Lnewton

My Dad always told me I could be anything I wanted to be, but like a lot of parents he seemed to have something specific in mind. He first acquired his pilot's license in 1977 and by time I was born a decade later, he was well and truly in love with the wild blue…

I read a really great book recently. Like really, really, really great. It gave me the type of reading experience I didn’t even know I was craving. It was dark, and lush, and brooding, full of magical mayhem set against the oppressive, slate colored backdrop of the sea and its hidden horrors. Marketed as gothic…

Every now and then I notice totally accidental trends in my reading. Not too long ago it was portal fantasy, repeated traipses through magical doorways leading to other worlds. Those adventures filled me with whimsy and also a dash of pre-pandemic wanderlust. Now I find myself on a darker path. One with a lot less…

There seem to be two kinds of speculative fiction readers these days. (And by these days I mean the ones rife with political unrest the likes of which my generation has never witnessed and oh, also the raging pandemic.) Ones who are still hankering to be transported to a post apocalyptic future and ones who…

In a year when we needed the distraction more than ever, books were there for us. Here are the library staff's top reads of 2020. Brad, Director Begin Again The Broken Heart of America The Cold Millions Memorial Sarah, Accounts The best fiction book I read that was published in 2020 was Hamnet by Maggie…

Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote my first ever LPL Blog about a selection of the Little Free Libraries in Lawrence and the impassioned bibliophiles behind them. The response was overwhelming and two things became abundantly clear: 1. This town is absolutely bonkers for cute little homes for books to share, and 2. Because of…