“What’s scarier than your family?’’ –Author Lisa Unger’s tongue-and-cheek remark on the 2018 Bouchercon panel, The Fear Factor: Threatening Family in Thrillers I was fortunate to attend my fourth Bouchercon mystery convention this month in St. Petersburg, Fla., where hundreds of authors talked about their craft with more than a thousand readers. I enjoyed…
Popular Services Librarian Jo Hansen shares her thoughts on John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, a novel she read for the first time as part of PBS’s The Great American Read. We talk about why she selected this novel out of the 100 finalists, her favorite Owen Meany quotes, and why it should be…
September brought another fine gathering of our Genealogy Networking Group. We started out by sharing brick walls and breakthroughs. One of the biggest brick walls we all face is “jumping the pond” and researching our immigrant ancestors in their home country. The tried but true rule is, in almost every case, you need to know…
“The truth depends on who it is that’s telling the story.” Kate Morton, “The Clockmakers Daughter” Reading Kate Morton’s intricately plotted new novel The Clockmakers Daughter, is like pulling apart a Russian nesting doll until the last tiny doll is found in the center. At the center of this book is Birchwood Manor and…
Welcome back to my series of posts on local history! While looking for a topic for this post, I realized that we have somehow neglected to write about the history of a Libertyville institution: Lambs Farm! Since its inception as a small pet store in the fall of 1961, Lambs Farm has made it its…
I first encountered author Naomi Novik’s work with her delightful Temeraire series that featured talking dragons during the Napoleonic Wars. When the series ended, I read her standalone, Uprooted, an imaginative Grimm-like fairytale for adults that won the prestigious Nebula Award. Her newest book, Spinning Silver, continues along those lines and takes inspiration from the…
I’m sure it wouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that I am not an avid fly fisherman nor do I spend my spare time tying salmon flies for fun. However, if you were to take a peek at my browser history, you might suspect otherwise. Some of my recent Internet searches have included “Greater Bird of…
Macbook Air, Anywhere! (inside the library) Here at Cook Memorial, we care deeply that our patrons are well resourced for whatever work brings them to the library. Along with the computer lab which allows patrons to login to a PC using their Cook Memorial library card and the digital studios which each have a iMac…
In part 1 of this series on the 1889 Union Church signature quilt, we learned about signature quilts in general, explored some of the unique characteristics of this specific quilt, and revealed the history of the Union Church. Part 2 looked at some of the Libertyville people and businesses represented by the signatures. In Part 3, we’ll…
Mary Shelley aficionado Emily Stensloff joins us on the podcast to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein’s publication. We talk about Shelley’s life, her feminist/anarchist upbringing, the differences between Frankenstein the novel and the idea of Frankenstein in popular culture, and why this 1818 book is Emily’s all-time favorite. Check out Frankenstein from the library…
