 Okay, good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I'm your host over here on the side Krista Burns here at the Nebraska Library Commission Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event or webinar webcasts online show Nobody can figure out and decide come to agreement on what you call these things But whatever we want to call us we're live online every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time We do record the show every week though. So if you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine you can always go to our website and Check our archives in there and watch the show at your convenience We have all of our shows listed there We post the recordings up to YouTube for easy access for watching any Slides or documents people have included as well And if any websites are mentioned they get added into our delicious account collected all together for you for reference This one Sally's got one today that we can put in there. Yeah So we'll have something up for that Both the show and the recordings are all free and open to anyone to watch. So please do Share with your friends colleagues neighbors family whoever might be interested in any of our topics Send them to our site and have them take a look at our upcoming shows or our recordings We are pretty broad in what we do here. Basically our only criteria It's something is library related or useful to libraries things libraries are doing New pro projects or programs are involved in things that might be of interest to libraries So sometimes a little out of the box thinking sometimes you'll see but somehow everything is is library related And we do all sorts of things presentations book reviews training sessions mini training sessions. We're only here for an hour nothing too in-depth but Basically anything We do have guest speakers that come in sometimes to talk on the show But we also have Nebraska Library Commission staff and that's what we have this morning a group of us here and I think we'll just as we Each talk first will introduce ourselves briefly like it easier to do that So all of us here they were all library commission staff in all various departments actually here and We're gonna talk about today is this new Well, something new ish that we've been doing I had to go back and figure out about two years ago this month We started doing a regular blog series called Friday reads and you may have heard of that It's not something that we invented necessarily It's been something that's been going on on Twitter Basically every Friday people have used the hashtag hashtag Friday reads and just share what book they're reading So people can see what's out there what people are interested in And then it's kind of people have expanded on that sometimes in doing more blog posts about what they've been reading on their own blogs or websites or whatever and I think it was Laura's idea if I remember. Yeah, Laura Johnson who was previously our Continuing education coordinator came up with this idea two years ago to have commission library commission Nebraska Library Commission staff do the same kind of thing And she recruited a group of people every Friday taking turns writing of a little just something about a book They liked a book. They're currently reading whatever it would You ever they wanted to and it's expanded. There's more people more of us doing it now every now and then every time a new staff Person comes on they get And Laura did retire back in December and Amy Owen who's new ish to the Commission to how she's been with us She has taken on the responsibility of monitoring this and making sure people have something or people are scheduled every Friday to do it So Amy's in charge and we decided to share a little bit about some of this. Amy help gather some people She's not here with us today. She's home with this sick kid sick child, but hi Amy So we do have a whole We've discovered in doing this and I discovered this when I was looking back to see what kinds of books We got 40 to 50 people working here at the Commission. Yes, nice that they share So many different top varying tastes and people in different have different things they read If you go to our blog you can just search on the phrase Friday reads You'll find that all of them with all of them together They will come up see you and see all of them that been out there But we're each gonna share just two of the ones that we've blogged about over the history of this program, so I'm gonna start I'm first Yeah, this is not in any particular order is just alphabetically by our first names When you introduce yourself Tell us what your job title is. Oh, well. Oh, yeah, I don't actually do that when I usually show Yeah, so at the library Commission. I am the Library Development Consultant is my title which is really broad And doesn't tell you too much in detail about what I do, but that's okay. Just I do a bunch of different things here I'm in the library development department and I run in campus live. I help people with their e-rate Which is where we got a deadline coming up this week Any public libraries who are applying for e-rate funding? I'm getting involved with helping Richard Miller who's our director doing strategic planning Some helping that's when we talk to libraries with that and technology planning Just a whole bunch of things so My first book that I have here what I decided to do is the very first one I did on Friday reads and then my most recent one that was just an easy way for me to pick The first one that I talked about was fables Which is by Bill Willingham and fables is actually a graphic novel Well, it's a graphic novel type thing now It's a comic book series that he started Bill on Willingham did and I'm not even sure how long go two thousand something and it's Unfortunately has wrapped up the series So you know comic books that come out weekly or every other week If you're a comic collector like I am you know that but they come up pretty regularly and he did just wrap it up Last year unfortunately. Oh, I did write 2002 is when he started it What it is is fables is characters from a 40 fairy tales folklore mythology It's all stories about them, but in modern times not in their fairy tale times when they are they have been actually ousted from their Homelands they lived in fairy tale land By some mysterious force that at the beginning you don't know who that is and I still haven't gotten to the part where they actually More explain what happened, but they live in New York City. They're hiding out in New York City They are Immortal might be the word so some of their hundreds of years old, but they've been hiding out in New York City in this Specific apartment building that's just for them and they have us, you know certain Protections that no one knows that they're actually fairy tale characters. They're just they look you think they're just like anybody Nobody is really You know stands out, but they stick together in this community called fable called fable town They live in this apartment building called the woodland luxury apartments and this just tells the stories about what they're doing here It's a really cool series Of books. They're very different from what you might remember. They're not just the fairy tale characters in New York City They're beyond the times of the stories we've read So if you know what snow white story is she got married to Prince Charming happily ever after well centuries later No, they're divorced Things didn't work out She's the deputy mayor of fable town. The sheriff is a big B wolf aka the big bad wolf from He's the sheriff, but he's a shapeshifter as that he's a wolf He's like a werewolf is how that works out so he can live in New York City as his human self Any characters that are like animals like three little pigs for example They are in the