Readers' Nook

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FICTION

Kang Han Greek lessons : a novel Fic Han
Belén Gopegui Stay this day and night with me Fic Gopegui
Dave Barry Swamp story : a novel Fic Barry
Don Winslow City of dreams : a novel Fic Winslow
Jenny Jackson Pineapple Street : a novel Fic Jackson
Thomas Brussig The short end of the Sonnenallee Fic Brussig

Historical Fiction
Brendan Slocumb Symphony of secrets Fic Slocumb
Miriam Herin The basilisk : a novelFic Herin
Amy S Kwei Under the red moon : a Chinese family in diaspora Fic Kwei

Mystery, Suspense, Thrillers, Espionage & Intrigue
Martha Grimes The old success Fic Grimes
David Baldacci Simply lies Fic Baldacci

Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror
M. R. Carey Infinity gate Fic Carey
Jinwoo Chong Flux : a novel Fic Chong

Short Stories
McSweeney's. Issue no. seventy. SS M175
Fiona Sze-Lorrain Dear chrysanthemums : a novel in stories Fic Sze-Lorrain

LARGE PRINT
Jenny Jackson Pineapple Street Large Print Jackson

E-AUDIOBOOKS

Joanne B Freeman The Field of Blood : Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War
Eric Bentley Are you now or have you ever been?
Anzia Yezierska Bread givers : 3rd edition
Richard Nelson Some Americans abroad
Noah Boyd The bricklayer : a novel
Norman Polmar The death of the USS Thresher : The story behind history's deadliest submarine disaster
GM Matheny God & spies : Recently declassified top secret operation
W Craig Reed Spies of the deep : The untold truth about the most terrifying incident in submarine naval history and how putin used the tragedy to ignite a new cold war
John Medhurst Sub culture : The many lives of the submarine
James Calvert Surface at the pole : The extraordinary voyages of the USS Skate
Richard Humphreys Under pressure : living life and avoiding death on a nuclear submarine
Val McDermid Forensics : what bugs, burns, prints, dna, and more tell us about crime
Alexander McCall Smith A promise of ankles : 44 Scotland Street Series, Book 14
Maggie Nelson The red parts : Autobiography of a trial
Alexander McCall Smith The sweet remnants of Summer : an Isabel Dalhousie novel
Dustin Lance Black 8
Dava Sobel And the sun stood still
Sam Shepard Buried child
Katee Robert Electric idol
Mark Richard A hero's journey
Jack LoGiudice In the moonlight Eddie
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa The leopard
Israel Horovitz North Shore Fish
Anna Ziegler Photograph 51
William C Davis The pirates laffite : The treacherous world of the corsairs of the gulf
M R Green Shadowlands : A journey through britain's lost cities and vanished villages
Joyce Carol Oates The truth teller.
Harry Shearer Twilight's last gleaming
Damon B Akins We are the land : A history of native California
Oprah Winfrey What happened to you? : Conversations on trauma, resilience, and healing.
Leonard Gardner Fat city
Richard Montoya American night : the ballad of Juan Jose
Tracy Letts August : Osage County.
P J O'Rourke The funny stuff : the official P.J. O'Rourke quotationary and riffapedia
Harry Shearer It's not a fair world
Michael Lewis Liar's poker : rising through the wreckage on Wall Street
Pierre Corneille The liar
Oscar Wilde Salomé
Donna Leon Death at La Fenice : a Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery
Levi Roach Empires of the normans : Makers of Europe, conquerors of Asia
Seirian Sumner Endless forms : the secret world of wasps
Alec Nevala-Lee Inventor of the future : the visionary life of Buckminster Fuller
Colin Dexter The jewel that was ours
King James version audio bible : The book of 1 Chronicles.
Donna Leon So shall you reap : a Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery
Paul Fussell Thank God for the atom bomb and other essays
Patrick O'Brian The thirteen-gun salute
Donna Leon Transient desires
Betty Smith A tree grows in Brooklyn

In the 1920s, when he was in his 40s, no less, Bela Bartok and a friend carried a reel to reel tape recorder, and big heavy batteries to power it, into the Carpathian Mountains! Among the first of what we now call ethnomusicologists, Bartok recorded Hungarian peasants playing their traditional instruments and singing songs passed down through generations. Whenever I think of what Bartok accomplished, a line from an old Jane Sibbery song, The Empty City, runs through my head: 

Because if no one gets this down -- then it's gone forever. 

Bartok saved an enormous body of music from loss through industrialization and modernity. Because the people creating the music were not educated in a music conservatory, they also did not have the limits a formal education could impose. What we called "modern" in the 20th century -- dissonance, atypical rhythms and meters, deviations from the Western standard diatonic scale -- we can hear in Bartok's music, inspired by and borrowed from the music that Bartok recorded on that heavy, cumbersome reel-to-reel tape recorder in the 1920s. He did similar research in Turkey in the 1930s and later worked at Columbia University Libraries with his wife classifying Serbian and Croatian folk music. 

