{"id":6753,"date":"2023-04-28T23:08:40","date_gmt":"2023-04-28T23:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/cited\/?p=6753"},"modified":"2023-04-28T23:08:40","modified_gmt":"2023-04-28T23:08:40","slug":"theres-more-to-the-story-reading-recommendations-from-library-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/cited\/2023\/04\/28\/theres-more-to-the-story-reading-recommendations-from-library-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"“There’s More to the Story”: Reading Recommendations from Library Workers"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Gohstand Reading Room, CSUN University Library, 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Library wouldn’t be what it is without the staff, specialists, and information professionals that work there. Every year (usually the end of April), communities of library lovers and bibliophiles celebrate “National Library Week.” This year’s theme was “More to<\/a>\u00a0the Story,”<\/a> and in addition to celebrating the dedicated library workers that provide services and programs to our communities, we asked our CSUN library staff to share their own favorite stories.<\/p>\n

Below is a list of reading recommendations, featuring books from the CSUN Collection<\/a> and findable on OneSearch<\/a>, or available through CSU+\/ILL<\/a> or the Los Angeles Public Library<\/a> system. In addition, you can learn more about the CSUN University Library by checking out our social media<\/a>! The Library is on Instagram along with the Creative Maker Studio<\/a> and Tom & Ethel Bradley Center<\/a> also have their own accounts with additional content and insights. We even have a TikTok, where you can learn about ILL<\/a>, catch footage of live performances<\/a> and library-sponsored events, celebrate the re-opening of the Grand Staircase<\/a> with us, or explore a new database<\/a>!<\/p>\n

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CivilWarLand in bad decline: stories and a novella<\/em><\/a>\"\"<\/a> by George Saunders<\/h1>\n

Recommended by David Morck, Web Programmer<\/h2>\n

\u201cIf truth is stranger than fiction, then Saunders\u2019 strangeness holds up a mirror to the truth of the world. Surreal and odd, his stories are often a simulacrum of real life, amusement parks where the employees become their characters, museums with oddities that reflect inner turmoil, the mundane becomes grandiose and the grandiose mundane. Effective and strong commentary on our current society.\u201d Available in print from CSUN Library.<\/p>\n

Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel<\/em><\/a> by Anthony Doerr<\/h1>\n

Recommended by Becky Spiro, Cataloging and Metadata Specialist<\/h2>\n

Part of the Gohstand Reading Room Collection at CSUN Library.<\/p>\n

Reamde<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Neal Stephenson<\/h1>\n

Recommended by Laura Wimberley, Assessment Librarian and Chair of RIOS Department<\/h2>\n

“Reamde\u00a0<\/em>is a fast-paced, cinematic, global thriller with a dizzying cast of characters. A novel for gamers, hackers, and innovators.” Available in the Best Sellers Collection (Learning Commons) at CSUN Library.<\/p>\n

Project Hail Mary<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Andy Weir<\/h1>\n

Recommended by Tarry Kang, Director of Development<\/h2>\n

“Suspenseful, hilarious, and heartwarming!” Part of the Best Sellers Collection at CSUN and available through CSU+\/ILL and at LAPL<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The World\u2019s Worst Assistant<\/em><\/a> by Sona Movsesian \"\"<\/h1>\n

Recommended by Jacqueline Zak, Digital Materials Metadata Specialist<\/h2>\n

“A well written and entertaining memoir by Conan O\u2019Brien\u2019s long-time assistant.” Available through CSU+\/ILL<\/a> and at LAPL<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also Recommended by Jacqueline Zak:<\/h2>\n

Solito<\/a><\/em> by Javier Zamora<\/h1>\n

“Poet Javier Zamora\u2019s memoir recounting travel on his own as a 9 year old through Guatemala, Mexico and the Sonoran Desert to the United States in 1999”. Part of the Gohstand Reading Room Collection and available at LAPL<\/a>.<\/p>\n

True Biz<\/a><\/em> by Sara Novi\u0107<\/h1>\n

“A novel about the deaf community and a school for the deaf written by a member of the community”. Available through CSU+\/ILL<\/a> and at LAPL\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Master slave husband wife<\/em><\/a> by Ilyon Woo<\/h1>\n

“The true story of Ellen Craft, an enslaved woman who escaped slavery with her husband by posing as a white man traveling with her enslaved companion.” Available through CSU+\/ILL and at LAPL<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"A Spell of Good Things<\/em><\/a> by Ayobami Adebayo<\/h1>\n

Recommended by Nancy Young, Reference Librarian<\/h2>\n

“Currently reading and loving A Spell of Good Things!” <\/em>Available at LAPL <\/a>and through CSU+\/ILL<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Far Side<\/em><\/a> by Gary Larson<\/h1>\n

Recommended by Emilie Ducourneau, Assistant Map Curator<\/h2>\n

“Funny with ecological undertones.” Available at CSUN Library.<\/p>\n

The Daily Stoic<\/em><\/a> and Discipline is Destiny<\/em><\/a> by Ryan Holiday<\/h1>\n