series or monsters or giants or anything. They can't live in New York So you live in a place called the farm in upstate New York. I'm from upstate New York. I've never seen it So who knows I don't know where exactly it is But it's a really cool stories series of books I like fairy tales and mythology so I got into reading it They've all been collected into you know, it's a series of comic books that collected into books and while graphic novel styles You can read like six or eight of them at a time from one book He did wrap up the series in the end in 2015 though, so they're not any new ones for it But it's just a really interesting different take on what could happen after the fairy tale So next is Linda Hi, my name is Linda. I work in the Interlibrary loan and reference department and so if you've Talked to us about any interlibrary loans. I bet you've talked to me And the books that I'm Chose one of the books I chose is The Fisherman by Chigose A. Obiyama This just came out in paperback. So it is more affordable to get now and The book was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, which is an international prize for first novels and Chigose A. Obiyama is now he's from Nigeria, but he is now a professor at UNL and Teach his English and I've taken a class from him If you if he is gonna speak at an event that you're able to go to I highly recommend that he's really personable and entertaining the Fisherman is I think it's a good book for book groups or for individual reading because there's Different ways you can read it. It's a book that you can delve into the symbolism You can delve into the allegory or you can just enjoy it as a narrative read with quite a bit of suspense It's set in 1990s Nigeria and the narrator is Benjamin who's the third of four sons and he's just young enough that The world seems still like an idyllic place. He doesn't really understand what's going on in the world around him but then Things change for the family economically and the father decides That the best choice for the family is for him to take a job at the Bank of Nigeria that's in a nearby city, so he is he's absent sometimes and This changes some things for the family and the The boys spend some time out in the village and They end up meeting a kind of a crazy man a local crazy man who prophesies that one member of the family is going to kill it on a member of the family and They don't believe him but their reactions to Trying to avoid this happening or not believing it Changes the way they interpret things that happen in their lives and It affects their relationships The relationships I think are really the strongest point of the story even though there is quite a bit of suspense I don't want to give too much away about that But It talks about how Decisions that parents make for families can sometimes be misinterpreted by children even if parents think they're doing the best thing possible for the children in the family sometimes children don't really understand and think about it another way and Also The relationship between the brothers is very interesting. I'm the youngest in my family I'm not the third of four, but I'm the fourth of four, but the way the narrator talks about His older brothers and seeing them make decisions and seeing them Become adults and maybe making decisions that he wouldn't make is a really important process in his individuation as a human being and you'll never Love and hate somebody as much as an older sibling You really you want their approval My sister and I are together. Yeah, you know, you you want their approval. You don't want their approval You want them you want to be around them? You want them to leave you alone? And it's it's told really well in this story It it does take place in Nigeria, you don't really have to know anything about what's happening in Nigeria in the 90s To understand what's going on in the book. There are a few words in the vernacular languages But the meanings are made clear in the text around so you might just learn a word or two But you don't need to know you don't need to have any background about Nigerian history to Understand the book it could be set in Nebraska as well as in Nigeria is the story of a family and relationships and What expectations Can do to us and and those relationships All right, next up is Mary Hey, everyone I'm Mary Sowers. I'm the government information librarian here at the commission and Actually government information kind of says it all I Help oversee the Nebraska state documents clearing house where we collect all of the state agency publications that are meant for the public and We collect them in paper as well as online And then help with we have some federal documents as well But also I'm part of the reference team providing information and services to the general public Of the two books that I chose today, I chose my two favorites rather than first and last Although I'm I'm almost wondering if this one was my first one but anyway, two of my favorites that I wrote about the first one is the homesman by Glendon Swarth out and This is one of those books that I picked up Kind of by accident in an airport and I was in the airport bookstore just looking for something to read picked it up because it had this picture of Tommy Lee Jones and Hilary Swank on the front and so I knew instantly that it was already a movie so that had an appeal and Then when I read the back, I realized it was about Nebraska and even though the author is not from Nebraska Glendon's fourth out and his wife Came to Nebraska to do the research for this book and they started out at UNL did extensive research there Worked their way across the state going west to Carney Well, Grand Island, Carney and North Platte And did a very extensive research on this this particular topic and the topic of the homesman is Based in 1850s, Nebraska but it is a devastating story of pioneer life While at the same time very fascinating and it was not something a piece of pioneer history that we generally hear something about But apparently was much more common than anybody knew and What we don't hear about is a lot of the brave pioneer women Who actually lose their minds from the hardships and the loss and The lack of support Solitude Solitude nutrition couldn't have been great. Yeah, exactly Which I mean everything contributed and Exactly, I mean and a lot of these women were so isolated from other women that they couldn't even get together to Yeah, do a quilting bee, you know like we hear so much about it didn't happen in a lot of areas just because they were so isolated and even Being able to go to a nearby town was a major event, you know, so these women were very isolated Well, unfortunately a lot of them I wouldn't say a lot quite a few lost their mental capacity They really did. I mean they just could not cope anymore, but Their families couldn't cope with them either So the solution and apparently this did happen several times was the solution was to find a person Known as a homesman to escort these women back east to more populated areas and where they either had family that they could go back to or to a Mental institution okay, and so the story of the homesman is about finding a homesman in this particular area of Nebraska the town involved is called loop, which I believe is now loop City, Nebraska and Mary be cutty Who is a an ex-teacher and a spinster owns her own homestead and Is very concerned about these women along with some of the other men in the in the community But nobody wants to volunteer none of the men want to volunteer to take these women back to in this case They're taking them to Iowa. So anyway, Mary be cutty takes it upon herself to do it She can't find another man to go with her So she comes accidentally comes across a claim jumper named George Briggs in the movie played by