Library Bingo: Read a book that takes place in the future

It's a double rec day! Did you already see our post for the (possibly) new-to-you mystery author? If not, check it out, we'll still be here when you get back!

Note: we're calling "read a book that takes place in the future" speculative fiction.

On the speculative fiction front, we offer classics both deserved and seemingly undiscovered. From the grimly cyber to the colorful embodiments worth touching upon.


William Gibson’s classic Neuromancer hearkened in the a new reality and coined a evergreen term, "cyberspace", “Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...”  There are few books that usher in a completely new genre within a genre, and Gibson’s Neuromancer did that, which gave us "Cyberpunk". Think of this as the natural extension of Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, and the dark artificial intelligence of everyone’s connected minds.




Ray Bradbury wrote his first book on a checked-out typewriter while sitting in a library each day. From there he created unforgettable books such as Fahrenheit 451. The highlight here is on Bradbury's The Illustrated Man - -a wanderer whose entire body is a living canvas of exotic tattoos. What's even more remarkable, and increasingly disturbing, is that the illustrations are themselves magically alive, and each proceeds to unfold its own story, such as "The Veldt," wherein rowdy children take a game of virtual reality way over the edge. Or "Kaleidoscope," a heartbreaking portrait of stranded astronauts about to re-enter our atmosphere--without the benefit of a spaceship. Or "Zero Hour," in which invading aliens have discovered a most logical ally--our own children. Bradbury writes in a way that's accessible, beckoning you into other realities with open arms. Bradbury's a national treasure and certainly transcended the speculative fiction genre.



Octavia E. Butler is a writer that much like Ursula K. LeGuin, if you haven’t read her, you should. In Parable of the Sower, Butler astonishes the reader with an amazing story of grit, courage, and survival. In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future. This is a startling vision of human destiny by a writer that shouldn’t be missed.





What if you could live your life over again? And again? And again? Replay, by Ken Grimwood looks at that question in this time travel classic that was the basis for the Bill Murray film, Groundhog’s Day. How would you handle a replay, every day? This book will remind that life is short, even if you get to endlessly replay it.

Library Bingo: Read a mystery by a (possibly) new-to-you author

Before we turn our thoughts to leaves, classes, and . . . pumpkin lattes, we’ll suggest several mysteries and speculative fiction (for the bingo square: “read a book that takes place in the future”). A perfect way to embrace the last long weekend of summer and gin up with a good read. Let’s consider mysteries first, in all their permutations:

Two collections of classic noirs start the mysteries: the first Dashiell Hammett’s Complete Novels including Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, and The Thin Man. The first two introducing Hammett’s anonymous detective, Continental Op. The Maltese Falcon needs no introduction. Easily, one of the most famous noirs written with it’s protagonist, Sam Spade, getting wrapped up in a quest for an elusive falcon. The cast of characters are unforgettable (and ably brought to the screen by John Huston who also used the book’s dialogue almost verbatim). Falcon is a swift read still, and worthy of a revisit in these waning days of a smoke-filled summer. As a lagniappe, Hammett lived in Tacoma as he recovered from tuberculosis after WWI. The lawlessness of Tacoma at the time certainly influenced Hammett’s outlook on life, and inspired what’s known as The Flitcraft Parable from The Maltese Falcon, which was excised from the film. The Maltese Falcon is worth rereading just for that section.


Speaking of verbatim dialogue, it is known that Elmore Leonard was the master of dialogue. With the collection, Four Novels of the 1970s, we get great examples characters, malcontents, and can games gone awry. Including classics novels such as Fifty-Two Pickup, Swag, and The Switch, this collection starts with the lean early Leonard writing, then evolves into the more comic mode that Leonard becomes famous for which was aptly exemplified by Get Shorty. A modern American classic mystery writer who easily takes the banner from Chandler, Hammett, and Cain and plants it at his feet.






Jacqueline Winspear’s The Mapping of Love and Death features Masie Dobbs (#7 in the series), a psychologist and investigator" in post–World War I London. In The Mapping, Dobbs is hot on the trail of the death of a cartographer. Set in London, France and the Santa Ynez Valley, Winspear has a great eye for period details and a flair for settings. A thoroughly enjoyable mystery series that can certainly be enjoyed as stand-alone novels.




