 live on forever on the internet. All right, so that's not what today shows about. Good morning. Unless it's an annual event, I don't know. We'll find out. Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Kristen Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is submission's weekly webinar where we share anything that may be of interest to libraries. Encompass Live is broadcast live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time. But if you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. You can always go to our website and see all of our archives. And I'll show you at the end of today to show where those are. This, we have quite a huge and large archive. Actually, this is the 10th year of Encompass Live. I did not figure it out. So this is the beginning of our 10th year. So we have nine years worth of archives, which is great. Although that does mean that some of our things on there are, could be potentially outdated or it's called historical. We are librarians, we save everything. So it is an archive. So pay attention to the dates and things you need to watch our archives and realize that something we did five years ago might not be as up to date. And that's okay. What we don't make sure things here on Encompass Live's interviews, book reviews, mini training sessions, demos of services and products, really the only criteria is that it is something library related, something libraries are doing, something that we think they should be doing or could be doing, some new service or product we want to share. We bring guest speakers sometimes outside the library commission to share their expertise from both other members of the community. We also have library commission staff that do presentations. And today's is actually all commission staff. Hey. We have, there's five of us here and I'm actually participating today. I'm not just hosts. I'm a presenter. And I'll let you, as you first of those first of those, do you agree with Encompass Live yourself and get to your first, what we'll be talking about. But here at the rest of the library commission, three and a half years ago, we started this Friday reads program, which many people have been doing across the internet on Twitter or other social media to place things, is just sharing a book title on Twitter, just be like, Friday reads, here's what I'm reading now. Here's some cool book I thought you might want to know about. We have library commission. Our previous teaching education coordinator, where Johnson missing her tire from the commission, she started a program having commission staff write log posts about books that they had read or books that they were interested in, books they wanted to share. And it has been going strong since then. Since when Laura left Amy on here, she took over scheduling us, getting more people and new staff. They corner you. When you first start, they corner you. So we have a large number of posts here that do post every Friday. There's a blog post. I'm on the blog post on the commission website. We've got a book there. So we did an English post a year review on graphic book. We've been doing this for the last year. And so we decided to share some of the titles we wrote about this year. This is not everyone. We're not going to do 52. We have 10. So this is a small selection of what we and extra tips. So much. But go to our website. As we actually tag all these Friday reads, you can find all of them. And they actually also set up a separate web page that you can go to that collects all of her views in one place. You can browse and search and see what it's like. I thought it was both separated by fiction and nonfiction. Yes. So if you have a certain type of book you like to read, you can check that out too. So let's get started. And I am actually up first. These books are actually in order of when we actually posted them throughout the 2017. So starting from January through December. And I happen to be the first one to do that. I didn't realize it. That's fine. So my first book for this is Star Wars. Bloodline by Claudia Gray. Claudia Gray is an author who does a lot of science fiction and a lot of these kind of novels based on Star Wars and other genre things. I like a lot of the writing. This particular one is, as you can see from the cover, it's right there is general, general Leo Organa from Star Wars is on the cover. This is about her. I am, as I wrote in my post, a member of the original Star Wars generation. I saw the original movies before they were numbered, before it was one, two, three, before they had subtitles when they first came out in the theater. My parents took me and my sister to see Star Wars. Not Star Wars. It wasn't that yet. It was just a new movie, Star Wars. And I fell in love with the whole series. And specifically, and some of the other characters were my favorites. And I think it's a great book. It's a book specifically for me, and some of them were one of my favorites. Strong, independent, rebellious. I'm just connected with her for some reason. This book is actually probably a new series of novels that are being published in conjunction with the new films that are coming out. For good or for bad, when Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012, they declared that anything written previously was not considered previously was now considered non-canon by Disney, which means as far as they are concerned, any of those stories that were written outside of the movies, books and novels are written that tell other stories are no longer canon, which means they're not part of the history anymore. There's a big controversy about that, of course. People who love those previous books don't like that, but it is what it is. Those books still exist, you can read them if you want to, but they're starting new stories, and this is part of that. And bringing the storylines in continuity with the new movies that will be coming out. Sometimes it's hard to match up with a movie from 30 years ago, and I'm both written 20 years ago, and then write a new movie. Let's just start fresh. A bloodline actually takes place between Return of the Jedi, the last of the first three movies that were done, and The Force Awakens, which is a new movie that just came out two years ago. There's The Force Awakens, then Rogue One, and then just last month, The Last Jedi, which I just saw this weekend. Awesome movie. Anyway, it takes between the Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, so you can find out what happened in between those sides. At the end of Return of the Jedi, when you beat the Empire, yeah, it doesn't mean there's peace in the whole galaxy, though. There's still a little controversy, there's still espionage, there's