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"We Used to Live Here" is a spine-chilling horror novel about guests overstaying their welcome at a house settled in the rural mountains of Oregon. Written by Marcus Kliewer and published in 2024, the book opens with a seemingly normal family of a father, mother, 2 boys, and a girl who knock on the door of a home owned by Eve and Charlie, the new residents who just moved in. The father, Thomas, claims that he used to live there many years before and he'd like to show the kids around where he grew up.  Eve and Charlie just purchased the property and got a pretty good deal for it. With Charlie not home and Eve being a pushover, she invites the guests in. Once they arrive, strange occurrences slowly unravel. The daughter goes missing and Thomas begins acting strange. Once you start the book, you won't be able to put it down.  Throughout the story, the author provides archival documents about the history of the property and paranormal occurrences related to the home. The ...

Simone De Beauvoir is best known for her works such as “The Second Sex” and “The Woman Destroyed,” but little is known of her novellas, including "A Misunderstanding in Moscow." Set in the 1960s Nicole and Andre are an old married couple from Paris who go to Russia to visit Andre's daughter, Macha, from a previous marriage. On this trip, readers will observe how despite being married for years, Andre and Nicole grow apart and have become strangers. The ever-changing Russia and dialogue about the politics of the Cold War serves as a comparison to that of the marriage between Nicole and Andre in which they have in a way unfamiliar to each other and themselves. There are misunderstandings and confusion between the East and West just as there can be in families. De Beauvoir writes what Andre reflects:      Perhaps they would enable socialism to triumph, but their version of it would bear no       relation to the one his parents, his comrades, and he himsel...

photo credit: Cait Malilay ***TRIGGER WARNING:** This book contains descriptions of physical and emotional abuse, and pedophilia.  Consent is a powerful and raw 2020 memoir written by Vanessa Springora. Written 3 years after the launch of the #MeToo Movement, the 285-page novel recounts her experience as a 14-year-old in a relationship with an older man, a well-respected writer, who Springora only refers to as "G." Springora first encountered Gabriel Matzneff, 50, at a dinner party that was full of literary intellectuals.  She writes that her mother, who works in publishing, mistakenly thinks that he is interested in her, but no. Her mother is far from his type. He prefers teenagers and even younger, some as young as eleven. Didn't she know that? After all, that's what his works are all about. He admits his sexual experiences in the writings that are published by the company her mother works for.  "A father, conspicuous only by his absence, who left an unfathomab...

photo credit: Cait Malilay "Though hundreds of thousands had done their very best to disfigure the small piece of land on which they were crowded together, by paving the ground with stones, scraping away every vestige of vegetation, cutting down the trees, turning away birds and beasts, and filling the air with the smoke of naphtha and coal, still spring was spring, even in the town." - (Tolstoy 5) "Resurrection" was Leo Tolstoy's last written novel published in 1899. Told in the third person perspective, the book centers on a nobleman named Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhlyudov, whose values are tested when he by chance reconnects with someone from his past, someone he once loved and betrayed. The book's first chapter has strong similarities to that of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" with its opening passages of a prison and society focused on the fate of a fallen woman.  We are introduced to Maslova, also known as "Katusha," who i...

The Finkelstein Memorial Library hosted a Zoom book discussion on the New York Times bestseller,   “King: A Life,”   with author   Jonathan Eig   and   Mondaire Jones , a former Democratic representative and Congressional candidate for New York’s 17th district, last Thursday. " I wanted readers to encounter a more fully human Martin Luther King Jr: one with flaws, with doubts, with fears, one who’s even more inspiring because of his imperfection,” Eig said. Read full article here.

  I hope everyone's having a wonderful summer! 😎  My sunshine state of mind is soaking up the sun with a good book and an iced fruity drink.🍓 Instagram

Donus Roberts, the owner of DDR Books, stands next to his wife Lovila Roberts, who is seated in a chair. photo courtesy: @DonusRoberts / Twitter WATERTOWN, S.D. — Donus Roberts is the owner of DDR Books , a bookstore in a city that sits along the   Big Sioux River. Named after the Roman form of the Greek god, "Adonis," Roberts collected books all his life. He estimates that he owns about 14,000.  In the early 80s, Roberts began collecting first edition authors and began selling books online. A retired high school English teacher of nearly 40 years, he decided to open up a bookstore of his own.  Originally called ABC Books, he changed the name to Books from Donus Roberts until finally settling on  DDR Books in 2007.  Afterall, everyone called him DDR during his teaching days at Watertown Public Schools , which began in 1960. In fact, a love for literature and teaching runs in the family. Not only is his wife, Lovila Roberts, a retired high school English tea...

