Howdy Friends!

This month’s Reading Revelry, we have both non-fiction and fiction books relating to women in STEM!

You can request them by clicking on their hyperlinked titles below. If you have issues requesting the titles, please reach out to Amanda May at asmay@umsystem.edu

Our picks for March:

Hidden figures: the American dream and the untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped win the space race / Margot Lee Shetterly.

Before John Glenn orbited the earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South’s segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America’s aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia, and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. Even as Virginia’s Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens

Her hidden genius : a novel / Marie Benedict.

Rosalind Franklin knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture–one more after thousands–she can unlock the building blocks of life. Never again will she have to listen to her colleagues complain about her, especially Maurice Wilkins who’d rather conspire about genetics with James Watson and Francis Crick than work alongside her. Then it finally happens–the double helix structure of DNA reveals itself to her with perfect clarity. But what happens next, Rosalind could have never predicted. Marie Benedict’s next powerful novel shines a light on a woman who died to discover our very DNA, a woman whose contributions were suppressed by the men around her but whose relentless drive advanced our understanding of humankind

Lessons in chemistry / Bonnie Garmus.

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with of all things, her mind. True chemistry results. But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later, Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (‘combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride’) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo. Meet the unconventional, uncompromising Elizabeth Zott.

Chemistry : a novel / Weike Wang.

Three years into her graduate studies at a demanding Boston university, the unnamed narrator of this nimbly wry, concise debut finds her one-time love for chemistry is more hypothesis than reality. She’s tormented by her failed research–and reminded of her delays by her peers, her advisor, and most of all by her Chinese parents, who have always expected nothing short of excellence from her throughout her life. But there’s another, nonscientific question the marriage proposal from her devoted boyfriend, a fellow scientist, whose path through academia has been relatively free of obstacles, and with whom she can’t make a life before finding success on her own.

Eventually, the pressure mounts so high that she must leave everything she thought she knew about her future, and herself, behind. And for the first time, she’s confronted with a question she won’t find the answer to in a What do I really want? Over the next two years, this winningly flawed, disarmingly insightful heroine learns the formulas and equations for a different kind of chemistry–one in which the reactions can’t be quantified, measured, and analyzed; one that can be studied only in the mysterious language of the heart. Taking us deep inside her scattered, searching mind, here is a brilliant new literary voice that astutely juxtaposes the elegance of science, the anxieties of finding a place in the world, and the sacrifices made for love and family.

Howdy!

Happy New Year everyone! We hope everyone has had a restful break. Here are two books to ease you back into the semester. You can request them by clicking on their hyperlinked titles below. If you have issues requesting the titles, please reach out to Amanda May at asmx67@umsystem.edu

Our picks for January:

The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsey Drager 

Tracking the evolution of Hansel and Gretel at seventy-five-year intervals that correspond with earth’s visits by Halley’s Comet, The Archive of Alternate Endings explores how stories are disseminated and shared, edited and censored, voiced and left untold. 

In 1456, Johannes Gutenberg’s sister uses the tale as a surrogate for sharing a family secret only her brother believes. In 1835, The Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm revise the tale to bury a truth about Jacob even he can’t come to face. In 1986, a folklore scholar and her brother come to find the record is wrong about the figurative witch in the woods, while in 2211, twin space probes aiming to find earth’s sister planet disseminate the narrative in binary code. Breadcrumbing back in time from 2365 to 1378, siblings reimagine, reinvent, and recycle the narrative of Hansel and Gretel to articulate personal, regional, and ultimately cosmic experiences of tragedy. 

Through a relay of speculative pieces that oscillate between eco-fiction and psychological horror, The Archive of Alternate Endings explores sibling love in the face of trauma over the course of a millennium, in the vein of Richard McGuire’s Here and Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. 

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Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy 

Franny Stone has always been the kind of woman who is able to love but unable to stay. Leaving behind everything but her research gear, she arrives in Greenland with a singular purpose: to follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration to Antarctica. Franny talks her way onto a fishing boat, and she and the crew set sail, traveling ever further from shore and safety. But as Franny’s history begins to unspool—a passionate love affair, an absent family, a devastating crime—it becomes clear that she is chasing more than just the birds. When Franny’s dark secrets catch up with her, how much is she willing to risk for one more chance at redemption? 

Epic and intimate, heartbreaking and galvanizing, Charlotte McConaghy’s Migrations is an ode to a disappearing world and a breathtaking page-turner about the possibility of hope against all odds.

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Do you have a book recommendation you want to see in a future Reading Revelry? Reach out to Amanda May at asmx67@umsystem.edu

Howdy everyone!

We hope everyone has had a wonderful semester! For post-finals reading, we have two books to recommend this month. Want other recommendations? Go back to the previous Reading Revelries! Have a book you want to recommend for a future Reading Revelry? Contact Amanda May at asmx67@umsystem.edu. 

We hope everyone has a fabulous winter break! 

Our picks for December: 

One Day in December by Josie Silver

Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn’t exist anywhere but the movies. But then, through a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Their eyes meet, there’s a moment of pure magic… and then her bus drives away. 

Certain they’re fated to find each other again, Laurie spends a year scanning every bus stop and cafe in London for him. But she doesn’t find him, not when it matters anyway. Instead they “reunite” at a Christmas party, when her best friend Sarah giddily introduces her new boyfriend to Laurie. It’s Jack, the man from the bus. It would be. 

What follows for Laurie, Sarah and Jack is ten years of friendship, heartbreak, missed opportunities, roads not taken, and destinies reconsidered. One Day in December is a joyous, heartwarming and immensely moving love story to escape into and a reminder that fate takes inexplicable turns along the route to happiness. 

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan 

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. 

Happy October everyone! We hope your classes are going well! For this month’s Reading Revelry, we have three sinisterly scary books to get you in the mood for Halloween. 

To learn more about the books, click on the hyperlink in the title. If you have questions or issues requesting items, please contact us at (573) 882-2379.

Happy reading!

Our picks for October:

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
ISBN: 9780321398925 
Publication Date: 1764 

This book is often considered the first “gothic” novel.
Despite its short length, Walpole expertly crafts an uncanny and unforgettable story about a wedding gone wrong.  

Tender Is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica 
ISBN: 9781982150921
Publication
Date: 2017 (English translation 2020) 

In a world where animals carry a virus that makes them
poisonous and deadly for human consumption, society has moved on to a new protein source…humans.
This book is NOT for the faint of heart. 

The Harpy by Megan Hunter
ISBN: 9780802148162
Publication Date: 2020

This book follows Lucy, a loving wife and mother to two children.
When her husband, Jake, is found to be having an affair,
Lucy decides to stay with Jake on one condition:
she gets to have her revenge three times.