Reading Recommendations for adults from the staff of Oshkosh Public Library.
June Staff Picks from Adult Services:
Welcome to summer! Summer reading is launching, and we have a million minutes to log to meet our community reading goal. Here are a few good reads to help you get started! –Sarah Read
Familiaris by David Wroblewski
Recommended by Sarah.
Check this title out in large print, on CD, or on Libby as an e-book or e-audiobook.
It is spring 1919, and John Sawtelle's imagination has gotten him into trouble, again. Now John and his newlywed wife, Mary, along with their two best friends and their three dogs, are setting off for Wisconsin's Northwoods, where they hope to make a fresh start, and, with a little luck, discover what it takes to live a life of meaning, purpose and adventure. But the place they are headed for is far stranger and more perilous than they realize, and it will take all their ingenuity, along with a few new friends, to realize their dreams.
This book is long (almost a thousand pages--think of the minutes you could log!), but the charming characters, clever writing, and enchanting setting draw you in and make you comfortable. You might even find yourself wishing it was longer! Full of local Wisconsin flavor, this is a must-read for fans of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.
Motherless Child by Glen Hirshberg
Recommended by Alia.
Check this title out on Libby as an e-book or e-audiobook.
A mother of a vampire tale. Two women struggling with raising babies without help, are attacked by ‘the Whistler’ a notorious musician who is also a vampire. After turning the two women into vampires, Sophie and Natalie leave their babies with family and take off to find out how to live as vampires and without their children.
I enjoyed the detailed descriptions of the scenes and people’s physical emotional responses to the scenes. The love that Nat and Sophie have for one another is refreshing, as is their desire to be more than mothers. When they finally give in to their vampiric cravings, the story makes you see motherhood in a different light. One painted in the blood of millions of women who have struggled to raise happy healthy children, and to maintain their own identities.
Recommended by Michael
Check this title out on Libby as an e-book or e-audiobook.
This book discusses the history of the twenty-first century as a story of unaffordability and shortage in America. It highlights the national housing crisis, labor shortages due to limited immigration, insufficient clean-energy infrastructure, and delayed, over-budget public projects. The book proposes that both liberals and conservatives need to recognize when government is failing or needed, and advocates for a politics of abundance--building solutions for the future, rather than adhering to past approaches focused on scarcity. This approach aims to address current challenges and the growing dissatisfaction with the status quo.
I found this to be a fascinating and insightful critique about how the politics of scarcity has limited the nations’ ability to tackle massive problems like housing and climate change. While the authors point out that scarcity politics are prevalent on both the left and the right, they really focus on the failure of well-intentioned liberal policies and the hypocrisy of NIMBYs and “yard sign liberals.”
Much time is spent looking at my home state of California, where liberal dominance should be creating a social utopia. Instead, there is a colossal housing shortage, the nation’s largest unhoused population, and an increasingly rapid exodus from the state due to its lack of affordability.
Don’t even get me started on the high-speed rail line that still sits unfinished in the middle of nowhere after decades of development and billions of dollars spent.
The authors argue that the only way out of these problems is to develop politics and policies of abundance where more people can survive and thrive and the country can build the homes it needs, produce the energy it needs, and innovate the technologies that we need to address the needs and challenges of the 21st century.
Ultimately, it’s hopeful, but damn if it isn’t a frustrating read.