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monheganmemoriallibrary

A #bookstagram account featuring Mia’s favorite books from the Library! 📚 Every book posted is available for checkout. 📖

“Feral. He wanted to be free.” I love this book “Feral. He wanted to be free.” 

I love this book fiercely. It is so much: hawks & falconry, a diary of grief, a wrestling with nature and literature. Most of all it is the embedded biography of TH White, tortured and trying to redeem himself through a hawk. My heart stirred so greatly for him. Helen breaks the spell for herself and for White on these pages. I can’t recommend a finer book on the subject of creation. #hisforhawk #thwhite
“The error of love that proved its perfection.” T “The error of love that proved its perfection.”

This is less a book and more of a multi voiced unfolding poem. Atleast that’s how it felt to me. I went through it not trying to understand, certain I’ll come back for closer reading later. I let what little plot there is go and was just there with the language. So I can’t really tell you what this book is. Except one of the most beautiful reading experiences I’ve had recently. #annemichaels
“Whose woods these are I think I know.” How many “Whose woods these are I think I know.”

How many of us recited this in school? I did! Yet, it was when I heard Frost himself read it that I really grasped why this might be a classic poem. Opening this book and placing the accompanying CD in the player, listening to his voice, I suddenly heard what was hiding in this simple poem. It was a moment you’d like to stay in: dark and deep, peaceful and quiet. Yet you can’t stay. You have to keep going. 

Atleast that’s what I heard. 

You can listen to even more amazing poets read their own works here: Whitman. Millay. Brooks. Hughes. This is a real hidden gem in our collection, in my opinion. We also have a similar children’s anthology. 

So take this and hear beloved poems as they were meant to be experienced! I guarantee: you will feel different.

(Yes I know CD players are a rarity these days 🥹…the Library has one that hooks to a MacBook that you can borrow.)

#robertfrost #stoppingbywoodsonasnowyevening #poetryspeaks
Yes, it’s an atlas. Yes we have it in the library. Yes, it’s an atlas. Yes we have it in the library. 

This is the Rand McNally Road Atlas ‘06, so it’s incredibly outdated. I’m not sure what would be different though—-do exit numbers change? I suppose some highways must have been rerouted in those two decades. One thing for sure: if I tried to read an atlas in a moving car today? I’d probably puke. 

But I remember balancing it on my knees and not getting carsick. Some states were really big and took a surprising amount of time to get through. Like Virginia. The way we passed in and out of Delaware delighted me though.

I also loved flipping to states I’d never seen. I developed an interest in Montana. I liked that looked like a face with a nose. And there was so much blank space. I have still never been to Montana! But that’s the thing about the atlas. It captures your imagination. You don’t even have to be driving. Reading the maps is an exploration. 

Looking at this atlas, I feel sad about how our phones have changed travel. I appreciate google maps. Like most of us, I rely on it pretty heavily.

But I miss this.

#randmcnally #roadatlas
“He thinks, winter is here. I am at Launde. I have “He thinks, winter is here. I am at Launde. I have stumbled deep into the crisp white snow.”

What’s it like to read a book where you know the character dies at the end? The answer is, unnerving. Surprisingly suspenseful. Sad but in an ironic way. 

I skimmed a bit. Tudor names and politics were too complicated and boring. But this is the heart of it: Tudor England is brutal. Violent, cruel. Strange to say, that was a hook for me. That’s what made this book more than a relic of the past. The first two in the series as well, but this one most. It’s about mortality. Death. I’ve never found a book that pushes you off the edge and lets you take in the experience as you fall. We can’t do that as we die. So, though unlike Cromwell I doubt I will meet my end with a French executioner, still. This is the mark of good fiction. This book just inspires the feeling: Oh, is that what it’s like?

#hilarymantel #themirrorandthelight #thomascromwell #tudors #wolfhall
“I don’t want to end up simply having visited this “I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

I read this book growing up. It was maybe the first poetry I really knew. I admit I sometimes find Mary Oliver a little much. Too smooth. Too earnest. Perhaps it’s the effect of a few famous poems, shared over and over. Yet as I revisit this volume today, it’s not the famous ones I remember loving. It was the darker ones. Mary Oliver writes extravagantly about loving the world. But she also writes about leaving the world. Now I realize that death, not just the profound beauty of nature, is actually her theme. 

