A couple weeks ago, I posted about LeBron James's support of literacy, and in November, I posted about Taylor Swift's support of literacy. Someone commented on my post about LeBron James and said that B.J. Novak of The Office also has connections to libraries, which leads me to today's post.
I was reading the link given in the comments of the LeBron James post and was delighted to learn that Novak wrote the children's book The Book With No Pictures. I haven't read the book yet, but I've had several colleagues recommend it to me. I had no idea it was written by a celebrity, because I don't watch The Office, and while I don't always like it when celebrities write books, for some reason, I'm thrilled that this one was written by a celebrity--maybe because I don't know anything about Novak.
What's even better about Novak is that once upon a time, he wanted to be a librarian. In the article "B.J. Novak Goes the Extra Mile for Libraries" (this is the link that was given in the comments of the LeBron James post), Novak was quoted as saying, "I was enthralled by the library in my elementary school, where anything could happen and where no one told you where your mind was supposed to be."
This is a completely different way of showing support for libraries. Novak hasn't donated money to libraries or other literacy efforts, but writing for kids and doing readings from his children's book at libraries is a great way to bring awareness to public libraries.
Since there's not much more to say about Novak and libraries than that, I thought I'd dig around to see if I could find other celebrities who support authors. I was delighted to find this list, from Public Library News. I was even more delighted to see Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones on the list. According to an article published by The Economist, Richards, like Novak, once aspired to become a librarian.
Am I the only one who is surprised (in a good way) about celebrities who wanted to be librarians at one point in their lives? Do you know of any other celebrities who have said they wanted to be librarians when they were younger? Let me know in the comments!
Robin Hobb is one of the pseudonyms of epic fantasy author Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden. Born in California and raised in Alaska, Ogden, according to her publisher, "raised her family, ran a smallholding, delivered post to her remote
community, all at the same time as writing stories and novels. She
succeeded on all fronts, raising four children and becoming an
internationally best-selling writer." She now lives in Tacoma, Washington.
Ogden started her career trying to write children's books, but later decided "...that there was a corollary to the famous 'Write what you know' advice. That was, 'Write what you love reading.'" A longtime fan of science fiction and fantasy, she decided to change direction. She had tremendous success writing fantasy novels from 1983-1992 as Megan Lindholm, but when she decided to take an epic fantasy (sometimes called high fantasy) storyline, Ogden felt her new voice required a new name. As Robin Hobb, her books (beginning with Assassin's Apprentice in 1995) encompass several series, but all take place in the Realm of the Elderlings with the exception of the Forest Mage Trilogy. There are links between the series, and at least two of them run concurrently.
An atlas also let me do a bunch of things I wanted to do. One was to
provide a counter to the rush to online mapping with its hideous
aesthetics, evanescent images, normalizing tendencies to show all places
merely in terms of practical needs, and consumerism. There are all
these restaurants and shops on Google Maps, without any indication of,
say, where great women lived or endangered butterfly species live. ~Rebecca Solnit
Author, activist, and historian Rebecca Solnit, along with cartographers, designers, researchers, and teams of artists and writers, is putting out a series of city atlases though the University of California Press. The first two atlases explored San Francisco and New Orleans, and the third will focus on New York City. But, be warned - these are not your traditional atlases. Solnit's atlas places an emphasis on the cultural history of the city, and her rendering is admittedly "modest and deeply arbitrary". As Solnit explains "...a big part of my writing has been to try to describe and value those
things that are not quantifiable, commodifiable, controllable:
epiphanies, awareness, those beautiful moments when people come together
as civil society, whether to pick up after a disaster or overthrow a
disastrous regime, beauty itself, and the pleasures that don’t get named
much."
In Solnit's atlases, maps, rather than just showing city streets and
traditional cultural landmarks (museums, etc.), are a mashup of traditional maps, with varying takes on the topography of the city, and cultural history. The "Cinema City" map in Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, for example, shows the reader locations important to
Eadweard Muybridge (a photographer who helped create the earliest technology of
moving pictures) and to Alfred Hitchcock and his film Vertigo; you can also find the locations of "1958 movie theaters, surviving" and "1958 movie theaters, gone".
Maps are matched with essays on the topic the map explores. Map 9 in Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas is titled
"Sugar Heaven and Sugar Hell: Pleasures and Brutalities of a Commodity" -
New Orleans is famous for sweet treats such as pralines and beignets.
The map shows antebellum sites (e.g. where Jesuit missionaries raised
sugar cane in the 1700s), plantation borders, postbellum sites (e.g,.
