Hi!  This is Rachel Malay, director at the Port Library in Beloit.  

True crime novels always seem to be popular at the library. Even on television investigative news shows like NBC’s Dateline has been running for nearly twenty-five years straight. Authors popular at the Port are Ann Rule and William M. Phelps.  More recently on our shelves are books by Gregg Olsen, including this week’s selection: A Killing in Amish Country.  If you’re a fan of the prolific genre of Amish Christian fiction, this is definitely not a title for you.  However, if you do like watching gritty detective shows on TV or reading thrilling murder mysteries, this could be a good introduction into a new, but related section of books in the library.

In early 2009 Barbara Weaver, a wife and mother in the Amish community of Apple Creek, Ohio was murdered while she slept in her bed. Eli Weaver, husband of the murdered woman was eventually sent to prison for the crime as was his girlfriend and lover Barb Raber. Eli had had a troubled childhood and left the Amish church more than once before returning to settle down.  Unfortunately he was also abusive to his wife and had more than one affair, a cell phone, and more contact with “outsiders” than normal in his hunting outfitting business. Like many true-crime novels, this one starts with the murder in question, and then proceeds to fill in the back story. In this case much of the backstory is fleshed out with details of Amish life. And, unlike some other crime novels this one does not have a clear-cut murderer. The story is less sensationalized simply because the characters in it live simple lives.This makes the story both confusing and compelling, and the reader is more or less left to make up their own conclusions at the end of this book.
 
​You can get the book reviewed here, which was A Killing in Amish Country by Gregg Olsen and Rebecca Morris, and more great titles to watch, read, listen to, or play with at the Port Library. This is director Rachel Malay, saying “Thanks for checking us out!”

Hi!  This is Rachel Malay, director at the Port Library in Beloit. Tonight at 6 pm the library will have a computer basics class.  What we will cover will be based on questions from participants, so any topic, no matter how simple, is fair game!  Call the library Monday during the day to sign up.

Author Jodi Picoult is not known for writing simple or easy things.  She writes with empathy and paints fairly realistic and unflinching portraits of the lives of her characters.  Her latest, Small Great Things, delves deep into a complicated subject, and the length at nearly 500 pages reflects that.

Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a hospital in Connecticut, where she has worked for the last 20 years.  During her shift one day in the middle of a checkup on a newborn she is suddenly reassigned elsewhere. The newborn’s parents are white supremacists and Ruth is African American. The hospital has complied with the parents’ request, but the next day when Ruth is temporarily working alone the baby goes into cardiac arrest. Ruth hesitates before performing CPR on the infant, and as a result is charged with a serious crime. This happens in the first quarter of the novel and the rest is divided into alternating chapters from different characters as they proceed through a court trial.

In an afterward, Jodi Picoult admits that as a white person growing up among privileged circumstances  this subject was difficult to approach.  However, after trying to write on the same topic 20 years ago, she finally stopped approaching the problem of inherent racism from the marginalized point of view and tells most of the story through the white supremacist antagonist point of view. The trial in the book, and even the content throughout are left without a preachy message; instead the reader is lead on a journey to think for themselves.

You can get the book reviewed here, which was Small Great Things  by Jodi Picoult, and more great titles to watch, read, listen to, or play with at the Port Library.  This is director Rachel Malay, saying “Thanks for checking us out!”

Hi!  This is Rachel Malay, director at the Port Library in Beloit. This Thursday is our monthly classic movie night at 6 pm in the Schafer Room at the library. This month we’ll be watching The Quiet Man starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.  The movie, popcorn, and soda are all free.

To say that James Patterson is a prolific writer is a bit of an understatement. He has over 200 titles to his credit as a writer or co-author. Now, he is sponsoring a series of quick-read novels for people on the go, called BookShots. Patterson is coauthoring several of these, but many more simply have his name on the cover for recognition, while the content is written by another author. The Port Library has six of these slim volumes, and will likely add a few more.

Killer Chef by James Patterson with Jeffrey J. Keyes is a super-fast paced story set in New Orleans, with a chef by day and detective by night named Caleb. During the day Caleb sells the city’s best po’boy sandwiches out of his food truck called Killer Chef alongside his ex-wife Marlene. By night he solves mysteries as a detective with the local police force, and the latest case is a little too close for comfort. It seems someone is murdering diners in the neighborhood with poison.Who is behind it all? In true James Patterson style the answer is found, and then disproven, about three times before the case is finally solved.  And all in under 150 pages.

You can get the book reviewed here, which was Killer Chef by James Patterson with Jeffrey J. Keyes, and more great titles to watch, read, listen to, or play with at the Port Library. This is director Rachel Malay, saying “Thanks for checking us out!”

Hi!  This is Rachel Malay, director at the Port Library in Beloit. 

Even if you don’t get HGTV on your cable television package, you may have heard of the people behind this week’s Port Pick.  The Magnolia Story by Chip and Joanna Gaines is a sort of biography so far of life with the stars of the home renovation reality TV couple based out of Waco, TX. The couple are popular for their light and breezy style and humorous interaction as a duo, along with their four young children.

The book is arranged in a loose chronological order, with different typeface indicating who is telling the story at the time, with Joanna doing most of the narrating. There is a color photograph section in the middle of the book that fleshes out some of the narrating more completely.

Chip met Joanna at an tire store while the two were both attending Baylor University.  After college Chip, a self-described “serial entrepreneur” started buying and renovating houses with Joanna’s design help. The two decided to buy an additional farmhouse to renovate for themselves and their growing family in 2012. Cash was tight and then Chip did something impulsive: he bought a houseboat, sight unseen, for temporary housing for his family. At the same time Joanna’s home designs had been recently featured on a national design blog and had caught the eye of TV producers. The same day Chip revealed his surprise houseboat to Joanna was the last day of test filming for the television series. The very real and unwelcome surprise to Joanna was all caught on tape, which interested television executives.

The couple is obviously still married after tackling that project and the fourth season of their show called “Fixer Upper” is currently airing on HGTV. Outside of the TV series the duo owns a design studio and tourist destination called Magnolia Market at the Silos in Waco, TX.
 
You can get the book reviewed here, which was The Magnolia Story by Chip and Joanna Gaines with Mark Dagostino, and more great titles to watch, read, listen to, or play with at the Port Library.  This is director Rachel Malay, saying “Thanks for checking us out!”