In honor of the fact that I'm reading Stephen Chbosky's  Perks of Being a Wallflower, and this newsletter is, let's be honest, all about me; here is a playlist of the "winter songs mix tape" Charlie gives to Patrick for Christmas. He says, in his signature rambling way:

"I had an amazing feeling when I finally held the tape in my hand. I just thought to myself that in the palm of my hand, there was this one tape that had all of these memories and feelings and great joy and sadness. Right there in the palm of my hand. And I thought about how many people loved those songs" (Chbosky, 62).

Listen on Spotify...

Listen on Grooveshark...

Asleep by the Smiths

Vapour Trail by Ride

Scarborough Fair by Simon & Garfunkel

A Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum

Time of No Reply by Nick Drake

Dear Prudence by the Beatles

Gypsy by Suzanne Vega

Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues

Daydream by Smashing Pumpkins

Dusk by Genesis

MLK by U2

Blackbird by the Beatles

Landslide by Fleetwood Mac

and finally . . .

Asleep by the Smiths (again!)

Location: FIC Wiesel

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Night  is a work by Elie Wiesel about his experience with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944-1945, at the height of the Holocaust and toward the end of the Second World War. In just over 100 pages of sparse and fragmented narrative, Wiesel writes about the death of God and his own increasing disgust with humanity, reflected in the inversion of the father-child relationship as his father declines to a helpless state and Wiesel becomes his resentful teenage caregiver.

Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The Diary Of Anne Frank ,Night  awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.

--Goodreads

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Alexander Hamilton (2004) by Ron Chernow

Call Number: BIO Hamilton

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A  New York Times  Bestseller, and  the inspiration for the hit Broadway musical  Hamilton!

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow presents a landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who galvanized, inspired, scandalized, and shaped the newborn nation.

Chernow here recounts Hamilton's turbulent life: an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, he came out of nowhere to take America by storm, rising to become George Washington's aide-de-camp in the Continental Army, coauthoring The Federalist Papers, founding the Bank of New York, leading the Federalist Party, and becoming the first Treasury Secretary of the United States.Historians have long told the story of America's birth as the triumph of Jefferson's democratic ideals over the aristocratic intentions of Hamilton. Chernow presents an entirely different man, whose legendary ambitions were motivated not merely by self-interest but by passionate patriotism and a stubborn will to build the foundations of American prosperity and power. His is a Hamilton far more human than we've encountered before-from his shame about his birth to his fiery aspirations, from his intimate relationships with childhood friends to his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Monroe, and Burr, and from his highly public affair with Maria Reynolds to his loving marriage to his loyal wife Eliza. And never before has there been a more vivid account of Hamilton's famous and mysterious death in a duel with Aaron Burr in July of 1804.

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Weetzie Bat  (1989) by  Francesca Lia Block

 

Call Number:  FIC Block

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You've got to be a very particular type of person to love the book Weetzie Bat. The right reader is the one who is (or once was) into the quirky, crazy, and bizarre. Anyone who's ever felt at any time that sometimes life is just too darn frumpy should read this story.  If you like books that create little worlds where reality is rarely fixed and true love conquers all (eventually), then you'll enjoy taking a wild and wacky run through the insatiable Weetzie Bat.

In her stunning debut, Francesca Lia Block has created a wild, sophisticated fairy tale. She invites us into a magical world where love really does manage to conquer all. 

--Amazon.com

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