Young Adult Releases: June and July

Looking for something good to read this summer? There are plenty of options! Here is a list of young adult books coming out in June and July. These are not comprehensive lists, as there are far too many books to make such a list.

June releases

The Leaving by Tara Altebrando
The Long Game by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
The King Slayer by Virginia Boecker
Tumbling by Caela Carter
With Malice by Eileen Cook
Into the River by Ted Dawe
The Darkest Lie by Pintip Dunn
Julia Vanishes by Catherine Egan
Lotus and Thorn by Sara W. Etienne
The Loose Ends List by Carrie Firestone
Zero Line Chronicles by James Frey
We Were Never Here by Jennifer Gilmore
My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand
Cure for the Common Universe by Christian McKay Heidicker
Empire of Dust by Eleanor Herman
The End by Charlie Higson
How it Feels to Fly by Kathryn Holmes
The Flip Side by Shawn Johnson
Mirror in the Sky by Aditi Khorana
The Museum of Heartbreak by Meg Leder
You Know Me Well by David Levithan and Nina LaCour
How it Ends by Catherine Lo
True Letters from a Fictional Life by Kenneth Logan
Goldfish by Nat Luurtsema
A Season for Fireflies by Amanda Maizel
Never Missing, Never Found by Amanda Panitch
The Darkest Magic by Morgan Rhodes
Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies by Lindsay Ribar
Before We Go Extinct by Karen Rivers
Escape from Asylum by Madeleine Roux
How to Disappear by Ann Redisch Stampler
One Paris Summer by Denise Grover Swank
The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love by Sarvenaz Tash
American Girls by Alison Umminger
The Cresswell Plot by Eliza Wass
And I Darken by Kiersten White

July releases

The Memory Book by Laura Avery
Girl in the Shadows by Gwenda Bond
Mirage by Tracy Clark
Chasing Stars by Helen Douglas
The Shadow Hour by Melissa Grey
The Killer in Me by Margot Harrison
Black River Falls by Jeff Hirsch
The Devil's Banshee by Donna Hosie
Flying by Carrie Jones
Defending Taylor by Miranda Kenneally
Learning to Swear in America by Katie Kennedy
The Lost & Found by Katrina Leno
Secrets, Lies, and Scandals by Amanda K. Morgan
Rampage by John Sandford
Rebellion by J.A. Souders
Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies by Laura Stampler
Autumn's Wish by Bella Thorne
The Exorcism of Sofia Flores by Danielle Vega

Stay tuned--on June 4, we'll have a post announcing this year's Summer Reading Program, along with ideas for how you can read more this summer.

New and Novel: Women in Science

Last year saw the publication of The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys' Club. Author Eileen Pollack wanted to be an astrophysicist in the 1970s, but gave up her dream, despite being one of the first two women to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in physics at Yale, because she was unable to overcome the isolation, stereotyping, and gender discrimination the still faces women today who seek academic success in science and math. We hope this climate will change for women, with the White House espousing STEM for female students and events such as Sweden's Tekla Festival, where "girls between 11 and 18 years will get a chance to spend a full day discovering and experimenting with different kinds of technology...[offering] girls firsthand experience of the ways they can use technology, and a chance to meet female role models in a variety of fields."

If you are someone whose knowledge of women's contributions to science and math begins and ends with Marie Curie (we were!), why not check out one of these new titles and find out more about female achievements in these fields?

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which shes studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book is a revelatory treatise on plant lifebut it is also so much more. Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahrens remarkable stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classrooms labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done “with both the heart and the hands”; and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, of scientific work

Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars by Nathalia Holt
The riveting true story of the women who launched America into space. In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible. For the first time, Rise of the Rocket Girls tells the stories of these women--known as "human computers"--who broke the boundaries of both gender and science.


Rocket Girl: The Story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America's First Female Rocket Scientist by George D. Morgan
Blending a fascinating personal history with dramatic historical events, this book brings long-overdue attention to a brilliant woman whose work proved essential for America's early space program. This is the extraordinary true story of America's first female rocket scientist. Told by her son, it describes Mary Sherman Morgan's crucial contribution to launching America's first satellite and the author's labyrinthine journey to uncover his mother's lost legacy--one buried deep under a lifetime of secrets political, technological, and personal. 