Recommended by Gabriel Castaneda, Circulation Desk Lead<\/h2>\n

“I\u2019ve been getting into Stoicism this year and it\u2019ll be nice to share that with students. 😊” Available at LAPL.<\/p>\n

People of the Book: a Novel<\/em><\/a> by Geraldine Brooks<\/h1>\n

Recommended by Marcia Henry, Research and Instruction Librarian<\/h2>\n

“This is a book about an ancient (Barcelona<\/a>\u00a0around 1350),\u00a0Hebrew, illuminated manuscript,\u00a0 the Sarajevo Haggadah,\u00a0<\/em>written by the Pulitzer Prize winning author, Geraldine Brooks.\u00a0 It\u00a0contains the illustrated traditional text of the Passover\u00a0Haggadah.<\/strong><\/em> This well crafted novel’s classified genre is Hisorical Fiction, Thrillers (ficiton).\u00a0 \u00a0The\u00a0\u00a0novel is told from the perspective of Hanna Heath, an expert in book restoration, who is called in to restore the text…The great thing about Geraldine Brooks, the CSUN library has all her novels, so if this gets checked out, there are 5 other of her excellent novels to check out.”<\/p>\n

Stay True: A Memior<\/a><\/em> by Hua Hsu<\/h1>\n

Recommended by Nicole Shibata, Metadata Librarian<\/h2>\n

Available in the Best Sellers Collection at CSUN Library.<\/p>\n

The Monster\u2019s Bones: the Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by David K.\"\" Randall<\/h1>\n

Recommended by Lynn Lampert, Librarian and Coordinator of Instruction and Information Literacy<\/h2>\n

“A gripping narrative of a fearless paleontologist, the founding of America’s most loved museums, and the race to find the largest dinosaurs on record. In the dust of the Gilded Age Bone Wars, two vastly different men emerge with a mission to fill the empty halls of New York’s struggling American Museum of Natural History: Henry Fairfield Osborn, a privileged socialite whose reputation rests on the museum’s success, and intrepid Kansas-born fossil hunter Barnum Brown. When Brown unearths the first Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils in the Montana wilderness, forever changing the world of paleontology, Osborn sees a path to save his museum from irrelevancy. With four-foot-long jaws capable of crushing the bones of its prey and hips that powered the animal to run at speeds of 25 miles per hour, the T. Rex suggests a prehistoric ecosystem more complex than anyone imagined. As the public turns out in droves to cower before this bone-chilling giant of the past and wonder at the mysteries of its disappearance, Brown and Osborn together turn dinosaurs from a biological oddity into a beloved part of culture. Vivid and engaging, The Monster’s Bones journeys from prehistory to present day, from remote Patagonia to the unforgiving badlands of the American West to the penthouses of Manhattan. With a wide-ranging cast of robber barons, eugenicists, and opportunistic cowboys, New York Times best-selling author David K. Randall reveals how a monster of a bygone era ignited a new understanding of our planet and our place within it.” (Summary from the publisher.) Available in the Gohstand Reading Room at CSUN Library.<\/p>\n

Also recommended by Lynn Lampert:<\/h2>\n

Nemesis<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Philip Roth<\/h1>\n

In the \u201cstifling heat of equatorial Newark,\u201d a terrifying epidemic is raging, threatening the children of the New Jersey city with maiming, paralysis, lifelong disability, and even death. This is the startling theme of Philip Roth\u2019s wrenching new book: a wartime polio epidemic in the summer of 1944 and the effect it has on a closely knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children. At the center of Nemesis is a vigorous, dutiful twenty-three-year-old playground director, Bucky Cantor, a javelin thrower and weightlifter, who is devoted to his charges and disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. Focusing on Cantor\u2019s dilemmas as polio begins to ravage his playground\u2014and on the everyday realities he faces\u2014Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: the fear, the panic, the anger, the bewilderment, the suffering, and the pain. Moving between the smoldering, malodorous streets of besieged Newark and Indian Hill, a pristine children\u2019s summer camp high in the Poconos\u2014whose \u201cmountain air was purified of all contaminants\u201d\u2014Roth depicts a decent, energetic man with the best intentions struggling in his own private war against the epidemic. Roth is tenderly exact at every point about Cantor\u2019s passage into personal disaster, and no less exact about the condition of childhood. Through this story runs the dark questions that haunt all four of Roth\u2019s late short novels, Everyman, Indignation, The Humbling, and now Nemesis: What kind of accidental choices fatally shape a life? How does the individual withstand the onslaught of circumstance? (Summary from the publisher.) Available in the Gohstand Reading Room at CSUN Library.<\/p>\n

Forbidden City<\/em><\/a> by Vanessa Huong<\/h1>\n

A teenage girl living in 1960s China becomes Mao Zedong’s prot\u00e9g\u00e9e and lover–and a heroine of the Cultural Revolution–in this “grand, cinematic, and captivating novel” (Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings<\/i>)<\/b>. Available at the LAPL.<\/p>\n

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Happy reading!<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The Library wouldn’t be what it is without the staff, specialists, and information professionals that work there. Every year (usually the end of April),…<\/p>\n

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