Authors | Readers Be Advised

The 31 Days of December: The popularity of Junji Ito

Regardless of what level you work at in a school library, as a librarian part of your goal is to have books in the library that students want to read. Popularity is sometimes obvious, re: Dogman and sometimes it’s geographical or site-specific. This was evident several years ago when Karen McManus broke out on the scene for young adults with her murder mystery One Of Us Is Lying. Students should feel comfortable requesting the purchase of certain books. And sometimes they make it loud and clear.

Enter Junji Ito, the GOAT of horror manga since he entered the field in 1987. His popularity in our library is a confluence of one of our senior electives called Horror Fiction and Film, the large showing number of students who attend Anime Club (of which I’m the faculty advisor), and that manga regularly makes the top circulated items in our library.

Ito is the GOAT for a reason. They are dark, mind-bending, frightful, and intelligent horror stories and short stories. I’m drawn to them as so many of our students are. We recently started getting in our newest order which is adding more of Ito’s books to the collection and replacing well-worn books that have been in circulation for several years. He’s someone that we will likely always have on order.

First, read at least one of Ito’s books if not all of them. Second, remember to listen to your students when it comes to what’s on the shelves.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on December 11, 2021 in Adult, Authors, Blogging, Fiction, Manga

The 31 Days of December: Brain break

09 Dec

The celebrity memoir.

I don’t seek them out, but often I add them to my audiobook TBR (particularly when they’re read by them) when I see multiple recommendations or reviews with favorable reviews. I find they are the perfect brain break from more robust nonfiction audiobooks and my general reading.

Currently I’m a half an hour away from finishing Seth Rogan’s Yearbook after seeing it on a “best of” list. I am a lover of the brief but shining series he was in called Freaks and Geeks. Interest piqued and audiobook added to my list.

Within a day of adding it to the my reserve, it was available and I took a detour from my previously available audiobook, a collected anthology, to listen to this shorter (6 hour) audiobook as a way to take a little break from the epic fantasy adventure I had just finished.

And what a fun detour it has been. Celebrity memoirs are usually no-holds-barred entertainment leaving little to the imagination whether that’s the publisher expectation or what the celebrity wants. I’ve listened to Mindy Kaling and Amy Poehler, Tina Fey and Nick Offerman, Dolly Parton and Anthony Bourdain with an emphasis it seems on comedians.

The best kind of brain break and when I might learn a thing or two, it’s bonus material.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on December 9, 2021 in Adult, Authors, Blogging, Nonfiction

National Book Lovers Day: 5 photos

09 Aug

Pass up the opportunity to go back through the photo archives and share my favorite bookish pictures? Never! A story in five pictures. Share your favorite bookish photos too!

The only #bookface I’ve ever done and it was spectacular, probably because this book is one of my favorites.

My first YALSA *award* committee. These were the finalists (*Darius the Great Is Not Okay* by Khorram won) for the William C. Morris Award that year. I’ve sat on others and am currently the chairperson for the Excellence in Nonfiction Award Committee. This is in addition to the mountains of books I’ve read for Great Graphic Novels for Teens and Best Fiction for Teens, both selection committees. If you have the opportunity, lend your readership to these lists.

As a high school librarian, I get to play host for some amazing YA authors for our students who are book lovers too. Slater’s visit was a fabulous example of the power of nonfiction.

My love for books runs so deep and excitable that I often present about books: locally, state-wide, and nationally. It’s my favorite kind of presentation to do because the prep work is *reading*.

In addition to presenting, I write about books too. It’s one of the reasons you’re here on my professional blog, but I also spent time writing for our local newspaper’s Books Blog before it was retired. This was my cover photo among some of my personal library’s books.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on August 9, 2021 in Authors, Blogging, Events, Miscellaneous, Style

Outstanding book of the month for July 2021

31 Jul

I’m cheating a little for this month and choosing one graphic novel, one adult nonfiction, and one fiction title for my outstanding book(s) because I had some fabulous reading material (including the secret kind that I can’t tell you about). So here goes for the month:

This memoir is spectacular for its honesty and storytelling. Rosser grew up in West Philadelphia in a large single-parent family and discovered his love and talent for polo when his brother stumbled upon the Work to Ride program set up nearby. Rosser shares the discrimination he and his teammates faced as a Black team but also the resilience of a love of a larger community that wanted to see kids succeed.

I stayed up way past my bedtime to finish the finale to Lee’s Montague Siblings trilogy because it had all of the spectacular action and adventure, wit and tenacity as the first two. It was a delightful end as you follow the much younger Montague sibling (who didn’t know Monty and Felicity existed until the start of this book) on a fact-finding mission about his mother’s death and the spyglass that she had once carried everywhere.

You’ve got to appreciate sass and Charlotte’s got it in spades. She’s a teen detective on her way to *hopefully* win an award for her work until she’s caught up in a plot to frame her and take her down. Boom! Studios is always a favorite of mine with much of what they put out because I vibe with their artistry and bright colors, but also their spunky characters. This one didn’t fail as I continue reading the issues via Hoopla.