Back row (left to right) Amelia Faulkner and Gary O’Dell;  Middle row (left to right) Bree Thuma and Tina Schmidt. Front row (left to right) Alyse Foley and Bob Wolfe  photo courtesy: Bob Wolfe JOPLIN, Mo. — In Webb City, 10-year-old Bob Wolfe would walk almost every day from his house to the public library. He couldn’t wait to devour the next set of "The Hardy Boys" books and lucky for him, he lived less than a mile away. “I didn't read 'The Hardy Boys,' I became the third brother. I lived them, I loved it,” he said. On the way home, he’d read one book while he carried the rest of the haul stuffed into his shirt. He was so absorbed in the story that he'd sometimes step off a curve, run into a tree or walk two blocks past his house without even realizing. Now, 74, he owns a bookstore of his own called Always Buying Books , in Joplin, the birthplace of Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes. BOB WOLFE'S FAVORITE BOOK: Wolfe grew up in a family of reader...

pc: Cait Malilay "A Second Reckoning: Race, Injustice and the Last Hanging in Annapolis" by Scott D. Seligman delves into the historical case of John Snowden, a Black man charged under circumstantial evidence for murdering a White woman named Lottie Mae Brandon in 1917.  Seligman , an award-winning writer and a historian, walks readers through the case and the historical time period of Maryland's capitol, focusing specifically on race relations, while occasionally touching on gender norms and laws that restricted women from participating in government. Seligman presents the book in such a way where he's not setting out to prove whether Snowden was guilty or innocent, but rather simply stating the facts. There are many characters that help push forward the investigation, which made national headlines, one of them being Mary Grace Winterton Quackenbos Humiston. Humiston was a detective from New York who was hired by The Washington Times to solve the case.  She came fro...

pc: Cait Malilay  Can you imagine if you found out that the people who raised you weren't actually your parents? "A Girl Returned," by Donatella Di Peirtrantonio, tells the story of a 13-year-old girl in the mid-1970s Abruzzo whose life is turned upside down when one day she is dropped off at a house full of strangers, who happen to be her real family. Unnamed, she is referred to as "l'arminuta," the returned.  The phrase, "the returned," implies that she becomes objectified.  She not only returns to her real family, but her nickname, which was labeled by her classmates,  emphasizes that she lacks a sense of identity, and feels discarded and unwanted.  "One had given me up with the milk still on her tongue, the other had given me back at the age of 13. I was a child of separations, false or unspoken kinships, distances. I no longer knew who I came from. In my heart, I don't even now," (Di Peirtrantonio 115). It turns out that who she...

pc: Instagram / @cait_malilay_reads Will I ever, again in my life, fall in love with another book as much as "A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara?  Shortlisted for the 2015 Booker Prize, this whopping 816-page-long novel tells the story of four friends who meet in college, develop their own identities and face life's obstacles and milestones that come with adulthood. Readers will meet  Willem, the charming actor;                    Malcolm, the creative architect; JB, the cocky struggling artist and                    Jude, the mysterious lawyer with a dark past. ***TRIGGER WARNING:** This book contains descriptions of rape, addiction, physical and emotional abuse, self-harm and suicide.  This novel that's loved by many celebrities, such as Dua Lipa, Chris Pine and Dakota Johnson , is about friendship, the effects of trauma, love in all its forms and, of course, life it...

pc: IG / @cait_malilay_reads "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them" by Jason Stanley, a professor of philosophy at Yale University, Ph.D., is basically your introduction to fascism college course, or, in other words, Fascism 101.  At 193 pages long, if you don't include acknowledgments, one can definitely complete this in one sitting. Just because I personally describe it as fascism 101, one must certainly not underestimate the quality of the content as it is well worth the read indeed.  The Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy defines what fascism is in, if not all, most of its forms. Broken into 10 chapters, each goes into depth of a key idea of fascism and provides examples. He points out how one may think that fascism was a threat only long ago back in World War II, the days of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, but as he concludes, "It is tempting to think of normal as benign...there is no need for alarm. However both history and psychology show tha...