St. Albert Gazette Great Reading

Book picks as published in the January 16, 2019 St. Albert Gazette. For more great reads, check here.

21 lessons for the 21st century21 Lessons for the 21st century

By Yuval Harari

Yuval Noah Harari provides a kind of instruction manual for the present day to help readers find their way around the 21st century, to understand it, and to focus on the really important questions of life. Harari answers the overarching question: what is happening in the world today, what is the deeper meaning of these events, and how can we individually steer our way through them?

 

how to invent everythingHow to invent everything : a survival guide for the stranded time traveler

By Ryan North

What would you do if a time machine hurled you thousands of years into the past. . . and then broke? Ryan North shows you how to invent all the modern conveniences we take for granted–from first principles. This illustrated manual contains all the science, engineering, art, philosophy, facts, and figures required for even the most clueless time traveler to build a civilization from the ground up.

Joanne’s Mystery Picks

1473661943AUNTIE POLDI AND THE FRUITS OF THE LORD by Mario Giordano

Still basking in the glory of solving a murder in her first adventure (Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions), Poldi doesn’t hesitate to investigate when her neighbor’s dog turns up dead at the same time as the water to Poldi’s house has suddenly been cut off.  In Poldi’s mind, there’s no doubt that the Mafia are involved.  And that’s only the first conclusion that she jumps to in this hilarious second installment.

Poldi is brash, irreverent, and wickedly funny.  She’s unapologetic about her pursuit of Commissario Vito Montana or when her sleuthing disrupts his investigations.  Poldi is a breath of fresh air and a force to be reckoned with.  A more unusual heroine, you won’t find.

4 Daggers
Joanne gives this “4 daggers out of 5”

Weekend Picks

Best Indie Films 2018 – Vol. 1

The Death of Stalin

When the tyrannical ruler Stalin dies, his hapless inner circle scrambles to come up with the next evolution of the revolution, but it’s clear everyone is really out for themselves. Proof that comedy, like politics, is all in the execution.

Trailer

Mandy

The quiet life of devoted couple Red and Mandy takes a dark and bizarre turn when a nightmarish cult and their maniacal leader seek to possess Mandy, body and soul. A shocking assault on the innocent pair leads to a spiraling, surreal, bloody rampage of all out, mind-altering vengeance.

Trailer

Monday Evening Book Club January Selection

Lillian Boxfish takes a walkThe Monday Evening Book Club will meet at 7:00 pm on Monday January 14 in the 2nd floor Training Room to discuss the novel  Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney.

About the book…

It’s the last day of 1984, and 85-year-old Lillian Boxfish is about to take a walk.

As she traverses a grittier Manhattan, a city anxious after an attack by a still-at-large subway vigilante, she encounters bartenders, bodega clerks, chauffeurs, security guards, bohemians, criminals, children, parents, and parents-to-be—in surprising moments of generosity and grace. While she strolls, Lillian recalls a long and eventful life that included a brief reign as the highest-paid advertising woman in America—a career cut short by marriage, motherhood, divorce, and a breakdown.

A love letter to city life—however shiny or sleazy—Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk paints a portrait of a remarkable woman across the canvas of a changing America: from the Jazz Age to the onset of the AIDS epidemic; the Great Depression to the birth of hip-hop. (Author’s website)

Meet Chicago’s modern-day flaneuse: an interview with Kathleen Rooney

Interview with author Kathleen Rooney

Kathleen Rooney describes the process of writing Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

The real Lillian Boxfish: Margaret Fishback 

New York City in the 1980’s 

In praise of walking (and witty women) 

Chicago Tribune review