Domino Sugar's Chalmette Refinery), and dialysis centers. The
accompanying essay is called "No Sweetness Is Light"; in it, Shirley
Thompson talks about "the New Orleans sugar map" and how the craving for
sweetness exists alongside the more famous tastes of the city, like
fish and hot pepper. It's a brief, often personal essay, touching on diabetes, sugar processing, and slavery.
Both atlases are a pleasure to browse. The maps are coloful and clearly rendered, and there are also some photos and illustrations scattered throughout the book - many vintage, but some from the past few years. You may not be ready to take a tour of San Francisco or New Orleans after you read these atlases, but we think you will have a good sense of place, and a feel for what lies beneath the city's veneer.
You can find both Solnit's atlases in the ABC Library catalog:
The book offers this description of itself on the title page: "Of principal landmarks and treasures of the region, including butterfly species, queer sites, murders, coffee, water, power, contingent identities, social types, libraries, early-morning bars, the lost labor landscape of 1960, and the monumental Monterey cypresses of San Francisco; of indigenous place names, women environmentalists, toxins, food sites, right-wing organizations, World War II shipyards, Zen Buddhist centers, salmon migration, and musical histories of the Bay Area; with details of cultural geographies of the Mission District, the Fillmore's culture wars and metamorphoses, the racial discourses of United Nations Plaza, the South of Market world that redevelopment devoured, and other significant phenomena, vanished and extant." Maps include: Green Women: Open Spaces and Their Champions; Truth to Power: Race and Justice in the City's Heart; Poison/Palate: The Bay Area in Your Body; Tribes of San Francisco: Their Comings and Goings; The World in a Cup: Coffee Economics and Ecologies.
Potential readers take note, this book is: "Being an atlas in twenty-two maps and nearly that many essays about the city that is at the bottom of the Mississippi drainage of the interior of the North American continent and at the top of the Gulf of Mexico and at the center of the American unconscious, the small mortal city that is the immortal wellspring of much popular music around the world, a city not quite three hundred years old, half of that an era of slavery, all of that an era of striving for freedom; of segregation and mixing; of crime and corruption in secret and of the confident collective celebration in the streets that is their opposite; of wildlife flying over and oil pipelines cutting through; of complicated stories, not all of them black and white;of various heroines, some heroes; of unfinished tasks and interesting possibilities; a city resting on the pillowy softness of river-delivered muck, mud, and sometimes the hard ground of disputed memory; to say nothing of crawfish boils and the sweet loud sounds of brass bands."
Maps include: Oil and Water: Extracting Petroleum, Exterminating Nature; ¡Bananas!; Snakes and Ladders: What Rose Up, What Fell Down During Hurricane Katrina; The Line-up: Live Oak Corridors and Carnival Parade Routes.
Do these atlases inspire you, as Rebecca Solnit suggests, to "pay close enough attention and
move daringly enough through the city [so you] encounter difference,
mystery, the unexpected, the tender and desperate little moments of
strangers passing by, [and] come to know the rhythms and rites of the city and
some of its secrets, and know, too, that there are more secrets than
anyone can ever know" in your own town?
...[W]e take, admittedly, rather morbid pleasure in presenting a new selection of the best of...postoil, postgrid, post-financial collapse, postpandemic tales by exceptional fiction writers." ~Donna Seaman, "Read-alikes: Life After the Apocalypse"
Writers have a lot of ideas about how the world will be coming to an end. Epidemic? Terrorist plot? The rise of the machines? Nuclear war? However civilization will collapse, the question remains - what will come next? How will humanity survive? Here are a list of books, some new, some old, that take us into the author's vision of the imagined cataclysm, and what life will be like afterwards.
There are 179 titles listed in the ABC Library catalog under the subject "End of the world - Fiction". With the current popularity of dystopias, especially in Young Adult fiction, would you expect anything less?
