Month: August 2022

The Great Farr Naming Contest pt. 1

With Farr Regional Library’s 20th Anniversary coming up, we’ve been looking through old files, documents, and photos to bring something special.


One of the pieces of Farr history, remembered by few, is that Farr didn’t come to its name easily. In fact, at some point, someone (who was very brave) decided to hold a naming contest for the library.


The contest was announced, and the community had a short window to write in with a name suggestion in the form of a 150-word essay.

We just so happen to have a hefty chunk of those entries, still on original stationary, and in some cases, handwritten.


Throughout the month of September, we’ll take a look at some of the best entries, some of the trends, the finalists, and of course, how we ended up calling the library Farr.


Suppose there’s no need for spoiler alerts on that one.
We’ll start with some that we got from youngsters, like this one from Melanie, who was in 4th grade at the time and would now be (brace yourself) about 30:

typed letter


Can’t you see the splendid name Peakview Library on the sign placed on the front door of the new library? I can. It’s easy to remember, it has a view of a peak, and it’s by a park named Peakview Park. I hope you pick my name because I go to Monfort School. I also would be honored to be picked. I think Peakview Library is a good name for the new library. Can’t you hear it being said, “Peakview Library.”

Well, Melanie, our apologies. Peakview IS a great name.
Also, wow, wherever Melanie is, hopefully those sales skills are being put to good use. “Can’t you see it?” “Go ahead, say it.” Those are some solid sensory marketing tactics!

Before You Were Born

We all know that reading is a great way to escape the realities of life. But have you ever used it to time travel? Check out this list of books divided by decades. Read a book set in the decade before you were born. 

1920s

Blind Tiger by Sandra Brown

In this action-packed historical romance, Thatcher Hutton has just come back from fighting in World War I and is ready to get back to his cowboy life. Jumping off a train, he lands in Foley, Texas the day a local woman goes missing. Being the only stranger in town, he’s immediately considered a suspect and must fight against crooked authorities and interesting town characters to prove his innocence.

Book / Large Print / CD Audiobook / Audio eBook

1930s

Flight of Dreams by Ariel Lawhon

The setting of this book, the Hindenburg, is perfect fodder for this historical thriller. Emilie, the only female crewmember, is struggling to remain professional and hide her agenda while interacting with the passengers aboard the ship. Lawhon takes names from the actual passenger list of the Hindenburg and strings relationships and theories together that culminate in the ship’s fiery crash. Which characters will have you hooked? Which will survive?

Book / Large Print / eBook / Audio eBook

1940s

The Tobacco Wives by Adele Myers

This coming-of-age story, set in 1947 in North Carolina, follows a young seamstress named Maddie Sykes. Maddie is apprenticing under her aunt when she is suddenly hospitalized. Maddie must now cater to the wives of wealthy tobacco executives, who are clients of her aunt. It’s through this work she stumbles upon an industry secret about the health risks of tobacco and tries to unmask the cover up.  

Book / Audio eBook

1950s

The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali

This sweeping, romantic historical fiction will hit you right in the feels. A young couple, Roya and Bahman, meet and fall in love at a stationery shop in Tehran, Iran. On the eve of their wedding, they become separated during a violet coup d’etat when the Prime Minister is overthrown by the Shah of Iran. More than half a century later they’re reunited by chance.

Book / Large Print / eBook

1960s

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

This piece of African American fiction is inspired by true events. Set in Nickel Academy, a Florida reform school, the story follows two boys who suffer physical and emotional abuse by callous and corrupt staff during the last gasp of Jim Crow. The boys band together and struggle to survive. The chapters are interspersed with the main character’s adult life, showing how his time at Nickel still affects him.

Book / Large Print / eBook / CD Audiobook / Audio eBook

1970s

Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson

In this character-driven novel, a mother and midwife sound an alarm about the use of pesticides in her community, which she believes has raised the rates of local miscarriages. This inadvertently threatens the livelihood of her timber community and her husband’s company. The strong sense of place in this novel will have you anguishing alongside the community.  

Book / Large Print / Audio eBook

1980s

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce

Jump into the year 1988 and meet Frank, a music shop owner. A vinyl enthusiast, he sells records of every size, speed, and genre. No CDs or cassette tapes allowed! He’s great at his job, always finding the right record for everyone who walks in. When llse arrives at his store, he falls for this quirky woman. While trying to develop their relationship, Frank must also deal with a real estate company that wants to destroy the store.    

