Leveling the Playing Field: Sports Non-Fiction

You're a pretty athletic bunch out there, Burqueños. You run and walk in the Duke City Marathon and the Run for the Zoo; some of you take part in one of our two roller derbies, Duke City or Albuquerque; you ski and snowboard; you cycle; you hike. Some of you take advantage of the many recreation opportunities city parks to have offer. There are many of you who, whether active yourselves or no, follow sports - maybe you just watched football on Thanksgiving. Or cheered for the Astros during the World Series. Or maybe you're looking forward to the next World Cup.

We just want to make sure you know that we have resources in the library catalog for you, too! And not just exercise and weight loss reads, either, though we certainly have plenty of those titles. Here's a smattering of sports non-fiction we hope you might find intriguing:

The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports by Jeff Passan

Coach Wooden and Me: Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and David Fisher

Running With a Police Escort: Tales From the Back of the Pack by Jill Grunenwald [eBook]

Game Worn: Baseball Treasures From the Game's Greatest Heroes and Moments by Stephen Wong and Dave Grob

Epic Bike Rides of the World: Explore the Planet's Most Thrilling Cycling Routes

Dust Bowl Girls: The Inspiring Story of the Team That Barnstormed Its Way to Basketball Glory by Lydia Reeder

Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History by Cait Murphy

My Cubs: A Love Story by Scott Simon

Home and Away: Writing the Beautiful Game by Karl Ove Knausgaard and Fredrik Ekelund 

Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias by Don Van Natta Jr.

Off Speed: Baseball, Pitching, and the Art of Deception by Terry McDermott

A Life Well Played: My Stories by Arnold Palmer

Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape by Jessica Luther

Ways of Grace: Stories of Activism, Adversity, and How Sports Can Bring Us Together by James Blake

Women Who Tri: A Reluctant Athlete's Journey Into the Heart of America's Newest Obsession by Alicia DiFabio [eBook]

How Cycling Can Save the World by Peter Walker

Sting Like a Bee: Muhammad Ali vs. the United States of America, 1966-1971 by Leigh Montville

Horror Beyond the Bestsellers: Recommended Authors

Horrified Reader. Photographer. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/115_2842737/1/115_2842737/cite. Accessed 2 Nov 2017.

Halloween may be over, but we're still feeling spooky! 😨 Are you a fan of  the horror genre? Did you read Goosebumps as a child, or Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories? We're pretty sure every horror reader - and some folks who don't even like horror - are familiar with names like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, and H.P. Lovecraft. Even many horror films have been based on books - William Peter Blatty wrote The Exorcist, Ira Levin wrote Rosemary's Baby, Robert Bloch is the author of Psycho, and The Haunting is based on The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. But not every horror author is a household name, and the following is a list of some authors you might have missed. We've also included some recommendations to help you find even more new horror after the list! Do you have horror recommendations? Let us know in the comments!

Joe Hill

Christopher Golden

Brian Keene

Stephen Graham Jones

John Ajvide Lindqvist

Nick Cutter

Ania Ahlborn

Kaaron Warren

David Moody

Tananarive Due

Jonathan Janz

Victor LaValle

Ellen Datlow

Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Paul Tremblay


If you're looking for scary movie suggestions, check out Reel Terror: The Scary, Bloody, Gory, Hundred-Year History of Classic Horror Films or Pumpkin Cinema: The Best Movies for Halloween.

Recommended online resources: Horror Writers Association, home of the Bram Stoker Awards; articles tagged "Horror" on LitReactor; This Is Horror, a website which specializes "in horror fiction and the craft of writing," including a podcast, book reviews, news, and more; and RA For All: Horror -  the American Library Association's readers' advisory guide to horror. (RA For All recently featured "31 Days of Horror.") Also make sure to check out our eResource NoveList, which features booklists like "Blood-Drenched Horror," "Creature Feature," and "Classic Chills," or sign up to get a horror newsletter delivered to your email bi-monthly from The Public Library! Free with your valid library card.

Portrait Of Vampira. Photographer. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/115_2842327/1/115_2842327/cite. Accessed 2 Nov 2017.

Medical History

Nurse. Photograph. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/139_1891082/1/139_1891082/cite. Accessed 1 Nov 2017.

Even better: an iron lung. I’ve never seen an iron lung, but the newspapers had pictures of children in iron lungs, back when people still got polio. These pictures – the iron lung a cylinder, a gigantic sausage roll of metal, with a head sticking out one end of it, always a girl’s head, the hair flowing across the pillow, the eyes large, nocturnal – fascinated me, more than stories about children who went out on thin ice and fell through and were drowned, or children who played on the railroad tracks and had their arms and legs cut off by trains. You could get polio without knowing how or where, end up in an iron lung without knowing why. Something you breathed in or ate, or picked up from the dirty money other people had touched. You never knew.
~Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

What do you think about when you think about medical history? For us, it's the Mutter Museum exhibit we saw at the Albuquerque Museum several years back. It's T. Coraghessan Boyle's The Road to Wellville, Andrea Barrett's The Air We Breathe (and New Mexico's own history of "lungers"), The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the movie Burke & Hare. We think of what we've heard about medicine during the wars - amputations during the Civil War, aftereffects of the deadly use of mustard gas in WWI, MASH (did you know the movie and TV series were based on a book?). Stories about the influenza pandemic in 1918, like Katherine Anne Porter's poignant "Pale Horse, Pale Rider".  We're just waiting to see how the PBS TV series Victoria deals with Queen Victoria being given chloroform for the birth of her last two children after birthing seven other children without anesthetic. And, of course, the iron lung, as Margaret Atwood has referenced above.

