Staff Review: The Hour of Land by Terry Tempest Williams

The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks by Terry Tempest Williams stands a very good chance of being my 2017 best book of the year. I loved it so much I'm about to read it all over again. The book combines all my favorite genres: history, nature writing, memoir, travel. Published in 2016 to coincide with the National Park Service's centennial celebrations, The Hour of Land is a very personal tour, conducted by Williams herself, through a dozen of the nation's 58 national parks.

And what a tour guide she is. A naturalist, writer, and native of Utah, Williams is probably best known for her 1992 memoir Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place about losing her mother to cancer just as the Great Salt Lake floods, threatening the migratory birds Williams treasures. She's extremely knowledgeable, she loves wild places with a passion, and she possesses what I can only call a beautiful spirit: generous, gentle, peace-loving, compassionate. Plus, she's a terrific and highly poetic writer.

It's a pleasure to tour the country in her company, even when she's surveying wrenching scenes like the damage inflicted on Gulf Islands National Seashore by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 or the encroachments of the Bakken oil fields on Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. More often what she surveys is sublime, from Alaska's Gates of the Arctic and Wyoming's Grand Teton to Acadia National Park in Maine. She even makes a stop at Effigy Mounds National Monument here in Iowa.

Particularly pleasurable is the variety of approaches Williams takes to her park descriptions, focusing closely at times on ecology or American history, then shifting her lens to her own life and family. She includes letters, emails, and journal entries to fine effect and provides a wonderful personal anecdote about Lady Bird Johnson. Modern readers, who may be unaware of how our great park system got started, learn about the unflagging philanthropic and environmental efforts of such National Park greats as Laurence Rockefeller, Theodore Roosevelt, Stewart Udall, and many others. This book's a lavish banquet of luscious park detail and I, for one, could not get enough of it. How I wish Williams had visited all 58.

~Ann, Adult Services

#ComicsWednesday: Strong Female Protagonist by Brennan Lee Mulligan & Molly Ostertag

Sometimes it pays to take a chance on a book based entirely on the cover art or a clever title. Jumping into a story blindly with no real expectations can be a great way to break a reading slump by taking all the pressure off of yourself. Plus, there's a chance you'll discover a really great book you probably wouldn't've encountered otherwise.

I knew nothing about Strong Female Protagonist by writer Brennan Lee Mulligan and artist Molly Ostertag before I checked it out from the library, and I am so glad that I did. Like many of my favorite comics, it started life as a webcomic, and if you don't want to wait for the library's print copy, you can read it immediately on their website.

Strong Female Protagonist is a superhero story about a young woman who doesn't want to be a superhero but who finds it equally hard to stand silent in the face of injustice. When young teens started developing superpowers, Alison Green discovered she had some incredible powers. The government provided guidance, support, and merchandising opportunities, and Alison became Mega Girl. Until the day she discovered that maybe the world isn't cut into clear divisions of good & evil, and maybe the world shouldn't be turning to teenagers for saving. So Alison took off the mask and enrolled in college, but her life will never be normal.

This is a character-driven and thoughtful take on the superhero story that incorporates real world challenges and issues between the superpowered battles. There's an intriguing conspiracy that propels the plot, but the real focus is on Alison's struggles to adjust to adulthood. The art is less typical superhero comic, and has more of the feel of a cartoon, but with some incredibly detailed backgrounds. One of my favorite parts of reading a long running webcomic is watching the way that an artist's style changes over time. Not that you'll notice any sudden shifts (except for the addition of color in the most recent chapters), Ostertag's art is remarkably consistent.

~Sarah, Adult Services

Staff Review: When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

The recent explosion of diversity in YA books has given me heart. When I saw a contemporary romance featuring first-generation Indian-American kids, I knew I had to read it. I feel like I say that about lots of books, but I do read lots of books. If you're looking for something to satisfy that rom-com sweet tooth, look no further than When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon.

All Dimple wants in life is to go to school, code an app, and get her parents to see her for the independent American girl that she is. All Rishi wants in life is to do right by his parents, even if that means he goes to school for computer science and has an arranged marriage. Their parents didn't intend to tell them about this arrangement until they were older, but since Dimple and Rishi are headed to the same summer program, they might as well meet, right?

A true comedy of errors and romance, When Dimple Met Rishi is one of the best books I read this past summer. It was well-written, funny, diverse, and surprisingly realistic. Menon grew up in India and now lives in Colorado. She has captured the voice of a generation in this novel - first generation Indian-American kids who struggle between their identity as a normal American kid and as the traditional Indian kid their parents expect them to be. I can't wait for Menon's next YA novel, From Twinkle, With Love, out in 2018.

You can check out When Dimple Met Rishi through the library's OverDrive as an eBook or audiobook. I highly recommend that you do.

- Libby, Youth Services