Don Winslow has been lurking under the skin of serious mystery fans for a while until he broke big with The Power of the Dog, a ruthless look at Mexican drug Federacions and their battles with the DEA. With an unerring eye for the attention to detail backed by deep research, Winslow exposes all the corruption, double dealings, and includes a lone avenger as the story relentlessly unravels. I knew about Winslow from his earlier surfing mysteries, and The Power of the Dog is another wild riveting ride.

Library Bingo: Read a biography of someone you admire

 Hello all,

The wildly successful bingo bonanza ends after the Labor Day weekend so we’re here with more suggestions to fill out your cards. This week we look at Biographies, which we’ll include in that category memoirs:

Stephen Greenblatt’s thoroughly readable look at Shakespeare’s life, Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare  is worth taking to the beach for that last long breather before fall hits. Greenblatt effortlessly puts Shakespeare within the context of his contemporaries. The milieu is rough as only 16th century London could be, and Greenblatt brings it to life. While Greenblatt has to approach Shakespeare’s life speculatively (there’s scant few original documents from Shakespeare), he does so with engagement, learned scholarship, and a bit of brio. I think Shakespeare would have approved.








The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot is one of those sweeping biographies that wraps up whole cloth all the world surrounding a life. Mesmerizing, unbelievable, and utterly unstoppable, this story encompasses a tale from slave quarters to polio vaccines to cloning cells. A powerfully informative biography of a woman, a family, and the intersection of history and modern medicine.

Jonathan Eig’s, Ali: A Life, harnesses what is certainly one of America’s most astonishing figures. In or out of the ring, Ali embodied greatness, veracity, bombardment, bravery, and was an enigma that will live on. To understand the 60s and 70s and all the turmoil of America during those times, you have to deal with Ali and his journey from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali. No one was so hated and beloved as Ali in those times, and no one quite conquered the world as Ali did on his own terms.

A slight tack on the bio scenario brings us the wonderful world of Wonder Woman with Jill Lepore’s fascinating look at The Secret History of Wonder Woman. As Lepore sketches out Wonder Woman’s life as seen through the comic strip, she ties this fully fleshed out chronology with the creation of the character, the lives of the people surrounding the strip, and the way the strip remarkably reflected and influenced the times drawn upon.









David McCullough is always a fresh breeze in the sometimes murky waters of the subjects he shines a light on. As monumental as McCullough’s history of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge is (I highly recommend The Great Bridge as an audiobook), Truman stands right up there. A deeply moving book of the life of the US President, and as such, comes in at a hefty number of pages. But don’t despair, Truman’s life was astounding, and possessed a strength of character not often seen these days in the political arena.

One of the best memoirs in recent history is Roxane Gay’s Hunger. An intimate and searing memoir of Gay’s life living in a body she calls “wildly undisciplined.” With unrestrained candor and authority, Gay examines what it’s like to live in an overweight body in a world where the bigger you are, the less you’re seen. Brutally frank, intimate, and validating as no other book in recent times, Gay brings it all in this memoir.

Lives not to be missed:

Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This?, by Marion Meade

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One, by Blanche Wiesen Cook

Library Bingo: Read a book that is translated from its original language

Welcoming the curve of the earth and all that we might discover, this week’s blog post covers international writing. Looking at the bingo space “Book that is translated from its original language” we roam far and wide to find some of the best in global reading. The CGCC library shelves offer a well-rounded journey of intriguing writing. Many of these can be considered for the bingo square of “read a classic” but this isn’t your aunt’s clam dip, no double dipping allowed. Let’s set sail shall we?

Voltaire’s Candide faces the evil in the world with an ever-optimistic and naïve outlook. It’s all here – coming-of-age bildungsroman, forbidden love of a baron’s daughter, the dissection of science, spirituality, and society, all set within a desolate 18th-century Europe. What could be more fun?  A biting French commentary that still prods and pleases to this day.

