Archives for November 2022

Thanksgiving has finished for another year, and we at Smiley Library hope it was a happy one. Now, the December holiday preparations and festivities are in full swing. For some speedy dinnertime suggestions to keep everyone’s mood merry and bright, why not check out the following cookbook selections.

“Food52 Simply Genius” by Kristen Miglore contains her latest collection of tasty and approachable recipes for time-strapped home cooks. Turn frozen potato gnocchi into either an easy Asian-inspired sheet-pan dinner with chili crisp and baby bok choy or a skillet pepperoni pizza with kalamata olives and melted mozzarella. Most recipes include a “Great With” pairing suggestion such as ultra-smashed cheeseburgers with a salty coke. Finally, all vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free dessert recipes are each grouped together as a category within the recipe index.

In this next time-saving cookbook, a little prep once a week, can quickly help you put together four complete home-cooked dinners. “Prep and Rally” by Dini Klein, offers 10 weeks of menus, each with a ready-made grocery list. You can take a picture of it with your cell phone before leaving for the store. Not sure what to do with any leftovers? Not to worry, as a whole chapter of creative meal suggestions and recipes is provided. Now you can make the most of what’s on hand and cut down on food waste. Breakfast, brunch, and sweet treats round out this family-friendly book.

For those of us who have dietary challenges, turn to Danielle Walker’s “Healthy in a Hurry” for fast and friendly mealtime inspiration. Danielle’s recipes are free of grains, dairy, and legumes, as well as, processed sugar, additives and seed oils. A sneak peek of what you’ll find includes kid-friendly creamy bacon cheeseburger soup, teriyaki salmon packets, spicy Cajun chicken pasta, and brats with warm potato salad and kraut. Dessert lovers might enjoy banana-chocolate mug cake, salted chocolate cuties, and refreshing pineapple whip.

Casseroles, skillets, Instant Pots, soup pots, and sheet pans are featured equipment in Melissa Clark’s new cookbook, “Dinner in One.” Melissa’s one pot or pan recipes are streamlined so that there is less mess, less work, and more flavor. Meatball sub sandwiches on garlic bread come together using a sheet pan, and take advantage of store-bought marinara sauce. Turkey and bean tamale pie could be made using any variety of ground meat and is ready in about an hour. Green shakshuka with avocado, chili, and feta is one of the fifty or so meatless recipes. With fewer dishes to wash and a speedy cleanup, you’ll have more time for holiday shopping, decorating, and wrapping presents.

“…Thanksgiving is also a reminder of the painful history created by the arrival of European colonizers. For many Native American people, colonization resulted in displacement from their homes, war, disease, and death. Thanksgiving is a day to remember this history and honor the first people of the nation.”

This sobering message comes to us from a child’s book, The First Thanksgiving: Separating Fact from Fiction, by Peter Mavrikis. New to Smiley Public Library’s Young Readers’ Room collection, it is a non-fiction account in the Fact vs. Fiction in U.S. History series. Though the Pilgrims and indigenous people of the Wampanoag Nation met peacefully at the ‘Thanksgiving’ of 1621, the circumstances surrounding their meeting and the subsequent depictions in American culture are often romanticized. This book is designed for children at sixth-grade level; however, it is full of well-sourced information that we adults may also need to learn, or re-learn.

Native Americans are not the only indigenous peoples who have been displaced by U.S. settler colonization. The American Indigenous community also includes (Hawaiian Kingdom) Kānaka Maoli and Alaskan Native people, in addition to the homelands of 574 federally recognized American Indian tribal nations, and hundreds more state-recognized tribal nations, and others.

Native author Adrienne Keene reminds us in her recent work, Notable Native People: 50 Indigenous Leaders, Dreamers, and Changemakers from Past and Present, that indigenous peoples are not just part of the historic past, that they are not extinct. They live among us and beside us — their indigenous cultures, thriving, their original languages, alive and well. Keene believes that there is power in sharing stories of Native Americans as a foray into recognizing their centuries-long burden of invisibility and erasure. Our commitment to ‘see’ them will help us admit that we need to interrupt our status quo and take action. Keene does so in an easy-to-read format in which she thoughtfully curates a selection of one-page biographies of 50 indigenous Americans whose accomplishments are sure to impress the reader and, hopefully, inspire us to support the needs of those on whose land we live.

