Celebrating our Seniors!

 

We want to congratulate Emily & Chelsi, Library Aides graduating in December 2021!

Emily Coglio & Chelsianna Havko both began working here at the Library in Spring 2019. They have since each worked over 500 hours at the Library! We will miss them but are so excited to see what they do next. 

Emily Coglio will be graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Business. She plans to pursue a career within the costuming sector of the theatre industry. Her favorite memory of working at the library happened her freshman year when she was working during finals week. She was in the silent reading room and there was only one patron there and he had built a fortress-like structure out of books around himself—she found this quite humorous. She will definitely miss the library once she graduates.

Chelsi Havko is an English and Environmental Studies double major.  She hopes to find a job in publishing or editorial writing, and would love to work for an environmental non-profit someday. She is constantly debating if she should go to graduate school. She has worked as a library aide for three years. Her favorite memory was being disturbed by a library book containing unorthodox Thanksgiving recipes from the 90s. She will miss seeing the therapy dogs in their Halloween costumes and talking to the librarians about her many research projects. 

Thanksgiving Break

The Library will be closing tomorrow evening (Wednesday) at 4:50 p.m. and will reopen on Monday morning at 8:00. Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Holiday Reading Theme: Holidays

Yeah, we really stretched for this theme! 

Do you prefer your holiday fiction hot and heavy or gory and grim? We have Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s tales to suit every fancy. Grab a mug of something warm and curl up with a good book.

Photo by Valentin Antonini on Unsplash

A Highlander for Christmas by Sandy Blair

Boston antiques dealer Claire MacGregor is not looking forward to another solo Christmas. However, when she is fooling around with an old puzzle box, it opens and a gorgeous Scottish nobleman from the 18th century magically appears. (Publisher’s summary)

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie

Poirot is called to the family estate of Simeon Lee, after he is found lying in a pool of blood on Christmas Eve. (Publisher’s summary)

Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay's holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs and also into the seamy world of L.A. after dark. (Publisher’s summary)

The Poseidon Adventure by Paul Gallico

The luxury liner "Poseidon" is hit by a massive tsunami on New Year's Eve, rocking the ship upside down, and a small band of trapped survivors must work their way through the labyrinth of the ship's underbelly to escape. (Publisher’s summary)

Jerusalem Inn by Martha Grimes

Superintendent Richard Tury of Scotland Yard spends his Christmas holiday at a colorful country inn near a vast estate inhabited by the titled, the rich, the famous, and--suddenly--the deceased. (Publisher’s summary)

Skipping Christmas by John Grisham

In this hilarious look at the chaos and frenzy that have become part of our holiday tradition, a weary couple is about to discover skipping Christmas brings enormous consequences and isn't half as easy as they had imagined. (Publisher’s summary)

A Different Kind of Christmas by Alex Haley

Haley has written a sentimental tale of and for Christmas. Set in 1855, the story features a student at Princeton whose father is a U.S. senator and one of the biggest slaveholders in North Carolina. Changing dormitories to escape the persecution of some nasty northern students, Fletcher Randall finds himself under a different style of peer pressure. After meeting three Quaker brothers who introduce him to the antislavery activism of their friends and family in Pennsylvania, Randall becomes involved in the Underground Railroad and in an escape attempt on Christmas Eve, 1855. (Booklist review)

Christmas Holiday by W. Somerset Maugham

Charley Mason's trip to Paris is haunted by his meeting with Lydia, a wayward girl whose family was displaced by the Russian Revolution and who "pines for a man half a world away, a dope dealer and murderer whose sins Lydia seeks to absolve through her own self-destruction." (Publisher’s summary)

Turkey Day Murder by Leslie Meier

Amateur sleuth Lucy Stone investigates when Tinker's Cove's annual Thanksgiving festivities are interrupted by the murder of Metinnicut Indian activist Curt Nolan and uncovers a host of suspects while cooking up a holiday dinner for twelve. (Publisher’s summary)

The Dons and Mr. Dickens: The Strange Case of the Oxford Christmas Plot: A Secret Victorian Journal, attributed to Wilkie Collins, discovered and edited by William J. Palmer

On a dank and dreary November evening, Inspector William Field summons Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens to a crime scene in London's notorious Chinese opium district. When the two arrive in the seedy neighborhood, they learn that a man has been murdered and the victim is none other than an Oxford Don.

The Raven in the Foregate: The Twelfth Chronicle of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters

Christmas, 1141. After refusing to baptize the illegitimate baby of a local prostitute, the new parish priest is found dead in the river. Brother Cadfael investigates. (Publisher’s summary)

Philly Stakes by Gillian Roberts

Amanda Pepper, an English teacher at school for Philadelphia's filthy rich, is determined to teach the kids a lesson about the true spirit of Christmas. She intends to have them cook and serve a meal to the homeless, but unfortunately a powerful parent takes over, and the simple meal turns into a catered affair--topped off by murder. Of course, Amanda wants to solve the crime with her sometime boyfriend and cop C.K. Mackenzie. She's equally determeind to teach the the elusive killer a lesson or two, as well. (Publisher’s summary)

Friday Reads: Station Eleven

Have you had enough of pandemics yet? Sometimes the best way to process a real-life challenge is through fiction. In that spirit, Adam is reading Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.

Station Eleven is at least the the third novel I've read during the COVID-19 pandemic that is about survival after a viral plague has wiped out most of humanity. Apparently, escapism is not really my thing.

