June Books

 Nine books read in June! That is a record for 2026. I have read 6, 7 or 8 books in every other month this year, but the number is 9 for June.

1. At the end of last month, I was suffering from ideas for books to read, and remembered that in the past I liked to read Ian Hamilton's Ava Lee books. My records indicate that I read these books in 2014, 2015, then  2018 where I picked up in the series where I left off for a book or two, and then read one again in  2022 and then forgot about them until here it is 2026 and I had not read any Ava Lee books for four years. So I read the next in the series, which was The Imam of Tawi-Tawi (2018). Zakat College in the Phillipines is a source of possibly training terrorists, and it is the Islamic Brotherhood who are worried about that and seek help. (Just saying because people are always blaming terrorism on Islam but guess what? They don't like it either.) This book was interesting, but I don't really like the direction he has taken with the series (too much emphasis on romantic relationships, when it is the mysteries I am interested in), so I think I won't read any more. (FYI there are 17 books in the series. I liked the books in which Ava Lee was a forensic accountant working with uncle. I have liked the books less since uncle died, and Ava Lee goes into the fashion business instead.)

2. You know that I was reading The unselected journals of Emma M. Lion vol. 8 (2024) by Beth Brower, because I was slowly savouring it! Well, I finished it in early June! This was actually my least favorite of the eight volumes so far, though I still enjoyed it. It was just that they left St. Crispian and spent a month in Stonecrop, and I missed all the characters who live in St. Crispian! There were not many new characters to add in the remote countryside, and while I am sure it was very relaxing for Emma and friends (if they were real people and not book characters!) I missed the London life that I was used to in the first seven volumes.

3. A world without summer: a volcano erupts, a creature awakens, and the sun goes out (2025) by Nicholas Day. I loved this nonfiction book written for a YA audience. It tells of the 1815 eruption of Indonesian volcano Tambora and the years of bad weather and no crops that followed in its wake. In some parts of the world, there was a dearth of rain. In other parts of the world, massive flooding occurred. India's monsoon cycle got interrupted and has never really recovered even still. But the people had no idea that it was the volcano that caused it, because people were not yet following and meticulously recording the weather. Since then, people have been and yet...do we use that data effectively? What do we do now, when we can see climate change but are complacent?

4. The impossible fortune (2025) by Richard Osman. It was lovely to meet again the Thursday Murder Club characters--it has been a gap of a few years, so that Elizabeth could recover from her husband Stephen's death, but she is ready to get back to solving tough cases. There are so many twists and unexpected turns in this novel, and new characters are introduced. But through it all, the theme of the value of friendship and love as what matters most arises to the surface. I thought it was very good, and even a bit tender. (But my friend Cassandra, who otherwise loves the Thursday Murder Club books, of which this one is #5, disliked this book. To each their own!)

5. Yearning for the living God: Reflections from the life of F. Enzio Busche (2004) by F. Enzio Busche, edited by Tracie A. Lamb. This was our book club selection for the month of June. I got the book, which I had placed on hold, on the Thursday before the Tuesday that was our meeting. And so I read it fast! It was really interesting--I think it was so interesting to hear from his point of view what it was like to grow up as a child in the Third Reich. They thought Hitler was wonderful; they thought their country was wonderful. When they heard of terrible things happening, they did not believe they could possibly be true. Only in retrospect. I also was really impressed with Busche's humility, and his easily admitting when he made mistakes or errors in judgment. 

6. Just Julie's Fine (2023) by Theric Jepson. I found this book, and thought "Utah Mormon Author" immediately because...Theric?...like, if that is not a Utah Mormon Baby Name, what is? Well, I am not sure if the author is from Utah, but the book is supposed to be about what it was like at BYU in the early 2000s. I was like Huh. But the book grew on me, even though I started out just giving it a charity read. (Also Andrew Heiss did the typesetting? So bonus.) I especially liked the growth of Julie from guy magnet with an easy major, to deciding to study engineering and really use her brain.