The Debs of Bletchley Park And Other Stories by Michael Smith 
At the peak of Bletchley's success, a total of twelve thousand people worked there of whom nine thousand were women. Their roles ranged from some of the leading codebreakers, cracking German messages that others could not break, through the debutantes who chauffeured the codebreakers to and from work, to women like Baroness Trumpington who were employed as filing clerks, to the mass of girls from ordinary working families who operated machines or listed endless streams of figures, largely unaware of the major impact their work was having on the war. The Debs of Bletchley Park and Other Stories tells the stories of these women, how they came to be there, the lives they gave up to do 'their bit' for the war effort, and the part they played in the vital work of 'Station X'.  

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan
In this book the author traces the story of the unsung World War II workers in Oak Ridge, Tennessee through interviews with dozens of surviving women and other Oak Ridge residents. This is the story of the young women of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who unwittingly played a crucial role in one of the most significant moments in U.S. history.

Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science--And the World by Rachel Swaby
Covering Nobel Prize winners and major innovators, as well as lesser-known but hugely significant scientists who influence our every day, Rachel Swaby's ... profiles span centuries of courageous thinkers and illustrate how each one's ideas developed, from their first moment of scientific engagement through the research and discovery for which they're best known.

Links

Association for Women in Mathematics

Association for Women in Science

Why Are There Still So Few Women In Science? [New York Times]

Women Were Key to WWII Code-Breaking at Bletchley Park [Smithsonian]
 

The Brilliant Brontës: Brontë Fanfic

Anne Brontë (1820-1849), Emily Brontë (Thornton, 1818 - Haworth, 1848) and Charlotte Brontë (Thornton, 1816 - Haworth, 1855), English writers, Oil on canvas by Patrick Branwell Brontë (1817-1848), ca 1834. Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 19 Dec 2015.

http://quest.eb.com/search/126_150639/1/126_150639/cite

Fanfiction is very popular these days - "If you love something, write a fanfic about it," an article from Entertainment Weekly enthused recently (actually about Beyoncé's new album). So, it's no surprise that there have been many stories inspired by the Brontës, online and in print. (Not quite as many novels as those inspired by Jane Austen, but a healthy amount.) Perhaps it doesn't hurt that there are so few books written by the Brontë sisters - one by Emily, two by Anne, and only three published by Charlotte in her lifetime (The Professor, written before Jane Eyre, was rejected by several publishing houses and only published posthumously) - and that many people (myself included) find their short lives endlessly fascinating, so there is a lot left to the imagination.

I read two books inspired by the Brontës for this post: The Brontë Project: A Novel of Passion, Desire, and Good PR by Jennifer Vandever and The Madwoman Upstairs by Catherine Lowell. Both are fictionalized accounts of Brontë studies in academia. In both books, the protagonists are in crisis, but for different reasons. In The Brontë Project, Sara Frost is a junior scholar at a New York University; in The Madwoman Upstairs, Samantha Whipple, who happens to be the last remaining descendant of the Brontës, has just matriculated at Oxford. Sara's story begins when Claire, a Princess Diana expert, comes to campus and sends Sara's life spinning out of control with one comment at a cocktail party. In Samantha's case, she's come to university following the death of her father, a famous writer and Brontë scholar whose  untimely death has caused her to turn her back on literature and her famous heritage. Instead of wholeheartedly pursuing her studies, she finds herself the subject of articles in the school newspaper which she describes as "verbal vomit"; entangled with her father's nemesis; and receiving mysterious copies of Brontë novels, annotated in her father's handwriting.

Both novels have a wry sense of humor. In The Brontë Project, we find that

[Sara's] parents, both therapists, tried to snap her out of it. "Now, how could Cathy and Heathcliff resolve this problem by communicating their feelings before it leads to a fatality? What about the ending disturbs you? How could you change that? Could Heathcliff have worn a warmer coat? How about Cathy paying more attention to her health?" 

In The Madwoman Upstairs, Samantha has a drily sarcastic voice when narrating her own foibles, tending to tongue-in-cheek descriptions: "We entered a vast, bottomless silence. I scrambled for better conversation topics. This would all have been far less stressful in the movie version of our lives. The long silences would have been edited out."

