Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2022. 401 pages, $28.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is a love story between two characters who never have a romantic relationship. Through masterful storytelling, Zevin tells the story of Sam and Sadie, two complicated people who keep finding their way back to each other.

One cold day in December, Sam Masur spots Sadie Green at a subway stop in Massachusetts. Sam and Sadie used to be best friends, but a falling out years prior led to them losing touch until years later. Now in their early twenties, this chance encounter leads to the old friends reconnecting and bonding over the shared interest which first brought them together as children, video games. Sadie is at MIT, designing games that her classmates hate, but her professor Dov finds brilliant. When Sam and his roommate, the irresistibly charming and good-natured Marx, play one of Sadie’s games, they decide to collaborate on a video game of their own. The protagonist of Ichigo is a small child, who is swept out to sea by a giant wave. With limited tools, players must find a way to guide this child back to sea. Through connections provided by Dov, Sam and Sadie, and their producer Marx, sell Ichigo to a larger company, and it becomes an immediate success. This also brings about the creation of their company, Unfair Games, which will serve as Sam and Sadie’s life work.

While the story is full of personal and professional highs for the characters, tragedy is always lurking in the background. Sam and Sadie first meet in the hospital when Sam is recovering from a life-altering accident, and Sadie’s sister Alice undergoes cancer treatment. Sadie later finds herself in an abusive relationship with her professor Dov, and even when she is free of the relationship, she still finds herself seeking his approval, and his presence throughout the story feels invasive.  Racism, sexism, suicide, homophobia, depression, and gun violence all impact the characters’ lives in major ways, and it feels like in spite of reaching great success, Sam and Sadie are never able to truly enjoy it.

What makes Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow a fantastic read is Gabrielle Zevin’s extraordinary writing. Much like in a friendship, where secrets are gradually revealed the more you get to know someone, Zevin often hints at occurrences before she eventually reveals the full story. Zevin takes the narrative back and forth through time effortlessly. While some supporting characters could be slightly more fleshed out, Sam and Sadie have rich character development, and readers can understand their motivations, even through their more selfish actions.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is at its core a story about two friends who in spite of their best efforts, need each other. Though they have many falling-outs and failures to communicate, they always manage to find their way back to each other and they are at their best when they are collaborating. With beautiful writing and a narrative that will hook readers, this story is not to be missed.

Elizabeth Weislak is the Youth Services Coordinator for the Alamance County Public Libraries. She can be reached at eweislak@alamancelibraries.org.

“Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It” by David M. Ewalt; Scribner (288 pages, $26).

Published in 2013 in celebration of D&D’s 5^th Edition, David Ewalt’s Of Dice and Men is a deep dive into the classic fantasy tabletop roleplaying game and cultural phenomena that is known as Dungeons & Dragons.

In Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), players form an adventuring party to explore grand fantasy worlds together, embark on epic quests, loot lost treasures, and level up. The Dungeon Master (DM) is the game’s referee and storyteller. There’s no winning or losing in D&D, at least, not in the conventional way. D&D focuses on storytelling, the dice rolls just help you along. Everything is the player’s decision, from how they look, to how they act, to what happens next. The collective creativity in a D&D game builds stories that players will tell again and again—ranging from the stuff of legend to absurd incidents that’ll make them laugh years later.

From D&D’s creation in 1974 by American boardgame designers Ernest Gary Gygax and David Arneson, to the copyright battles with J.R.R. Tolkien and the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, to the game’s rise to fame and influence in modern pop culture, books, video games, and films, Ewalt has done a fantastic job encapsulating the gargantuan cultural impact of Dungeons & Dragons into a single book of just under 300 pages.

Along the way, Ewalt happily regales the reader with his own experiences playing Dungeons & Dragons from both his childhood as well as his ongoing man-child years. Of Dice and Men easily doubles as a memoir of Ewalt’s time with D&D. I greatly enjoyed hearing about his epic and amusing D&D adventures, both those that occurred in the game and those that occurred in real life because of the game.