7. One Good Thing about America (2017) by Ruth Freeman. Loved this book, which I found on the third floor America 250 book display shelves. Anais has moved with her mother and brother to Maine from the Congo as refugees. She does not like it here, but her grandmother back in the Congo challenges her, in her letters, to write at least one good thing about America. Most of the time she succeeds, though a few times, she can't think of one good thing that day. Ruth Freeman, who is a teacher of children learning English, really shows the point of view of the ESL learner. Anais is already fluent in two languages, and has been learning English at school in the Congo before coming to America, too. Like--these kids are smart! Oh, I also sort of made peace with "America." Like, people from what we call India call their own country Bharat. And people outside of the USA call it that, or the United States, but people within the USA call their own country America. So, I get it.

8. Ms. Holmes of Baker Street: The truth about Sherlock (2004) by C. Alan Bradley and William A.S. Sarjeant. These two University of Saskatchewan professors (in broadcasting and geology respectively) who are not English professors but who ARE Sherlockians posit that Holmes was a female pretending to be a male since Victorian conventions did not allow a tall, plain woman without marriage prospects much of a chance at life. They give their evidence story by story, and also pull in references from other scholars who share their opinion on the matter. (I found this because I wanted to know if Alan Bradley has written another Flavia deLuce book; he did, but it comes out this fall, and also he died after finishing the book--he was 82, so not a huge shock. And this book was the only thing of his I had not read yet.)

9. Death comes to Marlow (2023) by Robert Thorogood is his second detective romp with Judith, Suzie, Becks, and Tanika on the case. This time, Sir Peter Bailey is found dead in a locked room that only has one entrance. And the only key to the room is in the victim's pocket. Yet, it seems to Judith that it was no accident--it was murder. But how? And by whom? And why?

Sunday Musings

 It is Father's Day. We got Bruce a few gifts, both suggestions from Nancy (a massager and an ice cream shovel) and he seems to like them. We got a cake that is kind of like a layered trifle, and it was good--we ate that at about 1 pm, as soon as Rachel and I returned from attending her roommate Lizzy's mission farewell. (Well, she spoke in church and then had people at her house.) Rachel went into her house; I sat in the car and read my French short stories book (that I am really enjoying!) but I did snap a picture to remember the moment:

Lizzy is going to Georgia Spanish-speaking, and so I love that she is wearing a peach dress, because of Georgia Peaches!

I have a roast in the crock pot, and potatoes are cooking, so we will eat dinner soon! In the meantime, I saw a post on Facebook that made me think of a fun memory to share.

So, Josie's childhood friend Liz has a boyfriend who is the father of her second daughter, and she posted a Father's Day message to honor her boyfriend, her father, and her boyfriend's father. Her boyfriend's father's name sounded familiar to me--I am thinking, "I think I know him from El Cajon..." So I clicked on his name, and went to his profile page, and he totally looked like some brothers I once knew (younger than me!) only grown up. I knew one of them the best--I think he was a primary teacher or something? This man was not the one I knew the best; he was the other brother. But there is a memory associated with those brothers...

So, their mom was Juanita Woodfield. I knew her less than the one son--I spent my time at church in primary, and she was in Relief Society. Anyways, my parents visited us when David was born, and my mom remarked that she wondered who in our ward would be from Raymond, because at every ward she had visited anywhere in the world (including places in Europe) there was always someone from Raymond.

I said, "Mom, there is nobody from Raymond in my ward. I know everybody, and literally nobody is from Raymond. They all know that I am from Alberta, and nobody has said anything about knowing anybody from anywhere in Alberta." Mom looked skeptical and said, "Well, we'll see..."

So, we are in Relief Society (I was not in primary because new baby) and the lesson was being taught by Juanita Woodfield. And Mom leans over and whispers "I think she is Juanita Wall..." And I said, "Mom, her name is Juanita Woodfield." Mom said, "I think she was Juanita Wall in Raymond. Her sister Ramona was my age...they moved away after grade three..." I said, "Well, I know that the Woodfields moved here from New York. Not from Raymond."

So after the lesson, my mom goes up to her and says "Juanita Wall?" And she says "Yes!" And Mom points at herself and says "Pearl Hancock. Your sister was in my class in Raymond!" 

Mom was right! There was someone from Raymond in my ward!

Juneteenth

 June 19th is a holiday at BYU, but not at Orem Public Library, so while Rachel and I did not have to work--indeed could not work, because our building was locked tight--Josie did have to work.