What were your favorites of the month?

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on July 31, 2021 in Adult, Authors, Book of the Month, Cover Love, Fiction, Graphic novels, Nonfiction, Young Adult

Outstanding book of the month for June 2021

30 Jun

I knew I wasn’t going to create my book of the month post yesterday to post for today because I was in the middle of the book I was going to bestow that title to. I would carve out time today after an early morning walk with my librarian friend, Stacey, a little food shopping, and some other reading, to finish this book. And I was not wrong. And I was not disappointed. Behold, my June selection!

Published this past August, I have been on the wait list at the public library for quite some time. Once it came in, I brought it home and immediately felt the apprehensiveness of cracking the spine because I could feel the magnetic pulse of a book that would move me.

Nezhukumatathil is a poet, so it’s without question that she has a command of words. And as an avid lover of nature as evidenced by these vignettes, she has a command for sharing it with others. She’s like a literary Sy Montgomery and I say that as kindness for both. Montgomery is a scrapper, woman’s woman scientist who gets her hands dirty, her armpits sweaty in the forest, and rolls up her sleeves for the work. Who then parlays that into fascinating books for kids (and adults) about her adventures and learning from tarantulas to octopus. Nezhukumatathil is an explorer and an observer who won’t shy away from the experience, but isn’t in it for the scientific study but rather the enlightenment it will provide. And that is equally beautiful.

The vignettes of birds, plants, and animals are only several pages in length but leave a life lesson within each that pulls the reader closer to nature and asks the existential questions along with it. The writing was magical. The descriptions were breathtaking. And the muted illustration was a cherry on top to this tiny but powerful book.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on June 30, 2021 in Adult, Authors, Book of the Month, Cover Love, Nonfiction

Outstanding book of the month for May 2021

31 May

More novella than novel, Sy Montgomery wins my heart over again with her magical storytelling about the most nonmagical magic– the natural world. Clocking in at 96 pages or just about two hours on audiobook, her newest: The Hummingbird’s Gift: Wonder, Beauty, and the Renewal on Wings is a special gift for readers and why it’s my favorite for the month.

Her deep connections to the animal world allowed her to weave her scientific escapades with her art of writing that allows the couch scientist to experience animals hidden deep inside jungles or the ones that we rarely think about right outside our windows. This story is a rescue mission; the rehabilitation of several hummingbirds by a friend of hers while she was able to help caretake alongside. The interwoven history of hummingbirds and their significance to groups worldwide is evidenced by their names in other cultures is given equal status in the book with the health of the bird’s of the story.

My recommendation would be to listen to Montgomery tell you the story via the audiobook version as I did because nothing can replace the emotional and logical approach to keeping the hummingbird’s alive. It’s an action-adventure in real life– will they or won’t they survive? What is the ethics of saving them? How do they experience the world? It’s all packed in this slim volume that feels as luxurious as a bite of dark chocolate.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on May 31, 2021 in Adult, Authors, Book of the Month, Nonfiction

Outstanding book of the month for March 2021

31 Mar

Is it that time again? Looking at my calendar, it is! My outstanding pick was a recommendation from a kindred book friend who said I must listen to the audiobook. Now I’m recommending it to anyone who will listen that you must listen to the audiobook.

I was crushing on Barrie Kreinik and Peter Ganim who narrate Nancy Wake and Henri Fiocca. Kreinik brought the French accent by way of New Zealand perfectly along with the zest and spunk of the real-life Nancy Wake that Ariel Lawhon presents to readers in Code Name Helene. Wake was a woman on a mission of resistance living many lives at once at the onset of World War II. And Fiocca was the man she fell in love with and married. Ganim brings the sex appeal to their romance through the ears from the pages.

It’s not often that I feel a certain way about narrators as my friend Stacey Rattner does, but when they’re good, I can see how it can happen. Yet their presentation can only be built from the impassioned foundation of Lawhon herself to approach this subject matter. I was lost in the details, the adventure, the romance, the espionage. It was dangerous and it sometimes had to be funny. It needed to be bawdy but also indulgent. And the treachery!

If I’ve said nothing that has stuck, remember this: listen to Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhon.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on March 31, 2021 in Adult, Authors, Book of the Month, Fiction

Dolly, country music, and books

21 Mar

Before it went defunct, I contributed to the local newspaper’s books blog online and had shared my recent audiobook recommendations under the title Audiowalking. This title sums up when I’m often listening to audiobooks as was the case today with Dolly Parton, Storyteller: My Life in Lyrics. I don’t think there could be a better way to engage with the book other than the audiobook spoken by Dolly herself. But this post isn’t only about recommending the audiobook but my realization in listening to her explain her life’s experiences and turning them in to poetry and songs that the reason I’m a reader and a country music listener is for exactly that reason: it’s all about the story.

