Friday Reads: Bring Up the Bodies

Can one ever have too many retellings of Tudor drama? Of course not. This week Library Director Adam Pellman tells us about Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel's take on how Thomas Cromwell worked to seal the fate of Anne Boleyn.

This is the second book in a trilogy of historical novels about the reign and successive marriages of King Henry VIII, centered on Henry's brilliant, ambitious, and savvy advisor, Master Secretary Thomas Cromwell. These characters, and this period in English history, have been the subject of countless novels, films, and plays, but it's hard to imagine they've ever been so richly imagined as in Hilary Mantel's books. The characterization, descriptive prose, and dialogue are all so beautifully executed (if you'll pardon my use of that term given the unfortunate fate of King Henry's wife in this novel, Anne Boleyn), that Tudor history and the inner life of Cromwell come to gripping, vivid life. The first novel in the trilogy, the prize-winning Wolf Hall, charted Cromwell's rise against the backdrop of King Henry's ongoing battle to end his marriage to his first wife, Katherine, and marry the young Anne Boleyn. In this sequel, Henry has become disillusioned with Anne after her failure to bear him a son, and growing gossip about her possible adultery and treason. Cromwell must navigate the complexities of power, politics, religion, family, morality, and his own precarious position as he works to bring about Anne's downfall.

Friday Reads: The Last Dragon

Just in time for Valentine’s day, a romance for the ages…with dragons. Our Metadata and E-Resources Librarian, Kathy Tobolewski, tells us about her recent read, The Last Dragon of the East by Katrina Kwan.

I’ve been long fascinated by tales of dragons. Especially dragons that are not as they
seem. From the Jay William’s picture book “Everyone knows what a dragon looks like”
that surely my mother must have been sick to death of reading to me, to more current
books such as One Good Knight by Mercedes Lackey and dragons in the Napoleonic
wars with Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, I’ve always been drawn to books where the
dragons serve as main characters. Most recently I found a review of The Last Dragon of
the East by Katrina Kwan and decided to give it a try.

Sai can see the magic red thread of soul mates for everyone but himself. The threads
of fate to his mate are gray and frayed in a way he has not seen with anyone else. He
makes matches and lives a quiet life with his mother while running their failing tea
house as endless war ravages the land. His search for a cure to heal his ailing mother
lands him in trouble with the emperor when dragon scales as medicine are found in his
possession. From there he is sent on a quest to hunt and kill the last dragon.

Along the way, he encounters Jyn and discovers that she is his soul mate. But Jyn is
not what she seems and is wary of him and his desire to know her and be with her.
What do you do when your soul mate may be a dragon? Why is she so unwilling to give
him a chance? Why is the emperor so determined to kill the last dragon in a relentless
and vicious hunt? How can two lovers really rebuild trust when thousands of years of
sorrow and dark forces have taken a toll on Jyn and her longing for her soul mate? Will
Jyn and Sai be able to overcome the past and find true love again?

Kwan combines love magic with the Asian dragon lore to create a sweeping romance.
Her lyrical prose and dialogue add to the feel of the tale as it kept me up long past my
bedtime. If you are looking for a dragon romance that is different from the standard
romantasy epic give this one a try.

Available in print from the Westmoreland County Libraries.

Spring semester hours

 

Back to semester hours!

Monday - Thursday: 8:00 a.m. - 9:50 p.m. 

Friday: 8:00 a.m. - 4:50 p.m. 

Saturday: 9:00 a.m. - 4:50 p.m. 

Sunday: 1:00 p.m. - 9:50 p.m. 

NOTE: These hours apply only to Reeves Memorial Library -- i.e., our office & the rooms with the books! Other departments in Reeves Hall set their own hours.

"Spring" Library Newsletter!

 

Brrrr! Happy Friday! Make a cup of something warm to drink and read the latest Library newsletter. 

In This Issue:

• Welcome Our New Librarian!
• Sage Premier Database
• Kelly Clever Presents at Celebration of Scholarship
• Library Research Award
• Reframing the Institutional Saga

J-Term Hours

 

Happy New Year! The library's hours of operation for the remainder of J-Term (through January 20th) are 8:00 a.m. - 4:50 p.m., Monday through Friday. We will be closed on January 15th for the Winter Workshop and on January 20th for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Friday Reads: The Underworld

Happy Friday! This week Adam tells us about broadening his horizons by going deep beneath them in The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean by Susan Casey. 

A few years ago, I started a Dewey Decimal reading challenge, where my goal is to read one book from each of the 100 divisions of the Dewey Decimal Classification system. There are ten divisions for each of the ten main Dewey classes (Religion, Social Sciences, Language, Literature, Technology, etc.), so it covers a very broad range of topics, many of which I might never engage with if not for this challenge. I'm working through it gradually, reading about ten books for the challenge each year. For the Earth Sciences & Geology division (Dewey numbers 550-559), I've selected Susan Casey's highly accessible book about oceanography and submarine geology, The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean.

Casey does a magnificent job of illustrating why the deep ocean continues to become the subject of fascination, exploration, and research for a growing number of people, and how vitally important this part of our world is for our climate and planetary health. It's a vast, dark expanse filled with creatures more alien than much of what we've imagined exists on other planets, and much of it has been explored and studied for the first time only in the last three or four decades. Casey's great skill is to bring this alien world to vivid life in the reader's mind through evocative descriptive prose:

"He could see mounds of black pillow lava, and rust-colored mineral deposits that signaled the presence of iron, and strands of bacteria waving lazily in the current. Jumbles of rocks glistened with volcanic glass. It was a landscape of stark Plutonian beauty."

Extended Weekend Hours

 

Happy Extended Weekend! The Library will be CLOSED Saturday & Sunday and will be open 8:00 a.m. - 4:50 p.m. on Monday & Tuesday.