Rachel went to the temple with her former roommate, Lizzie, and I did lots of laundry, and then went to meet Janet to drive to Heber to meet Janice for lunch. We went to a very old-timey and also very old looking cafe called Chick's, which served delicious and abundant food, and then drove back to Janet's house, where I got my car to drive to OPL to pick up Rachel, who had gone there, and drag her home. She was perfectly happy sitting at Josie's desk and helping with library things--I had to go and pick Josie up later anyway, so why did I drag her home? That was silly of me! Funny story Josie told me was that Nancy's friend Kate, who also works at OPL, just could not wrap her mind around the idea that that tall adult human standing before her was Nancy's daughter--surely a sister? Sister-in-law? Niece? Somthing else, surely. No, Josie had to reiterate, this is literally Nancy's daughter.

In the evening, I picked up my co-worker, Mary, and we went to the wedding reception of two of our students who married each other.

For the record, this is couple five, I think. First we had Doug and Christina (5 kids now), then Brian and Julia (10 kids now), then Justin and Angela (also 5 kids now), and then many years of NOT having our students marry each other, because like Justin's oldest is 18, so...a long time. Then maybe two years ago, or maybe only one year ago (can't remember which!) Crozier and Lillian married each other, and then on actually June 18, but the celebration was on June 19, Carter and Annalise married each other. 

I took pictures so, here they are. Oh yes. The venue was the Springville Museum of Art. First I took a picture of Mary with the happy couple. She is the actual hiring manager who actually hired these two, so she wonders if without her, they might not have met.

Then I nabbed a nearby young man to snap a photo with me in it, too. (He turned out to be the boyfriend of one of the harp girls that I know, although her name escapes me at present.)

So apparently my green flowery dress is my wedding reception dress. I think that in every wedding event picture recently, I am wearing this dress. Hannah's wedding, Trevon's wedding, and now Carter's wedding. (I checked Will's wedding last summer, and I was NOT wearing this dress. Phew.)

Then I took some photos of Mary with some of her former desk students. (Since I am the department chair, technically all of the students are my students, but these were students who worked for Mary on level five.)

Mary surrounded by Elise on the left (Mary's right) and Eve on the right (Mary's left). They both currently work at the Church History Library in SLC. Elise is doing an internship that ends in a month or so, and then she is going to grad school in Norwich, England. Eve works in collection care, and is starting her MLIS at San Jose State in the fall (virtually).

And here is Mary with Toni, who is now a high school English teacher. (I only took one photo, and Mary's eyes are closed, but she did not care. I should have snapped more than one!)

Back to the newlyweds: Carter just graduated in music (trumpet performance) and will be doing a master's in musicology at BYU starting in the fall. He worked with me on rehoming the musical instruments to the School of Music, and then asked me to be his honor's thesis advisor, and I was not very good at it, having never done it before, so now I know what to do! Thank goodness for Dr. Harker and Dr. Thornock who were also on the committee, because they knew more than I did, but I learned. Also Carter has worked with Janice on a project that they have presented at several conferences, most recently International Trumpet Guild, and this same project was the subject of his master's thesis. Annelise is a commercial music major with aspirations to attend law school focusing on copyright law. After working at our fourth floor desk (as Carter also does), she has moved on to work for the copyright office. 

And...that is all for now!

A tale of two Gerrits

 Yesterday, my colleague Tim was pretty upset. He had been asked to peer review an article that had been submitted for publication in an academic journal, and he very quickly could see the (undisclosed) hand of AI, and not in a good way.

Tim is a scholar of Chinese History, so this article was on that topic, and based on a quotation from an Ancient Chinese writer. Only when Tim read the translation of the quote (into English) it was just...off. So he looked for the original quote in Chinese (he is fluent) and found it in a couple of places, and the translation was just wrong. He kept looking, and finally found the quote in someone's writing, with footnotes that were that writer's interpretation of various aspects of the original quotation. And it seemed, based on the translation of the quote in the article, that the person had used an AI version of the quote in which the AI bot had glommed the quote and the footnotes together as if they were the original quote. It kind of threw off the premise of the whole article, based on, you know, not the truth of the original quote. 

If that wasn't upsetting enough, THEN he found in the footnotes a hallucinated book. He searched high and low for evidence that such a book existed and found none.

Tim was so upset that he had to come and vent to me (his department chair--and I had just finished  listening to Patrick venting about his reviewers for an academic article, so that was fun for me! Two venters!) and then he had to go for a walk to cool down so he could figure out how to be somewhat diplomatic about giving a scathing review. 