Book / Large Print / CD Audiobook

1990s

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Lincoln has a strange job. He’s an internet security officer in 1999 and spends most of his time monitoring company emails. It’s crazy how much people share over their company email, especially Beth and Jennifer. While following the flow of gossip and their personal lives, Lincoln finds himself falling for Beth. But how can he pursue this relationship when she doesn’t know he exists? Lincoln decides to follow his heart and try anyway.    

Book / CD Audiobook

New This Week

August 23, 2022

The Fall publishing season is starting to gear up, and readers should be prepared to reap the rewards. This week brings us three books to satisfy a variety of tastes, with a promise of more to come in the next several weeks. Whether you’re looking for a new thriller, a thoughtful literary novel, or a rollicking adventure romance, we’ve got you covered with these under-the-radar picks.

Dark Music by David Lagercrantz

When the acclaimed Swedish crime writer Stieg Larsson of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo fame passed away, the series torch was given to none other than David Lagercrantz to finish the story. With Dark Music, we get a crime fighting duo of idealistic, tough-as-nails young cop and a world-renowned authority on interrogation with a mind to rival Sherlock Holmes.

Book

Haven by Emma Donoghue

Book club favorite Emma Donoghue is leaving behind contemporary settings from her books like Room or The Wonder in exchange for 7th century Ireland. A priest and his two monk companions set sail in a boat, looking to leave the world behind. What they find in the Atlantic Ocean is an isolated island filled with birds and surrounded by cliffs: the site of their new monastery.

Book / Large Print

To Catch a Raven by Beverly Jenkins

Adventure and romance combine in Beverly Jenkins’ latest installation in the Women Who Dare series. Raven Moreaux is the latest in a long line of grifters, but she’s putting her talents to use for an entirely different employer in her latest mission: the US Government. A former Confederate official is suspected of stealing the Declaration of Independence, and along with Braxton Steel Raven is posing as household staff with the perilous aim of stealing this piece of history back.

Book

Love Your Space

Tips and tricks to spruce up your home and workspace. Indulge you inner organizer with these helpful picks often full of lush beautiful photos to delight the tidy self in us all.

365 Quick & Easy Tips: Home Organization

Keeping one’s home organized is a manageable daily project, as laid out in these easy-to-follow tips gathered by the folks at Weldon Owen.

Book / eBook

Fridge Love by Kristen Hong

A human in love with an inanimate object? That could happen in real life if readers follow Hong’s advice for getting the most out of the average American refrigerator, food-wise, efficiency-wise, and health-wise.

Book

Beautifully Organized at Work by Nikki Boyd

Bring peace and joy into your workspace as you learn how to declutter your office and mind and create a stress-free work environment.

Book

The Home Edit Life by Clea Shearer & Joanna Teplin

Clea and Joanna are here to remind you that “it’s okay to own things” in the quest for pretty and smart spaces. With The Home Edit Life, you’ll soon be corralling phone cords, archiving old photos, arranging your phone apps by color, and packing your suitcase like a pro.

Book

Real Life Organizing by Cassandra Aarssen

Declutter your way to happiness and peace of mind. Are you constantly cleaning up and clearing away clutter? Do you feel overwhelmed by your stuff? Whether you live in a studio apartment or a large house, we all face the challenge of staying organized, so we have a tidy home that feels welcoming, peaceful, and calm.

Book / eBook / CD Audiobook / Audio eBook

Joy at Work by Marie Kondo & Scott Sonenshein

In Joy at Work, bestselling author and Netflix star Marie Kondo and Rice University business professor Scott Sonenshein offer stories, studies, and strategies to help you eliminate clutter and make space for work that really matters.

BookLarge Print

Outer Order, Inner Calm by Gretchen Rubin

With clarity and humor, bestselling author of The Four Tendencies and The Happiness Project Gretchen Rubin illuminates one of her key realizations about happiness: For most of us, outer order contributes to inner calm. And for most of us, a rigid, one-size-fits-all solution doesn’t work. In this easy-to-read but hard-to-put-down book, Gretchen Rubin suggests more than 150 short, concrete clutter-clearing ideas so each reader can choose the ones that resonate most.  

BookLarge Print / eBook

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson

In The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, artist Margareta Magnusson, with Scandinavian humor and wisdom, instructs readers to embrace minimalism. Her radical and joyous method for putting things in order helps families broach sensitive conversations and makes the process uplifting rather than overwhelming.

