Skip Navigation
Falvey Library
Advanced
You are exploring: Home > Blogs

Falvey Library Blog

Falvey Library Staff Offer 2021 Summer Reading Recommendations

Last week, we shared summer reading recommendations by the faculty of Villanova’s English Department.

This week, we’re happy to share reading recommendations by the staff at Falvey Memorial Library. Once you’ve explored the list below, check out some summer reads suggested by Falvey’s Distinctive Collections and Digital Engagement. Hope you’re having a great summer, Wildcats—See you in August!

Shawn Proctor, Communication & Marketing Program Manager

  • One Jar of Magic by Corey Ann Haydu: A middle grade fantasy book dealing with an abusive parent and a child who could never live up to unrealistic expectations. Lush and beautiful prose. Poignant and timely story.
  • Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson: In this young adult novel, a ne’er-do-well woman reunites with her childhood friend and must watch over her two adopted children…who just so happen to burst into flames whenever they are upset.
  • Small Spaces by Katherine Arden: A chilling and engaging middle grade novel in which a girl and her two friends must channel a ghost to survive a cursed night filled with evil scarecrows.

Linda Hauck, Business Librarian

Regina Duffy, Communication & Marketing Program Manager

  • I’ve been on a bit of a Stephen King kick lately. One of my brothers is a big King fan, so I go to him for recommendations. Currently, I am reading The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands. There are a lot of books in the series, so I had to brace myself before starting. It’s about a gunslinger on a quest for a mythical dark tower and his experiences on his long journey. The series combines elements of western, fantasy, science fiction, and horror. It’s been a fun way to escape the everyday and it’s going to be a long time before I run out of material.
  • View all books in The Dark Tower series here. Books can be requested through other libraries via EZ Borrow or ILLiad.

Darren Poley, Associate Director of Research Services

  • The Aeneid by Vergil. Translated by Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer, PhD, Helen A. Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor in Classics and the Program in Gender Studies, University of Chicago.
  • Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages by Holly Ordway, PhD.
  • Person and Act and Related Essays by Karol Wojtyla. The English Critical Edition of the Works of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, volume 1.

Caroline Sipio, Access & Collections Coordinator 

Danielle Adamowitz, Resource Management & Description Coordinator

Mike Sgier, Service Desk Coordinator

Joanne Quinn, Director of Communication & Marketing

  • There is nothing like reading about the beach while you’re actually on the beach, so I’m not hesitant to admit that I’ll be loading my waterproof kindle with Elin Hilderbrand‘s (the queen of the smart beach read) latest: The Sixth Wedding: A 28 Summers Story. This is a one-sitting, 76 page sequel to 28 Summers, a romance inspired by the old Alan Alda movie “Same Time, Next Year”.
  • And, since that one shouldn’t take more than an afternoon to tackle, I’m also looking forward to exploring two upcoming design books which sound fantastic. The first, Black Designers in American Fashion, describes dressmaking as one of few professions available to Black women after emancipation, and discloses how fashion can uncover hidden histories of activism, especially among designers who went unrecognized due to race.
  • The second is Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers. Ellen Lupton, its author, has written dozens of seminal texts in the field; this latest one is being described as “part textbook and part comic book, zine, manifesto, survival guide, and self-help manual.” Both are must reads!

Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Memorial Library. She plans to read “The Octopus Museum: Poems” by Brenda Shaughnessy.

 

 

 


Like
1 People Like This Post

Monday Mood: Falvey Library Staff Share Their Favorite Poems

Celebrating National Poetry Month, Falvey Memorial Library staff shared some of their favorite poems.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—Emily Dickinson
Submitted by Regina Duffy, Communication and Marketing Program Manager

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all -And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

Balaenoptera—Joshua Bennett
Submitted by Kallie Stahl, Communication and Marketing Specialist 

Today—Billy Collins
Submitted by Luisa Cywinski, Director of Access Services

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze
that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house
and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,
a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies
seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking
a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,
releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage
so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting
into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

Lighthouse Keeping—Kay Ryan 
Submitted by Deborah Bishov, Librarian for Communication, Education and Counseling, Russian Studies. Bishov learned about the poem from Shauna MacDonald, PhD, Associate Professor, Communication; Co-Director, Gender and Women’s Studies. 

Seas pleat
winds keen
fogs deepen
ships lean no
doubt, and
the lighthouse
keeper keeps
a light for
those left out.
It is intimate
and remote both
for the keeper
and those afloat.

The Same City—Terrance Hayes
Submitted by Erica Hayes, Digital Scholarship Librarian

The rain falling on a night
in mid-December,
I pull to my father’s engine
wondering how long I’ll remember
this. His car is dead. He connects
jumper cables to his battery,
then to mine without looking in
at me and the child. Water beads
on the windshields, the road sign,
his thin blue coat. I’d get out now,
prove I can stand with him
in the cold, but he told me to stay
with the infant. I wrap her
in the blanket, staring
for what seems like a long time
into her open, toothless mouth,
and wish she was mine. I feed her
an orange softened first in my mouth,
chewed gently until the juice runs
down my fingers as I squeeze it
into hers. What could any of this matter
to another man passing on his way
to his family, his radio deafening
the sound of water and breathing
along all the roads bound to his?
But to rescue a soul is as close
as anyone comes to God.
Think of Noah lifting a small black bird
from its nest. Think of Joseph,
raising a son that wasn’t his.

Let me begin again.
I want to be holy. In rain
I pull to my father’s car
with my girlfriend’s infant.
She was eight weeks pregnant when we met.
But we’d make love. We’d make
love below stars and shingles
while her baby kicked between us.
Perhaps a man whose young child
bears his face, whose wife waits
as he drives home through rain
and darkness, perhaps that man
would call me a fool. So what.
There is one thing I will remember
all my life. It is as small
and holy as the mouth
of an infant. It is speechless.
When his car would not stir,
my father climbed in beside us,
took the orange from my hand,
took the baby in his arms.
In 1974, this man met my mother
for the first time as I cried or slept
in the same city that holds us
tonight. If you ever tell my story,
say that’s the year I was born.

When This Is—Laura Kelly Fanucci
Submitted by Daniella Snyder, Graduate Assistant

When this is over,
may we never again take for granted;
A handshake with a stranger, Full shelves at the store,
Conversations with neighbors,
A crowded theater, Friday night out,
The taste of communion, A routine checkup,
The school rush each morning, Coffee with a friend,
The stadium roaring, Each deep breath!  A boring Tuesday.  Life itself.
When this ends, may we find that we have become more like the people we wanted to be,
we were called to be,
we hope to be,
and may we stay that way — better for each other because of the worst.

Mortal City—Dar Williams
Submitted by Shawn Proctor, Marketing and Communication Program Manager

I think I have a special kind of hearing tonight
I hear the neighbors upstairs
I hear my heart beating
I hear one thousand hearts beating at the hospital
And one thousand hearts by their bedsides waiting
Saying that’s my love in the white gown,
We are not lost in the Mortal City
We are not lost in the Mortal City
Nothing Gold Can Stay—Robert Frost
Submitted by Joanne Quinn, Director of Communication and Marketing 

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Poetry Unbound podcast—by Pádraig Ó Tuama 
Submitted by Laura Bang, Distinctive Collections Librarian, “Ó Tuama reads a poem and discusses some of the meanings he finds in it. The podcast provides a short and lovely way to be introduced to new poems and new ways of seeing the world.”

Poetry Unbound

Kallie Stahl ’17 MA is Communication and Marketing Specialist at Falvey Memorial Library. 

 


Like

 

Last Modified: April 27, 2020

Ask Us: Live Chat
Back to Top