Hello to all our Richfield Library Patrons. Enjoy our new Adult Services newsletter with some more suggestions to keep you busy while you're stuck at home. The books are all available at akronlibrary.org under the digital media section. All titles are in both the E-book and E-audio formats. The movies below have been released on one of the major streaming services. If you don't have access to Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime, be sure to check out the free movies you can access through the library, with our Hoopla or Kanopy apps.
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
This book, by Shaker Heights native and the author of the Orchid Thief, tells the story of the huge fire at the Los Angeles Public Library. Because it took place during the same week as the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, not many people outside California know the story. The author reopens the unsolved mystery of the most catastrophic library fire in American history. The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library--and, if so, who? Part mystery, part love letter to American libraries, Orlean tells a fascinating story.
Say nothing: a true story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
This book which appeared on all the major top ten lists for 2019 is a great true crime story that reads like a novel. In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress.
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
I found this book to be one the best surprises of the last year. Eleanor Oliphant struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country this fictionalized account was one of my favorite books I read last year. At once both heartbreaking and heart warming, it tells a story you will remember long after turning the last page.
This weekend we had a Humphrey Bogart marathon. Watched To Have and Have Not, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, and The African Queen. Besides killing a Sunday afternoon it was so much fun hearing all the classic lines and enjoying the wonderful supporting performances.
And finally.................
“Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.” Norman Cousins
“Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.” Flannery O'Connor
“Doctors?" said Ron, looking startled. "Those Muggle nutters that cut people up?” J. K. Rowling
“She ate so many clams that her stomach rose and fell with the tide.” Louis Kronenberger
“Do the Clam, do the Clam, grab your barefoot baby by the hand.” Elvis Presley
“Happy as a clam, is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hard-shelled, firmly closed.” Margaret Atwood
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Alexander Pope
“The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.” Winston Churchill
“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.” William Shakespeare
“A burrito is a delicious food item that breaks down all social barriers and leads to temporary
spiritual enlightenment.” Lisi Harrison
“A burrito is a sleeping bag for ground beef.” Mitch Hedberg
“Ever had a flying burrito hit you? Well, it's a deadly projectile, right up there with cannonballs and grenades.” Rick Riordan
“Keep the circus going inside you, keep it going, don't take anything too seriously, it'll all work out in the end.” David Niven
“Life is a circus ring, with some moments more spectacular than others.” Janusz Korczak
“The circus is the only fun you can buy that is good for you.” Ernest Hemingway
“The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.” Paul Cezanne
“You ask me what life is. That's like asking what a carrot is. A carrot is a carrot, and there's nothing more to know.” Anton Chekhov
“I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number of carats in a diamond.” Mae West
