Hi, I'm Robin from the Wichita Public Library and I'm here to tell you my three recommendations
for category three of ReadICT, a book that intimidates you.
And let me tell you, even though I'm a librarian, there are plenty.
I spent a lot of time recently working in children's services so haven't got a
lot of time to read adult books so this has been a really interesting prospect
for me kind of diving more deeply into things that are more advanced.
My first suggestion is one that I've been wanting to read for a really, really long time
as a fan of Hamilton musical. That's by Ron Chernow called just Alexander Hamilton. And
he is a really famous biographer specifically of presidents, has just researched and written
almost everything there is to know on Hamilton. You can tell that it is intimidating just by
its size to me at over 700 pages but it also is intimidating even being a lover of history. It can
sometimes come across as a little bit dry and a little bit rote but it makes up for that in all of
the really astounding stories about his life with so much background knowledge that does
make it into the musical. So if you're a fan of that, then you really, really enjoy this one.
We do have it in regular book format and we also have it available as book on CD.
The next is Stephen King's The Stand. I admit that it may have been
the wrong idea to read this during a global pandemic considering that
it is in fact a book about a global pandemic and it is also I believe one of the top 10
longest published books. Stephen King has relatively recently gone through and been able to
add all the pages that he originally had to cut because his publishing house had said it was too
long, but now we have more of the story. We have a graphic novel version of it as well.
It's been made into a movie several times. We have those. We have it on our Libby app available
for audiobook and e-book and the regular book version of course if you want the very original.
Our last suggestion is Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. We have it not only available
as a book on CD and a physical book, we also have a movie adaptation starring Tom
Hanks and Halle Berry. One of the things I find the most complicated is the narrative
structure of the book. It goes through several timelines starting from the 19th century
into the '30s, the '70s, about present day, and also post-apocalyptic future
and it has tie-ins through all of those narratives to the stories that came before. And then
for a special twist, the author takes us back in reverse through those timelines and shows us how
all the characters are interrelated and that is probably one of the biggest points of the plot
that I'm not going to spoil for you past there. It is a great book for those who love science fiction
and maybe a little bit more playful take on narratives that's not like many other books
so it's something that I really recommend for someone looking for something a little bit new.
And if you want to check out these or any of our other suggestions,
you can go to wichitalibrary.org/readict and check in with us there.