Of course, we know there's a lot more to the history of medicine than what our smattering of education, a lot of it garnered from pop culture and media, has provided us with. We thought you might be interested in exploring this fascinating topic with us, so we present you with the following list of books from our library catalog.

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris

Strange Medicine: A Shocking History of Real Medical Practices Through the Ages by Nathan Belofsky

Hysteria  text by Richard Appignanesi ; drawings by Oscar Zarate

Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War and the World It Made by Richard Rhodes

The Man Who Touched His Own Heart: True Tales of Science, Surgery, and Mystery by Robert Dunn

Pandora's DNA: Tracing the Breast Cancer Genes Through History, Science, and One Family Tree by Lizzie Stark

The Enlightened Mr. Parkinson: The Pioneering Life of a Forgotten Surgeon and the Mysterious Disease That Bears His Name by Cherry Lewis

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney

Dr. Mütter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation At the Dawn of Modern Medicine by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine by Ira M. Rutkow

Kill or Cure: An Illustrated History of Medicine by Steve Parker

Lotions, Potions, and Deadly Elixirs: Frontier Medicine in the American West by Wayne Bethard

Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital by David Oshinsky

For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women by Barbara Ehrenreich

The Daily Practice of Compassion: A History of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Its People, and Its Mission, 1964-2014 by Dora L. Wang

The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics, and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease by Meredith Wadman

The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markel

Meow-velous: Cats at the Library

DOMESTIC CAT. Photography. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/138_1073169/1/138_1073169/cite. Accessed 28 Oct 2017.

We're gutted to have missed National Cat Day on October 29th, but as Sandra Boynton pointed out on Facebook, "...March 28 is Respect Your Cat Day, May 30 is International Hug Your Cat Day, June 15 is World Catnip Awareness Day, June 25 is Take Your Cat to Work Day, August 8 is World Cat Day, Sept 1 is Ginger Cat Appreciation Day, Oct 16 is Feral Cat Day, and Oct 27 is National Black Cat Day," so we have plenty of other chances to celebrate our purry pals. Cats and libraries are a natural match! The tradition of having a cat in the library is allegedly dates back to the Egyptians, and there are cats in libraries worldwide. (There are also cats in the Hermitage Museum in Russia. Which has a library.) There are famous library cats - Dewey! Baker & Taylor! - and not so famous ones.

They have a job description:

1. Reducing stress for all humans who pay attention to him.
2.  Sitting by the front door every morning at 9:00 am to greet the public as they enter the library.
3. Sampling all boxes that enter the library for security problems and comfort level.
4. Attending all meetings in the Round Room as official library ambassador.
5. Providing comic relief for staff and visitors whenever possible.
6. Climbing in book bags and briefcases while patrons are studying or trying to retrieve needed papers underneath him.
7. Generating free national and worldwide publicity for Library. (This entails sitting still for photographs, smiling for the camera, and generally being cute.)
8. Working toward status as world’s most finicky cat by refusing all but the most expensive, delectable foods — and even turning up his nose at those most of the time.

Allergy complaints have made their positions more scarce recently. One cat was nearly banished, but ended up staying on the job after a petition was circulated and the city council voted to retain his services.

There's a stereotype of the cat-loving librarian. We don't know that all librarians love cats, but we sure do! Our library system does not have library cats, but we'd like to point out that even without a resident cat, the library catalog offers plenty of ways to enjoy felines - dander-free! Here's some standout items:

The Inner Life of Cats: The Science and Secrets of Our Mysterious Feline Companions by Thomas McNamee

The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Power of Meow by David Michie [eBook]

Shop Cats of New York by Tamar Arslanian

Cat Tales: True Stories of Kindness and Companionship With Kitties by Aline Alexander Newman

The Cat Whisperer: Why Cats Do What They Do-- And How to Get Them To Do What You Want by Mieshelle Nagelschneider

Men With Cats: Intimate Portraits of Feline Friendship by David Williams

Call of the Cats: What I Learned About Love and Life From a Feral Colony by Andrew Bloomfield

The Old Man and the Cat: A Love Story by Nils Uddenberg

Total Cat Mojo: The Ultimate Guide to Life With Your Cat by Jackson Galaxy

Lost and Found Cat: The True Story of Kunkush's Incredible Journey by Doug Kuntz and Amy Shrodes[eBook]

DVDs

The Story of Cats

The Secret Life of Cats 

Kedi

A Street Cat Named Bob

Featured Author: Angela Carter

This year has seen the publication of a new book about British author Angela Carter, who was, according to the book's publisher, "[w]idely acknowledged as one of the most important English writers of the last century...[her] work stands out for its bawdiness and linguistic zest, its hospitality to the fantastical and the absurd, and its extraordinary inventiveness and range. Her life was as vigorously modern and unconventional as anything in her fiction." The new book is called The Invention of Angela Carter by Edmund Gordon, and it is heavily based on memories of her contemporaries and her own personal journals.

