Jessi Wakefield

This is Jessi Wakefield with the Sioux City Public Library and you are listening to Check it Out. Today I would like to recommend the Disney produced movie, The Finest Hours starring Chris Pine, Ben Foster, and Casey Affleck. This movie is based off of true events of what is still considered today the most daring sea rescue ever attempted by the United States Coast Guard. It is the story of heroism, sacrifice, and love for your fellow man. In the winter of 1952, New England was battered by the most brutal nor'easter in years.

This is Jessi Wakefield with the Sioux City Public Library and you are listening to Check It Out. In 2014, Andy Weir came out with his debut novel, The Martian. It quickly and rightfully was lauded as a breakthrough and immediately became a favorite of many, including me. So the moment his second novel dropped, I quickly grabbed it and hoped to enjoy it even a fraction as much as I did his first. Today, I would like to recommend that second novel by Andy Weir, Artemis. I feel I need to say this first. This is not The Martian Volume 2.

This is Jessi Wakefield with the Sioux City Public Library and you are listening to Check It Out. May is an exciting time with its warm weather, end of school, looking forward to long summer nights sort of feel. But, if you were like over 6 million other people in America, May also means the excitement that revolves around the running of the Indy 500. There have been many books written about racing and even the 500, but today I would like to single one out and recommend the nonfiction book Black Noon: The Year They Stopped the Indy 500 by Art Garner.

Hello, I’m Jessi Wakefield of the Sioux City Public Library and you're listening to Check It Out.

This is Jessi Wakefield with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.

What if?

These two words might make up one of the biggest questions we as humans ask ourselves.

Author Blake Crouch tackles this age old thought process in his newest book Dark Matter. In a fast pace, mind bending, emotional roller coaster, Crouch takes the reader into what could happen if we could go back and make different choices. But this isn’t a time travel story. No, it’smuch more complex than that. This is a story about the Multiverse.

The multiverse is the hypothetical set of possible universes, including the universe in which we live. 

What would you do if you were married to a potential killer? In Fiona Barton’s debut novel, The Widow, she tackles this exact question.

Before his demise, Glen was the number one suspect in the abduction and potential murder of two-year-old Bella Elliott, who was kidnapped from her front lawn –years ago, much to the dismay and heartbreak of her mother.

One of my all-time favorite stories is J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, so I take it to heart when someone was to add to the story. Peter Pan, while amazing, let me with a lot of unanswered questions.

How did Peter get to the island? Who taught him to fly? Where did the pirates come from? How did Peter and Tinkerbell meet? Why, if fairy dust allows people to fly, is Peter the only one who can fly without it?

Nothing new under the sun is a common sentiment when it comes to remakes or retellings of popular books and movies. And while oftentimes that feeling might ring true when we read a classic work that has been redone, Marissa Meyer’s teen series The Lunar Chronicles breaks through. 

Today, I’m recommending, the beautifully poetic and award-winning book, Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otuska.

It is the story of a generation of Japanese war brides who leave behind everything they’ve ever known in the hopes of finding a better life in America by marrying men who they’ve only seen in photos and heard from in a handful of letters, promising them good jobs, large houses, and plentiful bounty.