still things happening with politics going on, and this tells you what happens with Princess the General Leia and how pleasing to The Force Awakens helps you learn a little more about what happened, how the persistence was formed, the origins of the First Order, and if you're going to start working on this, but it helps you, you know, give you a little introduction of what is going to happen in those moments. You also find out where Leia is given another title, The Hutt Slayer. Remember, in the original movie, she actually killed Jabba the Hutt, and to some people, that was awesome, and she is never weird by some, and we learned about that, that they look up to her for that she got rid of this horrible criminal. There's also a branding book, also I want to mention, following up this called Leia, that also written by Claudia Gray, that takes place before, when she was like a teenager and becoming Princess before the First Units. So that's another one, I've not had a chance to read yet, so that's another one. So that's my first book. If you're into Star Wars or just into fast-paced espionage, politics, this is now Batman. Next is, how should I put it again, next season? Yes, my name is Susan Beisling, and I worked in the Technology and Access Services Department, and early on in 2017, I read a book called How to Survive a Play, The Insight Story, How Citizens and Scientists Aide Us. The way I got to this book is I had watched John's Virus Club, finally, and the Matthew McConaughey character was really striking to me, and I always can tell I'm not researching, because one of the parts I love fast was when he first went to the library and started researching. A, he wasn't willing to just accept what the medical community was telling him, and he's digging through indexes, pulling up reports, and I just think that's so great. So I wanted to know more about that. I knew that groups like ACT have been really involved in whole science, trying to find a cure for AIDS, trying to understand how it worked, and also the politics of the science, how much the government was going to need to earn AIDS research, how long clinical trials were taken, how sort of stuck in certain protocols the medical community, the research community was, where people died, and so initially I was going to read Randy Schultz's book and the band played on, but that stops in 1985, which of course they were nowhere near to a cure yet, and so I think I thought in his copy of that book, I had it, but I haven't started reading it yet, and then at the end of 2017, I think, or 26, it was at the end of 2016, they had 100 notable books in 2016, and this book was on the list, and it had just been published, and so I knew it would take us up to present day, so we actually made it to the point where they found treatment that would allow people to that made AIDS manageable for many people. So I decided to read that book instead, things that were really striking about this book, where it really follows ACT, that ACT group in New York, and I think what struck me was how many people were involved, how passionate they were, how many different directions they wanted to take their activism in, so they had people who were really involved in demonstrations and dynans and putting up posters and unfurling banners of the New York Stock Exchange. I think one group actually enclosed Jesse Holmes' house in a giant condo, you know, so these people were really in a flash and in their face. There were other people who were looking for treatments, other people who were willing to advocate for that research for treatments, other people who weren't, you know, looking for social services to help people who were dying of AIDS. And the wonder that struck me is how much conflict there was within the group of between activists, which really stuck with me, that notion that you can have all these different people who have the same goal, who are so passionate that they all have different ideas about what the best way to work towards that goal is, and they can just be vicious with each other in terms of, you know, accusing each other of jeopardizing or sabotaging efforts. You know, if you pursue this path, it's going to undermine our pursuit of this other path, and you're going to give us a bad name, or you're going to release from your time being this. And, you know, by the time I got done with the book, my feeling was how they took all of these different efforts, all of these different directions. And, you know, you see this with today, in terms of activism, people fighting with themselves and disagreeing, and in some ways, looking at it from that perspective is sort of the idea of, you know, these groups need everyone. They need all these different people working with all these different ideas at once. One thing that really struck me, though, was the small group that really focused on, you know, national, what is it, human health, CDC, drug trials. We have this one young woman who just sort of started showing up at me, and she was 17, she was a high school girl. She and some other people are very interested in science. There was also sort of a middle-aged woman who had a PhD in chemical pharmacology or something, who, you know, suddenly just showed up from the suburbs and sort of attended these meetings, and they found this little, what they call, science towards a study group, and they researched and they found out everything scientifically they could about the disease, about treatment, about biology, about how clinical trials were conducted. This one woman is like 17, and, you know, they basically researched the halls with bureaucratic corporate important structure of all the government agencies that were dealing with AIDS. At the point where they understood it better than people who were working there, and eventually, took a long time, and eventually they were actually able to consult with and participate in some of the structure, and how they were going to change in the way they pursued truth. You know, they went to international conferences, and, you know, there was a picture in the book. This one was 21, and she used to have this international news conference. Sorry. You know, of course there are, you know, these oddball people. They teach early 20s and, you know, living shows with international and non-scientists, and they're being listened to. So, anyway, that only sad thing about the book is, of course, as you go along, you know that some of the people that you get to know are going to make it, so that's one of the hardest things as you went through the book. The other thing that was really striking was at the very end, you know, suddenly they have this treatment in 1995, 1996, so all of this comes to a