Both novels are unafraid to discuss literary history and theory. In The Madwoman Upstairs, during Samantha's sessions with her tutor (and remembered discussions with her father), many theories are tossed into the mix, from how to discuss literature (authorial intent versus textual analysis) to the possibility that Catherine and Heathcliff are actually half-siblings to accusations that Charlotte Brontë stole Anne's story when she wrote Jane Eyre. The Brontë Project has its own theories, including one that connects the sisters to Princess Diana:

"Obviously, emotional states, even telepathy, were elevated to a place of prime significance in the works of all the Brontës," she said. "There is a kind of psychological intensity that was particularly disturbing and exciting to audiences of that time and today as well, I think. What's more, even though their works were dismissed as 'unladylike', they did focus a lot of literary attention on those aspects that have been stereotypically associated with the feminine - intuition, emotions, affairs of the heart - and made them central, and, in fact, the elements that defined a life more acutely than the day-to-day reality that existed on the surface... Likewise, I think Diana called a lot of attention to these same things - in today's parlance, self-esteem, bulimia, whatever. She was really continuing the tradition that the Brontës pioneered of accepting and using her emotional life as the point of engagement with the rest of the world."

Despite discussions of literary theory, both books are entertaining reads, though I preferred the more lively The Madwoman Upstairs.  The Brontë Project lost the plot a bit in Part Two, though I did enjoy the way it employed quotes by Charlotte Brontë as chapter headings, perhaps to help readers to see the connections between "the mythology of romance [and] the reality of modern love," as the book blurb claims.

Would you like to try some Brontë fanfic for yourself? We've compiled a list of some other fictions inspired by the Brontës in the library catalog, whether you'd prefer to read fanfic based on their lives, their works, or beyond.

Lives of the Brontës

Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler 

Emily's Ghost: A Novel of the Brontë Sisters by Denise Giardina 

The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë by Laura Joh Rowland 

Romancing Miss Brontë by Juliet Gael  [eAudioBook]

The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë by Syrie James [eBook]

 
Based on the Books

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys 

The Lost Child by Caryl Phillips 

Jane Slayre: The Literary Classic - With a Blood-Sucking Twist by Charlotte Brontë and Sherri Browning Erwin [eAudioBook] 

Jane Eyrotica by Charlotte Brontë and Karena Rose 

Emma Brown by Clare Boyland and Charlotte Brontë 

Sequels

Mrs Rochester by Hilary Bailey [eBook]

Jane Eyre's Daughter by Elizabeth Newark [eBook] 


 Miscellaneous 

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde 

*This post is part of our year-long Brilliant Brontës challenge! To see more posts, search for the labels "Brontë, challenge" in the blog sidebar.  
 

Subject Guides

Our library website features 129 eResources and databases with 24/7 access, free with your valid library card - just click on "Research" at the top of the page for a dropdown menu! These include Auto Repair Center, BrainFuse Help Now, Consumer Reports, Encyclopedia of World Biography, lynda.com, NoveList Plus, Pronunciator, and more. These are all great resources for students and lifelong learners. But did you know the website also features subject guides created by the staff of The Public Library ABQ-Bernco? Some of them you might have seen, if you've ever looked for New on DVD or New Music CDs. But the range of staff-created subject guides goes deeper than media - there are guides about New Mexico, Science Project Help, DIY, and more.

You can peruse the 31 subjects covered by our guides very easily! First, click on "Subject Guides" in the dropdown menu.

Then you can select your subject of choice from another dropdown menu.

Unsurprisingly, we have many choices under the subject "Books and Literature"! Some guides are strictly informational, like the Center for the Book; many link to catalog for easy hold placing, such as Monster Mashups; Booklists for Adults and Teens has printables; the Books & Literature guide shows events, book recommendations, and links to NYT Bestseller lists.

Each subject has two views, so you can easily switch back and forth between staff-created Subject Guides...

...and eResources and databases! Just click on the headings to switch back and forth.

We hope this short tutorial will encourage you to explore the library website and check out all of our online resources! Do you already use some guides or eResources? Let us know in the comments!

