- April 23, 2025
The Lost Dresses of Italy is a lovely historical fiction focusing on Victorian poet Christina Rossetti and her family. It’s an immersive Italian setting and I’m learning about the Pre-Raphaelites in a very entertaining way.
-Gia, Children’s Room
Read more… - April 14, 2025
April is Poetry Month, and to celebrate, I humbly offer for your consideration two recently published poetry collections from contemporary poets. When was the last time you read a book of poems? Who reads poetry nowadays, anyway? My thinking is, perhaps we should. Poetry stirs my mind to soften, to move from thought to thought ...
Read more… - April 3, 2025
In the spring, the staff here at PFL turn our thoughts to reading (which is maybe not surprising, because it’s at the top of most of our minds all year round). Check out the list below to see the titles we are turning to as we brave late spring storms and look for flowers peeking ...
Read more… - March 26, 2025
High school senior Lemon Ziegler is in a tough spot; she desperately wants to leave her small Pennsylvania town to go to college, but she can’t because she’s been chosen to continue her family’s secret business of faking lake monster (Old Lucy) sightings. Loyal to cantankerous Pappap, and aware that the town’s economy might collapse ...
Read more… - March 19, 2025
While discussing family history with Miss Mary, I learned that her grandmother Irene had diaries from her younger years, including during WW2, and she had turned some of them into a book several years ago. Based on what she had told me about this fascinating woman, I knew I needed to read this book.
Fire Burn ...
Read more… - March 13, 2025
Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack by Willa Hammitt Brown
Legend has it that the giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan was born in Michigan, or Minnesota, or Wisconsin, or perhaps even our very own Bangor, Maine. Determining the birthplace of a mythical entity can be a tricky business, needless to say. Wherever he may ...
Read more… - February 26, 2025
Between Two Sounds is a moving graphic look at experimental composer Arvo Pärt’s musical path from his Estonian childhood to his eventual emigration due to his refusal to change his music to fit the political landscape. The book examines the role musicians played in Estonia’s national identity, while exploring the role religion and philosophy played ...
Read more… - February 19, 2025
The central character of North Woods is a house; a yellow house in the woods of Western Massachusetts that has been there for centuries. The residents of the house, which at times include Puritan lovers escaping their oppressive community, an orchardist and his insular twin daughters, a runaway slave, a nature painter obsessing over a ...
Read more… - February 12, 2025
The Forgotten Sense: The New Science of Smell by Jonas Olofsson
Being a body in the world is an endlessly stimulating affair. How bizarre that we should ever succumb to disenchantment – boredom, even! – when our five senses extend perpetual invitation into a rich-to-the-point-of-limitless extravagance of possible experiences. Often I lament that we are nowhere ...
Read more… - February 5, 2025
Tim Brown’s The Tao of the Backup Catcher: Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game tells the stories of players who never were #1 catchers but always the backup, playing irregularly but always needing to be ready and available, and calling the entire game on the days when they were called on. This book ...
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