stop, at least the intensity goes away. And so you've got all these activists who spend their years, spend their late teens, early 20s working towards this, and suddenly they have to prove us anymore. They didn't go to college. They didn't think they would live, so, you know, they devoted what they thought was the last good news of their lives towards this effort. Now they're going to live, but they have. But they do? Yeah. So there's a lot of depression, a lot of drug addiction. There's almost PTSD. So anyway, I probably have to do it. Goodness. Allison, oh, me, yes. It's just that good thing. So I'm Allison Badger, and I actually work with Susan in Tech Access, and I'm the cataloger. And this wasn't the first thing I wrote for Friday Reads. I wrote something else first, but I chose the House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. It's a book I first read in high school. It was introduced to me by my international literature teacher. And I just, I fell in love with the book and the story and I engaged her writing style. And of course, the characters, I engage writes very strong, passionate female characters. And so yeah, I've read this probably a dozen times in the 20 years since and every every time I read a book, I read a book, I learned something new about the characters or I learned something new about the story, something new jumps out at me. And so this book, I think they never specifically states where the story is set, but she's from Chile originally. And so it's always kind of assumed that the book, the story takes place in Chile. And it kind of starts out in the early 20th century with a very wealthy family. And there's this boy who wants to marry, marry one of the daughters, but he literally has not and he's very poor. And so he kind of, he goes out and buys some land and he comes a goldmire and he makes his fortune. And you know, and Mary's this woman, Clara Deval, the ball. And Clara is rather eccentric and she has some kind of, she could predict the future. She can kind of move things around. It's kind of this book has elements of magical realism in it, which is probably what I really liked when I was 17, 18 years old was the magical realism. And so the book, the story is of Esteban and Clara and their children and how they interacted with kind of the social and political upheaval that was going on in a lot of Latin American, South American countries during the middle of the 20th century. And I think, you know, in some ways it's a very dark story, some very bad things happen. And but what really struck me the last time I read this book was it concludes on a very hopeful note that even though Esteban's granddaughter has experienced truly some of the worst things you can experience in life. She's been in prison. She's been tortured. She's been raped. And she comes out of prison and she still has a lot of hope. She still thinks, she thinks things are going to get better that this is just kind of, you know, it's going to pass. And I found that very inspirational that, you know, this character, this woman who has truly experienced probably the worst of humanity is still saying, things are going to get better. I have hope. And I just, I just thought, you know, that's something that we can all really learn from and take to heart. Yes, it's, it is, it's, you know, like I said, she has hope that, you know, things are going to get better. And she's kind of taken in briefly by a very poor family who has nothing but they're sharing what they have. And they have hope. And she just is like, yeah, things are going to get better. I have hope. E, that's mine. My name is Amy Owen. I'm on the reference team. If you called Library Commission, you might be talking to me. I'm on the desk quite a bit. And my book is a little different. I read a lot of the same books as Sally Reed's, picture books, chapter books, books for elementary school kids. And this book, Ms. Bixby's Last Day by John David Anderson, is about three sixth grade friends who ditched school to visit their favorite teacher in the hospital. Steve, Topher and Brand, they're in sixth grade. She'll be their last year at elementary school. Everything's great. And their teacher, Ms. Bixby, she's one of the good teachers. They're really lucked out. She's kind of a teacher who's got pink streak in her hair and she moon lights as a clown. But she also really listens to her students and gets to know them and what makes them special and what makes them sick. And each of these boys has a very special bond with her. Well, then they get the sudden news that Ms. Bixby is sick and she's not going to be able to finish off the school year. So they're going to throw her a goodbye party with her class and I was looking forward to it. But then she's actually too ill to attend the party and she's hospitalized before the party takes place. So these boys decide that she can't come to the party. They're going to bring the party to her. So they can start this elaborate plot to gather all her favorite things and skip school and go to the hospital to have a party with their teacher. So they can start with this really detailed scheme. But of course, they run into every matchable obstacle. And they're very realistic obstacles. I thought, you know, I have a son. This is the sort of trouble that you dread your middle school. But you can totally imagine these things happening. So I don't want to ruin any plot points with people who are going to read it. But just at every turn something goes terribly wrong. But they do eventually get to the hospital and just see their teacher. So it's a very character-driven book. You really get to know each of the boys and why they had such a bond with their teacher. There's Topher. He's the artist. He and Ms. Bixby bonded over his drawings. There's a brand to Paris for his Ingrid Potter and Ms. Bixby, you know, season one day walking through the grocery store and they start going grocery shopping together. He's really taken a lot of responsibility on at home. And so she, you know, makes him feel that's okay. And then there's Steve, who is in the shadow of his big sister. But Ms. Bixby wants to know that he's good enough also, you know, he doesn't have to live up to what she has done. It's told in a first person narrative, but from each boys' perspective, so you kind of get an inner meaning of the story. So they alternate the chapters so that each boys' experience is told, but as one boy is thinking something's great, the next boy is thinking it's the most horrible thing ever. They're going to get busted and in trouble. And another one might be thinking, I've already been there and done. It's an incredibly moving and sad story because their teacher is very ill and that