Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End by Alua Arthur
Although humans have been dying as long as we’ve been living on the earth, death continues to come as an unwelcome shock to most of us. There is, however, a growing contingent of mortals eager to shift the cultural stance on death away from petrified denial and towards something more like acceptance, if not embrace or affection. In the vanguard of this “death positive” movement are death doulas, who provide companionship, emotional support, and guidance to individuals preparing for the end. And at the fore of the death doula vanguard is Alua Arthur. Probably the only celebrity death doula in the business, Arthur makes regular media appearances and speaks at conferences to nudge the public and care professionals alike along in redefining their relationship with death and dying. How might our lives change if we faced human mortality honestly and with equanimity, even curiosity, she asks, rather than painstakingly avoiding the subject: avoiding talking about it, avoiding thinking about it, avoiding planning for it. Briefly Perfectly Human is equal parts memoir and death positivity primer, interweaving reflections on Arthur’s path to what some might consider her morbid vocation with stories from the thousands of deaths she has attended in her career. Empathetic and impassioned, the book offers space for readers to ease into contemplation of death’s place in their own lives, as the tenebrous destiny that awaits us all.
For amateur thanatologists, the tentatively death positive, and fans of Caitlin Doughty.
Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy
Try to call to mind the major American social struggles of the 19th century, the ones you learned about in history class. Abolition? Women’s suffrage? The labor movement? Less likely to be on your list is the crusade against animal cruelty—but, as Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy admirably document in Our Kindred Creatures, the early animal welfare movement was closely entwined with these more prominent campaigns. Focusing on the period between 1866 and 1896, the authors explain how the fight for animal rights rode in on the wave of reformist zeal that followed the Civil War, when abolitionists, in need of a new cause now that slavery outlawed, shifted their energies to the maltreatment of so-called “lesser beasts.” Early women’s rights activists were also among the first leaders of the anti-vivisection movement, while the plight of workers in the Midwest’s harrowing meatpacking plants drew attention to the horrors the industry inflicted on animals as well as humans. Our Kindred Creatures spotlights the key battles – campaigns against horse-drawn streetcars in New York City and the slaughter of Philadelphia’s stray dogs, for example, or the protests launched to call off the U.S. military’s policy of shooting down bison from speeding trains – and trailblazers of the “moral revolution” that initiated the long, still ongoing slog toward shifting hearts and minds in the direction of justice for all creatures.
For animal history buffs, trackers of social progress, and fans of Wasik and Murphy’s previous book, the remarkable Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus (2012).
As a sort of international sampler platter of contemporary women poets whose writings swerve into some of the stranger wilds where feminist politics meet surrealism, I submit:
All the Garbage of the World, Unite! by Kim Hyesoon
The Dead Girls Speak in Unison by Danielle Pafunda
Hackers by Aase Berg
Please note that none of the above are for the squeamish, the literal-minded, or those who like their verse dished up placid and polite, as fodder for wistful contemplation. Indeed, each of these poets could be justifiably called the Anti-Mary Oliver. Take it as you will.
-Aurora, Reference
The Book of Nightmares by Galway Kinnell was published in the early 1970s, a time of apocalyptic malaise and unmooring. He dedicated it to his two young children, Maud and Fergus, and the theme of death and rebirth is redolent throughout. This is arguably Kinnell’s best work, a poetic masterpiece, but one I read as a parenting manual. One poem’s title alone is a complete poetic work: “Little Sleep’s-Heading Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight.” This is the poem I’d remember each time one of my children (and now grandchildren) awoke crying from their sleep and in need of comfort. Kinnell’s poetry soothes the one who soothes the child, not with assurance of any kind, but with the reassurance that this repeating performance of cry and response is our shared human condition.
-Elizabeth, Assistant Director
The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster by John O’Connor
If you’re anything like me, the phrase “I Want to Believe” summons visions of flying saucers, extraterrestrial visitors, and the intrepid renegade government employees who tirelessly track them across the United States. If you have the good fortune of not being especially like me, and your psyche is organized around something other than an undying preoccupation with Fox Mulder, the phrase might draw your thoughts to entities loftier even than UFOs. But of all the things we might long to believe in, perhaps the most uniquely, bizarrely American is Bigfoot. With The Secret History of Bigfoot, journalist and self-declared cryptid agnostic John O’Connor serves up a jaunty, impressively comprehensive popular history of the hirsute hominid said to prowl the darkest reaches of forests from Oregon to Maine’s own Hundred-Mile Wilderness. O’Connor not only reviews the folklore and literature of the Bigfoot phenomenon, he also seeks out firsthand encounters for himself, tagging along with seasoned trackers and attending conventions organized by the legendary creature’s hardcore devotees. While this book is very much about Bigfoot, it is equally about the nature of faith, what it means to believe in the unknown and unknowable—and why it is that we so badly want to.
