Tomorrow, June 10, at noon in the Cumberland Room at the library, Back in Time, your favorite rock, pop and R&B big jazz band will be performing. Get ready to smile, sing along, and dance to songs that you’ll love.
Join us Wednesday, June 17, at noon in the Cumberland Room at the library as the Plateau Pluckers Ukulele Band play good old familiar tunes from country to rock to good old-time music.
Art Circle Public Library is at 3 East St., Crossville. We’re open 8 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday; and 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday.
Visit artcirclelibrary.info or call 931-484-6790 for more information.
Great New Books
Daughters of the Sun and Moon by Lisa See. The stories of three Chinese immigrants in 19th-century Los Angeles are interwoven. In 1870, the small, dirty city is home to just 180 Chinese residents, including 30-odd women.
That year, Dove’s scholarly Cantonese father earns a large “bride price” by arranging her marriage to an elderly Los Angeles merchant who covets the status conferred by a young, beautiful wife.
After Petal’s starving peasant family sells her into servitude, she’s forced to perform sex work at a brothel controlled by one of the city’s Chinese tongs. By chance, Dove and Petal meet Moon, a happily married woman trying to get pregnant, and they bond over their mutual powerlessness. (“Not one of the thirty-four Chinese women in Los Angeles came here by choice,” Moon observes dryly.)
All three are endangered when white rioters loot the Chinese community and massacre nearly 20 men in October 1871. This taut story from precise details includes the fact that Petal will have to service an average of seven men a day, six days a week, to earn out her four-year contract. Without minimizing the period’s racism and misogyny, this novel offers an inspiring vision of female resilience.
The Break-Up Retreat by Camilla Sten. Psychologist Martina Hastings created the well-known Himlafall Clinic to help women recover their self-esteem after traumatic break-ups — but online forums populated by former patients tell another story, one of mistreatment at the clinic and even several disappearances of the clinic’s patients.
Journalist Isobel Andersson, hoping for a story to launch her career and make her journalist father proud, goes undercover at the clinic to reveal the truth. One of five patients at a week-long session, she finds Martina psychologically brutal, pitting patient against patient.
At times, Isobel feels like she is being followed, a feeling that is reinforced when her room is ransacked and her recording device stolen. Isobel thinks that Martina is behind the robbery and stalking, as a means of controlling her patients. But Isobel still has to prove it, and tension builds as other, more dangerous possibilities emerge.
Contrapposto by Dave Eggers. When 9-year-old Rob “Cricket” Dib meets Olympia Argyros, a year older and wiser and more brazen, she persuades him to help vandalize the town playground with ornate graffiti, an impulsive collaboration with long-lasting consequences. Cricket has the gift of drawing but no vision to harness it; Olympia has her ideals and the decisiveness to spur Cricket into action, together confronting the important question of art versus commerce.
For the next six decades, the two orbit each other like satellites, Cricket completely in thrall to Olympia’s free spirit and brash opinions, she finding safe harbor with Cricket’s guilelessness and artistic purity.
From art school in the Midwest to a gallery in Chicago, from the coast of Turkey to a remote beach in Cambodia, amid all the successes and tragedies and drudgery of life, Cricket and Olympia find their way back to each other, with their friendship and love as a North Star.
Library Laugh I
Do you know what they say about a clean desk? It’s a sure sign of a cluttered desk drawer.
Stingy Schobel Says
Consider keeping those sale alerts running even after you make a purchase. Many large retailers refund you the difference in what you spent if an item you ordered from their online site goes on sale at the same retailer for up to a month after your transaction.
The rules vary by retailer and may exclude certain holiday sales. Check the customer service page on a retailer’s website for instructions on how to submit a claim.
Library Laugh II
I told my friend 10 jokes to make him laugh. Sadly, no pun in ten did.
Libraries=Information
A lot of people like to add white vinegar to the automatic dishwasher to help boost its cleaning power and leave dishes and cups sparkling clean.
The only issue with using vinegar is this: It’s a strong acid that can degrade the rubber gaskets inside your dishwasher over time.
Instead of adding vinegar to the dispenser, consider spraying white vinegar over your dishes, plates and flatware with a spray bottle. Let the mild acid do its trick for a few minutes before hitting the ON button. This will give you all the benefits without any of the acidic damage.
Last of Spring Bonus
Why shouldn’t you write with a broken pen? Because it’s pointless.