Not familiar with Angela Carter? She did die in 1992 of cancer aged only 51 - a voice silenced too soon - and is not hugely well known outside of England. Raised in South London, in her late teens she rebelled from a sheltered, overprotected childhood to embrace a lifestyle that included being politically active - she considered herself a socialist and a feminist - and building "a reputation as someone who would say anything and take any risk." Carter worked briefly as a reporter, as a co-editor of a literary magazine, and taught at several universities, but mainly worked ferociously on her own "surprising and transgressive" books, including a book-length essay called The Sadeian Woman. She won a literary prize that allowed her to travel to Japan, where she led a bohemian lifestyle and took up with the first in a succession of younger men. She ended up back in England in the 1970s and had a child at the age of forty-three. Her literary protégés included Salman Rushdie, who called Carter a "benevolent white witch." Margaret Atwood called Carter a "fairy godmother." These kind of otherworldly descriptions have stuck to her posthumous reputation, though she was not overfond of that style of classification in life.

Her fiction, though she began writing with a more socially realistic bent, is "punctuated by extravagant flights of imagination," concerned with "“the social fictions that regulate our lives,” and is often associated with adjectives such as "savage,"  "thorny," and "fantastic."  Perhaps unsurprisingly, Carter was a fan of Wuthering Heights, and her "male romantic leads tend to be feral, violent, and encrusted with dirt." Author Joan Acocella says:

The English novelist Angela Carter is best known for her 1979 book “The Bloody Chamber,” which is a kind of updating of the classic European fairy tales. This does not mean that Carter’s Little Red Riding Hood chews gum or rides a motorcycle but that the strange things in those tales—the werewolves and snow maidens, the cobwebbed caves and liquefying mirrors—are made to live again by means of a prose informed by psychoanalysis and cinema and Symbolist poetry.

It's suggested that Carter's influences ranged from Baudelaire and Rimbaud to science fiction. Sex and autonomy were two of the most notable subjects that she returns to again and again in her writings. Her work was a way of questioning the world around her, and she was very clear that she did not have the answers.

The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories

Nights at the Circus  

About the author: Angela Carter by Lorna Sage [eBook]

Part of the "Writers and Their Work" series, this book is described on Google Books thusly: "Although Angela Carter's work is considered part of the contemporary canon, its true strangeness is still only partially understood. Lorna Sage argues that one key to a better understanding of Carter's writings is the extraordinary intelligence with which she reads the cultural signs of our times. From camp subversiveness in the 1960s to fairy stories, gender-politics, and the theoretical 'pleasure of the text', which she made so real in her writing, Carter legitimized the life of fantasy, and celebrated the fertility of the female imagination more actively than any other writer of her generation. Lorna Sage's study explores the roots of Carter's originality, covering all her novels as well as some short stories and non-fiction."

For readalikes of Angela Carter, consider Jeanette Winterson, A.S. Byatt, Sarah Waters, Margaret Atwood, Katherine Dunn, Emma Donoghue, Francesca Lia Block, and Salman Rushdie.

Workplace Drama

OFFICE: AN AMERICAN WORKPLACE, THE (2005) - FISCHER, JENNA. Photography. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/144_1563023/1/144_1563023/cite. Accessed 25 Oct 2017.

If your workplace is a drama-free zone, consider yourself lucky. Many workers deal with unfairness, questionable activities, abusive bosses, unprofessional colleagues, or just a "culture of dysfunction" in the workplace. Life coach Lori Scherwin says "No one should ever have to work in an environment that causes your stomach to go in quivers but the unfortunate reality is it's more normal than we'd prefer. Often professionals 'accept it' as is, which can do more harm for you in the long-run, both professionally and also personally." Everyone has bad days, but there are a whole lots of red flags that indicate your workplace is toxic - backstabbing, micromanaging, bullying, internal competition, with no concern from management about work-life balance and dissent being discouraged. Depending on how toxic your workplace is, you might need more than good advice, but Mashable, The Muse, Lifehacker, Huffington Post, and even Ivanka Trump all have suggestions for coping with workplace drama. Us? We don't pretend to have the answers, but we're always willing to take a look in a book. The Rumpus and The New Yorker had some suggestions of  "books with bad bosses" that you might find useful, and we've added a few of our own.


