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Socrates famously worried that the development of writing would atrophy the ability to store and remember information, that dependence on external memory would negatively change the brain. And he was right, reading and writing have changed the way human brains work--though whether for better or worse is still up for debate. Similarly, Nicholas G. Carr famously asked Is Google Making Us Stupid? in an article in The Atlantic a dozen years ago. He examined how the act of reading is changing in a digital age and worried it is negatively impacting the way our brains process information. Maryanne

Psst! Hey, parents! I know you’re at home right now. I know your kids are out of school. I know this because I’m at home right now, and my kid is out of school. I know this because WE’RE ALL #ATHOMETOGETHER RIGHT NOW.  

Ahem. Sorry for shouting. These are stressful times.

If it’s at all possible, I want you to find a private spot in your house—please stop laughing—away from your kids, so you can fully concentrate on a little parenting secret I’d like to share with you.

Who am I, you ask? Here are my qualifications:

I am a professional storytime leader at the Johnson County Library. I am

The Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia is ravaged by the opioid epidemic. One sister, Mickey Fitzpatrick, patrols the streets as a police officer. The other sister, Kacey Fitzpatrick, works the streets and succumbs to addiction at an early age. The sisters keep their distance from one another now. Their relationship is strained but each hopes a reunion is right around the corner, just as soon as Kacey can get clean.  

Mickey narrates her harrowing and heartbreaking life in "Now" and "Then" chapters that unveil the slow, never ending battle against addiction as she watches her sister and

This was a very odd read. It started weird, strange even, and then went full on psychological thriller and yet I find myself wondering what I just read. 

An unnamed woman is offered the chance to step into the life of a celebrity because she looks similar to Rosanna Feld, an actress who has gone into seclusion after a mental health crisis.  Rosanna can no longer go out in public to be photographed by the paparazzi or give interviews to help further her career.  Max offers her a chance to live the Hollywood life and is being paid handsomely to leave her old life behind.

She is left alone for

From Ötzi the Ice Age hunter-gatherer to billion-dollar pharmaceutical research and development labs people have been looking for substances to ease pain, cure disease and prolong a healthy life.

In The Drug Hunters we follow along the circuitous paths drugs can take on their way to the pharmacy shelf. One antifungal drug that was researched as a cure for athlete’s foot is now used in anti-rejection therapies. The birth control pill started with Swiss dairy farmers' efforts to keep their cows producing milk. We also learn how the earliest synthetic dye companies transformed into modern-day

The past two months of quarantine shutdown have been bizarre to say the least. Surprised by how hard it's been to focus on simple tasks and know how to deal with whatever each day might bring, I turned to another time in history where the whole world was under threat and people had to deal with a cloud of confusion that hung over everything--World War II. Obviously COVID-19 is not the same as WWII by any means, but I was inspired and encouraged to read the stories of how women in particular faced the challenges of such a world-impacting crisis.

I think my favorite book was A Woman of No

Seventeen year old Tracy Petrikoff loves the outdoors. She is an avid hunter with an unusual... proclivity for the animals she kills. Her family is heavily involved with dog sledding but following her mother's death,  they struggle financially after her father gives up mushing and sells the majority of their sled dogs. Tracy keeps hoping to change his mind about her competing in upcoming mushing events, but after she is suspended from school for fighting, her dad grounds her from taking care of the remainder of their dogs and roaming the woods surrounding their home. Headstrong and stubborn

Rosie and Dominic Vega have always seemed the perfect couple. They both had dreams stemming from their childhood. Rosie's dreams were to own a restaurant and fulfill her Cuban legacy. Dom hoped to be half the man his own father was to his mother. However, after a tour to Afghanistan, Dominic returns and Rosie feels as if the man she knew never came back. While she is busy at her lackluster job as a perfume specialist, Dominic works hard in construction, secretly saving money for a dream he believes both he and Rosie share. However, their lack of communication makes Rosie feel as if their

Hello and welcome to our look at some new releases in the fiction section at the Johnson County Library! Every month we look at five titles making their debut that we think you absolutely need to know about. Give one - or more - of these titles a chance to make it in your hold list. We hope you find something new!

Kate Elizabeth Russell’s MY DARK VANESSA is one of the most hotly-anticipated debuts this year, and for good reason. A fresh and powerful look at the aftermath of a relationship between a young student at an elite boarding school and her much older English teacher, this is bound to

     Three Hands for Scorpio is the last adult book for young adults of Lifetime Grand Master of Fantasy, Andre Norton, who passed away on March 17, 2005 after a long and extremely fruitful career.  Her magically detailed world-building skills, upright, against-all-odds characters, and fast pace will be sorely missed.  Tor rushed a copy of this book of women-of-steel into print, so that the 93-year-old author could see it before she died.  It is the last manuscript she penned alone, and has an action-packed storyline.  I have read most of Ms. Norton's books, and especially enjoyed her women

     You know, sometimes you just need some escapist fantasy about self-discovery in women.  McKinley's seventeen-year-old girl Lissar was just the ticket for me last night. Deesrkin is a beautiful, haunting, and sometimes painful coming-of-age story that ends with a message of hope.  The first half of the fantasy fiction is really about the traumatic aftermath of a violent assault and rape by the heroine's own father.  These dark themes are handled appropriately, realistically, and with great compassion but they do make for some hard reading in the gateway fantasy.   