After the heart-racing opening chapters set right at the start of a devastating flu outbreak in Toronto, the novel jumps back and forth between the years before the pandemic and a time twenty years later. The post-pandemic sections follow Kirsten Raymonde and her fellow actors and musicians as they travel between settlements as part of a small theatre troupe, the Traveling Symphony. The chapters set in the pre-pandemic years focus on various other characters, including an entertainment journalist-turned-paramedic, a famous actor, and the actor's artist ex-wife. With over 100 pages still to go, I already get the sense that these characters' lives are closely connected in a sort of Dickensian, fate-filled way that can be hard for some novelists to pull off without it seeming too convenient, but that Mandel seems clearly talented enough to pull off easily.

November DVD Spotlight: Musicals and Music Films

This month, we're shining our spotlight on movies that celebrate song and dance in a variety of different ways.  We've included traditional musicals like West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965) alongside more recent genre staples like Rent (2005), but we've also featured movies that, while they are not musicals, focus on music as part of their central story.  There's Christopher Guest's hilarious folk music-centric mockumentary A Mighty Wind (2003), and Jean Renoir's lush Technicolor masterpiece French Cancan (1955).

Other featured titles include:

Copying Beethoven (2006)

Ed Harris gives a commanding lead performance in this fictional account of the last years in the life of Ludwig van Beethoven, as he mentors a promising young composition student.

The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001)

Notoriously twisted Japanese director Takashi Miike's darkly comic musical has been billed as "The Sound of Music meets Dawn of the Dead."

Sholay (1975)

This Bollywood classic has everything: it's a western, a love story, a buddy comedy, a revenge film, an action epic, and, of course, a musical.

Singin' in the Rain (1952)

One of the best films ever made, this love story set against the backdrop of Hollywood's transition from silent movies to "talkies" is so much more than just that iconic shot of Gene Kelly hanging off a lamppost.

Sita Sings the Blues (2008)

This animated reinterpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana is set to the 1920s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw.

The Smiling Lieutenant (1931)

An early sound-era Hollywood musical from the great director Ernst Lubitsch, this charming romantic comedy features Maurice Chevalier as a military officer caught up in a love triangle with a musician and a princess.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

There's no place like home, as you'll learn from this perennial classic about Kansas farm girl Dorothy, who is magically transported to the land of Oz.

Stop by the library and check one out today!

Friday Reads: Transit in the Triangle

Happy Friday! Today our Library director, Dr. Stanley, muses on the evolution of mass transit as he tells us about Transit in the Triangle by Blaine S. Hays and James A Toman.

Being a railfan and a former volunteer at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum I was elated when I
came across this book. Public transit was used by the majority of the population in the early part
of the 20th century. Not everyone owned a car which necessitated other means to get from one
place to another. In the Pittsburgh area as well as Westmoreland County, before buses came on
the scene people relied on trolleys, also referred to as streetcars. This book gives an excellent
overview of public transportation by rail, showing the evolution of transit from horse-drawn
streetcars to electric powered vehicles. However, progress cannot be stopped and as cars became
more affordable to the general population, the streetcars, which had many roads to themselves,
found the need to share space with not only cars but also buses. The latter two could get people
to places quickly and weren’t reliant on the set routes of rail vehicles. This began the decline of
the rail industry, completely wiping it out in many areas. Interestingly, as mass transit continues
to develop, rail vehicles are seeing a surge in popularity. So the pendulum has swung back!

Editor's note: The Trolley Museum is well worth a visit, even on a rainy day! 

Friday Reads: From Here to Eternity

 We're kicking off October with a Halloween-appropriate read: From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty. Our Public Services Librarian, Kelly Clever, tells us about this unique twist on the travel writing genre. 

Fun fact about me: I sort of grew up in a cemetery. By that, I mean that the "family business" of my family of origin is operating a memorial park. We also took a lot of road trips when I was younger, and my dad took a professional interest in other cemeteries, so we always visited the burial places of the areas we visited. This book is like that but on steroids. And with a lot more discussion of decay. 

Caitlyn Doughty is probably best-known for her YouTube channel, Ask a Mortician. The same funny-yet-respectful, lightheartedly-morbid tone of her videos pervades this book. I'm not very far into it, but so far she has traveled to a remote town in Colorado to visit the only legal open-air funeral pyre in the United States. She has also taken an arduous 30-hour trip to the Torajan region of Indonesia, where dead people are considered still alive for the first few months or years (they're described as ill or feverish but still cognizant) and go on "living" in the home with their families. 

This book and Caitlin's YouTube channel are not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but I find it comforting to reflect on the universality of death and how it is not truly an end. Every culture has rituals around mourning, the treatment of the body, and grief, and in every culture, those still alive must find a way to go on living after loss. I would rather not do that with a mummified body in my living room, but it's nice to reflect that many peoples do not perceive the same rigid division between life and death that modern American culture usually does. 

September-October Fiction Reading Theme: Horror

We’re getting a head-start on October with a selection of hair-raising horror!