Fiction

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville [eBook]

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

The Assistants by Camille Perri

The Circle by Dave Eggers

Lightning Rods by Helen Dewitt

The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips

A Window Opens by Elisabeth Egan

Non- Fiction

Cubed: A History of the Office by Nikil Saval

Making Work Work: The Positivity Solution For Any Work Environment by Shola Richards

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton

No More Work: Why Full Employment Is a Bad Idea by James Livingston

First Jobs: True Tales of Bad Bosses, Quirky Coworkers, Big Breaks, and Small Paychecks edited by Merritt Watt

Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford

The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable For Managers (And Their Employees) by Patrick Lencioni

A World of Work: Imagined Manuals For Real Jobs edited by Ilana Gershon

The Well-Read Witch

Witches: five silhouetted figures. [Photograph]. Retrieved from Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest.
http://quest.eb.com/search/125_1229428/1/125_1229428/cite

One thing I know for sure is that I am too lazy, disorganized and anti-social to be a competent witch who belongs to a close-knit coven. I never know what phase of the moon we are in and my black thumb prevents me from cultivating the necessary herb garden for effective rituals and spells. I don't even cook from recipe books, so putting together a whole spell is out of the question. I have never read any of the Harry Potter books.   However, that doesn't mean I'm not intrigued by witches, Wiccans, pagans, and the spiritually adventurous.

Whether you celebrate Halloween, harvest festivals in the church parking lot, or Samhain, witches are a part of our collective imagination and historical record and autumn is the time they are most likely to be on our imaginative radar. Witches, witchcraft, witch hunters, and witch panics make for riveting reading in the categories of fiction and non-fiction. So keep one lamp on for yourself, pretend you're not home to hand out candy, and read about witches.

Non-Fiction

America Bewitched: The Story of Witchcraft After Salem by Owen Davies
A Brief History of Witchcraft by Lois Martin
Brujas, Bultos, y Brasas: Tales of Witchcraft and the Supernatural in the Pecos Valley collected and edited by Nasario Garcia
The Crafty Witch: 101 Ideas for Every Occasion by Willow Polson
The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-Hunting in the Western World by John Demos
The Penguin Book of Witches edited by Katherine Howe
Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials by Aarilynne Roach
Wiccan Celebrations: Inspiration for Living By Nature's Cycle by Silver Elder

Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants by Claudia Muller-Eberling, Christian Ratsch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl

Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English
Witches, Rakes, and Rogues: True Stories of Scam, Scandal, Murder,and Mayhem in Boston, 1630-1775 by D. Brenton Simons


Fiction

Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness
The Book of Spirits by James Reese
Brida by Paulo Coehlo
Bruja Brouhaha by Rochelle Staab
The Burning Times by Jeanne Kalogridis
The Circle by Bentley Little
Dark Birthright by Jeanne Treat
Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

The Witching Hour by Anne Rice

Lasher by Anne Rice
Taltos: Lives of the Mayfair Witches by Anne Rice

Cosplay: Wearing Your Fandom

Japanese woman in cosplay outfit, Harajuku, Tokyo, Japan, Asia. Photography. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/151_2569803/1/151_2569803/cite. Accessed 14 Oct 2017.

For me personally, cosplay is the strongest and purest way to express your love for a fandom. Creating a costume from scratch by spending days and nights with your sewing machine or heat gun and using most of your hard-earned money to bring this dream to life takes passion and pure dedication. Before cosplay you just consumed the art and worlds of other artists by reading comics, watching movies or playing video games, but now you're becoming the artist yourself!
~Svetlana Quindt AKA Kamui Cosplay

We confess, our first introduction to cosplay was when we happened upon Shoichi Aoki's Fruits in the early oughts. This book of portraits of Japanese street kids in Tokyo's Harajuku district, taken from a popular fanzine of the same name, is probably more about fashion than cosplay, but it is about having fun with fashion. Though there are a lot of "Gothic Lolitas," you also find references to anime such as Sailor Moon popping up. But cosplay existed long before 2000. The first recorded cosplay (a portmanteau of costume play) involving an established character - as opposed to a masquerade or fancy dress party - took place at the 1st World Science Fiction Convention in 1939, according to Wikipedia, with fan costuming at conventions taking off slowly and primarily in party settings. The term cosplay was not actually coined until 1984, although fan costuming had been a phenomenon in Japan since the 1970s. Japan later became the home for cosplay cafés and the first World Cosplay Championship, one of many events for cosplayers.

Cosplay is not just a costume worn for a party or holiday. Cosplay costumes are drawn from any movie, TV series, book, comic book, video game, or anime and manga characters. Steampunk became a very popular look recently. Cosplayers often stay in character whenever in costume, although this kind of performance is more often seen in live-action role-playing (LARP). Some cosplayers just model their costumes without staying in character.You can buy costumes, or create your own from scratch - costumes are judged for accuracy, craftmanship, presentation, and audience impact in competition. There are those who cosplay "to create, learn, socialize, and be someone or something you've always dreamed of."

Other than cosplay-centered conventions, another place to find cosplay is, of course, any comic convention worth its salt - New Mexico has several options, including Bubonicon, Las Cruces Comic Con, and the Indigenous Comic Con (coming up in November!)  - or at the Renaissance Fair (locally, there's one in Albuquerque and one in Santa Fe).

If you're interested in exploring cosplay, the library catalog has some titles that might help you along. As Kamui Cosplay says, "Being an artist means being free to express yourself and not be bound by skin color, sex or body shape. Dress up as whoever you want to be and enjoy all the different character interpretations you'll find on the convention floor."

How To Cosplay. Vol. 1.