Multicultural Fiction: India

Readers will probably be familiar with the Indian writer Arundhati Roy (winner of the Man Booker Prize in 1997), the British Indian writer Salman Rushdie, and Indian-American writers like Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Jhumpa Lahiri. Or perhaps you like to watch Monsoon Wedding and Bollywood films, eat Indian food, listen to Indian music, or have even been to India. Even if you aren't too familiar with Indian culture or writers, if you enjoy multicultural reads, we have some suggestions for you!

Most of the suggested reads are by Indian authors or authors of Indian heritage, but we have included some books by non-Indian writers who have lived in India or have ties to the Indian sub-continent.

Kids and Teens

The Monkey King by Shobha Viswanath & Uma Krishnaswamy

Jasmine Skies by Sita Brahmachari

Child of Spring by Farhana Zia

Hope is a Girl Selling Fruit by Amrita Das

Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood by Varsha Bajaj 

Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier [eBook, eAudio]

Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman

Boys Without Names by Kashmira Sheth

The Grand Plan to Fix Everything by Uma Krishnaswami 

Indie Girl by Kavita Daswani 

Adults

Where Earth Meets Water by Pia Padukone

Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand

Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes by Betsy Woodman

The Artist of Disappearance: Three Novellas by Anita Desai

The Pleasure Seekers by Tishani Doshi

The Case of the Missing Servant: From the Files of Vish Puri, India's "Most Private Investigator" by Tarquin Hall

The Mango Season by Amulya Malladi

The Accidental Apprentice by Vikas Swarup

The Journey by Indira Ganesan

The City of Devi by Manil Suri

If Today Be Sweet by Thrity Umrigar

The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan

An Equal Music by Vikram Seth

The Writing On My Forehead by Nafisa Haji

English, August: An Indian Story by Upamanyu Chatterjee 

Madras on Rainy Days by Samina Ali

Blind Faith by Sagarika Ghose [eBook]

Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry 

Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil

My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru

Family Life by Akhil Sharma

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra

The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob

Passages: 24 Modern Indian Stories edited by Barbara H. Solomon and Eileen Panetta

The library catalog also features many films set in India, including Bollywood movies! 

Links

The Top 10 Desi Chick-Lit Novels

Desi Diaries: 10 retellings of Indian Mythology

12 Books By Indian Authors You Need to Read Now [India Times]

The 17 Best Indian Novels and Travel Books [The Independent]

Greatest Indian Novels You Can't Afford to Miss [Hindustan Times]

Featured Author: Emma Donoghue

Reading an Emma Donoghue book is like falling into a deep friendship with an unlikely stranger: a lady of the evening, a cross-dressing frogcatcher, an imprisoned child. The author’s empathy for outsiders makes for captivating characters; she illustrates the complex inner lives of her creations with a candor that shows humanity at its best and worst.
~Allie Ghaman, "Why you should give 'Frog Music' authorEmma Donoghue's books a read"

Emma Donoghue is an Irish-born writer currently living in Canada. On her website she proclaims, "From the age of 23, I have earned my living as a writer, and have been lucky enough to never have an ‘honest job’ since I was sacked after a single summer month as a chambermaid." She earlier wanted to be a ballerina, but "This way I get to eat more cake." In a funny twist of fate, she was named for Jane Austen's Emma, though she does not count Austen among her influences. She is a proponent of the treadmill desk.

Her book Room was an international bestseller; shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prize, and winner of  the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Prize (Canada & Caribbean Region), and more; and made into an award-winning feature film.

She has also written short stories, literary mystery, Bildungsroman, historical fiction, reimagined fairy tales, plays for stage and radio, and began her writing career as a literary historian.


Fiction

Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins 

Slammerkin 

The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: Stories 

Life Mask  

Touchy Subject: Stories 

Landing

The Sealed Letter 

Astray

Non-Fiction 

Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature  

Anthologies 

How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity [YA]

One Hot Second: Stories About Desire

 

April in Review

Welcome to the second edition of my months in review. I was busy in April! Here's what I read last month.