And also, he advised me to watch a video by Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the 12 apostles that had just dropped, about AI, which he felt was very good. 

And so I did! 

The video was very good. I have already recommended it to others--we are grappling with how to teach about AI use in library instruction. I like Elder Gong's God, self, others, and the environment approach, because these elements all need to be considered in AI.

I am not a big fan of AI. It is neither artificial nor truthfully intelligent, so why do we call it that? And why are we all jumping on the bandwagon when we literally have real problems that are more important to focus our attention on? I was reading a lot about AI today, and in an MIT publication, one teacher commented "The world continues to be plagued by climate change, war, and hunger. Solving large global crises will require critical thinking and strong communication skills, skills that the current inception of AI undermines." Well--this is tangential to the title of this post, which is about two Gerrits, right?

The first is Gerrit W. Gong. Early in this video, he talks about his name: Gerrit, which is a Dutch name, Walter, which is an American name, and Gong, which is a Chinese name. Now, I have to relate that I first became acquainted with Elder Gong when he was an assistant to the president at BYU, in my early days as an employee. I didn't "know" him; I just knew of him, and I was impressed with his sincerity, kindness, the calm he carried, the gentle stalwart way of being he had. We parked in the same parking lot, and I saw him many times. We would say hello to each other, since we frequently crossed paths. This one time, I pulled into the parking lot just behind him. This was the west ASB lot -- he parked facing west, in the last spot reserved for BYU officials. I parked a bit north and east of his car, facing east. As I got out of my car, he was walking away from his car heading to the ASB, when another car came into the lot, went to park beside Gerrit Gong's car (I thought of him as just Gerrit Gong back then) and hit it instead, smashing the right rear bumper and tail light.

Gerrit G. of course heard the crash, turned to see what happened, and came back to deal with the damage to his car. I got to see first hand that he stayed calm, that he was firm but also kind, and that he helped the person who had hit him to maintain her dignity. He did not devalue her; her personhood was important to him in that moment when his vehicle had fallen victim to her mistake.

I have always liked him more since witnessing that event.

But I have to say, that whenever I think of Gerrit Gong, I think of Gerrit de Jong. Like Gerrit Gong, Gerrit de Jong was not large in stature. He too had a very pleasant demeanor, was kind, was intelligent but not arrogant, was just a really nice human being. 

Gerrit de Jong was a linguist, a musician, a composer; he was the person for whom the concert hall in the HFAC was named. I met him there when I was an usher for the School of Music programs--back in the day when we, the ushers, had to wear formal gowns to usher. Nobody went to concerts in jeans. Everyone dressed up. Like, no short day dresses; I am talking evening gowns. That is an aside of n'importe quoi to my story! But still, that is the way it was on the day I first met and talked with Gerrit de Jong for the first time. He was a frequent attendee at concerts, so I got to be well acquainted with him.

He was left a widower to raise his daughters; besides his children, his proudest accomplishment, he told me, was the hymn he had written, "Come, Sing to the Lord," which was in the 1948 hymnal (and would also have a place in the 1985 hymnal). We were standing in the lobby of the concert hall that bore his name when he was telling me that that hymn being included in the hymn book for all to sing was his greatest accomplishment. He was humble about the concert hall.

So, when I became aware of Gerrit Gong in the early 2000s (some 25-ish years since knowing Gerrit de Jong), for some reason Gerrit Gong always made me think of Gerrit de Jong. Like always, persistently, over the past two decades (+) those two men were linked in my brain. I mean, their names are similar. And their personalities also were similar, seemed to me. But why did I persistently link them?

So yesterday, after watching that video, and thinking about Gerrit W. Gong talking about his name (Gerrit is Dutch; Gerrit de Jong was Dutch) I thought "I wonder if there is a Wikipedia article?" And I looked him up and guess what? He was named after Gerrit de Jong!! HIs mother roomed at the de Jong house while she was a BYU student, and the de Jongs were like family! Gerrit Gong called Gerrit de Jong "Grandpa de Jong!" 

So. My brain connected them somehow, I thought erroneously, but actually correctly!