Bartok immigrated to the United States in 1940, having antagonized the Hungarian government with his outspoken anti-fascist views. In the last 5 years of his life, his music did not enjoy much popularity, although he did earn some money from concerts. He died of leukemia in 1945. 

In the 1950s, another Hungarian-American, the comedian Ernie Kovacs, in an episode of his innovative television show, staged a wordless New York City street scene to Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. This segment, so unusual and wonderful, came out of that period of television programming in which brilliant people explored the possibilities of the new medium.  

Ernie Kovacs' Street Scene / Béla Bartók "Concerto for Orchestra"

In the 21st century, Bartok's music continues to appear on concert programs and new recordings and interpretations of his works have come out on CD and on classical music streaming services. Mechanics Institute Library has 13 Music CDs of Bartok's compositions.

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NON-FICTION
Biography & Genealogy
Judy Chicago The flowering : the autobiography of Judy Chicago 750.92 C53f
Paris Hilton Paris : the memoir 305.4821 H656
Paul W. Williams Harvard, Hollywood, hitmen, and holy men : a memoir 791.4 W721

Business & Economics
Naomi Oreskes The big myth : how American business taught us to loathe government and love the free market 330.122 O669
Bill Perkins Die with zero : getting all you can from your money and your life 332.024 P448
Craig Freshley Together we decide : an essential guide for making good group decisions.
Amy Porterfield Two weeks notice : find the courage to quit your job, make more money, work where you want, and change the world 658.11 P849
Mariana Mazzucato The big con : how the consulting industry weakens our businesses, infantilizes our governments, and warps our economies 658.46 M459

Chess
Nathan Rose Chess opening names : the fascinating & entertaining history behind the first few moves 794.1 R79

Health & Medicine

Dasha Kiper Travelers to unimaginable lands: stories of dementia, the caregiver, and the human brain 616.831 K57
Kelly Starrett Built to move : the ten essential habits to help you move freely and live fully 613.71 S796b
Wendy Dean If I betray these words : moral injury in medicine and why it's so hard for clinicians to put patients first 362.1 D281
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling If it sounds like a quack ... : a journey to the fringes of American medicine 615.856 H757
Peter Attia Outlive : the science & art of longevity 612.68 A885

History
Ralph White Getting out of Saigon : how a 27-year-old American banker saved 113 Vietnamese civilians 959.7 W582
Meryl Frank Unearthed : a lost actress, a forbidden book, and a search for life in the shadow of the Holocaust 940.5318 F828
Tomaz Jardim Ilse Koch on trial : making the "Bitch of Buchenwald" 940.5318 K761

Languages & Linguistics
Adrian Johns The science of reading : information, media, and mind in modern America 418.4 J65

Law
Denis Clifford Make your own living trust 346.052 C63m

Literature & Writing
Judith Thurman A left-handed woman : essays 814.6 T539

Natural Sciences & Mathematics
Paco Calvo Planta sapiens : the new science of plant intelligence 571.2 C169
Elliot Rappaport Reading the glass : a captain's view of weather, water, and life on ships 551.5 R221
Chris Impey Worlds without end : exoplanets, habitability, and the future of humanity 523.2 I345

Performing Arts & Music
Todd McEwen Cary Grant's suit : nine movies that made me the wreck I am today 791.43 M142
Micah E. Salkind Do you remember house? : Chicago's queer of color undergrounds 781.648 S167
Michael Schulman Oscar wars : a history of Hollywood in gold, sweat, and tears 791.4 S386

Philosophy, Psychology & Religion
Bart D. Ehrman Armageddon : what the Bible really says about the end 236.9 E339
Susan Magsamen Your brain on art : how the arts transform us 111.85 M212
Toby Matthiesen The Caliph and the Imam : the making of Sunnism and Shiism 297.8 M443

Social Sciences & Current Events
Andrew Boyd I want a better catastrophe : navigating the climate crisis with grief, hope, and gallows humor : an existential manual for tragic optimists, can-do pessimists, and compassionate doomers 363.738 B789

Travel & Geography
David Roberts Into the great emptiness : peril and survival on the Greenland ice cap 919.8 R643

Universal (Children's)
Flora Ahn A spoonful of time U Ahn
Minh Lê Drawn together U Le
Leah Henderson The courage of the little hummingbird : a tale told around the world U Henderson
Matthew Burgess The red tin box U Burgess
Bonnie Tsui Sarah and the big wave : the true story of the first woman to surf Mavericks U 797.32 G368
Jane Park Hidden creature features U 590 P235
Jordi Bayarri Ada Lovelace and the start of computers U 510.92 L898