 

Photo by Edilson Borges on Unsplash.com

100 Jolts: Shockingly Short Stories by Michael Arnzen (yes, Dr. Arnzen!)
One hundred very satisfying small stories by one of the true masters of flash fiction. Sometimes disturbing, sometimes humorous, and sometimes musical, this collection is essential reading for anyone interested in flash-bizarro-horror, not to mention the fact that it's basically a clinic for anyone interested in writing the stuff. A modern classic. (Amazon.com reviewer Scott Cole)


Ghost and Horror Stories by Ambrose Bierce
Drawing on his own experiences as a Civil War veteran and a San Franciscan journalist, Bierce uses the backdrop of the Civil War, the South and California as the setting in many of his tales. His highly intelligent, highly critical and biting personality comes through in the bizarre menagerie of characters populating his narratives, in the descriptions of their actions and in the world they inhabit. (Amazon.com reviewer Amazon Customer)

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Have you ever tiptoed down a hall in a dark house late at night, not sure if you really heard that bump in the night? That is what reading this novel was like, in all of the best ways possible. Shirley Jackson is a renowned master at the macabre, the unnerving, the Gothic genre, and this work puts her talents on full display—in HD. (Goodreads.com reviewer Navidad Thelamour)

Four Past Midnight by Stephen King
You are strapped in an airline seat on a flight beyond hell. You are forced into a hunt for the most horrifying secret a small town ever hid. You are trapped in the demonic depths of a writer's worst nightmare. You are focusing in on a beast bent on shredding your sanity.

You are in the hands of Stephen King at his mind-blowing best with an extraordinary quartet of full-length novellas guaranteed to set your heart-stopwatch at- FOUR PAST MIDNIGHT. (Publisher’s summary)


The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
Does this classic need a synopsis? A young and beautiful primadonna is visited by a masked "Angel of music" who teaches her to sing and jealously demands her devotion. (Publisher’s summary)

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft
Incantations of black magic unearthed unspeakable horrors in Providence, Rhode Island. Evil spirits are being resurrected from beyond the grave, a supernatural force so twisted that it kills without offering the mercy of death! (Publisher’s summary)


Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice
Lestat's kiss has awakened Queen Akasha from her 6000 year sleep. She immediately begins a wholesale slaughter of most of the world's vampires, sparing only a small remnant (including Lestat) who she expects will join her in a crazed crusade against male mortals. (Publisher’s Weekly)


Dracula by Bram Stoker
Presents the classic macabre tale of a vampire, Count Dracula of Transylvania, and the small group of people who vowed to rid the world of him. (Publisher’s summary)


Fog Heart by Thomas Tessier
Oona Muir has visionary trances that involve self-laceration, bleeding and fits. Expressing her visions in the disjointed, imagistic language of traditional prophecy, she convinces a few believers but lets more skeptical acquaintances scoff--until she hints at their own dark secrets. (Publisher’s Weekly)


The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story by Horace Walpole
On the day of his wedding Conrad, heir to the house of Otranto, is killed in mysterious circumstances. Fearing the end of his dynasty, his father, Manfred, determines to marry Conrad's betrothed Isabella, until a series of supernatural events stands in his way. A giant helmet falls from the moon, a portrait sighs, a statue bleeds and spirits warn of impending tragedy, as the curse on Manfred's house inexorably works itself out. (Publisher’s summary)


Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, edited by Phyllis Cerf Wagner and Herbert A. Wise

This is the bedrock of horror anthologies; the quintessential collection of spine-chilling tales; the keystone in any serious horror buff's collection. (Amazon.com review)

Labor Day Weekend

 

The Library will be closed Saturday - Monday for Labor Day Weekend. The Library staff wishes everyone safe and happy celebrations; we'll see you on Tuesday!

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.

Summer Reading

Can you feel summer yet? Whether you're picking up a summer job, solving a murder, finding yourself, or falling in love, we have a book to fit the mood. 

Photo by Hannah Morgan on Unsplash

Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman - Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Fiction

This book is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Each is unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, when, during the restless summer weeks, unrelenting currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion and test the charged ground between them. Recklessly, the two verge toward the one thing both fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy. It is an instant classic and one of the great love stories of our time. (Publisher's summary)


Summer Sisters by Judy Blume

When Victoria Leonard answers the phone in her Manhattan office, Caitlin's voice catches her by surprise. Vix hasn't talked to her oldest friend in months. Caitlin's news takes her breath away--and Vix is transported back in time, back to the moment she and Caitlin Somers first met, back to the casual betrayals and whispered confessions of their long, complicated friendship, back to the magical island where two friends became summer sisters. (Publisher's summary)


Dandelion Wine: A Novel by Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury's moving recollection of a vanished golden era remains one of his most enchanting novels. Dandelion Wine stands out in the Bradbury literary canon as the author's most deeply personal work, a semi-autobiographical recollection of a magical small-town summer in 1928. (Publisher's summary)


A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

In 1906, sixteen-year-old Mattie, determined to attend college and be a writer against the wishes of her father and fiance, takes a job at a summer inn where she discovers the truth about the death of a guest. Based on a true story. Set... in the Adirondack Mountains, against the backdrop of the murder that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, this Printz Honor-winning coming-of-age novel effortlessly weaves romance, history, and a murder mystery into something moving, and real, and wholly original. (Publisher's summary)


A Good Neighborhood by Therese Fowler

In Oak Knoll, a verdant, tight-knit North Carolina neighborhood, professor of forestry and ecology Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son, Xavier, who's headed to college in the fall. All is well until the Whitmans--a family with new money and a secretly troubled teenage daughter--raze the house and trees next door to build themselves a showplace. With little in common except a property line, these two families quickly find themselves at odds: first, over an historic oak tree in Valerie's yard, and soon after, the blossoming romance between their two teenagers. (Publisher's summary)