Girl Last Seen by Heather Anastasiu

I didn't love this book. It had potential, but the story was incredibly similar to Gone Girl--so now I'm pitching it as Gone Girl for teens. I feel like if I hadn't read Gone Girl, I might of liked Girl Last Seen, but for me, it was just okay.

Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend by Alan Cumyn

I don't know what to say about this book other than when I finished reading, I had no idea what I had just read. Is it satire? I can't tell. It feels like it in some places, but in other places, it doesn't. At any rate, the Goodreads reviews are more fun to read than the book was. It's too bad, because the title is pretty awesome; I wish the book had been just as good.

Hour of the Bees by Lindsay Eagar

So, Hour of the Bees. I love that it's set in New Mexico. I don't love how the author described New Mexico, since she was just so wrong about so many things (she's from Utah). That being said, I enjoyed the story, but the incorrect details of landscape, Albuquerque, and other things were hard for me to let go of. This book is getting rave reviews, though, and I'd say it's worth a read, despite the inaccuracies.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston

I loved this book. So much. There are so many young adult novels that focus on sexual assault, and what I loved about this one was the strong female friendship (Polly was amazing--everyone should have a friend like her), and I loved the fact that it focused on a character who didn't want to be a victim. This is a fantastic addition to a group of novels that are starting to feel too similar to each other.

Where You'll Find Me by Natasha Friend

This was cute. It wasn't amazing, but I liked it well enough.

Defending Taylor by Miranda Kenneally

I wanted so much to like this book, but here's the thing with Miranda Kenneally's novels: I'm tired of the Hundred Oaks series. I loved them in the beginning, but now, I'm just bored with them, and I wish she'd write something outside of the series. I can definitely see the appeal of this novel, though; anyone who loves contemporary and romance will probably adore it.

The Borden Murders: Lizzie Bordon and the Trial of the Century by Sarah Miller

I have mixed feelings about this one. My first thought when I was reading this book was, "Some of these descriptions feel a little graphic for middle grade non-fiction." Overall, I enjoyed the story, and while others don't agree with my initial reaction about the book possibly being too graphic, I wouldn't recommend this to sensitive readers.

Summer of Sloane by Erin L. Schneider

This book was so cute. The narrator annoyed me at times, but overall, Summer of Sloane is the perfect beach read.

Buried Child by Sam Shepard

I don't read plays very often, but I've had Buried Child on my list because Sam Shepard is in my favorite movie. Plus, it won a Pulitzer. I was so happy that this play lives up to the hype. I loved every word of it, and I'm looking forward to re-reading it.

Ascending the Boneyard by C.G. Watson

I can't even write what my initial reaction was to Ascending the Boneyard, because it wouldn't be library-appropriate. This book has gotten some great reviews, and the cover copy of it promises a shocking conclusion. I think this is the type of book that you either love or hate, and I hated it. I really only read it because the conclusion was supposed to be so shocking, but by the time I got to the end, all I could think was, "That's it?" That's actually not quite what I thought, but I don't want to give away the ending. I will say, though, that I did feel a little cheated by the ending. I knew while reading this book that it's about a mental illness, but I still feel like the ending is a bit of a cheat.

Our Town by Thornton Wilder

Confession: I just don't get it. Our Town is supposed to be amazing. By the time I finished it, I felt like I was missing something, because I just don't understand what is supposed to be so amazing about it. Maybe I need to actually see it, since plays are meant to be viewed. I'm not really sure. All I know is, whatever that thing is about this play that makes everyone love it wasn't there for me.

I've also done a lot of binge-watching lately. In April, I finally started watching The Walking Dead. Here's the thing: I've never been a fan of zombies. I tried watching The Walking Dead a few years ago, and I made it through the first episode. I disliked Rick Grimes so much that I stopped watching. Maybe a year later, I thought I'd give it another try, with the same result. It wasn't until I watched the first episode for a third time that I finally decided to keep going with it. Of course, now, I'm hooked. I just finished season four, and I'm dreading season five, because I know a few things that happen that I'm not looking forward to. But, I can't wait to get caught up, that way I can start watching season seven when it airs in October.

May's reading theme is biography/memoir/autobiography. Here's what's on my reading list:

You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day
A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story by Brian Wilson

Did you read or watch anything you loved in April? Let us know in the comments!