Book

Organizing for the Rest of Us by Dana K. White

You long for a little more peace but minimalism isn’t sparking joy? Decluttering expert and self-proclaimed recovering slob Dana K. White offers sustainable ideas to simplify and manage your home.

Book / eBook

New This Week

August 16, 2022

This week we’ve got a children’s picture book that has the makings of a modern classic. New generations of children will love searching the illustrations for the easter eggs that show connections between families, and caregivers will enjoy sharing this warm and lovely story about what makes a house a home.

House Finds a Home by Katy S. Duffield

There’s not much better than cozy, feel-good picture books that invite cuddles and bedtime stories, and this month brings one that could become a classic. Like Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House, this story tells us all about a cozy family house and its yearning for people to fill the rooms and hallways and turn it into a real home.

Book

Having a REALLY Bad Day

Everyone has a bad day occasionally. Your car breaks down, things don’t go well at work, you have an argument with a friend. But what if you had to deal with an earthquake or tornado as well? Reading these stories will remind you things could always be worse . . . a LOT worse.

The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner

Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about, widower Martin Hocking. Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. Sophie discovers hidden ties to two other women, whose fates intertwine on the eve of the devastating San Francisco earthquake. 

Book / Large Print / eBook

Just after the Wave by Sandrine Collette

When a volcano collapses in the ocean and generates a tidal wave of biblical proportions, the world disappears around Louie, his parents and his eight siblings. Their house, perched on a summit, stands firm. But when the water starts to rise again, and the parents realize they must make for the highlands, they are forced to make a devastating decision.

Book / eBook

The Andromeda Evolution by Daniel H. Wilson

In 1967, an extraterrestrial microbe came crashing down to Earth, nearly eliminating the human race. Designated The Andromeda Strain, a team of scientists was able to save the world from an epidemic of unimaginable proportions. Deep inside Fairchild Air Force Base, Project Eternal Vigilance has continued to watch and wait for the Andromeda Strain to reappear. On the verge of being shut down, the project has registered no activity–until now.

Book / eBook /CD Audiobook / Audio eBook

The Children’s Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin

The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats-leaving them unprepared when a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Based on actual oral histories of survivors, this gripping novel follows the story of sisters Raina and Gerda Olson, young schoolteachers who were suddenly faced with life and death decisions, some with tragic consequences.

Book / Large Print / CD Audiobook

Things You Would Know If You Grew Up Around Here by Nancy Wayson Dinan

18-year-old Boyd Montgomery returns from her grandfather’s wedding to find her friend Isaac missing. Drought-ravaged central Texas has been newly inundated with rain, and flash floods across the state have begun to sweep away people, cars, and entire houses as every river breaks its banks. Amid the rising waters, Boyd sets out across the ravaged back country, determined to rescue her missing friend.

Book /Audio eBook

Torn Apart by Sharon Sala

Seven-year-old Bobby Earle’s disappearance after a twister sweeps through Bordelaise, LA, is considered a tragic accident-until young Holly draws a picture of “God” taking Bobby away in his blue truck. As the chilling pieces fall into place, an estranged couple are drawn back together to find their son before it’s too late.

Book

The River by Peter Heller

Taking time off from jobs and classes, Dartmouth pals and consummate outdoorsmen Jack and Wynn undertake a weeks-long canoe trip in Northern Canada. The boys’ fluency with one another and the rugged landscape is quickly tested, though, by an encroaching wildfire and their unknowing entry into an argument between the married couple they try to warn about it. Disasters, growing in severity, eat away at their provisions and their sanity. 

Book / Large Print / CD Audiobook / Audio eBook

I Will Send Rain by Rae Meadows

Annie Bell can’t escape the dust. It’s in her hair, covering the windowsills, coating the animals in the barn, in the corners of her children’s dry, cracked lips. It’s 1934 and the Bell farm in Mulehead, Oklahoma is struggling as the earliest storms of The Dust Bowl descend.  Rich in detail and epic in scope, this is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, filled with hope, morality, and love. 

Book / CD Audiobook

The Unfamiliar Garden by Benjamin Percy

Jack and Nora Abernathy lose their daughter Mia when Earth sweeps into the debris field of a comet and thousands of meteors rain down. Botany professor Jack, now a recluse, is studying a deadly parasitic fungus in his lab when ex-wife Nora, a homicide detective, asks for his help. She’s investigating ritualistic murders rocking Seattle and, ultimately, they will be called upon to save the world.

