We hope you enjoy this month's selection of books that our librarians have been reading lately.
Non-fiction
The listening path : the creative art of attention by Julia Cameron
Over six weeks, readers will be given the tools to become better listeners - to their environment, the people around them, and themselves. The reward for learning to truly listen is immense. As we learn to listen, our attention is heightened and we gain healing, insight, clarity. But above all, listening creates connections and ignites a creativity that will resonate through every aspect of our lives. Each week, readers will be challenged to expand their ability to listen in a new way, beginning by listening to their environment and culminating in learning to listen to silence. These weekly practices open up a new world of connection and fulfilment. In a culture of bustle and constant sound, The Listening Path is a deeply necessary reminder of the power of truly hearing.
Feel the fear and do it anyway by Susan Jeffers
What are you afraid of? Public speaking; asserting yourself; making decisions; being alone; intimacy; changing jobs; interviews; going back to school; ageing; ill health; driving; dating; ending a relationship; losing a loved one; becoming a parent; leaving home, failure, believing in yourself...
Internationally renowned author Susan Jeffers has helped millions of people overcome their fears and heal the pain in their lives with her simple but profound advice. Whatever your anxieties, Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway will give you the insight and tools to vastly improve your ability to handle any given situation. You will learn to live your life the way you want - so you can move from a place of pain, paralysis, depression and indecision to one of power, energy, enthusiasm and action.
An empowering and life-affirming book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway will help you triumph over your fears and move forward with your life.
Wild : a journey from lost to found by Cheryl Strayed
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State – and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than 'an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise'. But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone. Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humour, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened and ultimately healed her.
How your story sets you free by Heather Box and Julian Mocine-McQueen
Everyone has a story to tell. Sharing that story can change you, your community, or even the world. But how do you start? Discover the tools to unlock your truth and share it with the world: Storytelling coaches Heather Box and Julian Mocine-McQueen reveal how to embrace the power of personal storytelling in a series of easy steps. You'll learn how to share your experiences and invaluable knowledge with the people who need it most, whether it be in a blog post, a motivational speech, or just a conversation with a loved one. How Your Story Sets You Free is the path to finding the spark that ignites the fire and reminds you just how much your story matters.
Fiction
Life's too short by Abby Jimenez
Vanessa lives life on her own terms -- one day at a time, every day to its fullest. She can't afford to think about whether she has the same fatal genetic condition as her older sister. After all, she has way too much to do, traveling the globe and showing millions of YouTube followers the joy in seizing every moment. But lately, life has been anything but pure joy, and travel has come to an abrupt halt. After her younger step-sister drops off an infant and skips town, Vanessa is housebound -- on mommy duty for the foreseeable future and feeling totally out of her depth. The last person she expects to help is her wickedly hot next-door neighbor, Adrian Copeland. After all, she barely knows the guy. But the closer they get, the more she realizes her carefree ways and his need for a life game plan could never be compatible for the long term ... not unless one of them is willing to take a drastic leap of faith.
"Brilliant as an Audiobook! Read by author and the personalities of the different characters really shine through with her narration and different character voices. Such a richly layered book with warmth and humour that centres around the bonds of friendship, family and fate. It's one of those magic books that makes you want to dream big things while reminding you of all the small beauties and wonders of everyday life. I'm only about 1/3 or the way through and already don't want it to end!"
Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. There, he has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amongst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses's life for the next four decades. As Ulysses returns home to London, reimmersing himself in his crew at The Stoat and Parrot - a motley mix of pub crawlers and eccentrics - he carries his time in Italy with him. And when an unexpected inheritance brings him back to where it all began, Ulysses knows better than to tempt fate, and returns to the Tuscan hills.
Liberation Day by George Saunders
The "best short-story writer in English" (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose-wickedly funny, unsentimental, and exquisitely tuned-Saunders continues to challenge and surprise: Here is a collection of prismatic, resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality. "Love Letter" is a tender missive from grandfather to grandson, in the midst of a dystopian political situation in the (not too distant, all too believable) future, that reminds us of our obligations to our ideals, ourselves, and one another. "Ghoul" is set in a Hell-themed section of an underground amusement park in Colorado and follows the exploits of a lonely, morally complex character named Brian, who comes to question everything he takes for granted about his reality. In "Mother's Day," two women who loved the same man come to an existential reckoning in the middle of a hailstorm. In "Elliott Spencer," our eighty-nine-year-old protagonist finds himself brainwashed, his memory "scraped"-a victim of a scheme in which poor, vulnerable people are reprogrammed and deployed as political protesters. And "My House"-in a mere seven pages-comes to terms with the haunting nature of unfulfilled dreams and the inevitability of decay. Together, these nine subversive, profound, and essential stories coalesce.
Sea of tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal -- an experience that shocks him to his core. Two centuries later, a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him. When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.
Adult Graphic Novels
The most important comic book on Earth : stories to save the world by Paul Goodenough
100 inspiring visual stories on environmentalism from key figures, charities, activists, artists, writers, environmentalists, and spokespersons from around the world. The Most Important Comic Book On Earth is the single largest collection of powerful and entertaining comics calling for planetary change. Contributors include Jane Goodall, Ricky Gervais, Yoko Ono, Alan Moore, Taika Waititi and many more.
Your black friend by Ben Passmore
Your Black Friend is an open letter from your black friend to you about race, racism, friendship and alienation