From Puss in Boots to Krazy Kat, the Cheshire Cat to The Cat in the cult British TV show Red Dwarf (if you're not familiar, he's a Felis Sapiens which evolved from a domestic housecat), felines demonstrating agency have been around for quite some time. Cats in literature have quite a pedigree, particularly in mysteries - some of the most well-known include:
Lillian Jackson Braun wrote a couple dozen The Cat Who books, starring reporter named Jim Qwilleran and his Siamese cats, Kao K'o-Kung (Koko for short) and Yum-Yum
Rita Mae Brown has co-authored a mystery series with her cat, Sneaky Pie Brown (the mysteries also feature a cat named Mrs. Murphy)
T.C. LoTempio's Nick and Nora series has Nora Charles as a crime reporter and Nick is now "a stray cat...who has a talent for detection"
Carole Nelson Douglas writes the Midnight Louie mystery books, where chapters alternate between the voice of Midnight Louie, a slightly overweight black cat, and his human "roommate"
Shirley Rousseau Murphy's cat P.I., Joe Grey, has his own website, which describes him as "the sharpest feline sleuth on the mystery scene--one cool
cat, a clawed and formidable enemy of crime"
Sofie Kelly writes about a librarian who solves mysteries with the aid of her cats with magic powers
the Dixie Hemingway mysteries feature a sleuth who is a former sheriff, now professional cat-sitter
How do you feel about anthropomorphized pets in novels? We confess to a tendency to avoid them, having been irrevocably scarred by exposure in our youth to the sad end of the animals in Sounder and Old Yeller, but books about animals running the show seem to be quite popular. In fact, there are two (very different) brand-spanking-new books with cat protagonists:
For people who both love and hate cats comes the tale of
Alec Charlesworth, a librarian who finds himself suddenly alone: he's
lost his job, his beloved wife has just died, and to top it all off, his
sister has disappeared. Overcome by grief, he stands in his sister's
kitchen staring at the only witness to whats happened to her - her cat, Roger. Who then speaks to him. It takes a while for Alec to realize hes not gone mad from grief, that the cat is actually speaking . . . and that much of
what we fear about cats is true. They do think they're smarter than
humans, for one thing. And, well, it seems they are! Whats more, they do
have nine lives. Or at least this one does. Roger's older than
Methuselah, and his unblinking stare comes from the fact that he's seen
it all. And he's got a tale to tell, a tale of shocking local history and dark forces that may link not only the death of Alec's wife, but also several other local deaths. But will the cat help Alec, or is he one of the dark forces?
The
war with no name has begun, with human extinction as its goal. The
instigator of this war is the Colony, a race of intelligent ants who,
for thousands of years, have been silently building an army that would
forever eradicate the destructive, oppressive humans. Under the Colony's
watchful eye, this utopia will be free of the humans' penchant for
violence, exploitation and religious superstition. The final step in the
Colony's war effort is transforming the surface animals into
high-functioning two-legged beings who rise up to kill their masters.
Former housecat turned war hero, Mort(e) is famous for taking on the
most dangerous missions and fighting the dreaded human bio-weapon EMSAH.
But the true motivation behind his recklessness is his ongoing search
for a pre-transformation frienda dog named Sheba. When he receives a
mysterious message from the dwindling human resistance claiming Sheba is
alive, he begins a journey that will take him from the remaining human
strongholds to the heart of the Colony, where he will discover the
source of EMSAH and the ultimate fate of all of earth's creatures.Sound intriguing? For more fiction with cat protagonists, check out the library catalog. We recommend, just for fun, The Meowmorphosis - a parody of Kafka which sees "Gregor
Samsa, a seemingly typical man...transformed into a cat"; or, if you prefer
something more serious, check out Takashi Hiraide's The Guest Cat, which
NPR called "illuminating and achingly poetic". If you're more of a dog person...well, we're sure there's books about dogs too.
*descriptions are taken from the library catalog unless otherwise noted
As an NBA fan, it's impossible for me not to know who LeBron James is. I remember when he left Cleveland to play for Miami, and how angry it made everyone, and I remember when he left Miami to return to Cleveland--not that it happened all that long ago.
The reason I mention remembering it is because I remember how upset people were about his leaving Cleveland. Fans were so upset that they burned his Cleveland jersey. A lot of people were disappointed that James would leave a place that had supported him as much as Cleveland (and surrounding areas) had--James is from Akron, Ohio. At the time, I didn't have much of an opinion on LeBron, except that I thought he was a bit too egotistical.
But then, I heard about his efforts to support literacy. Before we get to that, check out this video about James' reading habits. It's pretty awesome.
So, what exactly has LeBron James done for literacy? As it turns out, a lot.
In 2014, The LeBron James Family Foundation funded an e-library program for Akron Public Schools, through the Wheels for Education program. As it turns out, James adopts a new third grade class every year; the Wheels for Education program provides those classes with various literacy tools.
It might seem small that his focus is on Ohio schools, and that it's limited to third grade classes, but even by doing that, LeBron can reach so many people and provide them with tools they need to build their literacy skills. That's not to mention the video posted above, which has been seen by many, and is a great example of LeBron James modeling good reading habits.