     If you have any

"Well I'm not a proper princess then!" Cimorene snapped. "I make cherries jubilee and I volunteer for dragons, and I conjugate Latin verbs-- or at least I would if anyone would let me. So there!”

I have slowly been making my way through a long list of fantasy fiction books I have wanted to read or reread.  Dealing with Dragons is one of those re-read upbeat books; possibly it was “the” book that honestly got me hooked on reading. 

I cannot sing enough praises about this fast-paced book, in particular for its excellently written main character.  This is one of the best “fractured fairy tales”

Persons Unknown is the second police procedural following Detective Sergeant Manon Bradshaw, following up Missing, Presumed. Manon's character is growing and changing throughout. She is five months pregnant at the start. And she has adopted Fly Dent, a quiet teenager whose family died in the previous book. Looking for a change of pace in their hectic life and a better quality of friends for Fly, they move from London to Cambridgeshire with Manon's sister, Ellie, and her toddler son, Solly. Life is moving along well for them until a murder investigation throws everything into chaos. 

Jon

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires begins with a normal description of the affluent life of a bored southern housewife.  Just before you think it is another dysfunctional family story, Patricia Campbell, one of our five book club members and main character, is attacked by an elderly neighbor while putting out the garbage at night. The elderly neighbor is put in the hospital, as is Patricia.  Then a handsome relative of the neighbor comes to stay at the house and help out. Patricia being the lovely southern lady she is feels she should take over a casserole and help out if

     The Secret Hour has a very imaginative paranormal premise, and it was enjoyable to read; I finished this book for reluctant readers in two sittings.  I love the idea of a hidden hour after midnight where only a select few can visit, and the continuing threads of mystery and “what’s going on?” kept me reading this urban fantasy.  The characters are not all best buddies, but are unique individuals with their own motivations which are shown in the fast pace.

     The premise is original and interesting with a compelling writing style.  It is definitely written with a young adult audience in

Listed as one of the top 10 most anticipated books of 2020 by Goodreads members, American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins tells the fictional story of Lydia and Luca, a mother and her young son, as they flee from Acapulco Mexico and attempt to cross the US border. Lydia’s journalist husband, Sebastian, publishes an expose about Javier, the head of the drug cartel, which causes all 16 members of their family to be brutally killed. Lydia is acquainted with Javier through her bookstore and knows she and her son were also supposed to die with the rest of her family. As Lydia and Luca journey north to

Warning: This book will make you remember things not forgotten.

As a woman and in the wake of the #MeToo movement it was really hard to read My Dark Vanessa. It is very well written and oftentimes, too well written. It was haunting in its realness. Real predators exist. Real victims don't come forward. Real justice oftentimes isn't served.

Vanessa is disturbed by the posts she’s seeing on social media about, Jacob Strane, a teacher she had while attending boarding school roughly 15 years ago. He is accused of inappropriate behavior with young girls. But Vanessa isn’t disturbed in the way

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

Ruth Ware, a well established mystery author, created a captivating novel with The Woman in Cabin 10. I am not overly familiar with Ware’s writing style, as I have only read two (this one included) of her mysteries. The formula of this particular book reminded me of an Agatha Christie novel, as it followed the same “trapped with a group of people, one of whom is a murderer” formula as many of Christie’s own books. Lo Blacklock, a travel writer, is given the chance to report on a luxury cruise with a select few passengers, when she hears a splash in the night

I am not one that is normally drawn to the fantasy genre.  I mean, sure, I read all of the Harry Potter books (because they were fantastic!).  I am a huge fan of the Xanth series and don't even get me started with the Incarnations of Immortality series (if you haven't read that series, I highly highly recommend it) but I find myself drawn more to thrillers or mysteries or anything with vampires and witches.  So, with that being said, I love how this book drew me in from the get go.  

Just the blurb on the jacket alone got me excited to read this book:

Meet Roger.  Skilled with words

You’ve heard of Dungeons and Dragons.  Right?

It’s been around for 45 year and been in everything from Simpsons to Stranger things. 

What is it? 

It’s a pen and paper Roleplaying game.  A set of rules to tell a shared story with friends and family with a backdrop of classic sword and sorcery in the vein of The Lord of the Rings.

Pretty simple right?  Well that’s what Tales from the Loop is.  A very rules-simple pen and paper Roleplaying Game!  Only it ditches the old tropes of Dwarves, Elves, Dragons, and Goblins for a more contemporary setting.