Trevon & Nicole

 Another family wedding yesterday! My niece Carlie's youngest son Trevon married a lovely, nice woman named Nicole. We were invited to the evening reception. They chose a venue in Taylorsville, and I appreciated Josie going with me. It was nice to chat on the way there and back again! And it was nice to see all the cousins who were there. I didn't take pictures of everybody, but I think I got a good representative sampling of family members who were there.

When we arrived, we could have gone through the door, but we spied Auntie Judy and Elizabeth in the outdoor pario, so we headed in that direction.

And then Josie and I switched places:

And then Auntie Judy suggested we do a selfie shot, which Josie handled nicely.

Then we found Carlie, the mother of the groom! And also Heather and her daughter Madeline, who has just graduated from high school, and is -- oh dear! was it U of A or ASU? I am not sure!! -- anyways, she is off to one of those Arizona universities in the fall, in a sciencey/mediciney major. And she is very excited about it.

We had not yet seen Melinda, so Heather found her and brought her to us! Melinda and Jim are soon off on a cruise, where they will be spending time in Italy, for their 25th wedding anniversary. Before they leave, their son Jacob is getting baptized on June 14 (Patrick's birthday) and then I think they are leaving on June 19 (Hadis's birthday) and are leaving Jacob in charge of his sisters. Abby, the youngest, is heading for grade 9, and Kali is maybe 20? I can't remember! They grow up so fast!

Of course, we had to talk to the people who made this event possible, Trevon & Nicole. Carlie's sons are such nice people, and they all have nice wives, too. Nicole is joining a good bunch of people. 

And here they are dancing together:

And then the MC called for other married couples to join them on the dance floor, so here we have Heather and Mel!

That is a cute picture of them, but I did not center the shot very well, did I? It was a pretty fun dance party! Here are some of our family enjoying a line dance.

At the back, Elizabeth is dancing beside Heather. In the front, Kali (in brown) is dancing beside Carlie and her granddaughter Junie. The smaller person just behind Junie is Rhaenyra. (I don't know if that is the way they spell it, but that is how you spell the person's name in "Game of Thrones" which is where Dallin and Jasmine got their daughter's name) She is dancing with her mom, Jasmine. 

Here is another shot of Jasmine dancing with her daughter, with Dallin's back to the camera.

On the right, that is the wife of and one of Dallin's twin brothers (a brother who is a twin to another brother) but I can't remember which one of the twins it is! I need to pay attention better!

And then we bowed out, because we had not planned to stay long, and wanted to get home while it was light. And also I wanted to turn the water on to quench the thirst of our parched plants, but of course, I did not remember to do that! But first, we did go inside and sign the guest book. They had a little polaroid camera, and you would take a picture of yourselves and then tape it in the guest book, signing under it. Which is sort of a genius idea, I thought. 

Student Visit

 Another former student dropped in yesterday! It is so good to see our students! It was a slow day at the library--super quiet. So having the chance to chat with Dan and show him around what is a very changed library was a very nice diversion from an otherwise uneventful day.

Dan worked in the library for a few years -- his post that I saw later and luckily got a screen shot of--says three years. So I am thinking about 2006-2009, or 2005-2008, something like that. "By far the best part" of his undergrad experience, he says!! He teared up when he saw the library!! I teared up reading that.

Back in the time Dan was here, David was his direct supervisor, Janet was the department chair, and I supervised all the time cards, so all three of us had a piece of the management of Dan's work. And he, and all the other students, were so great to work with!! What a lovely toast to all of us Dan wrote there. And I just found it because we are FB friends. So nice of him to write that.

Here is a picture of me and Dan, taken by Lila, one of our current students.

Dan, having not seen the library in a very long time, was blown away. This was his first time back on campus since he graduated, and our floor of the library looks completely different! So we had a good walk around to see all the changes!

Dan was working here during the time that DD took a couple of students to New York to organize and load up and transport a TRAIN CAR full of LPs from the collector in NY to our library. This was an enterprize that the rest of us in the music library were NOT in favor of. We were worried about where to put them, how to get them catalogued, how to deal with 150,000 LPs which is, frankly, too many. 