I have to say, it's really hard to dislike a guy who loves reading and supports literacy in the way LeBron James does. I give him major kudos for the work he's done and continues to do.
If you know of any other celebrities who have a heavy focus on supporting literacy, let me know in the comments--I may just turn this into a small series of posts.
Every March 14, we celebrate the day where mathematics and round food intersect -- π (Pi) Day! Pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, has drawn many admirers for its infinite, non-repeating digits as an irrational and transcendental number. It's been calculated to the ten trillionth digit, and math enthusiasts and students all around the world challenge themselves to memorize pi 100 (or 67890) places past the decimal point!
Since pi begins with 3.14159, it only makes sense that March 14 (3/14) has been nationally recognized as Pi Day. This year has special significance as it will occur on 3/14/15, or the first six digits of pi!
This mathematical constant also has the happy coincidence of having a homophone that's one of our favorite round baked goods -- pie. This is how we like to observe Pi Day (and also Alfred Einstein's birthday), but we encourage you to eat or enjoy anything circular in shape!
To celebrate Pi Day to the pi-est, have a slice of pie on 3/14/15 at 9:26 am/pm and check out one of our materials related to pi, pie, or mathematics:
Author Lev Grossman was no stranger to writing when his first book came out in 1997. His parents are the poet Allen Grossman and the novelist Judith Grossman, and his twin brother is the author Austin Grossman. In addition to writing fiction, Lev Grossman is also the book critic at Time magazine, and has been published in many other periodicals, including the Believer, the New York Times, Wired, and Salon. His second book, Codex, became an international bestseller in 2004, and he has really hit his stride with the publication of the fantasy fiction Magicians Trilogy, which began in 2009.
The Magicians Trilogy is the story of Quentin Coldwater, a high school senior obsessed with a series of fantasy novels set in a land called Fillory. Upon his admittance to an exclusive college of magic, Quentin discovers that Fillory is real. George R.R. Martin called The Magicians "thoroughly adult, his narrative dark and dangerous and full of twists"; Patrick Rothfuss said "[m]ost people will like this book. But there’s a certain type of reader who will enjoy it down to the bottoms of their feet"; and Cory Doctorow said it "may just be the most subversive, gripping and enchanting fantasy novel I’ve read this century". The series is considered to be dark urban fantasy.
Codex [eAudio]
About to depart on his first vacation in years, Edward Wozny, a hotshot
young investment banker, is sent to help one of his firm's most
important and mysterious clients. His task is to search their library
stacks for a precious medieval codex, a treasure kept sealed away for
many years and for many reasons. Enlisting the help of passionate
medievalist Margaret Napier, Edward is determined to solve the mystery
of the codex-to understand its significance to his wealthy clients, and
to decipher the seeming parallels between the legend of the codex and an
obsessive role-playing computer game that has absorbed him in the dark
hours of the night.
Magicians Trilogy
The Magicians [eBook, eAudio]
Like everyone else, precocious high school senior Quentin Coldwater
assumes that magic isn't real, until he finds himself admitted to a very
secretive and exclusive college of magic in upstate New York. There he
indulges in joys of college-friendship, love, sex, and booze- and
receives a rigorous education in modern sorcery. But magic doesn't bring
the happiness and adventure Quentin thought it would. After graduation,
he and his friends stumble upon a secret that sets them on a remarkable
journey that may just fulfill Quentin's yearning. But their journey
turns out to be darker and more dangerous than they'd imagined.
Psychologically piercing and dazzlingly inventive, The Magicians, the prequel to the New York Times bestselling book The Magician King and the #1 bestseller The Magician's Land,
is an enthralling coming-of-age tale about magic practiced in the real
world-where good and evil aren't black and white, and power comes at a
terrible price.
The Magician King [eBook]
Quentin Coldwater should be happy. He escaped a miserable Brooklyn
childhood, matriculated at a secret college for magic, and graduated to
discover that Fillory—a fictional utopia—was actually real. But even as a
Fillorian king, Quentin finds little peace. His old restlessness
returns, and he longs for the thrills a heroic quest can bring. Accompanied
by his oldest friend, Julia, Quentin sets off—only to somehow wind up
back in the real world and not in Fillory, as they’d hoped. As the pair
struggle to find their way back to their lost kingdom, Quentin is forced
to rely on Julia’s illicitly learned sorcery as they face a sinister
threat in a world very far from the beloved fantasy novels of their
youth.