My one critique of the book would be that while Ewalt does a generally excellent job of summarizing the many topics of D&D’s long and complicated history, there are some missed opportunities for flushing out the more complex or controversial topics that would have been of great interest to long time D&D players and outsiders alike. My guess is that since the book was published as a celebration of D&D’s latest edition of rulebooks, the author wished to paint the game in a positive light overall without dragging out any of D&D’s skeletons in the closet for discussion, such as how Gary Gygax lost the creative rights to his own creation.

That being said, Of Dice and Men is still a great read full of fun facts you probably never knew! Ewalt’s writing style is easy on the eyes and flows well from topic to topic. Whether you’ve played D&D for years or never rolled dice in your life, this book remains a great overview of Dungeons and Dragons, as well as a study of how this simple game of dice and imagination wonderfully infects every form of media it touches.

David M. Ewalt is an award-winning journalist and author widely regarded as an expert on the intersection of technology and gaming. He currently works as the Editor in Chief of Gizmodo, a news website for design, technology, science and science fiction. Previously he was an editor at The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, and has written for a wide range of media outlets including The Wall Street Journal and New York magazine.

Donavon Anderson is a reference library assistant at May Memorial Library. He can be reached at danderson@alamancelibraries.org.

Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen

Other Birds is a wonderfully written story by Sarah Addison Allen. Her quirky, magical tales are always a delight to read.

When Zoey arrives on Mallow Island, South Carolina, she feels both like she’s come home and like she’s an outsider who doesn’t belong anywhere. Her mother emigrated from Cuba many years ago, and landed on Mallow Island, South Carolina. When she married, she and her husband lived in the South for a few years, until he lost his job and decided they would move back to where his family lived in the Midwest.

Zoey’s mother brought her back to Mallow Island a few times before she passed away, when Zoey was only 7. She remembers very little about her visits to Mallow Island as a young child, but now that she is 18 and headed to the College of Charleston, she is glad to have her mother’s apartment to live in during the summer and on school breaks. She doesn’t have a great relationship with her father or her stepmother, who was all too excited to turn Zoey’s room into a crafting space.

The apartment is the loft unit at The Dellawisp, a small complex of apartments hidden off a side street. The dellawisps (birds) fly everywhere, and seem to communicate with the manager, Frasier. The other apartments house a chef, an artist, two middle-aged sisters who don’t talk to each other, and a bevy of ghosts. When a tragedy occurs at The Dellawisp, the other residents slowly begin connecting with each other. It turns out Zoey is the breath of fresh air they all needed to move on and exorcise the ghosts in their lives, and they’re the family that Zoey has always needed to support and celebrate her.

I really adore the way Allen writes, and her take on magical realism. Her books feel both grounded in Southern culture and alive with magic and fantasy. Maybe that’s less of a contradiction than it should be, given that the South is a place where ancestors are kept alive through their descendants’ storytelling. Allen’s characters, too, feel both familiar and unique, like someone you’d run into at the corner drugstore and want to follow home because they’re just a little different and therefore fascinating to you.

If you love this book (and her other novels), I highly suggest you follow Allen on social media. Most Sundays, she shares short short stories and invites others to comment and continue the story. They are entertaining to read, and encourage us all to flex our creativity muscles.

“Legends & Lattes,” by Travis Baldree. Copyright 2022, Cryptid Press (305 pages, $12.00).

Picture this: You’re sitting at home, reading your fantasy novel, and it ends. Do you ever ask yourself, “What about after? What happens next for those beloved characters that are always in high-stakes scenarios?”

In his debut novel Legends and Lattes, Travis Baldree answers this very question. Enter Viv, a mercenary who is wanting to do one final job, get that big pay out, and then retire to a quiet place and open up her own coffee shop. Once she’s retired (she literally hangs up her sword), Viv moves on and settles in the town of Thune, where she converts an old livery into the town’s first coffee shop, and tries her best to just immerse herself in the simple life, a tall order for the tall orc. Viv befriends other “outcasts,” like Calamity, the hard working and genius hobs; Tandri, the misunderstood succubi; Thimble, the pastry chef extraordinaire rattkin; and Pendry, the farmhand who just wants to become the bard he was born to be. With every one of Viv’s new friendships, her shop begins to flourish – from kitchen expansions, to new pastries, and even an open mic night! Don’t think that this novel of high fantasy and low stakes doesn’t have its trials though. Viv has to figure out how to run a new business for a market that didn’t know they needed a coffee shop (and were apprehensive at first), all while working around a corrupt government system in her town that wants to collect extra taxes from the top of her funds.