And we had not been told about them--I found out, because one of the students, Tony, was a foreign student, and he was worried about how to deal with his hours, to make sure he didn't violate the employment laws governing him, and he therefore came and asked me. And I was like, "What? You are going to New York to pick up LPs?" At the time, since Janet was our Department Chair, I told her and she was not happy. Because someone she supervised was planning a trip with students to New York, and she hadn't even been informed, let alone consulted with! I even visited with the then university librarian, RO, and he didn't know about it either, but told me "Over my dead body will this happen!" And I told him I didn't believe him--I didn't believe he would stop it from happening, because flights had been booked for the students, and all the plans were well underway. And of course, he didn't stop it. R was a YES MAN. So he would tell me yes, and he would tell you yes, and he would tell everybody yes, even though he would be saying yes to opposites. So somebody would actually get a no, but they wouldn't hear it from him!

So Dan and Tony flew to New York, and I don't remember if Doug went to New York, or if he just helped with the unloading at this end, but we did have a worker's comp claim for Doug. It was soooo annoying from our point of view. Finding places to put all those LPs! Moving those heavy things so many times!! Having to hire Backstage Library Works to help with the cataloguing.

And then...the current library administration in this decade mandated that it be an OPEN, browseable collection, and it was not manageable. I was able to make a deal with Internet Archive, though. They would take all our LPs, and they would pay for the materials to pack them, and for the transportation to their warehouse in California. They have a preservation mandate and they will digitize them and share them freely as copyright laws allow. So--despite all the sunk costs, this was a very good thing!!

But then, our current university librarian, RA, decided to get in a philosophical fight with Brewster Kahle of Internet Archive, so he made us stop after our first shipment (of six)!!! So that set us back an entire YEAR, but then a good friend of his who worked for OCLC moved to a position at Internet Archive, and he and she were able to work things out, and he told AS, the AUL over collections, that we could resume, and our friends at Internet Archive were happy, and we were happy, and after all the stupid politics, we are going again, and AS is saying "Why are you so slow?" when we would have been so much further along if RA had not stopped us for purely political reasons.

However, we had been carrying on as much as we could hoping the problem would be resolved, and it was! My current RA, Megan, has been working diligently on organizing the LPS by genre because we are keeping about 6-10 thousand, in bins, that people can easily look through. 

So it was fun to have Megan meet Dan--the start and the end of the LP problem/solution!! Dan was giving Megan grad school advice (he went to Iowa, she is going to Indiana) and told her that the experience of going to New York was life-altering for him!! Listening to him, I repented of my resentment about getting this stupid LP collection that has cost so much in $$ and time over nearly 20 years--it was worth it for Dan, and for Tony, and if it had such an impact for good on their lives, then it was worth whatever it cost, right?

And Dan told me in great detail how the experiences he had as an undergrad because of the library were so impactful, and that he and the friends he sees from time to time back east (he lives in D.C.) talk all the time about working at the music library and how great it was, how it expanded their horizons. 

It was indeed a very golden time! When we were a separate entity within the Special Collections Division in the library, Janet was a great department chair, and Scott Duvall was a great AUL, and we enjoyed so much freedom to create great experiences for our students. 

And then, Dan's next post on the reel I found on FB said THIS. I mean, we do end up hiring many gay boys. Like, we do music and dance (and now theatre) and...this is a very common thing in our disciplines, these wonderful people who identify as queer and who are so sweet and thoughtful. But this sentence: "We felt safe and loved there and I'm not exaggerating when I say that some of us probably wouldn't have survived our time [at] BYU if it hadn't been for the music library and the saintly people who worked there." Also the sentence after that: "the library will always hold a sacred place in my heart and I have so much love for the people associated with that experience." That is...so sacred. Thank you, Dan, for your sincere expressions of appreciation. I knew you liked to work here at the time, but I had no idea of how much your work here meant to you! Of how much WE meant to you. It is so nice to know. Thank you.

Books Read in May

 I will start with a photo, just for fun? How many conservators does it take to clean a pagoda that has been exposed to several years of construction dust?

It is very hard to see the fourth one--she is gray-haired, and barely visible right below the arm of the girl on the left. So FOUR is the answer. Although, when I first saw them, there were five working on it, but I didn't have my phone/camera. By the time I got it, Lili (the superviser) had bowed out because five was too many! Too crowded! (Patrick suggested to me that technically it only takes ONE conservator for this task--it would just take longer to finish.)

And now on to the eight books I read in May! (With still two days to go, I am not planning to finish any of the books I am currently reading, including Emma M. Lion #8, which I am slowly savouring.)