Yes my first exposure to country music was from my parents, but I loved it all the same. And, I was an avid reader from the get-go remembering fondly my insistence in re-reading Heidi, the American Girl books, and The True Adventures of Charlotte Doyle. And, I also started my first two books when I was in fourth and fifth grade- one about a pirate ship and one about an Indigenous girl and her younger brother. Then I became a librarian. And all of these have a commonality- storytelling.

Even now when I read, I often take pictures of the text or Post-it a passage to keep in a folder on my computer to revisit when the mood strikes me because words have power. But the story the words create is stronger. Dolly knows it. Country music creates it. I get lost in it. Dolly’s audiobook re-centered my gratitude to authors and songwriters for being able to weave the magic of words into the stories that embed in our lives. Aside from asking everyone to listen to her audiobook, I’ll also leave you with one of my favorite country songs. You be sure to let me know if you missed the story in this song.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on March 21, 2021 in Adult, Authors, Nonfiction, Poetry, Reflections

Finding passion

03 Jan

Netflix is the pleasure I reserve for early morning workouts on the elliptical in the garage and Friday and Saturday nights usually. Netflix in the mornings is whatever I want to watch while the weekend watching is usually with my husband and sometimes even the kids. Last night we watched two episodes of two different series: one called The Surgeon’s Cut (episode two “Sacred Brain”) and one Chef’s Table: BBQ (episode two “Lennox Hastie”).

My takeaway from the first series having watched the first episode as well as the second now is that the body is an amazing thing. Having recently read the deeply bibliotherapeutic memoir The Beauty in Breaking by Michele Harper, I can’t help but connect the two. The doctors in the docuseries and of her own memoir are passionate about their work because they can throw themselves into something that helps others when they themselves needed a hero growing up– for each of them, they became their own rescuer and in that metamorphosis, they now fight for others. A powerful message indeed.

My takeaway from the second series you can likely connect to my affinity for reading food memoirs which I’ve shared extensively here and on the other blogs I contribute to. Especially this second episode, Lennox Hastie has created something entirely his own for his own benefit– the love of the heat of an open flame and his restaurant that took a career to open in Australia– is all flame-cooked from the salad to the dessert. Whether it was the crafters of the episode and thus the series or Hastie himself, the episode hit me deep down. His quest for scrumptiousness and his enjoyment in watching others moan with the pleasure of the taste sensations is the chase that he yearns for. But it is more than pleasing others, there is also a deep satisfaction with himself in the process of exploring and creating that should be honed. Everyone should find their passion the way he has. It’s the constant practice that connected me to one of the last books of 2020 that I listened to: James Clear’s Atomic Habits coupled with Eric Ripert’s 32 Yolks.

How do we unlock our passions? How do we keep the drive alive to excel and find our purpose? What is your story?

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on January 3, 2021 in Adult, Authors, Nonfiction, Reflections, Shows

It’s all about the food

14 Dec

I regularly contribute short pieces to other book blogs and sites, especially when I sit on committees or the mood strikes me. Likewise, I write in library land too. I started a new venture this fall as a columnist for the New York Library Association’s bimonthly digital newsletter with the column title– Brain Food: Learning Through Reading which falls in line with my refocused work on the significance of unending learning especially nonfiction.

In December’s article I recommended Julia Childs’ book written with her nephew Alex Prud’homme called My Life in France. And since I’ve penned it, I thought about writing a sister article. One where I can share more books about the celebration of food in our lives since so many have brought me back to my own memories, which is ultimately going to spawn another post about fictional books that do the same thing! Here are some of my favorites with a “Readers Be Advised” advisory note:

Chicken Every Sunday by Rosemary Taylor is advised for those that want to go back in time. I had my indie bookstore find me a copy of this 1943 publication after it was mentioned in another book about it being a popular title among servicemen during World War II. And it does give you those comfy/cozy home vibes.

Save Me The Plums by Ruth Reichl is advised for those curious about the the creation of food and life magazines especially as the internet dawned and people could find recipes outside of those trusty clipped magazine picture-perfect recipes.

First Bite: How We Learn to Eat by Bee Wilson is advised for a bit of social psychology with our food. I’m a big fan of Bee Wilson in general who writes for many magazines and newspapers in addition to her books (plus her Instagram is full of food).

Notes from a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi is advised for the entrepreneurs out there. How do you make it in the business? Trial and error and blood, sweat, and tears. Onwuachi’s story is amazingly rich with feeling and food.

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain is advised for those that followed his shows (of which I hadn’t) to understand the underbelly of what keeps kitchens running like well-oiled machines.

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan is advised for the thoughtful readers. Who would have thought that the potato is as poetic and magnificent to read about as they are to eat?

Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler is advised for the emotional readers who want a visceral connection to experiences we’ve all had in the kitchen. Being a series of essays make it a special read and one in which I bought a copy to send to a foodie friend.

Maker Comics: Bake like a Pro! by Falynn Koch is advised for everyone young and old. Yes, it’s written for a middle grade and teen audience but Koch is blinding us with science. Kitchen science!

What recommendations do you have for amazing nonfiction books that are food forward?

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on December 14, 2020 in Adult, Authors, Nonfiction