This cozy-fantasy book has opened a new genre to me that is only continuing to grow. Who wouldn’t love a “normal” kind of life but where magic and creatures roam? If you love this idea too, then put Legends & Lattes on hold with your library card!

Kayleigh Dyer is a library technical processing assistant at May Memorial Library. Contact her at kdyer@alamancelibraries.org.

“Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life” by Jordan B. Peterson; Portfolio (432 pages, $29).

Published in 2021, Beyond Order is an engaging self-help book by the bestselling author and YouTube sensation Jordan B. Peterson, a renowned Canadian Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. Beyond Order is a follow up to his prior book, 12 Rules for Life, and is meant to be read as a sequel, but it remains perfectly capable of being an insightful read all by itself. After all, you should not be afraid to go beyond the order of things. Ba dum tss.

With decades of scientific expertise and professional experience under his belt, Dr. Peterson set out to give psychological advice in written form that would help his readers understand the hardships of being human, and how we may better confront them. While 12 Rules for Life focused on 12 guiding rules meant to help its readers identify and recover their sense of self-determination from the chaos that may manifest in our lives, Beyond Order instead focuses on how its readers can learn to let their guard down in order to face their fears, and go fourth to engage in life’s many disorderly challenges despite the risks involved.

While no book can truly prepare its readers for the various catastrophes life has in store for us, Peterson has done an excellent job in offering direction and guidance to those who need it, as well as providing deep, meaningful psychological insights on the emotional secrets of the human mind. You’ll feel one step closer to being a psychologist yourself by the time you finish this book, likely to walk away with a better understanding of how we humans emotionally operate.

Ultimately, the goal of Peterson’s writings is not mere psychological analysis, but to give his readers the tools to better understand and prioritize their own desires in order to pursue them in a healthy, meaningful way. Peterson explains that no matter how we choose to spend our life, we will find it laced with burdens of one variety or another. With that being the case, he suggests our best bet for obtaining personal happiness is to head-on tackle the largest burden we can carry and to drag it with us with all the ferocity of a parent lifting an overturned car to save their child.

While we certainly can’t solve all of our own problems, Peterson recommends his readers tackle as many of their own problems as they can manage, especially before trying to tackle grand problems of the world beyond their own life. He suggests the process of organizing our own life in a way that orients us towards our desires can begin with something as simple as cleaning our own bedroom. He insists that we must be our own best caretaker whenever possible, to care for ourselves with as much enthusiasm and elbow grease as we would provide for a sickly loved one, which entails cleaning up our own messes.

Peterson always dots his life lessons with meaningful anecdotes and real-life examples of the various topics his book explores. These can originate from himself, his friends, his family, or one of the many unnamed clients from his decades of clinical psychology. Animal psychology, cultural stories, sociology, and neuroscience make guest appearances too. We’ve more in common with our pets than you may think!

I’d definitely recommend Beyond Order to just about anyone. Even if you would self-identify as the happiest person on earth, Dr. Peterson’s psychological insights are just too nifty and useful to pass up.

Jordan Peterson remains a Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. His main areas of study are the psychology of religious and ideological belief, and the assessment and improvement of personality and performance. His YouTube videos and podcasts have gathered an audience of hundreds of millions worldwide, and his global book tour reached more than a quarter million people in major cities across the globe. Alongside his students and colleagues, he has published over one hundred scientific papers, and his 1999 book Maps of Meaning revolutionized the psychology of religion. He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario with his family.

Donavon Anderson is a reference library assistant at May Memorial Library. He can be reached at danderson@alamancelibraries.org.

