter

 

Welcome, Summer! The Library's Summer 2021 newsletter is here. Grab a refreshing beverage and click to read. 

Friday Reads: The Woman in the Window

Happy Friday before finals! Our Cataloging & Acquisitions Librarian, Adam Pellman, has a dark thriller to share on a sunny afternoon: A.J. Finn's The Woman in the Window. 

With the exception of Gillian Flynn's superb Gone Girl, I haven't read any of the popular psychological thrillers that have been topping the bestseller lists over the past decade or so. I wanted to give The Woman in the Window a shot, in case I decide to watch the film adaptation that is coming to Netflix this week. The novel's protagonist is Anna Fox, a New York City psychologist who has become an agoraphobic shut-in after a traumatic accident. Separated from her husband and daughter, she spends much of her time drinking wine, playing online chess, watching old black-and-white movies, and spying on her neighbors. She forms a tenuous connection after a couple of visits from Jane Russell, who has just moved into the house across the park with her husband and teenage son. However, Anna's world begins to spin out of control one night when, while peering out her window, she sees a shocking act of violence in the Russell home. Or does she? With her unstable mental state, her drinking, and her new medications, did she imagine the whole thing?


"Hitchcockian" is a term often used to describe stories like this one, and it's a perfect description in this case. The novel's storyline, about a homebound person who witnesses a crime while spying on their neighbors, is reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's great film Rear Window, and Anna herself watches several of Hitchcock's films throughout the novel. Anna's love of old movies, especially the thriller and film noir genres, is one of my favorite elements of the novel, which even shares its title with a classic film noir from the 1940s. Anna's movie watching habits are described in wonderful detail: "This time I'm coiled on the sofa, watching Rififi--the extended heist sequence, half an hour without a syllable of dialogue or a note of music, just diegetic sound and the hum of blood in your ears." Be still my cinephile heart.