The Apprentice: A Novel by Tess Gerritsen

A series of shocking crimes that end in abduction and death terrorizes Boston during a boiling summer. Forced again to confront the killer who scarred her--literally and figuratively--Detective Jane Rizzoli is determined to finally end Hoyt's awful influence on a murderous disciple. (Publisher's summary)


The Finishing School by Gail Godwin

Justin Stokes would never forget the summer she turned fourteen, nor the woman who transformed her bleak adolescent life into a wondrous place of brilliant color. In the little pondside hut she called her "finishing school", eccentric, free-spirited Ursula DeVane opened up a world of love and loyalty, encouraging her to change, to learn, to grow. But the lessons of the finishing school have their dark side as well, and Justin learns how friendship can be shattered by shocking, unforgivable betrayal. (Publisher's summary)


The Summer Before the Dark by Doris Lessing

As the summer begins, Kate Brown -- attractive, intelligent, forty five, happily enough married, with a house in the London suburbs and three grown children -- has no reason to expect anything will change. But when the summer ends, the woman she was -- living behind a protective camouflage of feminine charm and caring -- no longer exists. (Publisher's summary)


For Love by Sue Miller

For Love tells the story of Lottie Gardner, her brother Cameron, and their childhood friend Elizabeth, who all come together one summer in their hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts, after years of separation. The packing up of her mother's house and the rekindling of the romance between Cameron and Elizabeth lead Lottie to look back at her past, as well as to consider the future of her own new marriage. The intrusion of a senseless tragedy upon the lives of all three characters forces Lottie to examine the consequences of the things she herself has done, and will do, for love. (Publisher's summary)


Escapade by Walter Satterthwait

In the summer of 1921, Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle attend a weekend party and seance at an English country house. Their host, the Earl of Axminster, is found murdered in a locked room. Will an American private eye beat two 20th century heroes to the punch and find the killer--before he finds them? (Publisher's summary)


The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

Does this one need an introduction?

Set amid the austere beauty of coastal North Carolina in 1946, The Notebook begins with the story of Noah Calhoun, a rural Southerner returned home from World War II. Noah, thirty-one, is restoring a plantation home to its former glory, and he is haunted by images of the beautiful girl he met fourteen years earlier, a girl he loved like no other. Unable to find her, yet unwilling to forget the summer they spent together, Noah is content to live with only memories, until she unexpectedly returns to his town to see him once more. (Publisher's summary)


Night of the Moonbow by Tom Tryon

An awkward, mysterious orphan becomes the victim of a cabal led by a charismatic, selfishly competitive young man at a summer Bible camp. (Publisher's summary)

Friday Reads: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Religious Orders

Happy Friday! Dr. Stanley doesn't seem to think that too many people will be fascinated by his current read, but we're sure there are a few of you out there. After all, Ranganathan's Third Law is "Every Book Its Reader." So read on and learn more about The Rise and Fall of Catholic Religious Orders by Patricia Wittberg.

In reading articles in newspapers and listening to news reports that talk about Catholic school closings and various dioceses addressing the need for parish consolidations I remembered that I had this book in my personal library from my days as a doctoral student. Although it was dry reading when I used it for research it was actually very interesting when reading it at a leisurely pace more for enjoyment.

There have been rises and falls of religious orders throughout the Church’s history and it was interesting to compare the reasons for this in the past versus the present. Reading about the effects of modern life and Vatican II upon the Catholic religion gives a clear overview of how the most recent “fall” began and offers hypotheses as to why it continues. But since the pendulum swings both ways it will be interesting to see what will be the outcome of Catholicism’s next metamorphosis.

Congratulations to our Research Award winners!

 

CONGRATULATIONS to Kathryn Way and Jasmine Thomas, the winners of the 2021 Reeves Library Research Award!

At the first-year/sophomore level, Kathryn Way won for her paper, "Melun Diptych Analysis." One of our faculty reviewers wrote, "You mentioned how art serves to stir emotion. Your writing did the same!"

At the junior/senior level, Jasmine Thomas's paper, "The Bicultural Social Identity Phenomenon," impressed readers as "a perfect example of how outstanding research can be driven by personal inquiry" and with the way it "stressed the importance of understanding social identity/self concept as not only a way for a person to understand themself, but big picture idea- as a way to understand others."

Competition is always fierce, and we thank everyone who entered or who supported an entry!

Friday Reads: The Art of Taking it Easy

 Happy Friday! This week, Public Services Librarian Kelly Clever tells us about her current read, The Art of Taking It Easy, by Dr. Brian King.

I hadn't heard of this book until I got an email from the public library system saying that The Art of Taking It Easy was April's "Big Library Read." I wasn't sure what to expect, but I've enjoyed other Big Library Read picks in the past and I figured I'd give it a try. 

Brian King has a unique set of qualifications to talk about happiness and positive thinking -- he's both a doctorate-holding psychologist and a touring comic. In this book, he hilariously explains what stress is, why it happens, and when it's good and when it's bad. I've particularly enjoyed his use of murderous attacking unicorns to explain justified stress. Even the footnotes are fun. I'm about 20% of the way in and am looking forward to reading the rest. 