each boy's been for a lot, both personally and with her. But there's also a lot of cameras. It's very funny. Sally, thank you for the turn. Yes, Ms. Bixby was one of the most incredibly complete people. I'm Sally Snyder, I'm the children and doing without services coordinator for the like recognition. Just please, you can know that. The first book I want to talk about is Restart by Gordon Corman. And many of you here familiar with middle school and high school books will recognize Gordon Corman's name. He's been writing ever since he was in high school. And he's been very popular for years and years. But in this book, Chase, who is in eighth grade, wakes up in the hospital and he remembers nothing of who he is. Who are these people standing around and looking at him? He doesn't recognize his family. He remembers nothing. He knows how to read and walk and talk and everything, but he can't remember anything personal about himself or why he's in the hospital. And you don't know as the reader at first what happened. But then he goes back to school. It's completely unfamiliar to him, but he begins to notice that as he walks down the hall, other students are cringing away from him. And he isn't the one because he doesn't remember who he is. These two solid, burly fellas come up to him and they are apparently his best friends. He has been the eighth grade team quarterback and they are on the team within a day of a great studies. As slowly he learns that he has been the reigning bully of the school. And he has encouraged his best friends to be bullies, too. And nobody's stopping them because he's the eighth grade quarterback, plus they're pretty sneaky about it. So he's really puzzled by this because he's thinking to himself, how did he get that way when now, the way he is now, his impulses are to be frankly and hopeful. And what should he do now? He joins the video club, like the death knell of top students. So there's humor in it, but he's known for his humorous books, but this one, it takes it more serious and intriguing fact, although obviously there is some humor in it. And interestingly, just this morning before our program, I was looking in an online journal called Teaching Tolerance and there were a couple of articles in there, one of them was titled, so well I can't get them, I didn't write the title down there. The idea is that the boys will be boys mentality is guiding our society and we need to get rid of that now because it is non-acceptable and we're teaching kids in elementary school and middle school and high school, that's okay because you're a boy and you know when you go out for a beer and blah blah blah. No, it's just stuff and I'm not wow. That really connects with this book and this boy who really was caring about people and his best friends. Keep trying to give them to be the old guy and he's not really interested in it. It's a wonderful book of course. I don't think there is a bad Gordon Gordon book, so there you go. Next. Oh, that would be me again. So Jane Austen is one of my favorite novelist, favorite writers, and Pride and Prejudice is actually my favorite book, but that's not the book I'm talking about. I'm talking about Vanceville Park and I say all of that because until the last time I read Vanceville Park, again this is a book I've read numerous times. I really didn't like this book. This was probably one of my least favorite Austen books and part of it was the main character Fanny Price. She just drove me absolutely insane. She's the poor relation taken in by her much richer relatives and Fanny is just kind of, she cries a lot. She gets sick a lot and she's just, I don't know, she's just, she's not the kind of person I would probably hang out with. She's not the kind of person I'd be friends with. She's the kind of person who would really, really avoid me. And part of it is the family really does overlook Fanny. They just, they don't treat her very well. They impose their will on her. They kind of take her for granted. They treat her like a servant and she just kind of is like, yeah, that's cool, whatever. But probably one of the last times I've read this book, I realized that no, Fanny actually does express a lot of emotion. She expresses her anger. It's just, it's not a very obvious way. It's more internal. And she has moments where she does reveal herself to actually be a very strong woman, where she digs in and is like, no, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that. You can't make me. I don't care what happens. And I think really, what I took from this book was that Fanny really takes a lot of pleasure in kind of those small moments of like, those kind of moments that we maybe don't think much of, you know, hanging out with our best friend, you know, or talking to, you know, her brother. It's, she really just genuinely feels the joy. And I just really felt like there's something that we could learn from that, that you live each moment as it is. And yeah, you just, as I write in my review, you know, you embrace each and every moment that life keeps you. So it's interesting, you mentioned that this is your least favorite of second least favorite, but you kept rereading it. Yes. Why? Or do you know why? Even, you know, you read it once and I don't like it. And this is a good question just in general. Why would you go back and read? Because I love Jane Austen. And even though this is, this is the genius of Jane Austen, she creates characters not all of us like. Fanny is one of them. Emma from Emma is probably the other one that I really don't like because she reminds me too much of myself, but that's neither here nor there. And I think that's the genius. That's, that's how you know someone is a really good author. And Jillian Flynn did it with Gone Girl. They create characters who are so unlikeable. You hate them. You detest them. And yet here you are rereading the book that makes it interesting. It's not boring. Yeah. And you're willing to continue. You're, you're still invested regardless of the characters and how much you dislike them. So that's, and, and also people often ask me, you know, why do you reread books out? So why, why do you always reread? And a lot too. Yeah. Because it was so good the first time I read it. We live it again. I wanted, well he said find things that I didn't say at the first time. That's exactly what it is. I think every time I've read a book, I gain something new. Something new jumps out at me or I, you know, depending on where I am in my life, you know, I might interpret, reinterpret a character differently for, you know, this the one time, this one of the last times I read Mansfield Park. Wow. Fanny. Okay. She's not nearly as bad as I thought she was. There's, there's