Posted 11:59 a.m. Friday, May 31, 2024
Once Upon a Time...
Once upon a time (May 2023), in a land not so far away (Murphy Library), the hero of our tale (hi! it’s me! I’m the hero, it’s me!) was bracing himself for another summer at UWL. You probably just read that and went, “Bracing himself? Isn’t summer vacation one of the perks of working in education?” As a cataloguer who works in the library’s tech service department, summer is like any other season, just more muted. Gone are most of the students shuffling their way between buildings, the steady stream of new books to catalogues becomes a trickle at best and drought at worst, and, most devastatingly, Murphy’s Mug (and their baked goods) is closed.
To give you a concrete example I reached out to tech services and access services librarian Scott Pfitzinger for the numbers from our security gates at the front of the library that measure how many people are coming in and out of the library any given day, week, or month. Since it measures how many people are both coming in and out of the library, you take the gate number and then divide it in half. We here at Man of Leisure only allow the simplest of mathematical equations.
In April 2023 the monthly total was around 54,000 or 27,000 people. Obviously, a lot of those people are students who frequent the library daily. Fast forward to June of 2023 and those same security gates registered just shy of 4,000 or about 2,000 people the whole month.
“Looks like in the summer we have about six to eight percent of the numbers during our fall semester and maybe eight to ten percent of the spring semester numbers,” Pfitzinger told me.
Quite the vibe shift.
Speaking of shifting, Murphy Library’s leisure reading section had originally been located on the second floor but in 2022 had been moved down to the prime real estate location just off from Murphy’s Mug. The move had, initially, renewed interest in students and staff, but the leisure section is like one of the many potted plants scattered around the first floor of Murphy: it doesn’t stay alive without being carefully looked after. You may not water a bookshelf, but you do need tend to it to make sure its thriving.
We have lots of systems in place help us know what’s being read, what’s languishing on the shelf but sometimes you just dive in and see for yourself so that’s what I did. Over the course of 106 days, I managed to read 101 books. I’ve compiled a list of book summaries and reviews that will be presented in five sections. I hope you come along with me on this journey. I hope you find books that you will end up being favorites. I hope you deeply disagree with some of my opinions. Most importantly, I hope you enjoy this project as much as I did while doing it. So get yourself a nice cool drink, put on your reading glasses if needed and let’s get to the first set of books.
1. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Keywords: Romance, Historical Fiction, Old Hollywood
Synopsis: Reclusive old Hollywood movie legend Evelyn Hugo is ready to tell her life story to a young writer, and it’s a story exposing a lifetime of highs, lows, and celluloid secrets.
Review: What starts off as a seemingly obvious riff on Elizabeth Taylor’s legendary number of marriages reveals itself to be a clever examination of fame, family, identity and the sacrifices people make for all three.
2. Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Keywords: Romance, LGBTQ, Enemies to Lovers
Synopsis: Boy meets boy. Boy hates boy. Boys cause international incident at royal wedding and must pretend to be friends to smooth it over and end up falling in love with each other all while one boy’s mother runs for re-election as President of the United States. Tale as old as time.
Review: When it comes to friends to lovers, a popular trope in romantic stories, Red, White and Royal Blue doesn’t reinvent the wheel but does put that wheel on a charming new vehicle.
3-6. Heartstopper vol. 1-4 by Alice Oseman
Keywords: Coming-of-age, LGBTQ, graphic novel, young adult
Synopsis: A coming of age story following two boys falling in love, finding themselves and trying to survive adolescence in one piece, all in the format of a graphic novel.
Review: A quick read that improves with each book as the series eventually strikes the right balance of sweet and serious.
7. The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie
Keywords: Mystery
Synopsis: Amateur sleuth Mrs. Marple is back on the case when her friends find a dead body in the library of their home.
Review: An enjoyable read that only loses some of its spark when Mrs. Marple is not the central figure investigating the murder.
8. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Keywords: Classic fiction, fishing
Synopsis: A Hemingway classic, the story follows an old fisherman as he tries to capture a fish and all the resulting existential questions he must answer in the midst of that pursuit.
Review: Your enjoyment of this novella may be swayed by how much talk of sea and fishing you can stand. But if you can get past that, this book is great look at one man making peace with all the what-ifs and what-could-have-beens of his life while out on the open ocean.
9. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Keywords: Classic fiction, romance, bullfighting
Synopsis: A group of American expatriates travel around Europe, drinking and loving and fighting in the aftermath of World War I.