For believers and skeptics alike, along with fans of the International Cryptozoology Museum, weird Americana, and offbeat travelogues. Special shout-out to my dad, a true believer.
Remembering Peasants: A Personal History of a Vanished World by Patrick Joyce
Although the average person you meet today may be more tuned in to what’s trending on TikTok than the basics of subsistence farming, for the larger part of our species’ history, humans lived off the land. And in reality, of course, we still do. Yet this is a reality we denizens of the digital-age industrialized world can all too readily forget, because we tend to have others doing the ‘dirty work’ of actually touching that land for us. For millennia, however, the agrarian way of life dominated, such that wherever our families may hail from, the majority of us are descended from peasants. Irish social historian Patrick Joyce urges us not to forsake these earthier ancestors in his new book, Remembering Peasants. Although careful to avoid romanticizing his subject – the peasant life comes with hardships too unpleasant to be discounted (famine, anyone?) – Joyce poignantly laments the fading out of the values he ties to the agrarian cultures of Europe’s past, from neighborliness to a high-spirited, slightly anarchic aversion to centralized authority. A thoughtful homage to disappearing lifeways and an understated critique of their technologized modern successors, Remembering Peasants is worthwhile reading for anachronisms of all stripes.
For fans of Wendell Berry, European history, folk culture, and Helen and Scott Nearing’s The Good Life.
The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself by Robin Reames
Do you ever suspect that the media pundits, politicians and influencers aggressively vying for our attention have an unspoken agenda, that as these talking heads go on talking and talking they’re angling to sell us on something rather than straightforwardly setting out the facts at hand? How terribly cynical of you! But also: how perceptive, since you are altogether right. To remedy the migraine-inducing mind warp of omnipresent spin, Robin Reames has gifted us with a helpful guide to sharpening our rhetorical chops. As the art and study of persuasive language, rhetoric deals with the how’s and why’s of wielding words to shift and shape people’s thinking. With a healthy grasp of rhetoric, Reames writes, we can better equip ourselves to sift through the deluge of brain-hijacking babble/babel that comes pouring out at us from every screen. This is an invaluable skill in our media-soaked, ultra-polarized age, and one bound to be a true mental life preserver as the election season haze continues to thicken.
For independent thinkers, commonsense logicians, chatter-addled minds seeking a detox, and everyone already exhausted by 2024.
The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding, Big and Small by Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell
When contemplating the state of the living earth and the legion of ecological crises that seem to grow graver by the day, it is difficult not to tumble headlong into the proverbial abyss of despair. The trouble with the abyss of despair, however, is that there’s not an awful lot one can do about anything from way down there (I say this with the confidence of a regular visitor to some of the abyss’s bleaker recesses). If you’re looking for more than yet another reason to feel terrified and despondent, hence paralyzed, about environmental cataclysm, I submit The Book of Wilding. Following up on author Isabella Tree’s popular Wilding, in which she chronicled the transformation of her family farm into a flourishing ecosystem, The Book of Wilding is a fantastic resource for everyone seeking to restore and nurture the biosphere here and now, wherever we live, in whatever time we may have. Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell offer a bounty of detailed information on the many ways we can be proactive in our care for the earth, complemented by a passionate appeal to rethink our relationship to, and place within, the natural world.
For my fellow dwellers in the abyss, as we fumble through our eager striving to crawl up and out. Never forget we can still plant flowers, still feed the birds.
I am not a fan of post-apocalyptic sci-fi, nor do I read sci-fi often. However, the Silo Saga was recommended to me and I am so glad I tried it! I don’t know how the TV series is compared to the books, but I always find the books better. The series has great characters, a fascinating setting, action, romance, and thought provoking moral dilemmas. You can get the Wool Omnibus and read the five books in the series at once.
-Meredith, Children’s Room
In the car, in the air, you can listen anywhere! PFL staff love audiobooks and think you should too. Favorite titles below can be found in CD book form or on cloudLibrary.