more to her there. So, you know, while we buy movies and rewash, you know, re-binge again a TV series we watched years ago, it's just going to be something new. Yeah, yeah. Let's visit more friends. Oh yes, that's it. Yes. All right. Who's next? Oh, it's me again. Yeah. All right. I don't know if you can help us with anything yet. All right. So, The Dark Tower, The Gunslinger by Stephen King. This is the first book in the Dark Tower series, which is a ongoing, I mean, he still keeps writing new things randomly. With the recent release of the Dark Tower movie, which was last year or something like that, it was like August, I think. Is it okay? Because I did this in November. I decided to finally start reading this series. Yes, I've never read it before. Sorry. I am a big, as you can tell from the problems with many of things, sci-fi, fantasy, that kind of thing, or my, or my, that's what I like. Stephen King, he, when it gets to the horror, more horror, lean stuff. I'm not too much into that. I read Kujo. Didn't really like it too much. But I decided the movie is coming out. Idris Nova, hello. But before I see the movie, I want to read the book. I'm going to be a good librarian and do it that way. So I decided to do this. And I did. And in my, in my, in my writing, I wrote this up. I said, so far, but I only read the first book. Actually, I'm into the second one now. I have to go and after the first, I read the first one, then saw the movie and then started reading the second one, just how it turned out. It's interesting. I'll talk about the movie in the end of this, actually, because this is more about the book, is what the point of this is. It just happens too thin. I really liked the feel of this book, because it was a mixture of things. It's a western, but there's magic. Is it far into our own future? Is it after major apocalypse? Is it an alternate universe? An alternate history? What is it? And as I said, this has been a series of books. And unfortunately, by the end of just this very first one, you have no clue where you are or when you are. There's no clear, if you haven't realized, and I don't know, so I just read at the end, but I was like, are you kidding me? I have no idea what's going on. I don't know where I am. I don't know when I am. And now I want to read the next one. Way to go Stephen King for a second. Yeah, that's because you did not wrap this up. You left us completely unsure about what the heck is going on. Do you wait until you read it until the second book in the series was already available? Yes, exactly. I've read that before. Yeah, it started a new one. I'm like, yes, no, because at least I know, I've got these guys all on my tablet. So I'm pretty human there, hopefully. So you don't know anything. You don't know why is Roland, the last big gunslinger chasing the man in black. They actually don't explain that in the first book, which is interesting because in the movie you can see this is out. Turns out the movie is based on not just the first book, but it jumps around and pulls things from several books in the series and not necessarily all of them chronologically, which is I confused and obsessed with people too that it wasn't just a story of here's the first book or here's the first two into a movie. It's electric. Here's part of the first one. I'm going to pull some of this from the third one. And don't worry about the second. I'm not exactly sure I'm going to read all of them, but I'm noticing that now that they kind of grab different bits and pieces. So yeah, it's very interesting. Who is the man in black really? Where? What is the dark tower? You don't know. It's the name of the series, but just by the first book I'm telling you, keep coming with them. So it is, and because of the way it's written, I think it's a bit disjointed in introducing the characters, location, the class. I felt like you already know something about this before reading the book, but you don't. You're kind of being dumped in the middle of a story. And it almost has an annoying non-ending. It's totally open-ended. So you do have to continue if you want to know the whole story. You guys keep going. But I did enjoy it inside of all the annoyance. I guess it's like I said, it is annoying me, but it made me, it sucked me in. And yeah. So it was interesting to match up parts of the movie that came from the book, but sometimes they're in the book, but they're not the movie that happens. So, and some things that were obviously pulled from future books in the series that I had not read. So when I watched the movie, I did get some spoilers, I assume, of what is one. Well, you see, but it didn't really run from me. So the books and the movie are different. I'll tell you that. Don't, if you've just seen the movie and you're like, oh, I want to read more about that, you're not going to have the same necessarily kind of feel. But they're both good and they're all right. And I think people, and I do this a lot of the things I'm, I'll have more forgiving, I think, than some people about what they didn't do exactly right. And I am so upset. I'm never going to watch anything again. I'm more open minded. I'm going to try it. We'll see. And they may be exactly the same. They may be completely different. Everybody has different opinions of these things too. Introduce the Vampire by Anne Rice is an example for me. The movie that was done was exactly what was in my head when I read the book. It was so perfect. I was like stunned to me. I don't know if everyone else, other people saw something, but I was like, oh my God, they did it. But they don't always. And this one, they did a, what I thought was really fun and interesting movie and really cool book too, but they're not necessarily exactly the same. So I'm getting back into Stephen King right now. In the middle of the second one. Let's see. Next. Solo by Kwame Alexander. I marked this because I just wanted to say that this is a 457 page book written for teens high school, but it's written in free verse. So there is so much white space on every page. It feels like you've really accomplished your things. You should just zoom into it. But it's wonderful. Blay, who is almost 18, is the son of a famous rock star, but his father is now more famous for his antics when he's drunk on drugs than his music. So on the day of his high school graduation, when he stood up to address the crowd, his father rode a motorcycle down the hill and right into the podium and outside and crashed him. He's done with his father and just sitting there. His sister, who's a little older, is still supporting his father. And she let's go a family secret that night. Blay does not. He's adopted. He's not the child of this time. Well, he