The Hero's Closet: Sewing For Cosplay and Costuming by Gillian Conahan

The Costume Making Guide: Creating Armor & Props for Cosplay by Svetlana Quindt, aka Kamui Cosplay

Make: Props and Costume Armor - Create Realistic Science Fiction and Fantasy Weapons, Armor, and Accessories by Shawn Thorsson

Knits For Nerds: 30 Projects - Science Fiction, Comic Books, Fantasy by Joan of Dark, a.k.a. Toni Carr

Cool Japan Guide: Fun in the Land of Manga, Lucky Cats and Ramen by Abby Denson [eBook]

The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider's Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan by Patrick W. Galbraith

Leaving Mundania: Inside the Transformative World of Live Action Role-Playing Games by Lizzie Stark

History of the Human Body

Hands. Photography. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/132_1280923/1/132_1280923/cite. Accessed 13 Oct 2017.

You've enjoyed popular works that combine science, history, and culture, such as books by Mary Roach (Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers) and Diane Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses). Your interests are many and varied, and don't exclude the cosmetic. You are curious about the workings of the human body and how the body has been regarded over time - physiognomy and phrenology are ideas you've heard about before, for instance - and are not squeamish. You like to know how things work, and you don't mind finding out through observation rather than experimentation. If some or all of these statements apply to you, we have just the booklist for you!

Teeth

Teeth: The Untold Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle For Oral Health in America by Mary Otto

Hair

Hair: A Human History by Kurt S. Stenn

Plucked: A History of Hair Removal by Rebecca M. Herzig

Country Music Hair by Erin Duvall

Hair Fashion and Fantasy by Laurent Philippon

Of Beards and Men: The Revealing History of Facial Hair by Christopher Oldstone-Moore

Feet

Leonardo's Foot: How 10 Toes, 52 Bones, and 66 Muscles Shaped the Human World by Carol Ann Rinzler.

Nose

Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell by Alexandra Horowitz

Ears

Balance: A Dizzying Journey Through the Science of Our Most Delicate Sense by Carol Svec

Human Sexuality

The Anatomical Venus: Wax, God, Death & the Ecstatic by Joanna Ebenstein

Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History by Florence Wilson

Vagina: A New Biography by Naomi Wolf

The Seeds of Life: From Aristotle to da Vinci, From Sharks' Teeth to Frogs' Pants, the Long and Strange Quest to Discover Where Babies Come From by Edward Dolnick [eBook]

Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story by Angela Saini [eBook]

Impotence: A Cultural History by Angus McLaren

Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body by Susan Bordo

Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners by Therese Oneill

General

Anatomies: A Cultural History of the Human Body by Hugh Aldersey-Williams

Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin

The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel Lieberman.

Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums by Samuel J. Redman.

Illness & Death

In the Kingdom of the Sick: A Social History of Chronic Illness in America by Laurie Edwards

The End of Memory: A Natural History of Aging and Alzheimer's by Jay Ingram

Death's Summer Coat: What the History of Death and Dying Can Tell Us About Life and Living by Brandy Schillace

Make Mine Miniature: Crafting on a Small Scale

We have dabbled in a fair amount of crafts over the years - knitting, check; scrapbooking, check; sewing our own clothes (or at least costumes), check. But apart from a brief foray into knitting felted hearts to use as patches and an even briefer one into the world of mini-zines, we have generally shied away from anything miniature. The eyestrain! The fiddliness! The attention to detail! We've just never had the patience. But we are amazed by the amount of crafts that can be accomplished in miniature, from baking to creating tiny weapons to model-building to gardening to book-making. Do you like to create in miniature? Let us know your craft of choice in the comments! Or, for inspiration, check out our list below.

The Fairy House Handbook by Liza Gardner Walsh

Fairy Gardening: Create Your Own Magical Miniature Garden by Julie Bawden-Davis

Microcrafts: Tiny Treasures to Make and Share compiled by Margaret McGuire, Alicia Kachmar, Katie Hatz and friends

Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi: More Than 40 Itty-Bitty Minis to Knit, Wear, and Give by Anna Hrachovec

Amigurumi Toy Box by Ana Paula Rímoli

Carving Japanese Netsuke For Beginners by Robert Jubb

Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction: Build Implements of Spitball Warfare by John Austin

Miniature Scrapbooks: Small Treasures to Make in a Day by Taylor Hagerty

New Ideas for Miniature Bobbin Lace by Roz Snowden

Miniature Worlds in 1 1/2 Scale by Susan Penny

Basic Scenery For Model Railroaders by Lou Sassi

Pocket Pies: Mini Empanadas, Pasties, Turnovers and More by Pamela Clark

A Beginner's Guide to the Dolls' House Hobby by Jean Nisbett

Making Miniature Dolls With Polymer Clay by Sue Heaser

Minigami: Mini Origami Projects For Cards, Gifts and Decorations by Gay Merrill Gross

Terrarium Craft: Create 50 Magical, Miniature Worlds by Amy Bryant Aiello

Terrariums Reimagined: Mini World Made in Creative Containers by Kat Geiger

Exquisite Miniatures in Cross Stitch and Other Counted Thread Techniques by Brenda Keyes

More Making Books By Hand: Exploring Miniature Books, Alternative Structures, and Found Objects by Peter Thomas [eBook]

50 Yards of Fun: Knitting Toys From Scrap Yarn by Rebecca Danger

Mini Skein Knits: 25 Knitting Patterns Using Small Skeins and Leftovers by Lark Crafts

Budget Cinema: Some Incidents in the History of B Movies

CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) - ADAMS, JULIE. Photography. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/144_1533771/1/144_1533771/cite. Accessed 13 Sep 2017.

