Library Book Club Reviews

Communications Manager, Kyla Merwin, recommends Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament by Michael A. Singer. 

One of the great gifts bestowed on us as sentient beings – which we learn to access at some point (hopefully) in our lives – is personal agency:

Will. Free will. Choice.

We cannot control most of what happens around us—hot tempers and cold people, the length of the line in the grocery store or the width of the feet we were born with, the too-slow traffic or too-quickly changing technology, the time the sun sets or the rising of the tides, the opinions of your mother-in-law and other forces of nature.

In his two best-selling books, The Untethered Soul and Living Untethered, Michael A. Singer reminds us of this aggravating powerlessness with stark, unrelenting clarity. Thankfully, he also maps for us a path to exercise personal agency – awareness, intention, and choice – over matters that we can control: Our own thoughts, feelings, and actions.

He gives us powerful tools to “relax and release” our samskaras—the wounds, the anger, the hurt, the fears that, left to their own devices, wreak havoc on our lives.

These samskaras, says Singer, often hold sway over our better judgement, undermining our best intentions, our relationships, our careers, our dreams. Most importantly, these stored narratives from our past will inevitably distort our peace of mind, our stillness of heart, and our ability to move through life with ease and grace.

By dint of being born human on this “spinning ball of dirt in the middle of the vast space of the universe,” as Singer puts it, you have the ability, through choice, to live a life full of joy, happiness, and deep meaning.

I’ll be the first to admit I have pesky samskaras inserting themselves into my daily life. So if you see me walking around the streets of my own little universe – typically between the Library, the Gold Mine Stores, the Wood River Museum, the grocery store, and home – with AirPods in my ears and my head in the clouds, I might be pondering the words of the great Taoist philosopher, Lao Tzu:

Watch your thoughts, they become your words;
Watch your words, they become your actions;
Watch your actions, they become your habits;
Watch your habits, they become your character;
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

Or I just may just be thinking…

…relax and release.

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Find Living Untethered in Overdrive eaudiobook here. (Print copies coming soon!)

Living Untethered is the December 6, 2023 selection for the Community Library Book Club. Learn more/sign up here. Note: You do not have to read Singer’s first book, The Untethered Soul, in order to get the full benefit of the tools in Living Untethered.

Andrea Nelson, Library Assistant, recommends Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.

The Community Library will hold its inaugural book club, “Together We Read!” on December 8, 2022.  I am thrilled to host our first gathering! We will discuss one of my favorite recent works of fiction, Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus. 

Don’t be fooled by its hot pink cover, Lessons in Chemistry is no weightless romance novel. Garmus throws a huge pile of infuriating literary stones at her protagonist, Elizabeth Zott. It’s not easy to fluster a brilliant scientist like Zott, however. She’s determined to deflect those stones, or at least heal from their impact well enough to break through the barriers they raise between her and her lifelong dream—a Ph.D. in Chemistry.    

Lessons in Chemistry takes place in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when American society largely disapproved of women like Elizabeth Zott. The few that managed to navigate the minefields of unreliable birth control and open gender discrimination in higher education found themselves swimming upstream in pretty hostile, white male dominated waters.

Without other options, she accepts a job as a cooking show host. And being Elizabeth Zott, she does what any good chemist would do: She turns citric acid, sucrose, and H20 into lemonade.

Determined not to let dim minds stand in her way, the indefatigable Zott fights her way into the rarified inner sanctum of academia, only to lose her job as a Teacher’s Assistant (her only source of income as a graduate student) over a “scandal.”  Without other options, she accepts a job as a cooking show host. And being Elizabeth Zott, she does what any good chemist would do: She turns citric acid, sucrose, and H20 into lemonade.

The timing of this first-time author’s new blockbuster might explain, at least in part, its instant appeal.  The loss of Roe vs. Wade erased a fundamental right that, for fifty years, gave women more power to compete with men in the workplace. Along with Griswold vs. Connecticut, which established a right to birth control, Roe advanced female equality in the pursuit of education and career opportunities by granting unintentionally pregnant women the freedom to control when, and whether, to bear children.

The attribute that takes Lessons in Chemistry to the next level, however, is Garmus’ incredible talent for character development. From the brilliant, quirky, indefatigable, lovably unintentional feminist to her supporting cast—including an equally brilliant young daughter and a loyal mutt with an enviable I.Q and a voice of his own. Not surprisingly, a movie is already in the making! 

Please be forewarned that Garmus’ novel contains both heartbreaking and brutal scenes, but only those necessary to further the storyline and properly address serious issues that still threaten women today. Much like Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, the book does not sugarcoat the awful tolerance of crime against women and victimization in in patriarchal culture, but somehow, the story remains funny, lovely, and hopeful. Once you begin to read Lessons in Chemistry, you will not want to stop. When you do come to the end, you will want to talk about it! 

Sign up for the inaugural “Together We Read!” book club here.

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