1. The place of knowing: a spiritual autobiography (2011) by Emma Lou Warner Thayne. Emma Lou Thayne wrote this after recovering from her trerible accident, in which she was a passenger in a car driven by one of her sons-in-law, when a long metal pole came flying through their windshield and hit Emma in the face/head. She should have died, and in fact did die, but managed to survive and recover movement and all her mental faculties. Emma Lou was a poet, with most of her published books (not all) being volumes of poetry, so the language in this prose book is highly poetic. I read this book because a church historian contacted me to see if I could help her pin down the exact date of Emma Lou Thayne writing the lyrics of the hymn "Where can I turn for peace?" I had, years ago, read another of Thayne's books, written with her daughter Becky, about Becky's mental health issues and anorexia, and I knew that in that book she talked about writing the hymn. Only we didn't have that book in our library, so I couldn't easily re-read it, or even look in it. We had, instead THIS book, so I checked it out, and it too mentions the hymn, actually has a chapter with the same title, "Where can I turn for peace?" but lacks the detail that I remembered reading in the other book. I was sure that the hymn was written for a June conference, back in the day when June conference was a thing. The historian (Melanie) had the idea it was written for a Laurel conference held at BYU. I suggested trying to contact one of Emma Lou's five daughters, and in my sleuthing had the idea (inspiration?) that my friend Andrew Maxfield might know one of the daughters, Dinny. So I sent him a message to ask, and he had grown up in her same SLC ward, and immediately sent me her email address, which I gave to Melanie--and the daughter was super helpful, and then Melanie was able to fnd documentation that supported what Dinny (daughter #4) told her. So that was fun--and turns out the hymn was written for the June conference of 1973. (We had both been looking in the WRONG YEARS. I thought 1970; Melanie thought 1971. Yet the hymn's copyright date is 1973, so we should have looked THEN. Makes perfect sense--Becky's issues began in 1970, so it would reasonably take a few years of trial and effort and disappointment before her mom was anguishing about "Where can I turn for peace?") 

2. R.I.P. Eliza Hart (2017) by Alyssa Sheinmel. Ellie and Eliza were best friends in their early school days in California, before Ellie's family moved across the country to New York. Now they re-meet at an elite boarding school in California, where Ellie's parents have sent her as a scholarship student, hoping she can get some help with her terrible claustrophia issues that no therapists have been able to help her overcome. Eliza, whose family is wealthy, are also hoping she can be helped: she has terrible depression. These two girls are NOT well met. Not long after their unhappy meeting, Eliza dies in...a fall? a jump? a shove? over a cliff. This story is so well told! Add in some Redwood burl poaching (I did not know what a burl was!) and interesting characters, and this makes a compelling story as Ellie discovers the source of her own mental illness and how it connects to Eliza and her mental distress.

3. Walking in two worlds (2021) by Wab Kinew. This is one of Kinew's fiction books--I read one of his nonfiction books last month. I really like him. Like, I admire him as a person and as a politician. And this was a wll-told YA fiction story, set in the real world of an Anishinaabe reservation in Manitoba and the virtual world of a video game. Bugz is an awkward teen in the real world, but a powerful gamer in the virtual world. She meets a young man from China, Feng, who has moved to Manitoba to live with his aunt, who is a doctor for the reservation's medical center. Bugz does not realize that Feng is also one of her enemies in the virtual world. Kinew does a good job of walking his characters through their two worlds. I think Nancy would be interested in this book because she studies religion in books written for children and adolescents. The Anishanaabe religion definitely plays a role in this book, and also Feng is Uyghur, which is why he has been sent out of China--just like Bugz's grandparents had been subjected to residential schools in Canada, Feng's Muslim religion is being brainwashed out of him through residential schools in China. (This is really happening to Uyghur children in China right now.)

4. Up home: one girl's journey (2023) by Ruth J. Simmons. This memoir traces Ruth's life from birth through university. My short summary is: From hard beginnings as the 12th child in a black sharecropper family, Ruth became the president of three universities. Her life was difficult but she had a loving mother and some wonderful older siblings. Ruth's father was a hard man, and did not see the need of education, while Ruth knew that education was her ticket to a better life. After her mother's death, she could not rely on her father to provide clothes or books or school supplies, but she had a couple of much older brothers who were a wonderful support system. (She was in the same grade as one of her nieces, who was a few months older than her.) 