“The High House” by Jessie Greengrass.  New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021.  255 pages, $27.00

 “The High House” is the story of British teenager Caroline “Caro” who must cope with caring for her young half-sibling Pauly in the environmental disaster aftermath of global warming that leaves the two orphaned and living atop at remote coastal summer home that the great flood has not yet invaded.  Caro is aided in her task by local twentysomething Sal, a diligent farm homemaker who has been brought up in comparative austerity by her capable elderly grandfather Grandy.

Caro’s stepmother is renowned environmental activist Francesca who births Pauly late in life and then spends his first 5-years preparing for the environmental apocalypse. Unbeknownst to Caro, who is 14 years old when her brother is born, her parent and stepparent have been making survivalist preparations to retreat to a coastal summer home high atop the cliffs as global weather becomes increasingly erratic.

After a disastrous weather event on the US east coast that kills both parents, 19-year-old Caro makes an arduous journey to the coastal stronghold, sometimes carrying her little brother on her back.  She finds that her parents have laid in years of supplies in anticipation of worldwide disaster and added amenities including a tide pool, a mill, a greenhouse, a vegetable garden, and lots of self-contained elements for sustainable living. She is met by Sal and her grandfather Grandy, who have been engaged to help the two embark on a life sans civilization.

After just months, the very tenuous fishing village near the High House has been abandoned and the last remaining local denizen is an elderly vicar who sometimes entertains pilgrims or climate refugees at sporadic church services.  Caro is troubled by her failure to assist the rapidly dwindling population and goes on solitary runs in the vicinity of their house to deal with survivor guilt.

The entire family remnant is devastated when the final high water arrives and patriarch Grandy collapses from illness and the church is deserted for good.  This novel touches on themes of isolation, family responsibility, personal good versus societal good, and what human reaction should be in the face of extinction.  This is the second novel for author Jessie Greengrass, who lives in Northumberland England and has written a previous novel and a critically acclaimed short story collection. 

“The High House” is a beautiful novel about going into the great unknown with hope, poise, and aplomb.  It stands with “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy as an intimation of the various trajectories that might arise when “the last one standing turns off the lights”.

Lisa Kobrin is the Reference and Local History Librarian at Alamance County Public Libraries. She can be reached at lkobrin@alamancelibraries.org.

A Lady for a Duke by Alexis J. Hall. New York, NY. Forever. 2022.

            A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall is a dashing regency romance that follows Viola Carrol after she is presumed dead at the battle of Waterloo. This “death” allows Viola to reinvent herself and live the life as the woman she always knew she was, but it is also means giving up everything she knew and loved. In her disappearance, Viola loses her wealth, her title, her inheritance, and all her friends. Viola believes this is a loss she suffers alone until word reaches her of closest companion, the Duke of Gracewood. Like Viola, Gracewood was changed by the battle of Waterloo. He was left crippled with terrible PTSD, believing Viola to be truly dead and her death to be his fault. Viola longs to go to Gracewood and help him, but revealing herself to be alive with a new identity could destroy everything she has built and sacrificed for. Can these friends make a fresh start, meeting each other again and finally seeing each other fully so their friendship can, perhaps, become something more?

            Do not let this summary fool you; while A Lady for a Duke tackles serious themes, it also has everything we know and love from a regency romance. Gracewood brings his sister for her debut in London, surprising Viola there. The book describes lavish balls, longing glances, new fashions in lady’s embroidery, and love embodied in a private dance.

            In the spirit of Jane Austen, the side characters in A Lady for a Duke shine. Meddling though well-meaning relatives interrupt situations where they do not belong. Insidious social climbers get their comeuppances. Evil dukes swagger with swishing mustaches and Shakespearean references. More importantly, all these characters speak with their own memorable voices, their roles underlined with humor and wit even in the direst circumstances of the book, adding to the ambience and enjoyment of this escapist romance.

            Unlike more classical fare, A Lady for a Duke is not afraid to mix regency romance with modern sensibilities. The novel’s characters curse. The book contains a sex scene. A Lady for a Duke revolves around LGBTQ+ issues and uses the backdrop of the regency era to question the healthiness of fixed gender roles. If these topics offend you, turn back now, but if you loved Netflix’s Bridgerton or the 2020 movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, this book is for you.

