The Simpletons Book Blog

The book that I had read for the club that I participated in was The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher. This book was something that felt like reading a history book of recent events. It was a long read and was a struggle to get through, though I was able to finish the book in time for the book club. It was also interesting as to how everyone interacted with each other. The conversation felt very productive since everyone felt familiar with each other since they had been meeting for a while, and I am very new to the group. Who is asking the questions, is there a leader or do people take turns? There was a librarian leader to help lead and guide the discussion, but mainly she had included her thoughts and guided the conversation to keep it on track with the book, as well as letting others talk about their real-life experiences with technology and the platforms trying to garner are use time on them. Mainly, we answered her ...

For my special topics paper, I decided to do a deep dive into romance throughout history to get a better understanding of where the romance genre has been, where we are now, and how we got from then to now. I mostly wanted to stay within a certain range and thought it best not to go too far, so I decided to go only so far as the 1900s for my research. Here's a bit of an idea of where we went from the 1900s to now. In the 1920s, we had a surge of regency books, where Jane Austin made a comeback 100 years after her stories, but that didn't have as much detail about the time period since they were written during that period, but we had several other authors who wrote books with more details about that time period in their writing. We also had romance books covering some scandalous topics, such as premarital consummation and abortions. Moving into the 1950s and 1960s, we started to see many romance books portraying financially responsible women who have jobs and want a compassionat...

Author: Douglas Adams Title: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Genre: Science Fiction Publication Date: October 12, 1979 Number of Pages: 224 Geographical Setting: England, Space Time Period: 2000’s, considered the future from the year written Series (If applicable): The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Plot Summary: All Arthur Dent wanted to do was to keep his house from being destroyed for a bypass, and suddenly things started to change and become super weird all around him. At least he has his good friend Ford Prefect to keep him company during this whole mess. With the start of Arthur’s amazing adventure, we learn so much about the universe, and that is all thanks to the book that Ford keeps on him, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Subject Headings: Science fiction, Humor, Fantasy, Comedy Appeal: Language/Style – The story has lots of witty banter between characters, as well as many humorous turns of phrase, meant to make the reader chuckle when rea...

From the article, “Why the Banning of ‘A Birthday Cake for George Washington’ Really Matters,” we get a glimpse into understanding what happens with children’s books, particularly how part of the process is done. By reading, we learn that many children’s books are created with an author writing the story and an artist who draws the images for the book. Based on information from the Author, Ramin Ganeshram, many people had gone for how they looked and that they took away their “status as a person of color and glossed over the fact that the illustrator and editor are both African American” (Bloom, 2016, para. 28). Many people attacked the creator of the book for the art being too happy with the slaves smiling while working, and that it made the slaves look happy to be enslaved and to work for their master. The goal of the book was to try and show how although they were enslaved, there was status involved within the enslavement, and that the main character of the book, the historical fi...

Author: Ali Hazelwood Title: The Love Hypothesis Genre: Romance Publication Date: September 14, 2021 Number of Pages: 384 Geographical Setting: Stanford California and Boston, Massachusetts Time Period: Current time period, in the present Series (If applicable): The Love Hypothesis Plot Summary: Olive Smith is in her graduate Ph.D. program at Stanford and happens to be someone who wants what’s best for her friend, going so far as to say that she is on a date so that her best friend, Anh, can get together with Jeremy, who Olive went on a few dates with. The problem is that Anh just so happens to be at the lab when Olive is pretending to be on a date, so what is her solution? Kissing the first person she sees. And who happens to be said person? Dr. Adam Carlsen, who is notoriously known for being a tough person. Now in this predicament, there is only one solution that can save them both. They must continue the ruse and pretend to date. Subject Headings: Biologists, Sc...

One way that I regularly see as an idea is a blind date with a book, and this is commonly done with Romance books. I would love to flip the script and do a blind attack from a Horror book. This would give those who like the Horror genre something new, while also getting into books that they like. I would make sure to include blurbs on the book to help decide what book patrons would love to take home, but I would also keep a sheet with each blurb along with the title so that if someone wanted more details for a specific book, I would not have a problem getting them a little bit more about the book in general. This program would be a bit more passive for those who are just looking, but it would also have some sort of display to go with it just to bring it to the attention of the other readers. As for advisory, we could help others find a book that they may like in the display, as well as come up with new ideas to add to the display once some have been checked out. It would be a rotatin...

Goodman, Jessica. The Counselors. Libby. Unabridged. 9 hours. Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group. 2022. ISBN 9780593592977. $8.99. Three girls visit their favorite summer camp once again as counselors while trying to maneuver through their adolescent changes and keep their dark secrets from each other. Goldie Easton is going to be a camp counselor at Alpine Lake with her best friends, Ava, and Imogen, after having a really rough school year. The summer starts great but quickly twists into some trouble when they find one of the locals from Roxwood washed up on the shore of the summer camp. With the opportunity to meet with each other and talk the truth out between friends, they all hold something close and struggle to communicate, so is anyone really telling the truth to each other? A fantastic story of adolescents growing and learning from their mistakes as well as learning to communicate and talk with one another and trust others with their struggles and their wins. Also, a t...