I also realize just how many of her phrases have stayed with me since those early readings. Each time I look at peonies, I think they’re “getting ready to break my heart.” Sometimes I imagine “that long, blue body of light.” All around me things are “luminous” “throbbing” “before they are nothing, forever.” The non-nature lines too—the rhythm in “I believe no trinket, no precious metal, shone so bright as your bitterness.”

I’m glad I have these Mary Oliver things in the back of my mind. May they be steady guides as I travel through this life. And out of it.

#maryoliver
“The stars had only one task: they taught me how t “The stars had only one task: they taught me how to read. / They taught me I had a language in heaven / and another language on earth.”

These poems unfurled for me with so much beauty I was amazed it had taken me so long to read them. Is it strange to say: they reminded me of Rumi mixed with Leonard Cohen? I felt I was flying through a night of symbols. Some replay many times, like the hoopoe, or the olive tree. I can’t claim to understand these poems but I love being in them. I am so grateful to have discovered this. 

#mahmouddarwish #unfortunatelyitwasparadise
“And I wasn’t paralyzed by fear or stunned into sp “And I wasn’t paralyzed by fear or stunned into spontaneous memory loss. Nothing like that. I didn’t do anything simply because I decided not to.”

When I finished this book, I immediately tried to get someone else to read it, so I could see how they reacted to its development. It is a book that starts one way, that makes you think it’s one thing. Something melancholy but sweet. Harmless. And then…it veers. I wouldn’t have loved it without that twist. For how it got dark in all the right ways. Read it and compare notes with me!

#sarabaume #spillsimmerfalterwither
“And through these cuttings, as much as through hi “And through these cuttings, as much as through his fairy tales, he was able to express himself and his private world of make-believe.”

Hans Christian Andersen, creator of the saddest fairy tales ever, is a writer I have always loved. This book is a surprising and delightful find—a biography (young adult level) but with an emphasis on his papercutting! Made as he was telling stories to children and then gifted to the child, some cuttings were treasured and preserved. But most of them are probably lost. The ones that appear on these pages are just as strange as his tales. I love artists who work in more than one medium. And now I know my favorite Hans Christian Andersen was one! #hanschristianandersen #papercutting
“I am so happy,” Constance said at last, gasping. “I am so happy,” Constance said at last, gasping. “Merricat, I am so happy.”

There is nothing scarier to me than a slow mental descent, and that’s what I felt like was happening reading this book. I still have an image in my mind of that house hidden by vines. And the two women inside, given over to their complete isolation and their insanity. A hole in the cardboard to look out, but no one can see in. Ever again. That, has haunted me. #shirleyjackson #wehavealwayslivedinthecastle #halloween
“This is no ordinary aquarium.” The ocean is fas “This is no ordinary aquarium.” 

The ocean is fascinating and vital, but it is also profoundly artistic and inspirational.  Of this I am convinced. I’ve lived by the ocean my entire life but it’s only recently that I’ve deepened my relationship with it, though underwater photography. In the midst of this exploration/obsession, this book comes to the Library. I have always enjoyed Victorian naturalist sketches. And I have always loved nature assemblages (pictured here are some of my prize pieces as well as the shell collection of a friend.) This book is the essence of those things. So much wonder between two covers! Take it to a tidepool with you and see the magic reveal itself in real life. #oceanarium #welcometothemuseumseries
“I showed him kindness. He remained a monster.” T “I showed him kindness. He remained a monster.”

This book will kill you to read. It’s brutal. Another one to give a strong trigger warning for: this is a novel about a woman who is kidnapped and raped. Yet this must be on my bookstagram because it is maybe the most well written book I’ve ever read. I am presently working through Gay’s memoir “Hunger.” And I understand now how she was able to write this novel. I finished it in just a couple sittings back in 2016. I considered it, but don’t know if I can bear a re-reading. Really though I don’t need to: it’s haunted me ever since. #roxanegay #anuntamedstate
“I would have to turn around and face her, she who “I would have to turn around and face her, she who might be myself, but who was definitely herself.”

This book attracted me with its premise—a woman seeing her double. It enchanted me with its prose: spare and surreal so you feel like you’re floating. And, it made me fall in love with its core: an adopted girl who is looking for her mother. This book walks the delicate line between being both a stylish work of art and being emotionally true. And, it makes me remember back when I was a pianist. Excuse me while I go read everything by Deborah Levy now. #deborahlevy #augustblue
“O, the imagination of a new reborn boy/ but most “O, the imagination of a new reborn boy/ but most of us settle on 𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦.”

