From Maplewood Memorial Library:
Looking for book suggestions to read while you’re at home? Maplewood Library has got you covered with eLibrary options, including a wide selection of children’s, young adult, and adult books in eBook and audiobook formats via eBCCLS and Hoopla (accessible via your computer or the Libby and Hoopla Digital apps).
There are some basic instructions about how to access eLibrary materials at the end of this article, and you may contact a librarian at library@maplewoodlibrary.org if you need additional help accessing our eLibrary materials, or if you are a Maplewood resident in need of a library card.
There are thousands of titles available for every reader in the eLibrary; you may be surprised by what you discover! Here are 12 reading and listening suggestions to help you get started:
(All book descriptions are adapted from the catalog.)
NONFICTION
At Home by Bill Bryson (Formats: eBook, audiobook; browse more titles by Bill Bryson available on eBCCLS and Hoopla)
Bill Bryson provides a fascinating history of the modern home, taking us on a room-by-room tour through his own Victorian parsonage home in southern England and using each room to explore the vast history of the domestic artifacts we take for granted. As he takes us through the history of our modern comforts, Bryson demonstrates that whatever happens in the world eventually ends up in our home, in the paint, the pipes, the pillows, and every item of furniture. Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and he is a master at turning the seemingly isolated or mundane fact into an occasion for the most diverting exposition imaginable. His wit and sheer prose fluency make At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris (Formats: ebook, audiobook; browse more titles by David Sedaris available on eBCCLS and Hoopla)
David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface. He plays in the snow with his sisters. He goes on vacation with his family. He gets a job selling drinks. He attends his brother’s wedding. He mops his sister’s floor. He gives directions to a lost traveler. He eats a hamburger. He has his blood sugar tested. It all sounds so normal, doesn’t it? Sedaris’s world is alive with obscure desires and hidden motives — a world where forgiveness is automatic and an argument can be the highest form of love. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is a painful, funny and absurd collection, proving why Sedaris is one of America’s wittiest and most original humorists. (Note: the audiobook version is performed by the author, featuring his signature hilarious, wry delivery—highly recommended!)
Every Tool’s a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It by Adam Savage (Formats: ebook, audiobook)
Adam Savage—star of Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters and one of the most beloved figures in science and tech—shares his golden rules of creativity, from finding inspiration to following through and successfully making your idea a reality. In this practical and passionate guide, Adam weaves together vivid personal stories, original sketches and photographs from some of his most memorable projects, and interviews with many of his iconic and visionary friends in the arts and sciences – including Pixar director Andrew Stanton, Nick Offerman, Oscar-winner Guillermo Del Toro and artist Tom Sachs – to demonstrate the many lessons he has picked up from a lifetime of making. Every Tool’s a Hammer is sure to guide and inspire you to build, make, invent, explore and, most of all, enjoy the thrills of being a creator.
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell (Format: ebook, audiobook)
A galvanizing critique of the forces vying for our attention-and our personal information-that redefines what we think of as productivity, reconnects us with the environment, and reveals all that we’ve been too distracted to see about ourselves and our world. Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing. But in a world where our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity, doing nothing may be our most important form of resistance. So argues artist and critic Jenny Odell in this field guide to doing nothing (at least as capitalism defines it). Odell sees our attention as the most precious-and overdrawn-resource we have. Once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress. Far from the simple anti-technology screed, or the back-to-nature meditation we hear so often, How to do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book is more relevant now than ever before.
Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell (Format: audiobook; browse more titles by Sarah Vowell available on Hoopla)
For those who enjoy a healthy helping of humor mixed in with their politics and history, this is a humorous account of the Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette—the one Frenchman we could all agree on—and an insightful portrait of a nation’s idealism and its reality. Lafayette in the Somewhat United States is an amusing and insightful portrait of the famed Frenchman, the impact he had on our young country, and his ongoing relationship with some of the instrumental Americans of the time, including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and many more. This colorful cast of characters is delightfully voiced by the author along with actors Alexis Denisof, John Slattery, Patton Oswalt, Fred Armisen, John Hodgman, Stephanie March, Nick Offerman, and Bobby Cannavale.
White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World by Geoff Dyer (Format: ebook; browse more titles by Geoff Dyer available on Hoopla)
An expansive book–firmly grounded but elegant, often hilarious, and always inquisitive–about travel, unexpected awareness, and the questions we ask when we step outside ourselves. Geoff Dyer documents a series of fascinating adventures and pilgrimages: with a tour guide who may not be a tour guide in the Forbidden City in Beijing; with friends in New Mexico, where D. H. Lawrence famously claimed to have had his “greatest experience from the outside world”; with a hitchhiker picked up on the way from White Sands; with Don Cherry (or a photo of him, at any rate) at the Watts Towers in Los Angeles. Weaving stories about places to which he has recently traveled with images and memories that have persisted since childhood, Dyer tries “to work out what a certain place–a certain way of marking the landscape–means; what it’s trying to tell us; what we go to it for.”