            Alexis Hall’s A Lady for a Duke is an unexpected regency romance, but nonetheless a delightful one. Heartfelt and swoon-worthy, it introduces readers to flawed, but lovable characters who, through sword fights, kidnappings, and masquerade balls, must learn that it is only through loving, trusting relationships of all kinds that they can become the best and truest versions of themselves.

Rebecca Mincher is a Children’s Library Assistant at the Graham Public Library. She can be reached at rzimmerman@alamancelibraries.org.

 “Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History” by George Crile; Atlantic Monthly Press (416 pages, $26).

“In a little over a decade, two events have transformed the world we live in: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of Militant Islam.” – George Crile

Published in 2003, George Crile’s Charlie Wilson’s War shares the untold story of how the United States funded the only successful jihad in modern history, the CIA’s secret Cold War operation in Afghanistan that was intended to give the Soviets their own version of the Vietnam War. It follows Charlie Wilson, a left-wing congressman from eastern Texas, who conspired with a rogue CIA operative to launch the biggest, meanest, and arguably most successful covert operation in CIA history.

In the early 1980s, right-wing Houston millionaire socialite Joanne Herring turned Wilson’s attention to a ragged band of Afghan freedom fighters who continued their fight against Soviet invaders despite overwhelming odds. The congressman became passionate about their cause and saw the opportunity to make new allies over a mutual foe. While Ronald Reagan faced a total cutoff of funding for the Iran-Contra war, Wilson sat on the all-powerful House Appropriations Committee. Using his position, he would manage to procure hundreds of millions of dollars for the mujahideen (“those engaged in jihad”) whom were at war with Soviet forces invading Afghanistan.

Arms were secretly procured and distributed to the mujahideen with the aid of an out-of-favor CIA operative by the name of Gust Avrakotos, whose working-class Greek-American background made him an anomaly among the usual Ivy League American spies. Nicknamed Dr. Dirty, Avrakotos was an aggressive agent who learned how to stretch the Agency’s rules to the breaking point while serving on the front lines of the Cold War.

This operation was run by a staff of CIA outcasts handpicked by Avrakotos. Among them was codename Hilly Billy, the logistics wizard who could open an unnumbered Swiss bank account for the US Government in twelve hours when others took months; Art Alper, the grandfatherly demolitions expert from the Technical Services Division who passed on his dark arts to the Afghans; and Mike Vickers, the former Green Beret who created a systemic plan to turn a rabble of shepherds into an army of technologically-gifted holy warriors.

Moving from the back rooms of the Capital, to secret chambers at Langley, to arms-dealers conventions, to the Khyber Pass, Charlie Wilson’s War is brilliantly reported and one of the most detailed and compulsively readable accounts of the inside workings of the CIA ever written. While reading this book, I felt as though I had a front row seat for watching the real life James Bonds of the world in action and all of the dangers and breaking of international laws that entails. I’d highly recommend the book for anyone with an interest in the Cold War era and/or America’s involvement in Afghanistan.

George Washington Crile III (1945–2006) was an American journalist closely associated with his three decades of work at CBS News and known for his work as a producer for 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes II. He specialized in dangerous and controversial subjects, resulting in both praise and controversy. He received an Emmy Award, Peabody Award, and Edward R. Murrow Award. From 1968 to 1974, he served in the United States Marine Corps reserves as a lance corporal.

In the late 1980s, Crile began the research and reporting on the Afghan War that eventually led to the creation of his best-selling 2003 book Charlie Wilson’s War. It would go on to become the basis of the Tom Hanks/Mike Nichols film, Charlie Wilson’s War, which was released by Universal Studios in December 2007.

Donavon Anderson is a reference library assistant at May Memorial Library. He can be reached at danderson@alamancelibraries.org.

Upgrade by Blake Crouch. New York: Ballantine Books, [2022].