April DVD Spotlight: Oscar Winners

With the 2021 Academy Awards ceremony scheduled to take place on April 25th, it's a perfect time for our latest DVD display: Oscar winners!  We've got beloved classic Best Picture winners like Casablanca (1942) and The Godfather (1972), as well as more recent winners such as 12 Years a Slave (2013) and Spotlight (2015).  Whether you like comedy or drama, romance or suspense, American cinema or foreign films, we've got an award winner for every movie lover.

Other featured titles include:

Adaptation (2002)
Nicolas Cage plays identical twin brothers, one of whom is struggling to adapt an acclaimed non-fiction book into a screenplay, in this surreal comic masterpiece, which earned Chris Cooper a well-deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

The Departed (2006)
This Boston-set crime epic, about an undercover cop who infiltrates the Irish-American mob, only to discover that said mob may have a mole within the state police, took home the Academy Award for Best Picture, and gave Martin Scorsese his first Best Director Oscar.

Fargo (1996)
Frances McDormand won the first of her two Best Actress statuettes for her endearing portrayal of pregnant Minnesota police chief Marge Gunderson, whose investigation of a roadside murder puts her on the trail of a group of inept kidnappers.

Get Out (2017)
This acclaimed social horror film, about a young African-American man's increasingly unsettling weekend visit to his white girlfriend's parents' house, made writer-director Jordan Peele the first African American to win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Jack Nicholson gives an Oscar-winning performance as a rebellious mental ward inmate in this beloved Best Picture winner, which also earned Louise Fletcher the Best Actress award for her turn as the villainous Nurse Ratched.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
This acclaimed horror-thriller, about a young FBI cadet who interviews a notorious serial killer as part of an effort to catch another murderer, features Oscar-winning lead performances by Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins.

Titanic (1997)
This Best Picture-winning box office smash, about an aristocratic young woman who falls in love with a poor artist aboard the doomed ocean liner, won a staggering 11 Oscars.

Stop by the library and check one out today!

Library Statistics for National Library Week

 Happy National Library Week! Monday of NLW is "State of America's Libraries Day," so we're sharing some current stats about Reeves Memorial Library. If you ever wonder how much of our collection is still in print, or which databases are the most popular, here are your answers!

Library hours for Easter break

 

The library office and physical collections will be closing at 4:50 p.m. on Thursday, April 1st and will remain closed until 8:00 a.m. on Monday, April 5. We will resume our regular operating hours on Tuesday, April 6. 

Friday Reads: Trainspotting

Happy Friday! This week our Cataloging & Acquisitions Librarian, Adam Pellman, delves into the novel that inspired one of his favorite movies: Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. 

Irvine Welsh's cult novel Trainspotting is one that I've been wanting to read for a long time, and I finally came across a used copy in a bookstore last summer. It's the paperback edition that was published in the U.S. to coincide with the release of the book's acclaimed 1996 film adaptation, a pinnacle of 1990s British cinema that has long been a favorite of mine. The novel depicts the lives of a small group of Edinburgh junkies and their close circle of friends and acquaintances, and focuses primarily on heroin addict Mark Renton. The novel's structure is almost like a collection of short stories, jumping around in time and switching narrators from chapter to chapter, and its tone veers from grim to riotously funny without missing a beat.

The biggest challenge for me in reading this novel is a linguistic one. Much of the novel is written in Scots rather than British English, so that "didn't" becomes "didnae," "always" becomes "eywis," and slang terms like "ken" and "radge" are used in place of "know" and "crazy," respectively. The book comes with a handy glossary to help readers like me decipher the slang, but I find that if I read the text with a Scottish accent in my mind, the meanings of most of the Scots words are apparent without the need for the glossary. The language is one of many elements that lend the novel its authenticity, and it's a book that I've really enjoyed reading, despite its sometimes unrelentingly dark subject matter.

Friday Reads: Black Narcissus

Happy Friday! Today, Dr. Stanley checks out the book that inspired one of his favorite movies: Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden. 

I’m always torn about whether to read the book then see the movie or vice versa. This one was a no brainer since I’ve seen the movie more times that I can count and only decided to read the book before I watch the latest iteration. After reading the book I want to watch the original movie again! A group of Anglican nuns going to a deserted palace in the Himalayas to open a convent, school, and hospital makes for an intriguing plot. However, once they get to their destination and begin to turn it into their new home, St. Faith, they begin to experience feelings and old memories that affect not only their performing God’s work but also their relationships with each other. Added to the mix is Mr. Dean who helps the sisters with repair work around St. Faith and also assists with their accepting and being accepted by the local residents.

Each of the sisters experiences her own epiphanies. These run the gamut from a simple reexamination of their reasons for being there to massive mental collapse. It’s interesting to witness the slowly evolving changes in the sisters’ personalities which are exhibited in not only their personal reflections but in their interactions with each other as well as some of the local inhabitants but mostly with Mr. Dean.

The imagery throughout the book is impressive and at times enveloping. I could occasionally identify with some of the feelings and almost find myself on the mountaintop. As for comparing it to the 1947 movie: the movie was an enjoyable, enchanting experience; a paint-by-numbers rendering. The book: a haunting, emotion-filled rendering by an old master. Now on to the current Black Narcissus series!

March Reading Theme: Women's History Month

March is Women’s History Month, and we are returning to our downstairs fiction book displays by featuring historical fiction focused on the female experience.