B movies had their heyday during Hollywood's Golden Age (late 1920s-early 1960s). During the Great Depression, studios and movie theaters tried to entice moviegoers into the theater with a bill that could last more than 3 hours, with two features, cartoons, a newsreel, and previews of forthcoming films. The main attraction would be the A film, with the B feature being a lower budget genre film (often sci-fi, Western, or film noir) that was quickly produced, frequently using talent that was either waning or on the rise. The big studios had separate B-units to produce these films. These early B films were tied to the Big Five studio system - before 1948, major studios had their own theater chains, and there was a complicated booking system for A and B features.

In the 1950s, feature films got longer - 70 minutes or more, rather than an hour - and the double feature fell out of favor. B movie became a blanket term used for genre films with formulaic plots and cheap production values. These films helped create the drive-in cinema business, which skyrocketed between 1945-55, and launched the career of one of the most famous names in the history of B movies, Roger Corman, and another big name in B, William Castle, who specialized in gimmicks. "For The Tingler, which starred Vincent Price, the theater seats were wired with buzzers, which would make the seats vibrate when the tingler supposedly escaped into the theater," the website B-Movie Central reports.

In the 60s and 70s, B movies came to include exploitation films, as the film industry's adherence to the Motion Picture Production Code relaxed and finally ended in 1968. Major studios were no longer making B films, and these exploitation films - which often "graphically depicted the wages of sin in the context of promoting prudent lifestyle choices" - ultimately became the whole market, ranging from "sexploitation" to "blaxploitation" films, except for the rise of  kung fu (sometimes called "Brucesploitation") and "slasher" films in the 1970s. Some famous names came out this era - John Waters, Melvin Van Peebles, Brian de Palma, Russ Meyer, George A. Romero, Tobe Hooper, Francis Ford Coppola - with some later achieving mainstream fame and others becoming cult classics. Easy Rider, with its themes of hippies, drug use, and communal living, became the first movie under the exploitation umbrella to debut at the Cannes Film Festival. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a spoof of B movie tropes.

As cinema moved into the 1980s, the era of the star-studded blockbuster began. There was still a lot of low-budget horror films being made, and Troma Pictures, which got its start in 1974, was still "disrupting media." But there were more independent films being made in the last years of the 20th century, and it's important to remember that an independent or arthouse film is not the same as a B movie.

It has been suggested that recent  technological advances have made it easy to make low-budget motion pictures again, and digital cameras allow any filmmaker to make films with reasonably good image quality and effects. Is the B-movie ready to make a comeback? Well,  The Guardian suggests:

So here’s a suggestion: a two-tier cinema system. Your blockbusters in one league, and a separate circuit for lower-budget movies, with much cheaper tickets. For a long time, this was how movies operated... Now it’s serious dramas that are the B-movies, pushed to the margins along with what we used to call 'arthouse' movies: challenging, non-mainstream, maybe foreign movies. These are cinema’s endangered species. So why not put them all in a separate type of cinema and charge half the price? It would be a cheaper night out for punters and a proving ground for new talent.

Or, do you agree with Wired that "In 2017, 'genre' is no longer a niche, and nearly *every *movie feels like a midnight movie—albeit the kind you no longer need need to stay up all evening to enjoy." Whatever your take on the subject, why not take a little time to delve deeper into B movies of the past? The library catalog is here to help, with some likely contenders listed below:


Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell with Craig Sanborn

Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir by Arthur Lyons

Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You: The Shadow Cinema of the American '70s by Charles Taylor

The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero, Tom Bissell [eAudiobook]

Foxy: A Life in Three Acts by Pam Grier with Andrea Cagan

DVDs

The House on Haunted Hill

The Return of the Living Dead

Barbarella

The Blob

John Dies At the End

Evil Dead

They Live

Machete

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Brother From Another Planet

Tremors

Forbidden Planet

Schlock: Secret History of American Movies

American Grindhouse

Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

The Ed Wood Awards: The Worst Horror Films of All Time


Links

The 100 Best "B Movies" of All Time [Slate]

15 Awesome B-Movies You Need To See [Screen Rant]

Attack of the B Movies! 50 of the Best Schlocky Titles of All Time [Hollywood Reporter]

Beerstorming, One Draught at a Time

Five glasses of beer. Photography. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/156_2393568/1/156_2393568/cite. Accessed 9 Sep 2017.