Tommy Lee Jones and The rest of the story is about their journey taking a wagon load of women back to Iowa to Western Iowa to be taken care of so it's It was a 1988 Western Writers of America's America Award a Western Heritage Wrangler Award the author son has written a new afterward in the recent republication and It was just a fascinating read from the minute that I picked it up Had a hard time putting it down and even got an audiobook. So I wouldn't have to put it Yeah, absolutely, I just had to keep reading and while a lot of it was very shocking it was definitely a good picture of A piece of pioneer life that we you know don't hear very much about I highly recommend it and the movie as well the movie was excellent. I was gonna ask you to ask the movie, too Yeah, actually the movie was at the Ross. Oh, yeah, and we had seen the movie trailer You know several weeks, I guess maybe even months before I found the book And so when I saw the book that kind of clicked and I'm going oh, maybe this does sound interesting And then we went after I read the book we went back and saw the movie and it was very good as as you know those two Academy award-winning off. Yeah, you know actors can make it Highly recommend it Next is Sally. Okay. I'm Sally Snyder. I'm the children and teen services coordinator for the Commission and I Jumped right in that the first chance to be part of the Friday reads And I just want you to know the very first book I talked about was an adult book That But I picked a couple of books that that I really enjoyed and kind of like you kind of a couple of favorites I thought okay. I had to do a boy group book and a girl book kind of You know my mindset was that way, but this one I talked about in June The title is up to this point by Jennifer Longo and Harper is 17 And she and her best friend Kate have had a plan for their futures since they were in sixth grade And they're getting ready to graduate from high school Their plan is to become ballerinas Share an apartment in their home city of San Francisco and dance for the San Francisco Ballet and they I mean These are some dedicated young women Impressed But things fall apart Kate is on her way to their dream and Harper is not because her body can't do what Kate's body can do She tries hard, but she just can't do some of the movements and Bending that Kate is built for with her dream lost Harper goes to Antarctica to winter over for six months as a research Assistant that's huge difference. That is She's This works out because the woman that she's going to be the assistant for Was a mentee of Harper's mother so there's a connection there And that's how the author gets you to believe that yes She could be picked at the last minute to go on a trip to and she doesn't really follow science She doesn't know anything much about Antarctica, but there she is and it's you know This this is the part of the story that really fascinated me was and one of the reasons I picked up this book was oh, what would it be like to be somewhere where it's dark and Cold and you're inside most of the time and when you go outside you better be putting a whole bunch of clothing on and She spends a lot of she does her work. Well, she is a good She is good at organizing and and putting the the researchers notes together But she also is disconnected She talks to her her Researcher whose name I didn't put down here and Talks to the other assistant who kind of resents her getting on there So easy and doesn't know anything but she's really good at the job She was given which was organizing the notes and she doesn't really talk to anybody else And she doesn't want to go outside and she doesn't care She just does get to go see the penguins that the research is about one time and she was kind of love that and Slowly she she's having these visions of former explorers to that area where she's sounds almost like sort of a retreat or a Yeah, going away to have that introspective experience and that's what's it and actually the the doctor there is The lady who's the medical person. She's not really a doctor is Worried about her because she is languishing and so they have a greenhouse and she sets up a hammock in the greenhouse for this girl to To just get some Sun and or pseudo Sun because there isn't any and she just lays there and kind of let's the plants No, no Roma and she has these visions of former Explorers and then there's this young man who's kind of interested in her and he he helps to get her back coming back she she takes More time than I wanted her to Because I really did want to hit her upside the head a couple of times But we all know that people have to take the time they need to get to where they need to be and and she does and she does Finally get back to being Connected to people again and and actually she's ultimately generous to an unlikable member of the winter over team So it's an unusual setting for a young adult book, which is one thing and the ballet connection and Antarctica sound kind of Never Yeah But I thought also the two people Kate and what it's written in alternating chapters Antarctica and San Francisco So you get the past as to how she got to where she was and then where she is now and it was It features two people who were really dedicated to their futures and approach it with Unfailing intensity and effort which is very admirable and to lose that would be Devastating and it does take her quite a while to move ahead, but you have hopes for her as she's getting ready to leave Antarctica again So I found it an intriguing read and and in the afterward the author does say This would never happen a high school graduate would not get a research position They're college students who get these positions, but she just thought you know This would be kind of intriguing and so she wrote the story, which is pretty fascinating Cool. All right There we go, Susan you're up next. Okay, my name is Susan wisely and I work in the technology and access services department I work with the Nebraska access databases Nebraska overdrive subscription databases those are the Probably the biggest projects I'm involved with I'm glad I'm going to choose two books because I would have had trouble The two I'm going to talk about today are the ones I feel almost evangelical about During the periods of time when I was reading them I couldn't stop talking about them with the people around me the first One is becoming Nicole a transformation of an American family and this is about This came out in October 2015 and I think I read it in November. This was the same time period when the Houston equal rights Ordinance was on the ballot and that's really when the whole transgender Individuals and bathroom access issue really I think really hit the mainstream media I'm sure I know there have been issues prior to that and news stories, but that seems when it like when it really blew up And so this was I thought the perfect book to come out at this time and I so wished That we could somehow make it our requirement for people to read it before they Made comments on the news or in response to news stories What's so interesting about this book is It's not written by a transgender individual. It's written by a reporter Amy Ellis nut It's written about a whole family What's so interesting in this particular case is that? It's a couple who wound up adopting children the children were identical twin boys Jonas and Wyatt So, you know same DNA same genetic same environment that they grew up in And it was very clear from very early on You know based on the multiple anecdotes that were related in the story But the children viewed themselves in their gender identity very differently By the time he was to Wyatt was clearly interested in Stereotypically girl things Was upset about being a boy. He wasn't even three and he was asking his parents, you