Nannie Helen Burroughs. Photograph, [Between 1900 and 1920]. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparaíso, Chile, by the well-intentioned Victorian spinster Miss Rose and her more rigid brother Jeremy. Just as she meets and falls in love with the wildly inappropriate Joaquín Andieta, a lowly clerk who works for Jeremy, gold is discovered in the hills of northern California. By 1849, Chileans of every stripe have fallen prey to feverish dreams of wealth. Joaquín takes off for San Francisco to seek his fortune, and Eliza, pregnant with his child, decides to follow him.

As Eliza embarks on her perilous journey north in the hold of a ship and arrives in the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco, she must navigate a society dominated by greedy men. But Eliza soon catches on with the help of her natural spirit and a good friend, the Chinese doctor Tao Chi'en. What began as a search for love ends up as the conquest of personal freedom. (Publisher’s summary)


Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

In her bestselling novel The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood masterfully took us to a chilling world of the future. In her astonishing new novel Alias Grace, she just as convincingly takes us back 150 years and inside the life and mind of one of the most notorious women of the 1840s. Grace Marks is serving a life sentence for her part in the vicious murders of Thomas Kinnear, a wealthy landowner, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Grace herself now claims to have no memory of the murders.Simon Jordan, a young New England doctor in the field of mental health and an expert on amnesia, has been engaged to find out the truth. To do so, he must awaken that part of Grace's mind that lies dormant, using the practices of the science he has such great faith in. As Grace reveals details about Kinnear's and Nancy's unconventional domestic arrangements, Simon brings her closer and closer to the day she has so determinedly repressed.Into this rich work of the imagination--of sex, violence, immigration, spiritualism, and the brutal existence of the underprivileged--Margaret Atwood has brought her brilliant insights into the relationships between men and women and those between the society of the entitled and those without positions. Superbly evoking a century past and alive with mesmerizing storytelling, Alias Grace is vintage Atwood. (Publisher’s summary)


Clotel, or, The President’s Daughter by William Wells Brown

First published in December 1853, Clotel was written amid then unconfirmed rumors that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with one of his slaves. The story begins with the auction of his mistress, here called Currer, and their two daughters, Clotel and Althesa. The Virginian who buys Clotel falls in love with her, gets her pregnant, seems to promise marriage—then sells her. Escaping from the slave dealer, Clotel returns to Virginia disguised as a white man in order to rescue her daughter, Mary, a slave in her father’s house. A fast-paced and harrowing tale of slavery and freedom, of the hypocrisies of a nation founded on democratic principles, Clotel is more than a sensationalist novel. It is a founding text of the African American novelistic tradition, a brilliantly composed and richly detailed exploration of human relations in a new world in which race is a cultural construct. (Goodreads.com summary - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/247960.Clotel?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=k286WKbLlU&rank=1)


The Dragon’s Village by Yuan-tsung Chen

Shanghai, 1949: we look through the eyes of Guan Ling-ling, a headstrong, idealistic seventeen-year-old. As her family departs for Hong Kong, Ling-ling boldly chooses to stay, and joins a revolutionary theater group which soon leaves the city to carry out the new reforms in the Chinese countryside. After a scant few weeks' preparation, this city-bred schoolgirl suddenly finds herself in one of China's most remote and impoverished areas, a world so far from her own experience that she can barely understand the lives she has been sent to change. (Publisher’s summary)

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons.

Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood-the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers-Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah-the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that are to sustain her through a damaged youth, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah's story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate, immediate connection. (Publisher’s summary)


S.: A Novel About the Balkans by Slavenka Drakulić

Set in 1992, during the height of the Bosnian war, S. reveals one of the most horrifying aspects of any war: the rape and torture of civilian women by occupying forces. S. is the story of a Bosnian woman in exile who has just given birth to an unwanted child—one without a country, a name, a father, or a language. Its birth only reminds her of an even more grueling experience: being repeatedly raped by Serbian soldiers in the "women's room" of a prison camp. Through a series of flashbacks, S. relives the unspeakable crimes she has endured, and in telling her story—timely, strangely compelling, and ultimately about survival—depicts the darkest side of human nature during wartime. (Goodreads.com summary - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/278232.S_?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=4sjnwSY7fN&rank=1)


Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th-century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising half-caste children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath Effia in the Castle's women's dungeon, and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, where she will be sold into slavery. Stretching from the tribal wars of Ghana to slavery and Civil War in America, from the coal mines in the south to the Great Migration to the streets of 20th century Harlem, Yaa Gyasi has written a modern masterpiece, a novel that moves through histories and geographies and--with outstanding economy and force--captures the troubled spirit of our own nation. (Publisher’s summary)


Sappho’s Leap by Erica Jong

Sappho's Leap is a journey back 2,600 years to inhabit the mind of the greatest love poet the world has ever known. At the age of fourteen, Sappho is seduced by the beautiful poet Alcaeus, plots with him to overthrow the dictator of their island, and is caught and married off to a repellent older man in hopes that matrimony will keep her out of trouble. Instead, it starts her off on a series of amorous adventures with both men and women, taking her from Delphi to Egypt, and even to the Land of the Amazons and the shadowy realm of Hades. (Goodreads.com summary - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/857713.Sappho_s_Leap?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=W88WuY5AaB&rank=1)