The Magician's Land [eBook, eAudio] Quentin
Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his
childhood dreams. With nothing left to lose he returns to where his
story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic. But he can't
hide from his past, and it's not long before it comes looking for him.
Along with Plum, a brilliant young undergraduate with a dark secret of
her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde
of gray magic and desperate characters. But all roads lead back to
Fillory, and his new life takes him to old haunts, like Antarctica, and
to buried secrets and old friends he thought were lost forever. He
uncovers the key to a sorcery masterwork, a spell that could create
magical utopia, a new Fillory--but casting it will set in motion a chain
of events that will bring Earth and Fillory crashing together. To save
them he will have to risk sacrificing everything.
*book descriptions are provided by the publisher unless otherwise noted
Library staff don't just check out books to you - we read them, too! Many branches have staff pick displays which you can browse. Here are some staff picks in science, social science, and technology from various staff members. Would you like to see more staff picks in different categories on abcreads? Let us know in the comments! Also, make sure you check out our Best of 2014 Staff Picks and our Staff Picks in the catalog.
From one of our foremost thinkers and public intellectuals, a radical new view of the nature of time and the cosmos. What is time?
This deceptively simple question is the single most important problem
facing science as we probe more deeply into the fundamentals of the
universe. All of the mysteries physicists and cosmologists face--from
the Big Bang to the future of the universe, from the puzzles of quantum
physics to the unification of forces and particles--come down to the
nature of time. The fact that time
is real may seem obvious. You experience it passing every day when you
watch clocks tick, bread toast, and children grow. But most physicists,
from Newton to Einstein to today's quantum theorists, have seen things
differently. The scientific case for time being an illusion is formidable. That is why the consequences of adopting the view that time
is real are revolutionary. Lee Smolin, author of the controversial
bestseller The Trouble with Physics, argues that a limited notion of time is holding physics back. It's time for a major revolution in scientific thought. The reality of time
could be the key to the next big breakthrough in theoretical physics.
What if the laws of physics themselves were not timeless? What if they
could evolve? Time Reborn offers a radical new approach to cosmology that embraces the reality of time and opens up a whole new universe of possibilities. There are few ideas that, like our notion of time,
shape our thinking about literally everything, with huge implications
for physics and beyond--from climate change to the economic crisis.
Smolin explains in lively and lucid prose how the true nature of time impacts our world.Staff review: Lee Smolin is the guy to turn to for arguments that time is not an illusion, and that physics is stuck because we don't understand it.
At the core of Einstein's general theory of relativity are a set of equations that explain the relationship among gravity, space, and time--possibly the most perfect
intellectual achievement of modern physics. For over a century,
physicists have been exploring, debating, and at times neglecting
Einstein's theory in their
quest to uncover the history of the universe, the origin of time, and
the evolution of solar systems, stars, and galaxies. In this sweeping
narrative of science and culture, Pedro Ferreira explains the theory
through the human drama surrounding it: the personal feuds and
intellectual battles of the biggest names in twentieth-century physics,
from Einstein and Eddington to Hawking and Penrose. We are in the midst
of a momentous transformation in modern physics. As scientists look
farther and more clearly into space than ever before, The Perfect Theory
engagingly reveals the greater relevance of general relativity, showing
us where it started, where it has led, and where it can still take us.Staff review: A great book about the history of General Relativity, full of new insights about the theory as well as the people.
Interstellar, from acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan, takes us on a fantastic voyage far beyond our solar system. Yet in The Science of Interstellar, Kip Thorne, the physicist who assisted Nolan on the scientific aspects of Interstellar, shows us that the movie's jaw-dropping events and stunning, never-before-attempted visuals are grounded in real science. Thorne shares his experiences working as the science adviser on the film and then moves on to the science itself. In chapters on wormholes, black holes, interstellar travel, and much more, Thorne's scientific insights many of them triggered during the actual scripting and shooting of Interstellar, describe the physical laws that govern our universe and the truly astounding phenomena that those laws make possible.Staff review: Kip Thorne was the science consultant for the movie, and he's also one
of the top experts on relativity and worm-holes. It's lot's of fun, and
well grounded and speculative, with great pictures.