If you enjoy these short bios, you are sure to want to linger over new autobiography Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk, by newcomer Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe, of the Upper Skagit and Nooksack Indian Tribe in the Pacific Northwest. Author, poet, and artist, she guides us through a beautifully-written and enthralling personal memoir in which she attempts to find her indigenous identity, her voice, and the elusive concept of permanence. She writes,

“I realized I wasn’t sure what permanence looked like, because we weren’t meant to survive. My family, my tribe, my ancestors, we were something temporary to the settlers. Something that would eventually go away. Whether by disease or alcohol or poverty, our genocide was inevitable to them. I looked at the smoke pluming from the metal chimneys of the small reservation houses along the highway. But here we were, existing in our impermanent homes.”

LaPointe’s search for this innate, inherited need for a permanent home, urges her to explore the traditional spiritual practices of the women in her lineage, identifying their traumas and her own. She is able to ultimately recognize the through-line of resilience in her Coast Salish ancestors and herself. Her tribe’s healers wear red paint in religious dance ceremonies, and in her exploration of such traditions, combined with her affinity for punk music and poetry, LaPointe finds her own healing and purpose.

For more suggestions for reading and getting to know indigenous peoples, visit our post on Native American Heritage Month on Smiley Blog, https://blog.akspl.org/. You’ll find several new fiction books listed by Native authors, and new non-fiction, like the 2022 update to the classic on Indigenous languages of California, Flutes of Fire. New chapters highlight the exciting efforts of current language activists, and include contemporary writing in several of the languages.

Also listed in the post are older books concerning Native Americans, some set in Southern California, such as a treatise by local historians James Sandos and Larry Burgess on the historical inaccuracies of the novel, Willie Boy & the Last Western Manhunt. You also will be introduced to a new book in the Heritage Room, As they were led : Quakerly steps and missteps toward Native justice, 1795-1940, by Catlin, Martha Claire, which includes in its discussion the Smiley brothers and other Quakers, who, over one hundred years ago, worked toward finding justice for Native Americans.

Science is one of the topics that is ever evolving and infinitely interesting. It also can be a bit intimidating at times. So, what do you do if you want to learn more about science but don’t want to spend your time reading through a 700-page treatise on different moss? (I really do like moss; I just don’t know what a treatise is.) Try some of these more accessible science books. They are written in easily understandable terms while remaining extremely fascinating.

“The Chemistry Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained” walks through the history of chemistry and how we find ourselves in the scientific world we inhabit today. Interestingly, the book is organized not by subject but by time, starting off around 7,000 BCE and the brewing of fermented beverages. By organizing the book by time, the author is able to show how each new discovery is built off of what came before and adds insights into how those discoveries came to be. Walking through the discoveries of soap making, the nuclear age, and all the way until the vaccine for COVID-19, “The Chemistry Book” shows some of the missteps and some of the triumphs of chemistry.

Another book that uses a timeline with great success is “Weather: An Illustrated History” by Andrew Revkin with Lisa Mechaley. Beginning with the creation of the earth and the development of the atmosphere, Revkin and Mechaley show how our world’s weather came in to being and how our own development evolved with it. It, unfortunately, also shows how we have come to influence it. How a snowstorm helped to convince New York City leaders to build the subway system and just how far back scientists knew that the burning of coal changed the climate (they, at first, thought it was a benefit). “Weather” is an intelligent look at how much as a species weather has defined our world and how we as a species have defined the weather.

If ‘identifying’ is something that has piqued your interest, there are two new DK Smithsonian books. “Gemstones” by Cally Hall is an identification book that covers precious metals, gems, and different cut and uncut stones. Hall walks their reader through the different physical properties of stones as well as defining optical properties and facets. They even show where stones are found geographically. If you find fossils interesting, then check out “Fossils” by David J Ward. Cataloging over 500 different fossils, Ward’s book adds annotations such as epoch, region, and likelihood of each fossil. Both books are filled with highly detailed photos to aid in your exploration of the natural world.

Happy Sciencing! (Seriously, what is a treatise?)