This is the perfect book to read on a scorching hot day as you wonder if, perhaps, this near future isn’t far away at all, and maybe we need to do something about it before it is too late…

If you’d like to scare yourself about the possibilities of using gene therapy to permanently alter humankind, this is the book for you!

Upgrade is set in the near future, when climate change has half of Manhattan and other coastal cities under water, and genetic alterations led to a mass starvation event.

The Great Starvation occurred when Mariam Ramsay genetically altered some locusts to deliver a virus to improve a rice crop. But instead it mutated and killed off crops all over the world.

Mariam killed herself, and her son Logan works for the GPA (Gene Protection Agency), trying to make amends for her mistakes and his part of it. During a routine arrest, he is lured to a basement and is infected with a gene-altering virus. But instead of hurting him, it has made him smarter, stronger, faster – better in every way.

Soon Logan is running away from his former employers, who want to study his mutations and keep him locked up in a black site. He finds out his mother is still alive, and is the one who infected him. And his sister Kara has gotten the same “upgrade.” Now he and Kara have to decide whether to continue their mother’s work.

This story definitely makes you think about what limits need to exist in science to keep even well-meaning experiments from leading to grave unintended consequences. It makes some pertinent points about humanity and our lack of effort to curb climate change. And it is a rollicking good thriller to boot! If you like the pace and excitement that thrillers provide, you’ll love Upgrade, even if you’re not usually a science fiction fan.

The only thing that might keep people from enjoying this book is the discussions of genetics. Crouch has a reputation of making the science in his books accessible to readers, and I found that to be true in Upgrade. But the discussion of gene therapy sometimes gets very technical, even if he isn’t using scientific jargon, and that might turn off a casual reader. I found it fascinating!

Mary Beth Adams is the Community Engagement Librarian for Alamance County Public Libraries. She can be reached at madams@alamancelibraries.org.

Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. 2015.

Welcome to Night Vale is a book of everyday conspiracies, non-existent and heavily regulated dog parks, life threatening librarians- and two women.

The dog parks are the most normal part of this book, as expected.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Jackie is an eternally 19 pawn shop owner, with a piece of paper reading KING CITY suddenly and permanently attached to her hand. This makes operating her business impossible, and disturbs her endless days of making trades and writing out slips of paper for the many items (like single tear drops) that come through her door.

Diane is a PTA mom of a shape shifter son who is just trying to get a glimpse of his estranged father, no matter how many eyes he will have to grow to do it. When she begins to catch glimpses of the father around town, looking exactly as he did when he left years ago, she knows nothing good can come of their meeting.

A mysterious man with a deerskin suitcase weaves in and around the desert town they call home- a man no one can seem to remember, not even the angels that city officials would like to remind you do not exist.

Inspired by the podcast WELCOME TO NIGHTVALE, this book personifies the phrase “A wild ride from start to finish.” Embroidering the impossible fabric of a town with its own radio station but no way to leave, are points of discussion and emotions that seem a bit more everyday- Why should you grow up? How do you warn your teenage child about a bad influence in their life? When should you take the risk of accepting a little adventure into your life? And why on earth would you ever risk your life by going to the library?

(Side note- as a library worker, I would like to reassure you that, outside of Night Vale, libraries are NOT populated by tentacled eldritch horrors. However, just like inside of Night Vale, libraries do absolutely hold answers to many of life’s questions.)

This book is a joy to read, and a creative feat. Between bouts of laughter and mysterious exclamations of “ALL HAIL THE GLOW CLOUD” you just might catch yourself thinking deeply about what constitutes a “normal” community, and how you might interject a little healthy weirdness into your neighborhood. After all the talk of mysterious, sentient, glowing clouds (not to mention a dog park that is under 24/7 surveillance by individuals in dark hooded cloaks) this book is, at its core, about Jackie and Diane exploring their town, interacting with their usually harmless neighbors, and trying to solve their respective problems while hanging on to whatever shred of routine and normalcy they can muster.

And really, can’t we all relate to that?

Cyna A. Woodard is Library Assistant I at Graham Public Library, and can be reached at cwoodard@alamancelibraries.org