The House of Eliott by Jean Marsh

Beatrice, a ``spinster'' at 30, and her sister, Evangeline, just 20, suddenly find themselves independent and without many financial resources following the death of their widower father. Though a successful physician, Father apparently squandered much of his income on a secret life. Inheriting the house as their only tangible asset, Bea and Evie set out to establish their financial and social independence. And how they succeed! Their fashion house is a big success with the 1920s social elite of London. It is a pleasure to see the business and the sisters flourish as their story intertwines with other characters and causes representative of the decade. (Library Journal review)


Here’s to You, Jesusa! by Elena Poniatowska

Jesusa is a tough, fiery character based on a real working-class Mexican woman whose life spanned some of the seminal events of early twentieth-century Mexican history. Having joined a cavalry unit during the Mexican Revolution, she finds herself at the Revolution's end in Mexico City, far from her native Oaxaca, abandoned by her husband and working menial jobs. So begins Jesusa's long history of encounters with the police and struggles against authority. Mystical yet practical, undaunted by hardship, Jesusa faces the obstacles in her path with gritty determination. (Goodreads.com summary - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59200.Here_s_to_You_Jesusa_?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=qhiSLNEr4U&rank=1)


Hope Leslie, or, Early times in the Massachusetts by Catharine Maria Sedgwick

Set in seventeenth-century New England in the aftermath of the Pequod War, Hope Leslie not only chronicles the role of women in building the republic but also refocuses the emergent national literature on the lives, domestic mores, and values of American women. (Goodreads.com summary - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/887338.Hope_Leslie?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=eBFMFgheuf&rank=1) A novel that forced readers to confront the consequences of the Puritans' subjugation and displacement of the indigenous Indian population at a time when contemporaries were demanding still more land from the Cherokees, the Chickasaws, and the Choctaws. (Publisher’s summary)


The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley

Lidie Harkness marries Thomas Newton and moves with him to Kansas in an effort to keep it a Free State in the years before the Civil War. She is an earnest convert to the abolitionist cause and events lead her to disguise herself as a boy in her search for justice. (Publisher’s summary) At the start of the novel, Lidie simply adopts her husband's abolitionist views; eventually, the young Lidie becomes a fervent believer, with the courage to challenge her husband and the social skill to damn the Kansas abolitionists in public. She presumptuously dons men's clothing and sets out alone to search for her husband's killers, but lets herself be tricked and encouraged by a slave woman looking only for escape. (Library Journal review)


Jubilee by Margaret Walker

Here is the classic--and true--story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress, a Southern Civil War heroine to rival Scarlett O'Hara. Vyry bears witness to the South's prewar opulence and its brutality, to its wartime ruin and the subsequent promise of Reconstruction. It is a story that Margaret Walker heard as a child from her grandmother, the real Vyry's daughter. The author spent thirty years researching the novel so that the world might know the intelligent, strong, and brave black woman called Vyry. The phenomenal acclaim this best-selling book has achieved from readers black and white, young and old, attests to her success. (Publisher’s summary)


Dessa Rose by Sherley A. Williams

Imaginatively written by Sherley A. Williams, this book is the fictional confluence of two disparate real-life events: first, a slave revolt in Kentucky in 1829 led by a pregnant woman and, second, a white woman in North Carolina in 1830 who harbored runaway slaves. Thanks to the author's poetic license in writing this novel, these two women meet in the pages of this book. And what a meeting it is. (Review on Goodreads.com by Cathryn Conroy - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3570641337?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1)


The Chronicles of Noah and Her Sisters by Miriam Therese Winter

Winter reimagines the central narratives of Genesis and Exodus as read through the eyes of women in these stories. Noah, one of the Hebrew wives of Solomon, is the narrator and organizer of these tales. We not only hear the voices of Sarah, Rachel, and Rebekah but also encounter the stories of Keturah, who bore six sons for Abraham after Sarah's death, and Asenath, the Egyptian wife of Joseph. These women's recollections give us insights into a little-known side of biblical history. (Publisher’s summary)

March DVD Display: New Hollywood

This month's library DVD display will focus on "New Hollywood," a period from the mid-1960s through the end of the 1970s when the classical Hollywood studio system was upended by a new generation of filmmakers and actors whose style and methods would bring American cinema to new artistic and commercial heights.  This was the era when influential directors like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, and Brian De Palma launched their careers, and when actors and actresses like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton, and Jack Nicholson became the new class of Hollywood stars.  From generation-defining touchstones like The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde to beloved classics like The Exorcist and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, we've got a wide selection of films from this hugely important era in American cinema.

Other featured titles include:

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

Ellen Burstyn shines in her Oscar-winning performance as the titular Alice, a single mother who begins to reassess her relationships as she pursues her dream of becoming a singer.

Apocalypse Now (1979)
Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War opus, about an Army officer sent deep into the jungle to terminate a rogue colonel, remains the ultimate cinematic statement about the madness of war.

The Godfather (1972)
Far more than just a simple gangster film, Francis Ford Coppola's great mafia epic is both a sweeping family saga and an incisive examination of the corrupting influence of power.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
This offbeat, melancholy western follows a charismatic gambler and businessman who partners with a professional madam to establish a brothel in a burgeoning Pacific Northwest town, only to run afoul of a greedy mining corporation.

The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)

Jack Nicholson gives a superbly understated performance as a radio personality who gets sucked into his lowlife brother's get-rich-quick scheme in Atlantic City.

