Vacation Reads

 

Summer can be the perfect opportunity to stay up late reading or get lost in a great book. How do you decide which books to pack on your vacation? Do you travel light and rely on ebooks? Personally, I have a strong preference for hardback novels which is why my bags are always so heavy. On road trips, I enjoy listening to books on CD, especially anything by humorist David Sedaris. 

What do you like to read or listen to on vacation? 

Do you like to explore new authors or stick with your favorites? 

The 2023 Libby Book Awards - Genre Fiction

 

Libby is the digital platform Forsyth County Public Library uses to provide patrons with free access to thousands of eBooks and eAudiobooks.

In March, the Libby Book Award winners were officially announced at the first-annual Libby Book Awards. The ceremony was presented on YouTube by podcast duo, the Professional Book Nerds. Books in 17 categories were chosen by voters from over 1,700 librarians and library workers across the country.

Here are a few of the winners of the 2023 Libby Book Awards in various genre categories.

Winner for Best Fantasy

Fourth Wing

by Rebecca Yarros

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to live a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her mother—has ordered Violet to join the dragon riders . But when you're smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don't bond to "fragile" humans. They incinerate them.

Staff Picks: Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan

 

Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan

Do you love epics?

In a recent discussion, my son mentioned he had begun to read a series by Robert Jordan. My first thought was that Robert Jordan wrote some long books! But I began the series on audiobooks, and before I knew it, I was off to the world of Wheel of Time, using both eAudiobooks and traditional audiobooks on CD. As I cobbled together a blog to discuss this series, my son provided an intriguing and fun recap of his own:

Need a new high fantasy series? Have lots of time to kill? 

Wheel of Time: 4.4 million words to satisfy your fancy.

Staff Picks: Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko

 

Vita Nostra by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko

A sixteen-year-old girl’s life takes some very weird turns when she notices a strange man watching her during her beach vacation with her mother. Every time Shasha successfully evades the stranger, she awakens in a terrifying time loop until she finally agrees to hear his bizarre request. 

At precisely four in the morning, Shasha is instructed to swim out to a buoy in the ocean. When she complies, she receives three gold coins and is ordered to continue the practice daily. But when she oversleeps one morning, a close family friend pays the consequences. 

Staff Picks: In The Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune

In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune

In the Lives of the Puppets is a postmodern retelling of the story of Pinocchio that raises timely questions about artificial intelligence and human compassion.  

T.J. Klune’s version of the classic tale takes place in a post-human world inhabited by robots of all shapes, sizes, and temperaments. A fatherly artificial human named Gio uses his engineering skills to create a fairy-tale homestead in the forest where he raises an orphaned human as his son. While Gio spends his time in his shop, his son Victor and two companions—Nurse Ratched (Nurse Registered Automaton To Care, Heal, Educate, and Drill) and a sentient Roomba named Rambo—discover a partially destroyed robot named Hap. More curious than cautious, Young Victor restores Hap’s functionality, only to realize too late that his newest companion is a HARP (Human Annihilation Response Protocol).  

One of my favorite passages in In the Lives of Puppets comes from Rambo the vacuum.    

I know it seems hard, but we have to be brave. Your brain is telling you that you can’t, but you don’t always have to listen to it. Sometimes it tells you white lies.  I know it does to me. It says, “No, you won’t make it because you’ll die a horribly painful death where your entire body will be crushed and all of your innards will fall out."