This is THE best poetry chapbook I have ever read. That’s really all I have to say about it. Every line destroys you. I mean. In a poem called “every day is a funeral & a miracle,” Smith says “America might kill me before i get the chance.” Says “today, Tamir Rice/ tomorrow, my liver” and “do i think someone created AIDS?…anything is possible in a place/where you can burn a body/with less outrage than a flag.” Says, to sum it up: “they sent a boy/when the bullet missed.” That’s just one big poem out of 29 and not even necessarily my favorite. I cannot adequately portray the power of this book. You must simply read it. #danezsmith #dontcallusdead
“There are no harmless, compassionate ways to rema “There are no harmless, compassionate ways to remake oneself.”

This book…not a breath of fresh air but a gust of wind. The feelings, as a brown person, that I’d always had but never saw on paper. “Jasmine” showed me the bravery of becoming and left me with a desire to have more than one life, which I then learned was more than possible. What a beautiful book to set me on my way. #bharatimukherjee #jasmine
“But what she didn’t know was that the story of th “But what she didn’t know was that the story of the woman who disappeared like that didn’t make me sad…I thought it was beautiful.” 

This is one of my favorite books ever. It’s everything I find endearing and relatable. Misanthrop ✔️Gay ✔️ Snarky comments to therapist ✔️ Bookish ✔️ Feeling sad ✔️ Mental breakdowns ✔️ Also? Really funny. This is one of the most familiar, recognizable books I’ve ever read. It just feels true. #somedaythispainwillbeusefultoyou #petercameron
“ ‘Will you come again?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ she said. “ ‘Will you come again?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I promise.’ “

Sometimes picture books are jewels, metaphorically but also literally. This one along with its companion “Grandfather Twilight” (which was somehow deaccessioned from the library!) were childhood favorites. I could not resist the soft brightness of the covers. As an adult I appreciate them even more deeply for their symbolism. This book is a riddle that playfully unfolds. Each line is simple but makes a dreamlike aura. There’s a child’s sense of goodbyes, that particular sadness which I remember feeling. And those glowing illustrations. Beauty. #barbaraberger #whenthesunrose
“She might have been struck, as she often had been “She might have been struck, as she often had been when she was running the place herself, by the rough and beautiful ways people carried their loneliness.”

This book, so unassuming on the shelf for years, its title nothing that would catch my eye. One day I decided to just pick it up. And I felt so pleasantly surprised.

It’s about a small town. And it’s about drinking. And it’s about having relationships with people who live in small towns and are drinking.  At the time I read it especially, I recognized all this. And I felt like the book distilled some kind of lonely hurt that felt so familiar to me, even if it was not directly my own. I wasn’t expecting this book to knock me off my feet. But it did. #lateratthebar #rebeccabarry
“I see a landscape inside me, that resembles my li “I see a landscape inside me, that resembles my life, that explains why it is I’m dying…”

Soft like lilacs, I remember spending some meandering days discovering Colette. It was awhile ago, but still this particular story “The Landscape” remained in my imagination. When days are warm and light is long, I love to linger over works of literature that are similarly dreamy. Conceptual, telling moments not narratives, always graceful. I re-read “The Landscape” today and I was still charmed. Perhaps it’s because the lilacs are out. #colette
“For if I hadna had a hare-lip to frighten me away “For if I hadna had a hare-lip to frighten me away into my own lonesome soul, this would never have come to me.”

I don’t know what a love-spinning is or a Sin Eater, and the grammar is a bit strange…this book was written in 1925 but seems like it’s much older. But for all this quaintness, it reads as fresh as springtime to me. I feel like this is one of the sweetest books in the Library. It’s the quiet wonder in it, the descriptions of the natural world, and Prue’s courage and matter-of-factness. Most of all, it’s this scene in the attic, with the “pippins and jargonelles,” where she has a revelation that feels so familiar to me. Not religious, she writes, but having to do with “birdsong and daffadown-dillies rustling.” Something quiet that changes your life. I’ve felt that before. And I know too, that sometimes it does arise exactly from being in our lonesome souls. #preciousbane #marywebb
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