is not the other. His mother, who had died, is not his real mother. There's another lady with dead head. So he decides to go to Ghana, which is where his mother is now. She's from the United States, but she's in Ghana trying to make a difference and help people. And so he goes there to meet her and find out about himself and really figure out who he is and where he's going. And part of all of this is music, which is pretty wonderful. And so it's on my summer reading program list for this coming summer with the music theme. But I haven't experienced this yet, but my friend Joannis told me that the audio book of this includes the music, the songs, the four songs throughout the book. And then at the end, they play the songs again, all four of them to kind of revisit the whole story, listening to the songs again. I said, well, I have to get, I have to get that on audio and hear that part of it because it is wonderful work. The things that he's dealing with are the death of his adopted mother when he was 10, his father's behaviors, his girlfriend was cheating on him, he found out before he left, meeting his birth mother and the people he meets in Ghana that were very positive. And all along, he's had these nightmares that nobody can really explain, including his therapist. Nobody really knows what these nightmares are about. But it's also a look at the heartache moments in the main character's life and what it reveals in this true self. And it's just wonderful. Paul M. Alexander is one of my favorite authors right now. And I can't wait for his next book. I have no idea what it will be about, but so far he's, I think I'll say this, he's written in papers. He wrote books and crossover and this one. And he has been a contributor to some other collections of things, but he's writing this for you. So far, no, some of you have proved me wrong. It's a wonderful book. All right, my second book is The Dirty Life. It's a memoir of farming and love by Kristen Kimmel. Kristen is an Ivy educated journalist. She's 30-something, single, living in New York City, loves her city life. She's minutes from her sister, spends time in coffee shops and shopping, just all that the city has to offer. She started to feel this deep down longing for something else, her home, her family. And it doesn't make sense to her because none of the computers want this. She thinks maybe I shouldn't want this either, but it's there. And so she's on a freelance assignment and she goes to rural Pennsylvania to interview this young farmer about food trends. He runs a sustainable farm and is teaching other farmers and it's kind of this resurgence of local food that's going on. And at first, when she gets there, she's too busy to talk. So he hands her a rating, tells her to go help one of his assistants in the tomato beds. And she's horrified by the amount of work she's not dressed for it. She's ruining her designer clothes. She went there and she looked all cool and she is covered in dirt. But you know, it's so filthy and so hot and when she returns to the city, it's all she can think about in the physical labor and the sunshine and the fresh air. And she's this intense satisfaction she's getting from this place. And also the man. He's very intriguing. He's kind of like anyone she's ever met. He's got all these ideas that she's never considered before. But she can really see like the future with her and he reveals later on that he felt the same thing, but he thinks he met her and thought this is the first thing that I'm going to marry. And if I would be so scared, I would just ask her right now. So she keeps finding excuses to go back to his farm, you know, write more articles, thinking maybe to make an interesting copy for a book. And he keeps finding excuses to come and disappear. But he really can't handle her city life. He doesn't like anything to the city and she's very uncomfortable taking places because he's not quite dressed apart from the city boys. So they decided they were going to start a life together and go and find land and build their own farm. So the rest of the book is their first year together when you find a plot of land and they start setting up his dream farm. It's a sandal farm that is a CSA community supported agriculture model where customers are going to come and pay a membership fee and go and share the harvest all year round. And it's a unique model because it's a whole diet CSA and they're going to get meat and milk and eggs and flour and all vegetables that they want. So their first year on the farm students up and running and planning their wedding at the same time. And she's an incredible storyteller. You really feel like you're there. You can smell the dirt. You can feel the forces running away as she's trying to. She's planning her wedding in the loft of their barn. It's really, really great storytelling. If you're into books about the local floor movement or food writing, things like on the horse dilemma or animal vegetable mineral, why am I ever can tolerate so much along those lines. And I highly recommend it. I really have a thing for farming even though I've never actually done it. I love to. Are you gardening? Yes. It's nice to be able to close the book and not have to get up and practice on this. But what I really liked about this was that it's a love story that's not really centered too much on the love part. They really do are building this relationship, but it's not the center of the story. She keeps that part very private. And I recently went back and visited their website and their blog and they now have children and they can do this farm for like 15 years and it's really working out. Yeah. You really get to see more about how it actually turned out. Yeah. Yeah. And this one's very cute. Okay. I think it's the last one. Yeah. It's just how it came out. This was one that you obviously just did last month in December. So I just read this one. The Futurist History, How to Tell His Periodism, Inclaimed Russia. Again, how I came to read this book. I've been obviously rushing in the news all the time now and I'm always like, oh my God, I need a soda. I need to go out in the world. I really should read something. And then I just wrote one of the National Book Award. So this was a book of the 15th inside. Those two things came together in this book and now I'll give it a shot. This was a difficult book. I was reading it. We needed exactly to get home from work and I really had to struggle sometimes. There's lots of Russian names in it, which obviously those are people's names. So we can't blame the author. We're not saying Russian names. But I was also reading the book from it so it wasn't as easy to flip to the front where they have the list of who's