Juvenile:
Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney (Read by Claire Danes and enhanced with sound effects)
How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell (Read exuberantly and hilariously by Scottish actor David Tennant of Doctor Who fame)
Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne (Read by the author)
My 5 year old son loves listening to the author narrate each adventure while he builds with Legos. -Gia, Children’s Room
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (Read by beloved actor Alfred Molina)
YA:
The Inheritance Games series by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Read by Christie Moreau)
Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley (Read by Isabella Star LeBlanc)
Graceling by Kristen Cashore (Read by a full cast)
Had my whole family sitting in the truck after we had arrived at our destination. –Andrea, Circulation
For Lamb by Lesa Cline-Ransome (Read by an incredible cast of six voice actors)
My Contrary Mary by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows (Read by Fiona Hardingham who seamlessly switches between French, Scottish and British accents)
The Honeys by Ryan La Sala (Read by Pete Cross and enhanced with sound effects to amplify the eerie horror factor)
From Here by Luma Mufleh (Read by the author in a heart-breaking narration of her tumultuous journey from Jordan to America)
Sword of Summer and the rest of the Magnus Chase series by Rick Riordan (Read by Christopher Guetig)
Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz (Read delightfully by Scottish actress Mhairi Morrison and actor Tim Campbell)
Adult:
The Mike Bowditch series by Paul Doiron (Ready by Henry Levya)
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America, Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer by Barbara Ehrenreich
I’m not usually one for audiobooks, but in the past I’ve enjoyed Barbara Ehrenreich’s books on audio. Informative and thought-provoking but not so dense you feel as if you’re missing out because you’re driving and can’t take notes, and written with a wry tone that does my inner contrarian good, they make for ideal nonfiction listening. -Aurora, Reference
Neverwhere (read by the author) and American Gods (read by a full cast) by Neil Gaiman
Spare by Prince Harry (Read by the author)
I was really struck by the beauty of Prince Harry reading his book, Spare, on audiobook. It seems rare to see a man write such a vulnerable account of his struggles in the public eye and the death of his mother. Hearing his own voice tell his perspective was a really powerful listen! -Gia, Children’s Room
60 Songs That Explain the 90s by Rob Harvilla
Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches by John Hodgman (read by the author)
Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch (read by the author)
Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird edited by Jonathan Maberry
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (Read by the author to both hilarious and sobering effect)
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (Read by Meryl Streep)
Patchett’s writing combined with Streep’s storytelling is such a treat! -Gia, Children’s Room
Using an array of sketches, diagrams, and sequenced panels, graphic novelist Dan Nott presents an introduction to three modern wonders: the internet, electricity, and water systems. He explains the three topics through many facets—their historical development, their technological intricacies, their social importance, and their future challenges.
Much of the information in Hidden Systems might be familiar to readers, but its brilliance is in its entertaining and simple depiction of complex systems through historical time and across a globe without borders. As a reader, I became aware that these systems are in their historic infancy, and therefore of the existing needs to advance their efficiency, their climate costs, their cultural costs, etc. These issues will be central to the next generation, and it’s impossible to ignore that implication while reading. This book is a fascinating, well-organized, and invaluable primer for readers of all ages.
-Laurel, Reference
Mysterious disappearance of a loved one? Check.
Ages-old evil entity? Check.
Scary things back from the dead? Check.
All this plus a weird island that can’t be googled and seems to have stopped evolving past 1994. Makes for a page turning horror/psychological thriller. And did I mention fun 1994 references? Dead Eleven is told through a mix of text messages, letters, and the narrative of a few different characters. I read in one night, sitting by the fire.
-Meredith, Children’s Room
I listened to the audiobook, O Beautiful by Jung Yun on the CloudLibrary online catalog and was invested in the story from the first few lines. It’s about a woman named Elinor in her forties trying to reinvent herself after a modeling career from her youth. When she gets the opportunity to write an article on her hometown for a prestigious magazine, she discovers much more than she anticipated. As she explores how the Bakken oil boom has transformed the entire landscape of what she remembers of North Dakota, I was on the edge of my seat as she interviews those who are affected. I will never forget this book. Yun shows the complexity and greyness of capitalism, racism, sexism, and social class.
-Gia, Children’s Room
Leaving aside those who wish to have children but don’t, there are surely as many reasons for not being a parent as for being one and as many ways to be as to not be one. The essays in Selfish, Shallow, and Self Absorbed are thoughtful and honest about the challenges of living an “authentic” life. It’s clear that there can be courage and a rich emotional life in either decision.
-Barbara, Circulation
