The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Richard III has been in the news as of late; researchers and forensic scientists have recently confirmed that the ruins located underneath a parking lot in Leicester were indeed that of the late Richard III, King of Great Britain. But who really was Richard III? Was he a tyrant and murderer, like how Shakespeare depicted him in the historical drama Richard III? Or was he just a misunderstood ruler, with the Tudor dynasty power hungry and itching for the crown? The Daughter of Time explores these ideas and more. In the book, Alan Grant, a police officer from Scotland Yard, is stuck in the hospital. When he sees a portrait of Richard III, he analyzes his face and believes that he is not the murderer everyone set him out to be. With the help of a researcher from the British Museum, the two men journey out to find what exactly RIchard III was like, and was there really proof of him killing his two nephews. It’s a great read for those who like detective stories and discovering the truth. The Daughter of Time is available through our online catalog SWAN.
-Judy, Reference
Richard III has been in the news as of late; researchers and forensic scientists have recently confirmed that the ruins located underneath a parking lot in Leicester were indeed that of the late Richard III, King of Great Britain. But who really was Richard III? Was he a tyrant and murderer, like how Shakespeare depicted him in the historical drama Richard III? Or was he just a misunderstood ruler, with the Tudor dynasty power hungry and itching for the crown? The Daughter of Time explores these ideas and more. In the book, Alan Grant, a police officer from Scotland Yard, is stuck in the hospital. When he sees a portrait of Richard III, he analyzes his face and believes that he is not the murderer everyone set him out to be. With the help of a researcher from the British Museum, the two men journey out to find what exactly RIchard III was like, and was there really proof of him killing his two nephews. It’s a great read for those who like detective stories and discovering the truth. The Daughter of Time is available through our online catalog SWAN.
-Judy, Reference
The Americans, FX, Wednesdays at 9 PM Central
It's the early 80's in suburban Washington D.C. The US and the Soviet Union are embroiled in the Cold War. Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys star as Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings, an attractive, charming and extremely ordinary married couple with two children. Soon, we learn the couple is a pair of highly-trained undercover KGB spies who have been living in the US for decades. Their children, their neighbors, nobody knows anything of their double lives. This show is only two episodes in, but I am hooked. Both Russell and Rhys are fantastic at playing complex characters who are torn between a conflicting sense of duty to their homeland, mission, children and each other. I cannot wait to see where this series goes.
It's the early 80's in suburban Washington D.C. The US and the Soviet Union are embroiled in the Cold War. Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys star as Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings, an attractive, charming and extremely ordinary married couple with two children. Soon, we learn the couple is a pair of highly-trained undercover KGB spies who have been living in the US for decades. Their children, their neighbors, nobody knows anything of their double lives. This show is only two episodes in, but I am hooked. Both Russell and Rhys are fantastic at playing complex characters who are torn between a conflicting sense of duty to their homeland, mission, children and each other. I cannot wait to see where this series goes.
-Jen, Youth Services
The Best of Youth by Michael Dahlie
Things you need to know about Michael Dahlie's The Best of Youth: It takes place in Brooklyn. It features a sensitive, but clueless 20-something who spends his free time writing short stories. There is a manic pixie dream girl who plays the viola in an all-girl band. What will surprise you about this novel: It's still a tremendous triumph of humor and imagination. While Dahlie's world might be too whimsical and unlikely (the main character's parents die in a freak boating accident leaving him $15 million and a successful actor chooses him to ghostwrite his young adult novel), the author effortlessly infuses the comedy-of-manners and aw-shucks character that constantly leaves socially inept, privileged Henry with the fuzzy end of the lollipop with something akin to sympathy. Even when I hated it, I loved it.
-Anna, Youth Services
Mashups
Like the proliferation of the pomegranate and high-quality television programs, mashups are one of the twenty-first century's great consolations. Mashup artists alter the instrumentation and vocals of existing tracks in order to combine two or more songs into one, and the most gifted succeed in creating soundscapes that are both astonishingly fresh and seamless. One standard-bearer is Danger Mouse's The Grey Album from 2004, which combines the Beatles' The White Album with Jay-Z's The Black Album. Some recent standouts are Scott Melker's Skeetwood Mac--a wondrous melange of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and rappers like 2 Chainz and Yung Joc--and "Horizon," which features MYTHS, Grimes, and Majical Cloudz.
-Megan, Reference
The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe
The novel, available through SWAN, begins with a Japanese entomologist hoping to discover a new beetle species in the remote sand dunes outside of his city. After he misses the last bus out of the village, he is offered a room in a woman’s home at the bottom of a dune. After descending to the home on a rope ladder that is pulled up after him and spending the night shoveling sand into buckets that the villagers lift out of the pit, he realizes that he is doomed to fight the onslaught of sand for the rest of his days. As the characters develop a relationship amid the struggle, an existential question question comes to mind--are we all just shoveling sand?
-Mike, Reference
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