The website for BeerAdvocate magazine lists 20 microbreweries in Albuquerque, and, frankly, we're surprised there's not more. There seems to be new breweries popping up all the time in the past few years! The ABQ Beer Week blog recommends "drinking local" - to support local economies, contribute to neighborhood revitalization, help the environment, and support local musicians - but we know everyone's taste is different, so we've compiled a list of books about the hoppiest drink around which includes guides, brewing information, cooking with beer, the history of brewing (did you know the pharaohs drank beer?), and even a couple of movies on the topic. We hope that whether you are a beer aficionado or not, whether you prefer craft beer, international or vintages brews, you will find something to whet your palate in the following offerings from the library catalog.

Beer Guides 

The Complete Beer Course: Boot Camp For Beer Geeks - From Novice to Expert in Twelve Tasting Classes by Joshua M. Bernstein

Vintage Beer: A Taster's Guide to Brews That Improve Over Time by Patrick Dawson

Beer For All Seasons: A Through-the-Year Guide of What to Drink and When to Drink It by Randy Mosher [eBook]

The Beer Geek Handbook: Living a Life Ruled by Beer by Patrick Dawson

World Beer: Outstanding Classic and Craft Beers From the Greatest Breweries by Tim Hampson

Great American Craft Beer: A Guide to the Nation's Finest Beers and Breweries by Andy Crouch [eBook]

Brewing 

So You Want to Start a Brewery?: The Lagunitas Story by Tony Magee

Craft Beer for the Homebrewer: Recipes From America's Top Brewmasters by Michael Agnew et al.

The Craft of Stone Brewing Co.: Liquid Lore, Epic Recipes, and Unabashed Arrogance by Greg Koch [eBook]

The Good Beer Book: Brewing and Drinking Quality Ales and Lagers by Timothy Harper

Beer Cookbooks

The American Craft Beer Cookbook: 155 Recipes From Your Favorite Brewpubs and Breweries by John Holl

The Brewmaster's Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food by Garrett Oliver


Beer History

The Comic Book Story of Beer: The World's Favorite Beverage From 7000 BC to Today's Craft Brewing Revolution by Jonathan Hennessey and Mike Smith

The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer That Changed the World by Stephen Mansfield

Brewed Awakening: Behind the Beers and Brewers Leading the World's Craft Brewing Revolution by Joshua M. Bernstein


Local Beer

New Mexico Beer: A History of Brewing in the Land of Enchantment by Jon C. Stott

Albuquerque Beer: Duke City History on Tap by Chris Jackson


DVDs

Crafting a Nation

Brew Masters

Brewmore Baltimore: A Full-Flavored History

The Life You Save May Be Your Own: Memoirs of Self-Discovery

Girl wearing snorkeling apparatus at the beach. Photography. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/154_2892984/1/154_2892984/cite. Accessed 8 Sep 2017.

“It's daring to be curious about the unknown, to dream big dreams, to live outside prescribed boxes, to take risks, and above all, daring to investigate the way we live until we discover the deepest treasured purpose of why we are here.” ― Luci Swindoll

What does it take your change your life? We always think the answer can be found in a book. Some folks recommend non-fiction to "help you stop worrying, stop being tired, and stop feeling overwhelmed — and start excelling in your field, embracing life's opportunities for adventure, and being happier every day," with the emphasis on teaching you new behaviors. Some suggest that if you read a book wherein the "end message is that life is filled with possibilities, if you let it be,"or a similar message, can be helpful, even if it's fictional.But sometimes, we think, you just need to read a book that shows that someone has succeeded in changing their life before, in ways you might find galvanizing or might want to emulate.

There is certainly no dearth of titles out there for those looking to prod themselves into making a change - speeding things up, slowing things down, doing things differently. Maybe you've already read inspirational books like Gift from the Sea, Love Warrior, and Rising Strong. Or tales of life-changing adventure such as Under The Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy,  Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia, and Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. But maybe none of these titles resonated with you, or you just want more ideas. Never fear! We've compiled a list of other books that might help you deal with adversity, start you on a quest, or at least boost your spirits.


H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World by Rita Golden Gelman [eAudiobook]

A Year By the Sea: Thoughts of an Unfinished Woman by Joan Anderson

Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget by Sarah Hepola

Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor

Girl in the Woods by Aspen Matis

Lit by Mary Karr

Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback by Robyn Davidson

Claiming Ground by Laura Bell

Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship by Gail Caldwell


List

The Exhilarating Delight of Reading About Women in Search of Themselves [Oprah]

All the best, most kick-ass female memoirs you need to read [Hello Giggles]

The Memoir of Discovery (Not Recovery) [Kirkus]

Are You With the Banned?

Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 as a response to a surge in challenges to books in libraries, schools, and stores. It brings together librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers in support of the freedom to read. Each year, the Office for Intellectual Freedom puts together a list of the Top Ten Most Challenged Books of the year, based on stories from the media and challenges which have been reported, and you can also check out lists of the most frequently challenged books and challenged classics on the American Library Association's website; they also have infographics which show challenges by reason, initiator, and and institution over the course of a decade. Readers are encouraged to get involved, via the Rebel Reader Twitter Tournament, Stand For the Banned Read-Out, and more.