5. A stranger in Jerusalem: Seeing Jesus as a Jew (2019) by Trevan G. Hatch. I need to email Trevan and tell him I read his book! It is so interesting reading books by people you know--this book sounds just like him! Trevan is one of our librarians, but he came to us with a PhD. in Hebrew studies, and is very well-versed in all things related to Israel, where if I remember correctly he lived and did one of his advanced degrees there. Anyways! In this book, he positions Jesus as a Jew in the culture of the Israel of his time period. Christians tend to turn Jesus into a Christian--but he was definitely a Jew. Trevan raises some interesting points--like Judas for example: was he really a traitor, or did he think that there was no way that Jesus, the Messiah, would die? Trevan compares the accounts of Christ in the four gospels, and the history of when they were written, and by whom (we don't know, but what characteristics did these people have) and why the accounts are different, and what was happening then between the Jews who were Pharisees, the Jewish followers of Christ, and  the Jews who did not fit into either of those categories--it was a very complex situation. Super interesting!

6. On these magic shores (2020) by Yamile Saied Mendez. The title of this fiction book comes from a quote by J.M. Barrie in Peter Pan. And this book melds a story about three young girls whose Argentinian/American mother disappears, and so they are fending for themselves (the Lost Girls) while the oldest sister, Minnie, is trying to hold it together for their school production of Peter Pan. I really like how the author tells this story, so elegantly. (I am going to read more of her books!) The story is set in Utah, in a small town near Salt Lake City. (This is harder to figure out when you actually live here, I think, than if you were just imagining a small town near Salt Lake City.) And I like how the decision to move back to Argentina is a good decision. I feel like some books make leaving the United States into such a terrible thing to have to do, when actually there are many wonderful places to live in the world. Oh yes--for Nancy--there is a religious element in this JUV novel, too. Like, they don't go to church anymore, but they still keep the commandments; and Minnie remembers testimonies of things people believe though they have not seen.

7. Dance masters: interviews with New York's dance teachers (2024) researched and edited by Donna Marie Nowak. I have been working on a book/edition of a dancer's teaching methodology for the past couple of years, and it is due to be published in an online format in June. One of my peer reviewers wanted me to compare my teacher to some other female teachers (I had only done a section on male teachers to situate her in relation to other ballet teachers) and the reviewer suggested a couple of female dance teachers, and one of them was one of the 17 teachers discussed in this book. So I initially read just that section, but then I went back and read all of it, because it was interesting for me. (Suffice it to say, the female dance teachers he suggested were after my person, so not that relevant. But at least I did my due diligence before rejecting what the reviewer wanted me to do, right?) This book was helpful to me also because my editors keep asking me questions about why this and why that, when my dancer died in 1999, so it has been a loooong time since the stewards of her materials received them. And this book--she did the interviews around 1992-1994 and just published them in 2024. So. A lot of time passes! She had to add lots of footnotes about why this and why that. However, the tapes of these interviews are all held in New York Public Library's dance division. 

8. Al' America (2008) by Jonathan Curiel. Dick Dale is why I read this book. I had never heard of him until my student, Megan, was preparing her paper about the Beach Boys for the Mountain Plains Chapter of the Music Library Association, and while she talked about Dick Dale and his pioneering of Surf Rock (I had never heard that Surf Rock was a thing either!) she didn't have a sound sample, and I thought she should. When I heard Dick Dale I was like--that is totally Middle Eastern!! So I looked him up, and he is Lebanese! And so then I read this book. So, in the anti-Muslim environment that has developed in the USA post-2001, people have forgotten the long history of Islam and Arabic speakers in the United States. This was not a new thing. Probably the first to come to these shores came unwillingly, as slaves. So here we have these illiterate white guys capturing and bringing black slaves from Africa who were literate (in Arabic) Muslims. It wasn't until the 1870s that people from the Middle East started coming to the US voluntarily, even 29 who survived the Titanic, but this is all to say that there are lots of these people, millions of these people, who are born citizens of the US, AND that they have made huge contributions to our culture. Music, Ice Cream Cones, Architecture, I Dream of Genie, Aladdin, the Alamo, etc., etc. etc. Super interesting!