Point Blank (1967)

In this stylish, underseen late-60s classic, Lee Marvin plays a career criminal out for revenge (and his share of the loot) after being gunned down and left for dead following an underworld heist.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

In this brash, gritty masterpiece, Walter Matthau plays a wisecracking New York City transit cop who works to stop a gang of armed men who have hijacked a subway train.  Featuring a super-groovy, all-timer of a musical score by David Shire.

Stop by the library and check one out today!

Friday Reads: The Nature Fix

For this week's Friday Reads, Public Services Librarian Kelly Clever tells us about The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative by Florence Williams.

Many of us have heard that being inside all the time is bad for us, but in The Nature Fix, Florence Williams takes a different approach: she investigates why the outdoors are so good for us. How much time do we need to spend outside? What about when the weather is terrible? What if you don't have access to pristine wilderness? Are there ways to harness the power of, say, a Hawaiian beach for those of us stuck looking at our screens all day?

Williams travels the world in search of answers. She meets with psychologists and neuroscientists, with cancer-survivor forest rangers in Korea and nature-averse VR developers in Toronto. She goes on a creativity retreat with a group of top scientists and goes camping with a class of college students and their professor. And she interjects her own experiences, thoughts, and humor throughout, weaving a cohesive, entertaining, and accessible review of the living and written literature about our brains on nature.

Williams finds that hospital patients with windows with outdoor (preferably "natural") views have better outcomes than those without window rooms. Families whose apartments face green courtyards experience less mental illness and fewer episodes of violence than families whose apartments overlook parking lots. In prisons, incarcerated people who have access to outdoor work and recreation have fewer illnesses and are better-able to regulate their emotions. 

To answer those questions above: Five hours a month in nature is a good target, but more is always better! When the weather is awful, you might be miserable while you're out in the elements, but the positive effects on your health and your brain remain the same. Even small doses of nature, like looking out the window at the sky, can be beneficial. And virtual reality still can't come close to actual reality, though nature videos, birdsong audio tracks, potted plants, and nature photography are all a lot better than nothing. 

I'd love to see (and/or help with) student research on how the benefits of nature can be incorporated into fields like education, social work, criminal justice, medicine, and more. Hint, hint!

Friday Reads: Say Nothing

We're back to our semi-regularly-scheduled Friday Reads! This week, Adam Pellman tells us about Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe:

We don't often know much about the global events that are happening during our childhood years. They're often too recent for us to learn about in school, and too far outside the sphere of our everyday existence to be of much concern to us. For me, this was true of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, a 30-year conflict in which loyalist Protestants and British military troops were engaged in low-level warfare with nationalist Catholic factions such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA). I remember news stories from my teenage years about car bombings in Belfast, and I've seen numerous films (such as '71, Bloody Sunday, Hunger, and The Crying Game) set against the backdrop of the Troubles, but I never took the time to learn the history of the conflict.

This book, which is available in the Reeves non-fiction collection, provided me with an opportunity to do just that. The book uses the story of the notorious 1972 abduction and murder of a widowed mother of ten, Jean McConville, as an entry point into a much larger history of the Troubles. The book strikes a good balance between political history and true crime, and I would recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about this part of recent history.

Reeves Library Research Award accepting entries!

The spring semester has begun, which means that the Reeves Library Research Award is once again accepting entries! 

For complete details, visit the award page at https://setonhill.libguides.com/award. 

Spring Newsletter

The Library publishes a newsletter for faculty and staff three times a year to help you prepare for another semester on the Hill! Please let Kelly Clever (clever@setonhill.edu) know if you would like to be added to the newsletter email distribution list. 

February DVD Display: Romantic Films

With Valentine's Day nearly upon us, it's a good time to highlight some of the many romantic films in the Reeves Memorial Library DVD collection.  All through the month of February, we're featuring the best in silver screen romance, from classics like Casablanca (1942) and West Side Story (1961), to contemporary favorites like Titanic (1997), The Wedding Singer (1998) and Pride & Prejudice (2005).

Other featured titles include:

Brief Encounter (1945)
This classic British tearjerker tells the story of a housewife and a married doctor who meet in a railway station cafe and fall deeply in love, even though they know their love is impossible.

Bull Durham (1988)
Sports and romance meld perfectly in this hilarious film about an aging minor league catcher who is brought in to "mature" a young pitching prospect, and who falls for a local baseball groupie.

Her (2013)
In this fascinating glimpse at humans' relationship with technology, a lonely, recently-divorced writer falls in love with his artificially intelligent operating system.

In the Mood for Love (2000)
This gorgeous, swooningly romantic period drama, directed by the great Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai, chronicles the relationship between two neighbors who realize their spouses are having an extramarital affair.

The Princess Bride (1987)
This cheeky, beloved fairy tale movie has it all: true love, giants, pirates, kidnapping, sword fighting, deception, revenge, rescues, and, yes, kissing.

Sweet Land (2005)
In this underseen gem, a young German mail order bride travels to post-WWI Minnesota to marry a Norwegian immigrant farmer, and the two fall in love as they struggle to overcome prejudice and injustice.

Trouble in Paradise (1932)
A mischievous, sophisticated romantic comedy about a thief and a pickpocket who fall in love, then scheme to rob a beautiful perfume company executive.

Check one out today, and watch it with someone special.

Sculpture Comes To Reeves

Jen Venneman (Vienne) is displaying her sculpture, Journey to Awen, in Reeves Learning Commons. Please stop by to truly appreciate it!