Review: A gaggle of Americans boozing and acting a fool in different glamorous foreign locales while not dealing with all their various traumas? I know, it sounds like I just described the latest hit series on Bravo but The Sun Also Rises proves that a book being a classic doesn’t mean it has to be stuffy.
10. The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan
Keywords: Science fiction, dystopian, satire
Synopsis: After a momentary lapse in judgement threatens her custody of her child, a young mother enrolls in the School for Good Mothers to learn how to be the perfect maternal figure.
Review: A blistering piece of satirical science fiction in the tradition of Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives, Chan’s The School for Good Mothers is a mix of sharply written dialogue, finely drawn characters and a plotline that the less you know about going into it the better it is.
11-13. The Summer I Turned Pretty series (The Summer I Turned Pretty, It’s Not Summer Without You, We’ll Always Have Summer) by Jenny Han
Keywords: Romance, coming-of-age, young adult, love triangles
Synopsis: This young adult trilogy follows the romantic entanglement of Isabel “Belly” Conklin with brothers Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher as they summer together at the Fisher family summer home.
Review: I will be very honest, reader. When I got to the end of this trilogy, I asked myself if this was merely a young adult book series or was it in fact a government experiment created for the sole purpose of breaking my spirit. That being said, my aggravation at pretty much every character (especially the central love triangle) is an exhibit of how the series does get you invested in their romances, and you do want to see it to its conclusion. Unfortunately for this series, the final book squanders a lot of the dramatic tension built across the first two books to come to an ending that is shocking in its inept way of tying up all the loose plot threads.
14. The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Keywords: Thriller, workplace, satire
Synopsis: A young Black woman working at a mostly White publishing house finds a kindred spirit in a new Black female hire but there may be more to the eye of both.
Review: Described as “Jordan Peel does The Devil Wears Prada,” this fast-paced thriller is reminiscent of that for sure but is so much more as it tackles respectability politics, the occasional hollowness of alleged representation in media, and how your greatest enemy can be just one cubicle away from you.
15. Ejaculate Responsibly by Gabrielle Blair
Keywords: Nonfiction, Reproductive rights
Synopsis: A nonfiction look at sex education with the thesis that every abortion is the result of a man ejaculating irresponsibly and how we view abortions, sexual health and contraception should stem from that.
Review: A must read, Blair lays out her argument that fundamentally all abortions are the results of a man ejaculating irresponsibly that flips a lot of pre-existing notions about pregnancy/abortion on its head in a concise, easy to read, visually dynamic way. It may not necessarily sway the reader but at the very least will provoke needed debate.
16. The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie
Keywords: Mystery
Synopsis: The iconic Hercules Poirot tries to track down a serial killer who is murdering people one letter a time.
Review: A pleasant, quick-moving mystery that is further proof of Agatha Christie’s powers as a mystery novelist.
17. Afterparties: Stories by Anthony Veasna So
Keywords: Contemporary short stories
Synopsis: A collection of short stories, Afterparties follows the interconnected lives of Cambodian Americans in California
Review: It is hard to overstate how much I enjoyed this collection of short stories. Funny, sad, spiritual, uplifting, depressing, these stories run the gamut of emotions, often within the same story.
18. My Government Means to Kill Me by Rasheed Newson
Keywords: Historical fiction, LGBTQ
Synopsis: A historical fiction novel, written in the style of a memoir, the book takes on the gay rights movement as seen through the eyes of a young gay Black man as he hobnobs with a host of influential historical figures.
Review: Admirable in its ambitions but clunky in its execution, Newson’s book is a highly informative historical novel that would be a good jumping off point for folks interested in LGTBQ history.
19. Farm Girl: A Wisconsin Memoir by Beuna Coburn Carlson
Keywords: Memoir, Wisconsin history
Synopsis: In this memoir, Carlson details her life as a girl growing up on a farm in Wisconsin during the Depression.
Review: While not particularly thrilling in terms of plot, Farm Girl does offer interesting glimpses into a bygone era of rural Wisconsin farm life through Carlson’s genial writing.
20. Who is Maud Dixon? By Alexandra Andrews
Keywords: Thriller, workplace satire
Synopsis: A young woman in publishing finds herself having to answer a couple questions: who the person behind the penname Maud Dixon is and what’s the worst thing you’re willing to do to get a bestseller
Review: This hilariously dark send-up of the publishing industry is a blast to read specifically because of all the ambitious monsters it introduces the readers to. Some may find the lack of sympathetic characters off-putting, but I found myself unable to put down the book as I wanted to find out their next dastardly deed.
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Column Two: Life, Death and the Pages In-Between
Column Three: The Summer I Turned Pretty Sober
Column Four: (101) Books of Summer