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New York City’s Three Public Library Systems Unveil The Most Borrowed Books of 2021
Of the millions of print and digital books that New Yorkers borrowed from the city’s libraries in 2021, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, A Promised Land by Barack Obama, and The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah are among the most popular. Brooklyn Public Library, The New York Public Library, and Queens Public Library have unveiled the most popular books of the year, sharing the top 10 checkouts of 2021 in each system for adults, teens, and children. The top checkout for both Brooklyn Public Library – which marked its one billionth loan this year – and The New York Public Library systems was the powerful novel The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, which focuses on two twin sisters and issues of racial identity and bigotry in the segregated south. The most borrowed book in Queens Public Library system was The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, a piece of historical fiction set during the Great Depression. Popular selections that appear on all three lists also include A Promised Land by Barack Obama, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson and The Guest List: A Novel by Lucy Foley. more »
Ferida Wolff Writes: This Holiday Season
Ferida on this Holiday Season: This has been a rough two years. The pandemic seems to want to hang around in its various forms. Yet this time of the year is supposed to be cheerful and bright. So with that in mind, we took a ride around our local towns looking for the brightness of the season and found some homes lit up for the holiday. more »
Joan L.Cannon Wrote: A Family Inheritance: More Than 'Things' ... Emblems of Our Lives
Joan Cannon wrote: As one advances in years, one accumulates possessions the way a caddis fly larva accumulates grit. The glue that makes us carry it all along with us is in a way self-secreted as well. However, it's psychic rather than physical — emotional rather than material. Perhaps the most obvious example is a wedding band. There's a string of coral beads that belonged to a great-grandmother, samplers made by an ancestress of my husband’s in 1813, the parchment doctoral degree awarded to my father, the unsigned portrait of a three times great-grandfather and his wife, the wedding presents, military medals, camp swim trophies and school athletic medals. more »
Jo Freeman Reviews Russell Lee: A Photographer's Life and Legacy
Jo Freeman Reviews: The primary narrative is a biography of a man who spent his life taking photographs in order to document America. It’s not a full biography, as the focus is on the years of 1936-42, when Russell Lee worked for the Farm Security Administration. His life before and after is covered only briefly. It includes a biography of Roy Stryker, who was Lee’s boss and friend. A second theme is a history of the FSA’s Historical Section, headed by Stryker, who sent his photographers on assignments around the country. Their initial task was to document the effects of Depression and drought on rural American in order to justify the expenditure of federal funds to remedy problems. As war approached, their task shifted to documenting America’s strength and prosperity in order to convince enemies that it was a formidable foe. more »