Believe it or not, 2022 is almost over, and what better way to finish off the year than reading the 2022 Booker Prize novels? Every year, six works of fiction are shortlisted, and the winner of this prestigious prize is announced in late October.  

This year’s six authors on the shortlist represent five different nationalities, and half the books on the list were published by independent publishers.  

Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo, borrows a trick from George Orwell’s Animal Farm by telling the story of Robert Mugabe, the former leader of Zimbabwe, from the point of view of animals. Since gaining independence from British colonial rule, the fictional country of Jidada has been ruled by an aging horse. A military of dogs helps Tuvy, a younger horse whose promises sound too good to be true, stage a coup d’état and strip Old Horse of his power. Will Tuvy do right by the animal kingdom and improve their desperate living conditions, or will he turn out to be just another horse once he gets a taste of political power? To find out – and to learn about Zimbabwe’s troubling postcolonial history – you’ll have to read this unusual, beautifully-written novel for yourself.  

Treacle Walker by Alan Garner, introduces us to Joe Coppock, who “can’t see proper.” Joe spends his days in a mystical, folkloric world until Treacle Walker, a traveler who claims he can heal all ailments except jealousy, gives Joe two magical objects. Joe begins to experience the world differently once Treacle comes along – or did the world itself begin to change? Told in a combination of Old English and made-up words, Treacle Walker can be a bit hard to follow until you get the flow of the dialogue, but the story is worth the confusion. Fun fact: at 87, Garner is the oldest author ever to be nominated for the Booker Prize.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan transports the reader to Ireland in the mid-1980s. Coal merchant Bill Furlong is a hard-working man who cares deeply for his family and community. Having been rescued from poverty and disgrace as a child by a wealthy widow, Bill sincerely believes people are innately kind. During the Christmas rush, Bill delivers a load of coal to the local laundry, run by nuns, and witnesses a scene that shakes him to his core. Pressured to keep what he saw a secret, Bill wrestles with his faith, knowing the Catholic Church holds more power than a kindhearted coalman could ever hope for. Small Things Like These brings the cruelties of Irish Magdalene laundries to light through the lens of a generous but sensible man suddenly faced with a seemingly impossible decision. 

Percival Everett’s The Trees takes place in the present time in the small town of Money, Mississippi. A series of ghastly murders has the State of Mississippi detectives baffled and the townspeople resistant and defensive. Each murder leaves behind not only the body of a white man, but also a second body of a young Black man with an undeniable resemblance to Emmett Till, whose horrific real-life lynching in Money shocked the world back in 1955. As the case builds, more murders begin to occur, not just in Mississippi, but all over the country. Is this a case of long-awaited revenge or a reflection of something deeper-seated in American history? One might not think this grisly story could be humorous, but the author’s gallows humor keeps the reader amused and horrified at the same time. It takes great balance and talent to pull off a book like this, but to think it can’t be done would be a disservice to Percival Everett’s brilliant writing.  

Oh William! is Elizabeth Strout’s latest novel about her beloved character Lucy Barton. William is Lucy’s ex-husband and father of their two adult daughters. Reeling from the death of her second husband, Lucy is at a crossroads in her life and often becomes lost in thought. Despite their decades-long connection, William has always been something of a mystery to Lucy. When William discovers a secret about his family that leaves him questioning the actions of his late mother, he invites Lucy to travel to Maine with him to get to the truth. The beauty of this deceptively simple story lies in Lucy’s profound reflections on her impoverished, deeply damaging childhood, her complicated yet loving relationship with William, the death of her beloved second husband, and the overriding question of whether one person can ever truly know another.   

And the winner is (drumroll, please) The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka. The titular character in this novel is a Sri Lankan war photographer who wakes up one morning in 1990 and realizes he is dead. Maali has no idea who killed him, but he does know he has unfinished business – he must find his box of incriminating photos that have the potential to expose the appalling corruption of the Sri Lankan civil war and bring down governments. Struggling to communicate with the living from his surprisingly bureaucratic “in-between” afterlife, Maali has seven moons (one week) to complete this final task. Part ghost story, part mystery, and part history book, the Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is impossible to categorize, and equally impossible to put down.  

You can find all these books at Smiley Library and decide for yourself which one is your favorite.