know When he would become a girl when You know when he would get rid of his male anatomy so that he could be a girl So you have a child who's barely verbal and yet they're already knows ill to Verbalize the same parents same environment you have You know and in the author of this books that she watched You know hours of home video and she said it was so compelling to see these two children and how different they were As far as family dynamics go again These are not parents you would probably think of as being on the fringes in terms of how they want to bring up their children in terms of gender identity or stereotypes the father in particular was Describes himself as fairly conservative. You know, he was into hunting and guns and couldn't wait to introduce his two boys to those sorts of activities The mother was the one who was most sensitive to Wyatt's differences and his struggles and she's the one that started doing all the research So I think this would have been in the 90s Gosh there because the kids are over 18 now so it would have been in the late 90s and The internet and online searching was as robust then as it was now, but she you know as you would imagine a mother would do if they were Concerned and scared for their child. You know, she started doing all this research before her child even started school to try to understand this and she do searches and she'd come up with transgender as the topic and so she made connections with experts and other people in the state and Learned as much as she could and she sort of tried to walk that line between supporting Wyatt, you know, if he wanted to play with girls toys or grow his hair along those sorts of things and her husband was very Uncomfortable with it and you can see throughout the story. It's there is a lot of tension. I think in the family he sort of Distances himself. He's not comfortable with it. He doesn't understand it He's not particularly supportive of his wife's efforts So she basically is on her own having to do this research and battle with the school and or That's in the early years. It wasn't so much battling, but She'd have to intervene or talk to parents or before, you know a birthday party or a sleepover, you know make sure Everything was going to be okay It's interesting because in elementary school Things went fairly well Wyatt Friends were all girls They play they They think the girls accepted him as one of them And what's so interesting is it wasn't the kids that had problems with it the kids were very excited There's one anecdote even about a It was a mother couple in their kids that had done something with the mains family and The mother after the fact it said something to her child about oh and the mains boys and her child This is they were probably nine or younger and her son said no, it's not it's a boy and a girl It's not and the mother was even to the point where she was saying But you know, I don't know what they Something but she you know brought up something. It was almost irrefutable to say that it's a boy. He's like well He's still it's still a girl In the face of this incontrovertible evidence, you know, it's like no, yeah and Jonas Wyatt's twin was also very supportive of Wyatt who became Nicole At one point he told his father again. They're about no money. He's like they space a dad. You have a son and the daughter You know, he's spoken On this issue as as an older team and he said as far as he was concerned He always had a sister it wasn't an issue for him. It was just something that he knew so it was so powerful They eventually end up Having problems in the school system because one grandfather gets upset when he hears that there's a Transgender child who was using the girl's restroom and he has a fit and he actually Encourages his son to start harassing Nicole start following her into the girls restroom and say that if she gets to be there that he gets to be there And it became a huge issue. So then the school banned Nicole from using the girls restroom Boister to use the staff restroom Of course, they're starting to be harassment from other students Nicole who had been you know doing fairly well really Became distressed and upset and so the family ended up having to Remove the kids from school the motherly kids moved to another community where Nicole could go stealth Under the radar and they did end up suing the school district and ultimately a number of years later and many dollars later They did win it in the state Supreme Court against the school district And the father at the point it started at that point when things got bad The father came through and he really became the primary Person he went out and lobbied representatives who gave speeches who You know, he really got on board and and he will talk about that you know, he He speaks regularly on the issue and he writes Matters and essays and he's still involved. Oh, yeah, you know he'll talk about his transformation and I Watched a video of him at an award ceremony talking and he almost teared up because he talked about how he wasn't there for His wife and his kids when they were younger So it's it's just a really compelling story and I think it's really time All right And we're back to me again The other book and as I said, I had chosen just the first and the last book that I had written about in Friday Read so far And this is my most recent one just last month Seneca Falls inheritance by Miriam Grace Manfredo or Manfredo. I'm not sure Manfredo probably And this is actually a book about a librarian Yeah, and that's I mean I'm not exactly sure if that's how I first start read this book. I've had this book for Years, I think I got it from my mother when I was in high school or college or something I think I'd have to check exactly when it was written But when it's first out because I have this cover is the original hardcover Dust jacket picture of it doesn't look like this anymore. If you look it up now You'll find this buried in other ones, but that's the one that I have Seneca Falls inheritance takes place actually in 1848 in upstate New York So it's in my hometown during the first women's rights convention for suffrage That Elizabeth Cady Stanton helps to arrange It's it is fiction. It's not it's not It's a mixture of fiction and actual historical events because it does take place during that convention And it does talk about things that were actually happening You learn a little about the history, but then it's the fictional part is the story that's being told Which is about this librarian named glennis tyrant try and Who is librarian in Seneca Falls, New York where? The first women's rights convention took place and coincidentally and this is not how on purpose That actually took place July 19th and 20th This is not planned at all We picked this date because we were available and then I picked my books afterwards and it just happened to be the most recent one I've put in there I don't know so So Yeah, and I've seen a lot of things this week coming up on my Facebook social media about the anniversary of it And I was like, oh my gosh really? So it just it just happened so Good glennis is librarian in the town and She's asked by Elizabeth kitty stand to help actually organize the convention now as I said That's the fictionalish part. So she may or may not but this it did take place in the town That was a bit of a controversy for her as the librarian She'd been told by the board. You're you know don't make waves. You're just you know Don't put anything controversial in the library. We hired you just to be you know Stereo chip. Oh, yeah, yeah pretty much So So she was trying to figure it Well, do I you know I got the attention what the board tells me but I really want to get involved in this movement women's suffrage We do need you know the right to vote and all of that So it's also a very important book and what's coming up with our elections right now, which we'll not talk about So she did to get her to Elizabeth K St didn't convince her to talk to other women in this community and to get the thing going so she did help with Run that However, that's not exactly what the books about it is a murder mystery. So this is one of those People drive as a cozy murder mystery. It's it's got that typical thing, but it's got historical too. So historical fiction mystery Going on. There's been a couple a major couple in town has died in an accident and killed in an accident there were big people in town and There's their son is assumed that he will inherit their wealth They were two of the most prominent citizens in town and they died in an accident in on the Erie Canal Nothing weird about that just did happen But then this woman shows up in town Who seeks out the librarian looking for help maybe because they know that when we researched I don't know if she could do research for her and wants to talk to her About something so she's looking for the librarian and hasn't been able to find her it But she hears she's looking for her But then she is discovered murdered and that's where the mystery comes in. Who is this woman? Why is she coming looking for the librarian in town? What's it have to do with the other couple that has been murdered and what's going on? So then Glenn Glennis just helps with this sheriff in town who's a friend of hers Maybe a boyfriend eventually Figure out who what what happened. It's a really great murder mystery actually just on its own. It's very fun Fast-paced interesting a lot of crazy, you know Tide twists and whatnot, but then with the background of the women's rights convention and feminism and what's going on with that So it's got a little bit of everything that I liked about it for those reasons I've been to Seneca Falls as well. I went visiting there with my mom and my sister For a much trip one time. I still live back in New York. I'm to visit all these locations So it's kind of cool to read about places. I had been to in the book And I've reread this book a couple of times now since I got it. So I've obviously liked it a lot the author Miriam Grace Alfredo. She is actually a historian and a former librarian. So she knows her stuff And the librarian related things and it's also, you know, 1848 librarians librarianship, but still She knows what she's talking about. It was she's got all those parts and the historical historian part She's you know, really good at that. Glennis is a great librarian. She's smart. She's stubborn. She's educated Which would not be very difficult, but this is as you were talking about right near your time This is East Coast, New York. So that's a different, you know things going on there at the time So It's really really good really yeah fun book And it reminded me that and I didn't even realize as I was thinking about what I was gonna say about this book that both books I talked about today Have librarians in this one that the main character is but also in the fables series There is a librarian in that as well as one of them which you'd not think of that There's a fairy tale about librarian. No What this what the only was decided is that and just take it as it is one of the flying monkeys from Buffkin is a librarian and he's an actual like he big people go to him for research help Just like this woman was coming to Glennis for research help So when they need to find something out or go through all the old historical tones you go to the librarian in the fable town, too So very interesting. This is also the first one in a series There are now I think she ended up with five books Yes, five more titles, okay, so there's six total so this is a series So if you get started with this one and I've already read that I've gotten through the first three of them I think and I'm gonna start picking up some of the other ones now that I kind of fell off of it when I was Yes So after the you know the conventions over there's still things going on in Glennis's life that other It's a whole no series of mystery mystery type books isn't a wonderful full when there's more books after the one Yeah, they're already published. Yeah, yes I don't have it but yeah a few of these that I've written for there's another book that I wrote about on Friday reads The missing ink which is also a murder mystery about a tattoo artist And when I started reading that one it was the first one Oh, and I was like and I knew she was writing more that author And I had to wait and wait by the time I wrote about it though They were all out. Oh good. So I was like you guys are lucky you get to read them all one after I had to wait Like six months for each one But now yeah We are back with them So the next book I chose is Cinderella my daughter by Peggy Ornstein. This just sounds horrible And I said before I do in our library loan here and I had a personal moment of triumph after this one on the Friday reads blog because We got an interlibrary loan request for the book later in the morning Everybody was paying attention Attention I that reminds me to one that I just talked about the author commented on our blog Oh, that's about my when she's obviously, you know, you Google yourself if you're an artist and she said, oh, thank you so much I can't believe people are still reading my books So yeah, she I saw the post the thing pop up saying hey, there's a comment on your post Really? Oh Wow, all right, and she saw they're ready to think So Peggy Ornstein is a accomplished writer and cultural critic and when she had a daughter She was gonna offer her a positive childhood experience that didn't revolve around her daughter being pretty or a princess or being limited by anything That would be limited but because she's a girl and what she encounters in real life is A consumer consumer culture that's very different than the one she grew up in and it's one that has a lot of appeal for her daughter I Notice when I started working in libraries how different the books offered to children were than they were when I was young There's a lot of princesses. There's a lot of pink. There's a lot of Different themes marketed that just weren't there when I was young and if you go into stores and look at toys and clothes It's the same thing Everything's pink Everything's it's a lot different than when we were young and she wanted to take a look at how that happened So she takes a very personal approach to the story Her she has a great desire for her daughter to be happy but to try and Still have positive messages for her So she does take a very balanced and nuanced tone about complicated topics She also Let you know that she's still she's a human being she talks about when she Doesn't handle her frustration very well when she takes her four-year-old daughter to a store and the daughter wants to buy These hyper sexualized those brats dolls and she doesn't want to that's not what she wants for her four-year-old daughter So it is in one sense It's a classic story about a child a parent having different ideas about identity and a parent having to learn about How to let their child have their own ideas in the safest environment that the parent can provide But like I said, she's not judgmental She goes to visit some toddler beauty pageants, which is another thing that wasn't around when she was young And she talks to the families and she she doesn't judge them But she talks about what what they're getting out of it what they're looking for but also lets you know I mean they are Being exploited by the industry. They it's it's an expensive industry And the one thing that really stuck with me from the book Is the description of the processes that companies use to market to children? There's a story about how a couple of Disney executives want to a Disney on ice Production and I believe in the 80s and one of the Disney executives looked around and he saw all these girls and their Homemade costumes that they had made or that their parents had made To look like the characters that were out on the ice and they said we are losing out on so much money We need to make these costumes and sell them these costumes and that was one of the Disney really changed they had previously never allowed more than one Disney more than one Disney story in to be present at the same time like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White existed in completely different worlds They could never be on the same sheet set or the same Action figure. Yeah, they never interacted and even still this may have changed recently But even still when you see them in if there were on say like some wallpaper curtains for a girl's room They never make eye contact with each other Unless they're in the same story Now I have to look at that A lot of the princesses in pictures together and I just kind of assume that meant they were all together somewhere. Yeah Yeah, they don't interact The one thing I thought was funny about the the paperback copy I have is People magazine calls it funny and Vanity Fair calls it blood-chilling There's different ways to inside into different magazines I would recommend it to anybody who has kids or work with kids or anybody who's just I was just curious about the generational differences in how things are marketed to girls because it is different now than when I was young And she has a new book out now called girls and sex. It's about how to talk to your daughter about sex That's gotten some good reviews So, yeah As you saw I tapped the keeper Maxon Outfit up next the second one that I chose to talk about and is Probably one of my all-time favorite titles as well as series and in fact, I love this series so much I've read it three times and I've listened to it on audio it's just I Think the fascination for me is that the plot line is about time travel I've always been fascinated with it. I like shows about time travel. I like books about time travel and I for a while I wasn't sure if it was just because I wanted to change the past somehow or if it was a just a desire to experience different time period and When I was younger like a teenager it was more of a romantic view of Well, things would be better if I went back to this time travel and that is very romantic view of it And actually, you know the older I get the more I realize. No, things were not Not want to go back there, you know So anyway outlander by Diana Gavildon Starts out in 1945 Claire Randall who is a former combat nurse in World War two is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon They visit one of the stone circles that are found all over the British Isles similar to Stonehenge and She accidentally touches one of the stones during the summer solstice and Which happens to be and I don't know a whole lot about Pagan mythology, but it happens to be a very important date and things can happen. Well, it happened to her and she has suddenly thrown back to 18th century Scotland 1743 and Her old back in time by forces. She doesn't begin to understand because nothing like this has ever happened to her She becomes her destiny is intertwined with clan Mackenzie their home base is Castle Leoc and she is Immediately taken up into what's going on in 1743 Scotland which if anybody knows anything about Scottish history is only two or three years before the Battle of Colombo and Which changed Clans in Scotland forever so anyway, it's it's a series that Ms. Gavildon has researched very well, so not only is it a time travel and as a Genre kind of falls into the fantasy, you know world But she's done an excellent job so that it becomes a historical fiction she does She has talked about everything from what's going on in England and where Bonnie Prince Charlie is and what he's doing and everything leading up to Outlander as well as Claire's life and The man she becomes involved with Jamie Fraser who's you know the other main character in these and How they how she's torn between her husband Back in 1945 and her Soon-to-be husband in 1743, so Anyway, really loved the books In fact, the series is so well written There are eight of them now in the series with some little novellas, you know in between She's spun off some characters into their own series And it is also it has also just finished its second season as a stars television series and Ms. Gabelton is also involved in the series Television series like George RR Martin is with Game of Thrones So the series if you get a chance to watch it is really really close to the books and And needless to say I've been watching them Anyway highly recommended the book and the series She's still writing new books in this no series or she's no she has Yes, she has ended the series and Kind of interestingly, you know was not expecting the way she you know ended the story But you know could kind of understand, you know where she went with it So yeah, it was really fun and she got Michael to watch the series Oh, yeah, he's just as much as into it as I am because I'm initial I mean it's marketed as kind of a romance. Yes, it is But I know he said he was skeptical Yes, John is caught because we have stars John has watched a few I've come home. He's watching He had never heard about the book Outlander, I'm like, oh my gosh Do you know what you're watching? No, but it's really cool. It's a story. Yes Michael, you know said after the first couple of episodes. He said I'm not sure why but I'm really And I think is because you know the Scottish Clansmen are a very warrior-like people, you know, there's fighting and Swords and guns antique guns, you know Yes, it has, you know, so I really think it appeals to everybody, you know, not just not just to the romance I mean, obviously the romance is part of it, but it's not the main focus You know, there's much more historical stuff going on Well, I read a couple of the books and My the scene that I remember the most is when Claire notices someone else with a smallpox vaccine. Yes back in Yes, really yeah and another incident where she comes across the skull in the woods that has a filling You know and and she's got a silver filling and she's gone. Oh, this is not 1743 Yes, exactly. Yeah, so and and there she does actually meet up with a fellow time traveler and Well, she can't be the first one that test your rocket at the right time. Yeah, exactly Yeah, whether either accidentally on or on purpose. Yeah, so really good series All right back to Sally, it's gonna scream at some months. Yeah, I wrote this one in April of 2015 because at that point I was getting ready for this summer summer reading program. So I was reading books About get in the game read on your market set read and this one of course is about baseball and umpires Casey so Snowden who's 12 his father and grandfather run a sanctioned school for baseball umpires and Casey and his best friend Zeke help each fall the school is in the fall and this September They only have 80 students instead of the usual 100s and Casey's beginning to worry about the future He wants to be a sports writer. He doesn't want to run the umpire school But he knows that this is father's calling and he's starting to worry about what will happen for his father well as things go along he's writing for the school newspaper and and One day he realizes that because they only have 80 students one instructor is not there And he's the instructor who usually organized and ran the culminating event you suck up day So that day they have many people from the town gather around and they sit in the stands and they yell things and Throw sanctioned things because they're more controlling here in this School then and then in the real world an actual city Yeah At the students so that the ump students can really get a sense of what is it like to have everybody yelling at you and throwing things They prepare them for the real and along with that there are throughout the book Situations in the class because he's helping There's one student who has to keep being told to speak up to be confident If you're gonna yell strike yell strike if you're gonna yell out yell out don't say out He has to really Project confidence and that's kind of a life lesson for the boy as well Well, so they decide that that casey and sinker seek are gonna run the you suck up day themselves and That goes pretty well There's another side story in there as he's working on Practicing to be a sports writer. He notices that one of the students in the ump school this year is a former baseball pro Who went through? the drug issue Hoopla and is now in this ump school Looking toward his future. He got straightened out and he's thinking wow, this is a great story I can break this story and I'll be great and and but Fortunately over time he begins to realize that that's not the right thing to do He talks with the guy. So there's a number of levels of things going on in his dad's life's work But what really grabbed me about this and I have to say I'm not the first in line for sports books So it really made me laugh when we chose this theme for this summer because I thought oh gosh I'm gonna read her sports books left and right But this one grabbed me because of the title and the picture on the cover and then the thought of the you suck ump day Which sounds hilarious and I want to go can I be in the crowd? Everything that came together in the book It's a real fun look at the mind of a 12 year old and what it takes to be an umpire And so we also have a page that I looked at after I read the book And I put this on my Friday reads and this is the official Major League Baseball page about how to enroll in a school and an actual thing to roll the school and learn how to be Well, they are there's two schools. This was the third. It doesn't really exist Just those two do but it was fascinating to read The information here on this page about really becoming a baseball umpire So maybe somebody will be inspired to go check that out and try and it was a fun book And also works great for this summer summer reading All right, and our final book to wrap up is Susan Okay My final book is the book that I just did a Friday reads on it's grasshopper dungbell by Andrew Smith I hardly ever read or listen to a book more than once even if I love it this book I Listen to it twice. I listen to it the first time I listened to it a second time and I actually ordered a used coffee through Amazon, so I'd have the print and being able to Flip through the print was a good reminder that sometimes you notice things when you see it and writing that you don't when you're listening It's really hard to flip back on audio to Refind a passage and to really like reinforce maybe oh, there is a connection between this passage and this passage I'm not patient enough to try to fill with my Device to get back to the exact right section This is a book that I just for some reason just absolutely loved it And I've been trying to get everyone around me to read it and nobody else loves it as much as me The people that I'm getting to read it are people that I often Connect with with over books, you know We'll often react the same way to this book for that book. Nobody else loves it quite as much as me So it's been interesting. It's been an interesting process just to try to figure out Okay, what is it about it that makes it speak so much to me and I feel like if I figure that out I'll figure out something about myself as a person So what's it about on the surface? It's about two 16 year old boys Robbie Breeze and Austin Serba Austin Serba is the narrator. So I guess he's the main character And it set in a fictional town Ealing, Iowa economically depressed and there is some things happen and plague Is released basically There are these six foot tall praying mantises that are Eating people in the town. It's basically apocalyptic. Yeah, and the boys are I Wouldn't say they're responsible that they're kind of involved They see what happens that they know what's going on. They're probably the only people in the world who know what's going on So on the one hand you've got this really Really You know science fiction type plot Which it's not a plot. It's not the type of plot that I would normally go for On the other hand you have this really compelling main character narrator who is incredibly introspective who's incredibly honest And at some level I think it doesn't really matter what the sort of ostensible plot of the book is I almost think it could be some It's almost like there has to be some sort of plot going on just as a foil or backup for these characters in their relationships But it could have been anything in some ways. I don't think that I mean they have a lot of fun with the particular Plot devices in the events, but it could have been anything what really compelled me was the main character and one of the things that's really unique is that he is He realizes that he is In love with and attracted to his girlfriend and also his best friend Robbie who is gay And so he's very confused about this But he's also very honest. He never tries to hide it from himself or Squelch it or suppress it or whatever repress it. He's very honest with himself. He's confused He's also this isn't kind of an interesting Device throughout the book starts out talking about recording history and how do we record history? He's really interested in history and he has been writing journals recording his own history the story of his life And so he's always trying to get down everything that happened And trying to be as honest as possible So between his interest in how do we record history? What all is related to everything else? So, you know, he's got these weird digressions in the book that can't almost be annoying But yet it has something to do with how he views history that Things that seem unrelated are related and if this didn't happen 200 years ago in Poland then this wouldn't be happening in contemporary time in Iowa, so So there's a lot of, you know, he thinks a lot about that Somewhere I read that Andrew Smith that somebody wrote to him and basically complained that they're you know And I don't know if it was about this book or one of his other books But complaining that there's no teenage boy that's that introspective I was pretty introspective when I was that age. I thought a lot about a lot of things so It's a very different book when he wrote it He didn't think that he had sort of stopped writing for public He thought he had stopped writing for publication at the time because of Some Something that was written in I think it was the Wall Street Journal maybe talking about YA literature And how dark it was and he was named his work He was the first author named a sort of an example of this jar how How dark this Some why in literature is and it really upset him and so he'd sort of been decided he wasn't gonna write the publication anymore So he wrote this thinking nobody was gonna read it And he talks about the fact that his son had just gone away for college for the first time So he's missing his son and he said his son's probably missing him because his son Contacted him and asked his dad to send him something that he'd written. He wanted to read some of his dad's writings Dad sent him this and said, uh, okay, but you have to tell me if you think I need therapy after Honestly, I think his son really liked it and somehow some published convinced him to get it published It is very different than I've read subsequently some of his other YA novels and I would say this is very different