Forest Park Reads

“It wasn’t until I started reading and found books they wouldn’t let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else.” 

-John Waters

Hairspray

Role Models

Cry Baby

Hedy’s Folly by Richard Rhodes

What do Hedy Lamarr, avant-garde composer George Antheil, and your cell phone have in common? The answer is spread-spectrum radio: a revolutionary invention based on the rapid switching of communications sig­nals among a spread of different frequencies. Without this technology, we would not have the digital comforts that we take for granted today. Pick up your copy at the Circulation desk today!

Join the nonfiction book club, Curiouser & Curiouser to discuss this book on Tuesday, June 11th at 7pm.

Lois Leveen signs her novel, The Secrets of Mary Bowser

Thursday, May 23rd at 6pm

60 W. Walton St, Newberry Library, Chicago

Drew Magary signs his book, Someone Could Get Hurt.

Thursday, May 23rd at 7pm

4736 N Lincoln, Book Cellar, Chicago

Ross Mathews signs his memoir, Man Up!

Tuesday, May 28th at 5pm

111 S. State Street, Barbara’s Bookstore, Chicago

The local business spotlight is on Smokin’ M’s, a BBQ joint located at 7507 W. Roosevelt in Forest Park. The menu includes mouth watering items like rib tips, chicken wings, mustard & turnip greens, vinegar and peppery coleslaw, and everything else a great barbecue spot should have.

Everything is cooked to order and priced affordably, making Smokin’ M’s a solid choice for a local lunch or picnic basket stuffer. Stop in and try their food on a hot summer day!

We believe local businesses are part of what makes a community great. If you want to suggest a business to spotlight, email Maureen of the Reference Department!

(via Dangerous Minds | Blood-soaked Sissy Spacek takes a smoke break on the set of ‘Carrie’)

“A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.”

-Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid

The Dark

The Bad Beginning

The Beatrice Letters

Join us at the library on Wednesday, May 22nd at 7pm for another interactive gardening session with local master gardener, Debbie Kong.

This session will help you to create a colorful and productive garden that will transition well into Autumn.

See you there!

Rodger, Library Director, chose Francona by Terry Francona

As no book has ever quite done before, Francona escorts readers into the rarefied world of a twenty-first-century clubhouse, revealing the mercurial dynamic of the national pastime from the inside out. From his unique vantage point, Francona chronicles an epic era, from 2004, his first year as the Sox skipper, when they won their first championship in 86 years, through another win in 2007, to the controversial September collapse just four years later. Along the way, readers are treated to never-before-told stories about their favorite players, moments, losses, and wins.

Maureen of the Reference department chose The Silence of Our Friends by Mark Long
This semi-autobiographical tale is setin 1967 Texas, against the backdrop of the fight for civil rights. A white family from a notoriously racist neighborhood in the suburbs and a black family from its poorest ward cross Houston’s color line, overcoming humiliation, degradation, and violence to win the freedom of five black college students unjustly charged with the murder of a policeman.

JP in Circulation chose The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley
In 1634 Urbain Grandier, a priest of the parish of Loudun was tried, tortured and burnt at the stake. He had been found guilty of conspiring with the devil to seduce an entire convent of nuns in what was the most sensational case of mass possession and sexual hysteria in history. Grandier maintained his innocence to the end and 4 years after his death, nuns were still being subjected to exorcisms. Huxley’s vivid account of this bizarre tale of religious and sexual obsession transforms our understanding of the medieval world.

Gammy Birds, a fiction book club, is reading Louise Erdich’s The Round House and will meet to discuss the novel on Wednesday, June 4th at 7pm.

One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe’s life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.

Snacks and friends await, so pick up your copy at the front desk!

Forest Park Reads: Twitter

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