FICTION
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (Format: ebook, audiobook, BBC Radio 4 Dramatisation; browse extensive titles by these authors available on eBCCLS and Hoopla)
The world will end on Saturday. Next Saturday. Just before dinner, according to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, the world’s only completely accurate book of prophecies written in 1655. The armies of Good and Evil are amassing and everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except that a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture. And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist. Whether or not you’ve seen the recent miniseries adaptation of this modern classic, there’s never been a better time to dive into Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s hilarious take on the apocalypse.
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (Format: ebook)
A long-lost book reappears, mysteriously connecting an old man searching for his son with a girl seeking a cure for her widowed mother’s loneliness. Leo Gursky taps his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he’s still alive. But it wasn’t always like this: in the Polish village of his youth, he fell in love and wrote a book. Sixty years later and half a world away, fourteen-year-old Alma, who was named after a character in that book, undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With virtuosic skill and soaring imaginative power, Nicole Krauss gradually draws these stories together toward an extraordinary climax.
Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune by Roselle Lim (Format: ebook)
Lush and visual, chock-full of delicious recipes, Roselle Lim’s magical novel is about food, heritage, and finding family in the most unexpected places. At the news of her mother’s death, Natalie Tan returns home. The two women hadn’t spoken since Natalie left in anger seven years ago, when her mother refused to support her chosen career as a chef. Natalie is shocked to discover the vibrant neighborhood of San Francisco’s Chinatown that she remembers from her childhood is fading, with businesses failing and families moving out. She’s even more surprised to learn she has inherited her grandmother’s restaurant. The neighborhood seer reads the restaurant’s fortune in the leaves: Natalie must cook three recipes from her grandmother’s cookbook to aid her struggling neighbors before the restaurant will succeed. Unfortunately, Natalie has no desire to help them try to turn things around—she resents the local shopkeepers for leaving her alone to take care of her agoraphobic mother when she was growing up. But with the support of a surprising new friend and a budding romance, Natalie starts to realize that maybe her neighbors really have been there for her all along.
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated by Lucia Graves (Formats: ebook, audiobook; browse more titles by Carlos Ruiz Zafón available on eBCCLS and Hoopla)
Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets—an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love. An uncannily absorbing historical mystery, a heart-piercing romance, and a moving homage to the mystical power of books, The Shadow of the Wind is a triumph of the storyteller’s art.
Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks (Formats: ebook, audiobook narrated by the author)
A collection of seventeen wonderful short stories showing that two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country’s civil war. A man who loves to bowl rolls a perfect game—and then another and then another and then many more in a row until he winds up ESPN’s newest celebrity, and he must decide if the combination of perfection and celebrity has ruined the thing he loves. An eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant venture into America looking for acquisitions and discover a down and out motel, romance, and a bit of real life. These are just some of the tales Tom Hanks tells in this first collection of his short stories. They are surprising, intelligent, heartwarming, and, for the millions of Tom Hanks fans, an absolute must-read.
Instructions for accessing eBCCLS and Hoopla content:
There is a 5 item limit per card for electronic materials borrowed through eBCCLS and a 7 item limit per card for electronic materials on Hoopla. Items can be checked out for either 7 days or 14 days. Items are returned automatically on their due dates. If there are no holds on an item, then one renewal may be available.
If you are a Maplewood resident in need of a library card, please email library@maplewoodlibrary.org to create an account.
HOOPLA
Access Hoopla materials on your computer or download the free Hoopla Digital app through the AppStore or Google Play. Login using your library card number. For questions, see the Hoopla Help Page or contact the library for support at library@mapelwoodlibrary.org.
eBCCLS
Instructions for eBCCLS download and reading can be found on the Overdrive device profile page.
To access eBCCLS content on your computer, go here.
Log in using your full library card barcode number.
Browse for your item. Click to checkout or place a hold. Books can be viewed in browser or downloaded.
Answers to commonly asked questions can be found in the Overdrive help guide here.
To access eBCCLS content on your device through the Libby App:
Download the free Libby App through the AppStore or Google Play.
Find and select your library from the list: Bergen County Cooperative Library System
Enter your full library barcode when prompted.
Browse for your item. Tap to check out or place a hold. Books will be placed on “shelf” within the app. Tap titles to read.
Answers to commonly asked questions can be the Libby help guide including this helpful video that provides a brief introduction to the app Intro to Libby.
To access eBCCLS eBooks on your Kindle device:
Instructions on how to download library eBooks for Kindle can be found here.
Instructions on how to download library eBooks for Kindle Fire can be found here.
Explore the other electronic resources that the library has to offer, including digital magazines, TV & film libraries, and language learning resources, here.
Be sure to check the library’s website and social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube) for updates!