Is this one's still marketed as YA though? It's more than just YA And he actually has I think spoken on this topic of what is YA literature is it? Literature that is written for that particular age group and is and is made to be Appropriate for that age group or is it written about that particular time in your life when you're going through all those changes and He says he writes about that time period because it was such a Formative time period for him and going back prospectively trying to explore those issues in that period of time as a way to You know think about and that's something who we are. So that's sort of his school be of Interest to anyone at any age right those of us. I mean you were talking about when you were younger What you thought about time travel and now you're really at a totally different. Oh, yeah, that's much more realistic But it's good yet to read about you know Like someone who was like you when you were a child or a teenager But as an adult trying to figure out why am I the way I am now is it from this and then this story could help me Yeah, and of course he has stories about kids who've written to him saying God Adults that have written to him kids saying also, you know, this makes me feel so bad so much better about myself Or adults saying I wish I'd have this to me when I was that age go having some of these thoughts of I kind of feel that way about Judy Blume. Oh, yeah So I'll stop there Maybe somebody will email you about having read it. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I mean Lisa Kelly She really I guess you would say she humored me and she listened to it I don't think she hated it But she said she has no idea who she'd recommend it to like she couldn't think of anybody She necessarily recommended to you that it was a good thing for so I'm still trying to make everyone It does sound very interesting like from just well looking at it. You would know what it's next about right And it says kind of a Plandestine subtlety I don't think we're you know, you're like it doesn't scream why a it doesn't scream apocalyptic weird whatever's going on I Think it has been optioned for a movie and I was thinking as you're describing This sounds like a movie director that they sort of have on tap is the guy you did Shawn at the day Really? Oh As the actor or the director the director. Oh the record That could be Y'all have to keep us updated Alright, that's our last book that we had to talk about today We did run over but that's okay. We we go as long as need to on this show Anybody has any questions comments? I know you didn't throughout you can let us know But I think we will just wrap it up quickly since we are running a little long today I am gonna pop back over and find my mouse to our website here That said the way we do this is a series We've been doing on our blog and if you go here on the library commission website and then go to and compass which is our main Library commission blog and And search for Friday Oh wrong keyboard too many computers Friday reads Well, you get first is today show that's most recent thing But if you just scroll down you will see you'll get a list of all our ones and then like as Susan said the most recent one That's been done was last week's Her book, but you can just scroll through all these and see all the different titles that have been written about It doesn't any maintain a page that just lists all the I don't know if she has something I think there may be somewhere if this is how I went to look for it just to see how long I've been doing it Let me do a search and see if I can find Just Commission site Oh well here book reviews by NLC staff Yes Nice so yeah, so you go here and find all the different ones that all of us have ever written about and see who I don't need that kind of pressure Anyhow go here. You'll see all the books that we've written about you want to see what everybody here the commission has been doing I Didn't know that was there so that's fine. And you know, yeah, that will be linked to from the show notes then all right We'll get back to and compass live that set reps up for today's show Thank you everyone for watching and hearing about all of our our titles that we've been done doing They said we just picked two for each of us. We've all done more than that I think yeah, so there's a lot more out there to read two years worth every Friday I'm not 100 and something books were at by now and far as I know it'll keep going as I said Laura Johnson started up Amy has taken it over and she is determined to keep it going. So keep your eyes out for any of our new recommendations Encompass live the show you're watching if you just Google that anywhere Luckily so far. I don't know what this is, but nobody's named anything our show So you just Google us and find us right there The show has been recorded as always is and right here beneath our upcoming shows is where a link is to our archives So you can click there and you'll see all of our previous shows listed here and see last week We had yeah our recording goes up on YouTube the presentation will go up on our slide chair I'll put these slides up if you want to see them and then we'll have links to Sally's page with umpires and that page with our list of all the titles of all the Friday reads books if you're interested in Checking those out So that's where this show will be my later this afternoon I'll say as long as everything processes quickly and YouTube's up to speed. I'm shouldn't take me too long to get that up there Hope you join us next week on our topic is the queer Omaha archives. This is a new Collection at the University of Prescott Omaha in their Chris library where they are now preserving and collecting any resources about the history of People in in our area actually so it's actually it's called the queer Omaha because it is specific to The Omaha region in this Midwest area So they're reaching out and finding any sort of documentation and materials and things to collect into one place I heard about it on facebook a friend of mine mentioned it and they had their recently their official grand opening last month Month before just this summer. I don't remember exactly the date But we'll find out because Amy Schindler who's the director of archives and special collections at UNO will be with us Talk about this new Collection that they've got put together so that should be really fun Well interesting so join us next week for that and for any of our other topics You see that we got all the way through august scheduled here and I'm always adding more so keep my open for the ones coming up after next week We are also on uh facebook So if you are a big facebook user, you can pop over to facebook and like our page And if it gets there we go Facebook has this new pop-up here Like our page. You'll see reminders of when the new show like I've reminded people today login today's show I reminded people reminder. I post reminders And then when our recording is available I post it on here as well So if you're big on facebook like us over there, and you'll get notified of what's going on with the show a couple times a week Other than that that wraps up today. Thank you very much everyone for joining me today and sharing about our books Maybe in a year So we'll do another round and have other people like I said get all that's a good idea And you know just swipe of what it looks like here. We've got a lot of of our mail staff. They're doing this as well So they're out there in jama. Maybe we'll get that I can do the next show. Yes Can you you can use that to pressure them into being on the show? Yes we All right, uh, let's see So thank you very much. I think I have one. Let's see if I have any questions here or comments Okay, we're good to go. All right. Thanks a lot. See you next time on encompass live. Bye