There were 323 challenges reported in 2016 to the American Library Association [ALA]. A challenge is "an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group," according to the ALA, rather than an actual removal of the item, which is banning. The top ten for this year included graphic novels, children's fiction, picture books, young adult books, and one book of short stories written for adults. Not all the books were new - there were challenges on books published from 2005-2015 - and the challenges were varied. "May lead a student to 'sexual experimentation'," "challenged because of criminal sexual allegations against the author," "because of language, sex education, and offensive viewpoints," "includes LGBT characters, drug use, and profanity,"and for "being 'disgusting and all around offensive.'"

What you might not realize is that any book might be challenged. Less likely, perhaps, to make the top ten most challenged list are books of poetry and work by poets. The following list is taken from "Poetry's Place in the History of Banned Books," by Poets.org.

Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) by Charles Baudelaire: Banned in 1857 for eroticism, and, according to the judges, poems that “necessarily lead to the excitement of the senses.”

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: Banned for alleged promotion of drug use and portrayal of anthropomorphized animals.

Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer: Banned for its criticism of the medieval church, as well as its obscene language and sexual content.

Amores (Loves) & Ars amatoria (Art of Love) by Ovid: Banned, challenged, and burned for sexual content.

A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein: Banned for encouraging bad behavior and addressing topics some deemed inappropriate for children.

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman: Famously “banned in Boston” in 1882 for sexual content.

The Tempest by William Shakespeare: In 2011, deemed inappropriate for Arizona schools, as the law prohibited courses that “promote the overthrow of the United States government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

Links

Banned Books Week

Banned and Challenged Books [American Library Association]

Banned Books Week on Facebook

Banned Books Week on YouTube

Banned Books Week 2017 to Celebrate Everybody's Freedom to Read [American Booksellers Association]

Banned Books Week infographic [ACLU]

Simon & Schuster Celebrates Banned Books Week

Banned Comics [Comic Book Legal Defense Fund]

Unstable States: Reading Psychological Suspense

SUSPENSE (1946). Photography. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/144_1533468/1/144_1533468/cite. Accessed 4 Aug 2017.

A tale that is more interested in the “why” rather than the sheer mechanics of “how”—and that is more attuned to what makes a soul damaged potentially beyond repair—falls under the large umbrella of psychological suspense. Crime can be at the forefront, but the chase for the criminal is often hamstrung by mental intricacies of the case, its perpetrator, and, often most prominently, its would-be solver. A murder is usually the inciting event, the big rock that hits the water, but in psychological suspense, when it’s done right, the focus is on the ripples that rock makes. Psychological suspense is a genre within crime fiction that can, and does, encompass myriad subgenres, making it difficult to classify definitively. Still, one thing is for sure: if the mental states of the characters contribute to the story—the more unstable the better—and the plot revolves around this delicate balance, chances are you’re reading psychological suspense. And you’re reading with the lights on.
~Jordan Foster, "Top Ten Writers of Psychological Suspense"

Why do we love to read genres like psychological suspense? The intricacy of the plot? The complex, often wounded characters? The moral ambiguity that often ends up being punished? The fact that these tales have a domestic aspect, often set in familiar places and locales, while amping up the tension?  Psychology Today suggests it's because of their "power to stir up intense emotion. Our brains release neurotransmitters like dopamine, and oxytocin when we are intensely emotional (intensely happy as well as scared, or horrified) and these can serve to consolidate memories, and even strengthen bonds between us and others sharing the same experience." Maybe it's just the fascination with other people's psyches - Jessica Ferri asserts on the Early Bird Books site, "There's no escaping your own mind," but maybe you can, a little, by digging deep into the minds of others.

Fans of mysteries and thrillers will have likely heard of Daphne du Maurier, Gillian Flynn, Tana French, Sophie Hannah, Patricia Highsmith, and Ruth Rendell. But how about some of these less well known twisty tales?

Dare Me by Megan Abbott

The Forgotten Girls by Sara Blaedel

A Place of Execution by Val McDermid

Now You See Me by S. J. Bolton

The Clairvoyants by Karen Brown

The Visitors by Catherine Burns

The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain

Little Deaths by Emma Flint

The Ice Beneath Her by Camilla Grebe

Long Man by Amy Greene

Her by Harriet Lane

The Fall Guy by James Lasdun

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

Alex by Pierre Lemaître

The Perfect Girl by Gilly Macmillan

House. Tree. Person. by Catriona McPherson

The Iron Gates by Margaret Millar

Unravelling Oliver by Liz Nugent

The Walls by Hollie Overton

Drowned by Therese Bohman

The Perfect Neighbors by Sarah Pekkanen

Let Me Die In His Footsteps by Lori Roy

Unbecoming by Rebecca Scherm

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware

Heartsick by Chelsea Cain

Watching Edie by Camilla Way

The Black Angel by Cornell Woolrich [eBook]


Refinery29 says "Once you've reached the end and all the secrets have spilled out, it's not always fun to go back and read them again. You need new mysteries to unravel — new plotlines and characters to make the hair on your neck stand on end." Have you ever re-read a suspense thriller, or do you agree with their assessment? Regardless, you can find many more twisty titles in the library catalog - for more books, try a subject search in the catalog using the terms "Psychological fiction" or "Suspense fiction." But be prepared - there are thousands of titles to sort through!