Katelynne Shimkus - Northshire Bookstore Alumnus
A Dutch "minimal pair"; two words with a single spelling or sound difference.
The second, a verb: to become, or becoming.
The first, a noun, plural: words.
If there is such a thing as a perfect book to read during CoVid19, this is it because we are all, in different ways, facing failures. A lot of us have lost jobs, incomes, plans for the future. Some of us have lost even more. And through this we've all been forced to re-assess who we are, what's important to us, how we are going to live our lives, and what's the plan now that the board has to be wiped clean. Clack addresses the things that make us anxious: our sense of worth being tied to our economics, at a time when unemployment is at a record high; how ageing and our imminent deaths are fears we avoiding confronting in a time when age is a major factor in whether or not an infection is deadly, and where death tolls rise around us; how we forget that we are connected to one another, and that the universe is beyond our control, as we try to contain a viral pandemic by staying apart.
Written in January of this year, there's no way Clack could have known how important her work would be in this time. But it's critical to understand how to get through loss and failure, how to understand our brief place in the chaos of the world, and learn that we can move on and forward into an unknown future. ~ Reviewed by Katelynne Shimkus
If you've ever been into any kind of science comic (xkcd, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) or tv show (Bill Nye the Science Guy who Saves the World), this is your book. Hilarious, ridiculous, and addictively enthusiastic. You'll know more about artificial intelligence and deep learning than you ever thought you could learn (and, coincidentally, assuage your fears about the robot revolution. It's really far away, guys. Really, -really- far away). ~ Reviewed by Katelynne Shimkus
It's hard to write as well as you speak - I've read memoirs I realized I'd rather hear - but damn does Esposito do it. Her stories start in one direction, and suddenly you turn a corner to a new dimension you hadn't expected. With the craft of an expert jokester, Esposito tells her life story in a stark yet hilarious way - the 80-block-walk defeats, the total-familial-acceptance highs. Her writing influenced and changed the way I write, and that is the highest compliment one can give. ~ Reviewed by Katelynne Shimkus
This book read like a landscape - something you'd think would be cliche, and yet you are struck dumb by the masterpiece. It broke my heart, it made me giddy; I felt deeply connected to this wandering woman pursuing her awe. The world where she lives, where every animal is accelerating towards extinction, is a grim portrait of a future that is closer than we realize. The characters are vivid and lovable portraits of the people most affected by this destruction; on both sides of the conservation debate. ~ Reviewed by Katelynne Shimkus
There is a bleeding, red heart buried deep in this bookseller's layers of steely cynicism. You can't get there with conventional romance; nothing gooey or pink or covered in abs-tacular models. No cheesy poetry. No roses. Only something so well-crafted, so painfully beautiful; an arrow fit for Eros himself, could have pierced its way to that heart and made it bleed as profoundly and wonderfully after reading this book. It is a marvel. It is an enchantment. Go, damn you, and read this war epic of enemy-lovers in a dangerous time. ~ Reviewed by Katelynne Shimkus