who. Sometimes I would get confused about is this person? Is this person or is this person? But again, it's one of those books I plowed through it and I'm really glad I did it. I feel like it's one of those books that's kind of straight with me. She basically covers 30 years of the last 30 years of Russian history. So she starts out, she's got about seven people she focuses on, which again is one of the challenges because we're trying to keep track of the different people. So four of the people were born in the Middle East. So she wanted people who were born before the fall of the Soviet Union. So they were kind of just becoming a kind of age in the 90s when so even there's no more that this was the era where everything was kind of crazy and everything was unsettled. But there were new freedoms and new possibilities. But there was also lots of crime. There was awful inflation. There was a lot of chaos. And then in 1999, 2000, in the power again, things started gradually getting more authoritarian again. So she kind of wanted to look at the people who had come of age during this period of time. Susan, were these like just kind of normal every day? I don't know if you would say they were normal every day. Okay. She talks a little bit about how she chose them, but I mean, they all had sort of unique backgrounds. One was the, you know, child of several of them were children of people who were really involved in politics. Another one was an academic. So, you know, I don't know if they were exactly two people. No, probably not. Basically, all of them, you know, were really involved in what was going on and some of them wanted to be able to live in this. Russia, they had to leave. So, in that way, I'd say they're not just the people who are going on their lives. So she also followed three academics who were a little older. And what was interesting about them is they were adults and they were actually in sort of their special careers in the 80s. So one was a psychoanalyst, one was a sociologist. And one was sort of an independent philosopher who was self-educated, but what was really striking was just how close off their world was in terms of like the psychoanalysts. They really didn't have a lot of interaction with the Western world of psychology. And so, you know, we have all of these developments and different schools and different classes and different intellectuals that work and she didn't have access to that. So then, finally, in the late 80s, early 90s, things started opening up and then we had psychologists from the United States coming over to the seminars and it sort of all of a sudden trying to, you know, really back home, you know, you always think, can people come up with all of these ideas? I'm going to throw in without, of course, to other people, but it really sort of highlighted to me how helpful it is to have all sorts of different ideas and theories for the around encounter that helps you. You know, you might not even agree with them, but it's still a house. So, you know, that was really interesting. One of the sociologists was trying to conduct the first large-scale sociological study of what he called almost Sovietic history. What is Soviet or Russian citizen life? What? So, you know, but they had nothing to build on. Usually, you build one sociologist in the past. One thing that was interesting is that he had this sort of notion that, you know, after so many years of sort of totalitarian control, he had a certain kind of citizen that has developed because this is the kind of citizen that's going to be able to survive well in this kind of society. And, you know, with someone who just sort of knows their place and just sort of accepts what's going on, he had this notion that, okay, this generation is going to die off and the next generation is going to be different. And what he found is he conducted the studies as people started moving away from that way of being, but then with all the chaos that was going on in the 90s, people really wanted to build it. Which, of course, then was what he was talking about, and basically going back towards the day they were. Yes, that was such a strong way of being at such a strong hold that this sort of generation all had. You know, they really wanted to go back to that. It doesn't matter if I don't have as many freedom as I want to build it. And I want to start a leader and I want to build more of my closest society than I do. I don't want to feel this pressure to be behind it for more than a while. The psychoanalyst talked about how much anxiety I felt in the 90s and in my pre-term. For them, you know, for her freedom was so much new possibility and just excited opening up options for a lot of people. It was just causing anxiety. So that was interesting to see. The other thing that I took away from this that's more interesting is in around 2011, 2012, 2014 is when we started really getting the anti-gay legislation coming in. And this surprising, they had people coming over from the United States. So people who had been involved in saving the family kinds of groups in the United States that were anti-sales sex Some of the people that were opposing, people that actually didn't really want to be in California They didn't want to be in California. So they were involved in that side of the mission. I think that was the pro proposition. So some of these names, I actually recognized them. I had to go back and look up and repeat it and see why I recognized them. But these people are now going over to Russia in counseling and speaking at conferences in Russia and, you know, telling the Russian government, you can avoid the mistakes that the United States has made by laws and, you know, some of these people are people that have been sort of basically disavowed by the original psychological association, the consistent logical association. So, you know, there's a lot more cross-criminalization of ideas than I think I was ever aware of. The sort of self-training for Russia, that she follows. Yeah, just all this reading of the United States when there's really intelligent people, red, red, red, all these people but he ended up going sort of a nationalist, sort of going to the wing direction and he counts people. Yeah, and this is one of those things, you read one book on the topic and all of a sudden you start seeing things coming up and you realize that these are going to be good. Yeah. So, he's someone that fits your sponsor. There's some article in New Yorker about France and their sort of nationalist, far-right movement and he shows up in that article. So, reading this book was sort of an experience of wow, you know. Yeah. I've only read one book that goes to the Waterloo perspective, but even that, all of a sudden. Cover so many. I've seen all these things that needs up to a lot of things. All right, on that note. So, reading is good. You will learn things and expand your horizons. Let's make it positive, yes. Hopefully, we'll learn something. Hopefully. This interesting is now the author, of course, now living in the United States because she can't no wonder. So, if you live in Russia, you can criticize the regime. And she's been interviewed by, like I'm going to say, she's got all these, some ways she's got all these special skills that are really of interest. So, when people are always asking her, well, you know, what's the secret or what's that kind of fight that they're tearing this up? And she's like, well, obviously I did a really good job of this. I haven't seen Russia since now I'm here. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. We obviously successfully do that. Yeah, I'm not the right person to ask. All right. Well, that is our last official title for this. All right. So, that is just a sample of some of the things that we have done on Friday reads. What I'm going to do is actually pop out to the website to show you. So, from the commission's website, as I said, this is something we do every Friday. So, you'll see something like here is this last week's, as Amy said, if we do this again, analysis on again, you'll be able to watch it. This is the post that Amy did about our year interview. I just want to show this to you to see. Nice little collage that I have. Yeah. Of all of the book covers for this year. But we have in our blog, this goes to where you can get by the tag within our blog, all of the different titles that have been posted that had to do with Friday reads, if you want to scroll through it that way. Or we had created a page where all of the book reviews are collected here. And you can search by fiction or nonfiction, if you're a preference for what you read. I don't know. So, is both your books or nonfiction that you prefer? Or is it just happening? It seems much closer to the end. So, and then this will link you directly to each one. So, if you're interested in looking for a particular title that you know you've maybe heard about that we did, or mind see what some particular staff person here would be. And this is everything. This isn't just, this has been back to the beginning, which, and this is about three and a half years ago when we first started this program. So, I definitely take a look there to see all of the other titles that we have. And keep an eye on it every Friday. We've got a schedule through, wow, we've got a thing scheduled through this. So, we took about four months at a time and then we, yeah, reevaluate. Hopefully bring in some more people to do it. So, hopefully different people. We did this, we actually did a session about this by a year and a half ago. And we told a different group of people on, I don't know, some weirdo shows, I think? Yeah, weirdo shows, shows on those, I think. So, next time you guys see a whole different group, then you can volunteer. So, yeah, so that will wrap it today. So, thank you very much, Sally, Allison, Amy, Susan, Krista. Thank you, everyone, for attending. This is going to be on our End Campus Live website, which I'm going to go to right here now. These are upcoming shows, but our archives all go here underneath our upcoming shows. And today's will be at the top of the list. Most recent ones are always at the top. We will have this recording will be up there and a link to the presentation included in the description off the link to the page where you can search all the reviews as well. So, anyone who attended today or who registered for the show will be sending an email. I want to not be letting you know that it's available and it will also be posted to all of our various communication venues. End Campus Live, both the live show and recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So, when you're on post recording, go ahead and look at it. Share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, any topic you're thinking or may be interested in and they can come and sign up for our upcoming shows or watch the archives. So, what we'll do is next week, when we just get to our schedule here, dazzling displays. Denise Harders is the Director for Central Plains Library System, we have four regional systems here in Nebraska, and she has a presentation about doing displays. Every month, of course, she actually sends an email and message out to her system to display ideas for the month. The popular topics, is it going to be National Bacon Day, whatever. I think it just happened. Oh, sorry. Every day, National Bacon Day. Well, certain things you can be very creative with, yes. But so, she has a presentation about these displays that she does. So, she has some ideas and tips and tricks that I could create here on this place and how this is a passive programming technique, actually, and how to use that to get people interested in a certain topic rather than do the specific program that they attend. You kind of subconsciously create something that you're interested in and increase circulation of your library materials, your books, your movies, whatever it is you want to, that you can do displays. She's going to talk about passive programming and displays and give you some ideas. So, definitely sign up for that one in any of our other shows you see coming up here. We've got some more days coming in February to fill in. I'm going to talk to people, so we'll see if the schedule is still in. So, do you sign up for anything else in there that are coming up? Also, Encompass Live is on Facebook. If you're a big Facebook user, give us a like over there. I post here reminders. Here's a reminder to log in to Day Show. When our recordings are available, I post down here. When you have new things added to the schedule, I'm on here. So, if you are big on a user of Facebook, do give us a like over there to keep up with what we're doing there. Other than that, that wraps up for the show. Nobody had any questions or comments? That's okay. Thank you very much for listening to our readings. I think they're also very interesting books. I always, when I, when there are these kind of shows, Sally does Sessions on Children's New Books, I always get ideas for things that either I'm on and read for myself, which just asks my pile of things I haven't read, or ideas for other people. So, I've actually got some ideas here, some things that I might get books from my sister or my other sister-in-law's kids. So, we hope that we can get some good ideas. And that wraps up for the show. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you next time on Encompass Live. Bye-bye.