You and your friends play as teens

     I previously read Trickster's Choice with courageous teenage girls a little over a decade ago, and I wanted to revisit it.  I had forgotten just how easy it is to get drawn into Aly’s adventures which cause her to become a slave as a girl, and I am so glad to have revisited because it was similar to visiting with an old friend.  This is the story of Alianne Cooper, who wants to be a girl spy, and is the daughter of Spymaster Cooper and the famous Lioness of Tortall and champion of the throne.  Certainly Tamora Pierce is one of my favorite writers in this genre, and Alianne (Aly) stands

“Nobody would know me from my own description of myself; which is why, when called upon (rarely, I grant) to provide an account, I tailor it, I adapt, I try to provide an outline that can, in some way, correlate to the outline that people understand me to have -- that, I suppose, I actually have, at this point. But who I am in my head, very few people really get to see that. Almost none. It's the most precious gift I can give, to bring her out of hiding.”
― Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs

The Woman Upstairs is a smart book. The writing is smart; the vocabulary is smart; the main character

This is top-notch science fiction--it takes today's scientific advancements and speculates how they might play out in the future, considering legal, ethical, and practical ramifications along the way. The book does this over the course of six lightly connected stories, each progressively further in the future. The topic is gene editing and body modification.

The first story starts simply enough with improved organ transplants from one dying twin to another and ends with a distant reality in which the handful or pure, unmodified humans are kept safe on a reservation as a sort of archival

I have feelings about this book. It’s graphic. Sometimes maybe too much so, though it bothers me I would say that. The subject is clear: female desire. But in truth, there’s nothing clear about desire. We want what we want—or don’t—for reasons we sometimes don’t know, for reasons that stem from harmful situations or events. I guess what I’m saying is that it’s complicated—desire is complicated, sex is complicated, and the implications of sex and how sex affects us throughout our lives is complicated.

Three Women follows three women for a span of eight years. Each woman’s story is different

     The Assassins of Tamurin is on my top ten favorite adult books for young adults list.  I read this Asian-influenced fantasy for the first time nearly 15 years ago, and I have probably read it at least that many times since.  The Canadian author made me fall in love with the characters, even the characters I think I hate.  Everyone in this fantasy fiction is detailed, alive, and real.

          This culturally diverse book has an engaging story line and a lovable strong female lead character.  When I re-read this I thought it was too good to be a first effort; the story flows along

Donna Tartt  has been on my radar for quite awhile, and I finally picked up The Secret History at the recommendation of multiple coworkers. To be honest, I finished this novel over a week ago, and I am still unsure how I feel. I was unimpressed with much of the book, but something about it is still stuck in the back of my brain. The entire book is a psychological analysis of the six main characters before and after murdering their friend. Tartt opens the book with a prologue describing Bunny’s murder from the point of view of Richard, the narrator. The rest of the novel is then split up into

                “Why did everyone like that story so much when it wasn’t true?  Why was everyone so eager to believe it?  Was it because, in real life, ever after’s generally stink?”

Just Ella, a book for reluctant readers, is a retelling of Cinderella, and it is about a girl named Ella who has already won her freedom from her stepmother at the ball and moved into the palace.  But training to become a princess is not what Ella thought it would be like in this fairy- tale and folklore-inspired fiction.  While being constantly told to act like a “proper lady” by an evil decorum instructor and

“We script our lives on reaction rather than action, meaning daily life is always in response to, or a reply to, a command or demand. The world uses us in that way...The world does this--holds us down.”― Randall Horton, Hook: A Memoir

Randall Horton and I have lived wildly different lives. His memoir, Hook, tells part of his story: as an undergrad at Howard University, as an addict, as a cocaine smuggler, as a prisoner, as a reader, as a poet, as an author, as an educator, as a mentor, as a friend. Yes, all of this is part of his story—and, like his story, the book itself is unique. It’s not

Waking Up is a firsthand account of a scientist using his own mind to respond to the question, "what is the nature of awareness?"  It’s great reading, has lots of level headed advice, and looks squarely at a question with a bias against it so strong there isn’t another book out there like it. The subject of consciousness is usually handled in one of two ways, either with no use of the intellect or with a skepticism so strong exploration into the topic never even occurs. What we learn from Sam Harris is that we can ask this question as a skeptic while simultaneously opening to the ways we are

Touted as a Chinese Lord of the Rings, Jin Yong's A Hero Born, makes it's debut English translation. This story follows Guo Jing who was born during the Song empire. After his father, a Song Patriot, is murdered, he is taken up into the Mongolian steppes. There he is raised in Genghis Kahn's army before meeting The Seven Heroes of the South who tell him he is fated to fight in a competition to determine who is the greatest master. Filled with historical intrigue and epic kung fu battles, A Hero Born will delight fans of Wuxia stories like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 8 diagram pole fighter