The
best-selling author of The Drunkard's Walk and coauthor of The Grand
Design (with Stephen Hawking), gives us an examination of how the
unconscious mind shapes our experience of the world and how, for
instance, we often misperceive our relationships with family, friends,
and business associates, misunderstand the reasons for our investment
decisions, and misremember important events. Your preference in
politicians, the amount you tip your waiter, all judgments and
perceptions reflect the workings of our mind on two levels: the
conscious, of which we are aware, and the unconscious, which is hidden
from us. The latter has long been the subject of speculation, but over
the past two decades researchers have developed remarkable new tools for
probing the hidden, or subliminal,
workings of the mind. The result of this explosion of research is a new
science of the unconscious and a sea change in our understanding of how
the subliminal mind affects
the way we live. Employing accessible explanations of the most obscure
scientific subjects, the author takes us on a tour of this research,
unraveling the complexities of the subliminal
self and increasing our understanding of how the human mind works and
how we interact with friends, strangers, spouses, and coworkers. In the
process he changes our view of ourselves and the world around us.
We live in a
world where a tweet can be instantly retweeted and read by millions around the
world in minutes, where a video forwarded to friends can destroy a political
career in hours, and where an unknown man or woman can become an international
celebrity overnight. Virality: individuals create it, governments fear it,
companies would die for it. So what is virality and how does it work? Why does
one particular video get millions of views while hundreds of thousands of
others get only a handful? In Going Viral, Nahon and Hemsley uncover the
factors that make things go viral online. They analyze the characteristics of
networks that shape virality, including the crucial role of gatekeepers who
control the flow of information and connect networks to one another. They also
explore the role of human attention, showing how phenomena like word of mouth,
bandwagon effects, homophily and interest networks help to explain the patterns
of individual behavior that make viral events. Drawing on a wide range of
examples, from the Joseph Kony video to the tweet that spread the news that
Osama Bin Laden was dead, from the video of Homer Simpson voting in the US
elections to the photo of a police officer pepper-spraying students at the
University of California Davis, this path-breaking account of viral events will
be essential reading for students, scholars, politicians, policymakers,
executives, artists, musicians and anyone who wants to understand how our world
today is being shaped by the flow of information online.
Staff review: A fascinating and timely study.
*book description is provided by the publisher unless otherwise noted
You can stream all the seasons of Friends on Netflix. Twin Peaks is coming back to TV! People are brushing the dust off their Doc Martens and buying new scrunchies, because the '90s are back in style! That's what we've read, anyway. But we're starting to believe it now that Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny have both published fiction within 4 months of each other! (Guess they got really in sync all those years as Scully and Mulder on TheX-Files, which, by the way, is also rumored to also be making a comeback.) Interestingly, Gillian Anderson's book is science fiction and Duchovny's is a humorous fable. Of course, we're only basing this on their X-Files characters, but that's not what we would have expected from them!
How about you? Would you check out a novel by Anderson and/or Duchovny? What do you think of celebrity authors?
Vision of Fire by Gillian Anderson and Jeff Rovin
Book one of the Earthend Saga. Juggling
her career, parenting responsibilities and lackluster dating life,
child psychologist Caitlin O'Hara begins treating an ambassador's
daughter, who starts having fits and speaking in tongues right before
children throughout the world demonstrate similar mystical symptoms.
Holy Cow: A Modern-Day Dairy Tale by David Duchovny
A
rollicking, globe-trotting adventure with a twist: a four-legged
heroine you won't soon forget. Elsie Bovary is a cow, and a pretty happy
one at that--her long, lazy days are spent eating, napping, and
chatting with her best friend, Mallory. One night, Elsie and Mallory
sneak out of their pasture; but while Mallory is interested in flirting
with the neighboring bulls, Elsie finds herself drawn to the farmhouse.
Through the window, she sees the farmer's family gathered around a
bright Box God--and what the Box God reveals about something called an
"industrial meat farm" shakes Elsie's understanding of her world to its
core. There's only one solution: escape to a better, safer world. And so
a motley crew is formed: Elsie; Jerry--excuse me, Shalom--a cranky,
Torah-reading pig who's recently converted to Judaism; and Tom, a suave
(in his own mind, at least) turkey who can't fly, but who can work an
iPhone with his beak. Toting stolen passports and slapdash human
disguises, they head for the airport. Elsie is our wise-cracking,
pop-culture-reference-dropping, slyly witty narrator; Tom--who does
eventually learn to fly (sort of)--dispenses psychiatric advice in a
fake German accent; and Shalom, rejected by his adopted people in
Jerusalem, ends up unexpectedly uniting Israelis and Palestinians.Feeling nostalgic? TheX-Files are in the library catalog! *all book descriptions are taken from the library catalog unless otherwise noted