Book

Pompeii by Robert Harris

Marcus Attilius Primus, the engineer in charge of the massive Aqua Augusta Aqueduct, is summoned to the estate of Ampilatus. He is in the process of executing a slave for killing his fish. Attilius finds sulfur in the water and immediately realizes the problem is bigger than a few dead fish. With rich historical details and scientific minutiae, Harris vividly brings to life the ancient world on the brink of unspeakable disaster.

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New This Week

August 9, 2022

This week brings us a two surprising buried treasures! One is an epic fantasy launch that should satisfy all those fans of The Poppy War trilogy, and the other is a you-are-there river cruise adventure down the Mississippi combined with fascinating history lessons.

The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu

BookTok went wild for The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang, and the first in Wesley Chu’s new epic fantasy series is here to fill the gap left by the end of that series. It starts out the same as so many epic fantasies: a Chosen One, an epic battle, saving the world. But in The Art of Prophecy, we find out what happens when the Chosen One loses.

Book

Life on the Mississippi by Rinker Buck

Journalist Rinker Buck made a big impact with his first book, which described his modern-day journey on the Oregon Trail – complete with covered wagon. His next book is sure to make a similar splash, but quick readers can still snag that first spot on the hold list and live along with his flatboat adventure down the Mississippi River, exploring American history along the way.

Book / Large Print

Emerald Isle Authors

The literary tradition of Ireland, the Emerald Isle, is a long and distinguished one. That tradition continues to flourish through some of the most compelling English-language authors living today. Earn your Emerald Isle Authors badge by reading a contemporary Irish fiction writer.

Being Various, ed. by Lucy Caldwell

Being Various brings together original stories from Ireland’s current golden age of writing with some exciting new voices, never before published.

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Normal People by Sally Rooney

If you’re not already a Sally Rooney fan, you will be after reading this tale of the complex friendship and relationship between two teenagers, Connell and Marianne, who meet in a secondary school in County Sligo, Ireland, and later attend Trinity College Dublin together.

Book / Large Print / Audio eBook

Himself by Jess Kidd

Set in a small town filled with secrets and featuring the return of a mysterious character, Himself is an engrossing mystery, leavened with magic, comedy, eccentric characters, and the power of language.

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Love by Roddy Doyle

Drinking and storytelling: two old friends meet again in a Dublin pub. Reminiscing about past loves, their parents, and themselves through a series of stories—sometimes humorous, sometimes sad, always moving—these men show the many ways they’ve loved.

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Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry

Waiting for a family member in a port in Spain, two aging Irish drug-smugglers look back on their lives of violence and betrayal, telling stories with deft humor and turns of phrase.

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Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín

A widow and mother of four, Nora Webster struggles with the loss of the love of her life. Tóibín is a compassionate author, and it shows in this deeply moving story.

Book / Large Print / Audio eBook

Snow by John Banville

Want a suspenseful and beautifully-written murder mystery? This one has it all: a murdered parish priest, an aristocratic family’s country manor house, and a detective inspector summoned to investigate.

Book / eBook / Audio eBook

Solar Bones by Mike McCormack

This stylistically ambitious novel tells the story of the life and death of an engineer in rural Ireland, but also comments on the state of our larger world.

Book / Large Print / eBook / Audio eBook

TransAtlantic by Colum McCann

As its title implies, this story spans two continents—and 150 years, as it uses the fictional story of four generations of women to highlight the historical stories of Frederick Douglass, Senator George Mitchell and World War I airmen John Alcock and Teddy Brown.

Book / eBook / CD Audiobook / Audio eBook

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

A miracle has been reported: a girl in a small Irish village has survived for a month without food. But the English nurse who is brought to testify to that miracle instead finds she must fight to save the girl’s life.

Book / eBook / CD Audiobook / Audio eBook

New This Week

August 2, 2022

Summer break is winding to a close, and new books are starting to reflect a new season. If you’re ready to welcome the later months of the year with something more substantial than your traditional beach reads, we’ve got a below-the-radar pick for you.

The Codebreaker’s Secret by Sara Ackerman

Few historical time periods hold reader attention like World War II, and with The Codebreaker’s Secret Sara Ackerman breathes new life into the era. This dual timeline story straddles the Pacific Theater of World War II and a mid-1960’s mystery in Hawaii. Kate Quinn fans looking for something to tide them over should take note.

Book / Large Print / eBook / Audio eBook