The Portuguese writer and Nobel Laureate, José Saramago offers up an enthralling story of a mysterious ailment – the affliction of a spreading blindness within a city sparing no one.  As Blindness reclaims the age-old story of a plague, it evokes the vivid and trembling horrors of the twentieth century, leaving readers with a powerful vision of the human spirit that's bound both by weakness and exhilarating strength. A compassionate book, filled with humor and lyricism, that exposes the light with the darkness.



The German author, Patrick Süskind, puts us on the scent of a murder in his wonderful mystery Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.  Set in 18th Century Paris (aren’t all perfume-based mysteries?), Süskind eloquently weaves the essence of perfume production with the obsession of a parfumeur. Not satisfied with mere trifle scents, the parfumeur discovers the “ultimate perfume” . . . .and will stop at nothing to create it. A sensuous, dazzling narrative that unstoppers an odorous crime.

We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin, was the inspiration of Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World, and the writings of Ayn Rand and is considered the archetype of modern dystopia, or anti-Utopia novel. What happens if society surrenders the individual self to a collective dream of technology yet fails in the vigilance of freedom? Suppressed in Russia, this classic still has reverberations felt today.

Like Water for Chocolate (Como Agua Para Chocolate) by Laura Esquivel, is a heartfelt tale where each chapter is introduced by a mouth-watering recipe. Magic, sensuality, and romance delight the senses as food forms the backdrop to this family tale rich in generational aspirations. A classic tale of family, life, and a soulful wedding cake.

Selected Verse: A Bilingual edition, is a fantastic introduction  to Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain’s greatest modern poet. Emotionally intense and metaphorically brilliant, Garcia Lorca unravers “the dark root of the scream” in his poems. From his playful Suites, to his evocative imagery of Andalusia, to his final Elegies, this wide scope of his work sweeps across time and terrain to help us rediscover one the major poets of the 20th century.

Hemingway might have written the shortest of stories (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”), yet Maupassant wrote some of the most elegant and poignant stories. In the collection, Selected Short Stories, Guy de Maupassant evokes a world within a few pages. Covering all aspects of the human condition - adultery, prostitution, pleasures of river and countryside, greed and cunning, his stories cut to the chase. Masterly, atmospheric, the nuances of psychology bloom under his quill.

Other books in translations worthy of an international flight:
Yasunari Kawabata, Thousand Cranes (Japan)
Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard; and, My Life in the bush of ghosts (Nigeria)
Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend (Italy)
Mario Vargas Llosa, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (Peru)

Library Bingo: Read a book by an Oregon author

With a prompt from a Facebook friend, today’s blog post will highlight the bingo box of Oregon authors.






Heading the list is Ursula K. LeGuin who authored fantastic books such as The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe of Heaven, and the Earthsea series. Winner of multiple SF awards, she also won a National Book Award. If you haven’t read LeGuin, I suggest The Lathe of Heaven which is set in Portland, OR. and follows a draftsman, George Orr, whose dreams change reality.






Another of the pantheon of Oregon writers is Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest which is a must read book if you haven’t already.  Set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital, Kesey explores institutional processes and the human mind. Often picked as one of the best novels of the late-20th century, Cuckoo’s Nest is a chaotic character driven novel not easily forgotten. Yep, the movie was great, the novel is better.








Portland author Blake Nelson keeps writing great young adult novels uncovering aspects of youth, disenfranchisement, and the slacker generation. Thoughtful, telling, and empathetic, Nelson knows the milieu of what he writes about. His skate punk novel, Paranoid Park was made into a Gus Van Sant film. Look at his novels Girl, Dream School, and Recovery Road.








Another great Oregon author is William Kittredge who penned fantastic essays on the modern West. He has a pitch-perfect and poetic sense of the west that is heartfelt but never saccharin. He west is not quite lost, yet never remains the same. Look at Owning It All, and his wonderful memoir, Hole in the Sky: A Memoir.

Other Oregon authors worth reading:

Craig Lesley – Winterkill, River Song

Robin Cody – Ricochet River 

Tom Spanbauer – The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon