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BONUS - Spooky Halloween Books with Abigail in AL
45 Plays1 month ago
Enjoy this bonus episode of halloween book recs with librarian Abigail Hubbard from the Public Library of Anniston-Calhoun County in Alabama.
Recent Reads:
- Maria: The Examiner by Janice Hallett
- Abigail: You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins
Book Recommendations:
- New: The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler
- Backlist: The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher
- Local: 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey by Kathryn Tucker Windham and Gillis Figh
Book End: Spooky Halloween Books
- Plain Bad Heroines by Emily Danforth
- Daughters Unto Devils by Amy Lukavics
- Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
If you are in Anniston-Calhoun County stop by the library anytime in the month of November to make a card for hospitalized kids. If you're not local, check out their website below.
https://www.cardsforhospitalizedkids.com/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Guest Feature
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Checkout Stack, where we talk books with a new librarian every episode. I am your host and the world's biggest library superfan, Maria Skogin, and I'm so excited to introduce our guest today, Abigail Hubbard from the Public Library of Aniston Calhoun County in Alabama. Abigail, thank you for being here
Abigail's Journey to Librarianship
00:00:40
Speaker
today. Can you introduce yourself to our guests and tell us a little about you and your library?
00:00:45
Speaker
Uh, so like you said, my name's Abigail Hubbard. I am the head of young adult services at the public library of Aniston Calhoun County. I've been there for 12 years, seven years as the head of young adult working with the teens. And I'm excited to be here. Awesome. How did you become a librarian? Did you know that was always what you wanted to do or was it kind of a later in life calling?
00:01:12
Speaker
I mean, I've always loved books, but I was just in between jobs and an opening came at the library and I was like, you know what, that sounds awesome. So I applied and luckily was able to get it. Heck yeah, that's awesome. So we are releasing today's episode as a bonus episode because we have a Halloween-ish themed bookend for today.
Halloween-Themed Book Recommendations
00:01:36
Speaker
Do you generally like those kind of scary books or was this just for the season? I would say my favorite kind of book is like sci-fi fantasy but I do enjoy some horror. I've read several like one of the books that's on this list that I'm going to talk about today I would say is like one of my favorite books ever.
00:02:02
Speaker
Ooh, that's a good, that's a good bite. Okay, well, let's kick off with our recent reads. So I will go first. I recently read The Examiner by Janice Hallett. This is a new release. It just came out in September of 2024. I'm actually not sure how I got it so quickly.
00:02:24
Speaker
I must have just been early on the uptake and somehow got at the start of the hold list, which usually doesn't happen to me. I'm usually waiting a year for the new releases to finally make their way to me. But this is a mystery and I can't tell you much more than that because you really want to uncover the mystery as you read the book, but it is also an epistolary novel.
00:02:46
Speaker
So for those who have never heard that term before, an epistolary is a work of fiction that tells a story through written communication. So it's like a collection of letters or diary entries or newspaper clippings. But in this case, the book is told through the written communications for a graduate level college art class. So there are like direct messages between the students and there are homework assignments and there are emails from the professor.
00:03:15
Speaker
And as the story goes on, you get to know each member of the course and you slowly come to realize that something is wrong, that something is missing that you're not seeing in the written communications and that's slowly revealed to you throughout the book. I love an epistolary novel. I think they generally read really fast, especially because like with direct messages, you're just getting like constant conversation back and forth. And I think that that tends to read really quickly.
00:03:44
Speaker
And then the added mystery element to this one was super fun. Things like slowly become revealed and you you get to fill in the pieces from what you missed before.
Cultural Identity in 'You Bring the Distant Near'
00:03:55
Speaker
And it was it was a really fun read. I also love, I don't know, like a college art class, I think is kind of an interesting topic or forum for a story, just because artists can be so like quirky. And especially when they're in college, I feel like sometimes they can they They're just really deep in the theory of art. And so that was like a fun backdrop to set the mystery to. So that was The Examiner by Janice Hallett. Abigail, what have you read recently?
00:04:26
Speaker
A recent read for me was You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins. It was published in 2017. It actually won the National Book Award, Walter Dean Meyers Award, and was an ALA best fiction for young adults. Oh, wow. Its tagline says, five girls, three generations, one great American love story.
00:04:52
Speaker
And it was really fun. So it follows this Indian family who moves from India to America with a stop in London. And it starts out in the 1970s and focuses on two teenage sisters, Tara and Sanaya. And it looks at The relationship so they came from India where they have the caste system, and then they're coming to America in the 1970s, when we're having a lot of racism going on and it's comparing the two kinds.
00:05:32
Speaker
they They move into a predominantly black neighborhood and their mother is like, she does not want to be there because she feels they are higher up in the caste system than that. But their daughters, like they point out to them that our skin, as dark as it is, we're seen on the same level here in America. So it really looks at that. It was very interesting to compare those two. It follows the two sisters until they get married. And then we pick up again in the 2000s with their daughters, exploring their relationship with their parents. One of the daughters is mixed race. And so it explores
00:06:22
Speaker
what it's like to be mixed race, having one grandma who is Black and one grandma who is Indian, who are both insisting that, well, you're an Indian girl and you need to act Indian, or, you know, you're a Black girl and you need to act Black, and her saying, no, I'm mixed, I'm both, and I'm proud of being both.
00:06:43
Speaker
That sounds really good. When you mentioned the awards it had won, I didn't I've never heard of that second award. What was that one? The Walter Dean Myers Award. So it's an award for diversity. Oh, cool. I think that's an interesting way to explore race because in India with the caste system, it's a much more explicit conversation. So then being able to like translate that to the US where sometimes like it's a lot more nuanced or like we don't discuss it as openly. So when they were in India, were they in like a higher upcast? So it was hard for the mom when she came to the US because she feel like she was demoted. Yes, I think so. It talks about how they had like a nice house and they were kind of they were pretty rich when they were in India. And then there was a revolution that occurred over there and they kind of lost their lands and had to move. That's why they left.
00:07:42
Speaker
I think they were pretty well off. All right, and that was You Bring the Distant Near by Mattali Perkins. Yes.
Sci-Fi Exploration in 'The Tusks of Extinction'
00:07:51
Speaker
Next up, we're going to talk about a new book, so something on our new release shelves. Abigail, what do you have for us today?
00:08:01
Speaker
So a recent book that I read that came out this year in 2024 was The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Naylor. I picked this up because I had read his other book, The Mountain in the Sea, which had won both Nebula and Locust awards. It's a short story.
00:08:19
Speaker
less than 200 pages long. And it's told by several different perspectives. So we meet Dr. Damira, who is an expert on elephants and is trying to fight the ivory trade. So she agrees to this program.
00:08:39
Speaker
that like scans your brain and keeps a record of that on a computer and is then able able to re-upload that into another brain later. So when they when scientists decide that they want to bring back mammoths, they raise her brain into one of the mammoths so that she can teach the other mammoths how to be mammoths.
00:09:06
Speaker
Wait, they put her brain into a woolly mammoth? Yes. Can she get back out? So it's a copy of her brain. I see it. So there's there's the two versions of Dr. Damira that we're following. The one that's the human Dr. Damira who's trying to save the elephants. And then eventually the elephants go extinct and we're bringing back mammoths and they upload her brain into one of the mammoths. So there's the mammoth Dr. Damira as well.
00:09:35
Speaker
And then we also follow poachers. We have one young boy who has just been raised. his His dad was a poacher and he's been trained to do this. And then we also follow another poacher who's just like the rich kind of poacher who is just looking for trophies.
00:09:54
Speaker
So kind of you have different empathy for the one who is raised to be a poacher versus the guy who just wants the wooly man. Yeah, the one who's doing it just because I need money and the one who's doing it just for trophies. But it was really interesting. It was really enjoyable. I enjoy books that have a big basis in science. Like you can tell that the author has done a lot of research on the subject.
00:10:20
Speaker
like Kim Stanley Robinson is one of my favorite, favorite authors. This reminded me a lot of that kind of thing. Very heavy on the science side. Yes. I just wanted to, okay, so she becomes a woolly mammoth. Does she actually know how to be a woolly mammoth? I mean, technically you wouldn't because there are no woolly mammoths, but she is an expert on elephants. So she kind of like translates that. It's like, it's similar, right?
00:10:49
Speaker
Okay, I just like the idea of her like pretending to be a woolly mammoth but like doing something ridiculous a woolly mammoth would never do and but now all of a sudden all the woolly mammoths do it because she taught them. You never know it could. Elephants do this, mammoths would not have done that.
Gothic Tale of 'The Seventh Bride'
00:11:08
Speaker
All right. That was the tusks of extinction by Ray Naylor. Oh, and then again, you're coming in hot with all these awards. What was the first award had to do with science fiction? What was the second award? So the Locust is also, well, they have different categories. Locust has sci-fi, fantasy, and horror subcategories that they give. So the Locust is a very well-known magazine that has people vote about what their favorites are.
00:11:37
Speaker
Okay, so it's more of like a popular vote award. Yes. Okay, next up, we are going to cover a backlist title. So the idea for the backlist is that this will be a book that hopefully is on the shelves in your library, or if it's not on the shelves, hopefully the whole list will be relatively short so that you can pick it up and get reading. Abigail, what is our backlist book today?
00:12:03
Speaker
Our backless book is The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher. It was published in 2015.
00:12:11
Speaker
So I've heard this referred to as a Blackbeard retelling. You meet Rhea, who is a Miller's daughter. So she's growing up kind of poor, not too poor. um But she is she meets Lord Craven, who immediately decides that he wants to marry her like on first meeting.
00:12:31
Speaker
which she's not really into but she's just a miller's daughter and he's a lord and you can't really say no so she's now engaged to him and he wants her to come visit him at his house prior to marriage, which again, she's like, I don't want to do this. This is weird, but I can't say no. So she sets out on the journey to go to his place and like, as she's going down the road, things are getting more gothic and creepy. And she gets to his house and she finds there are other women in the house. And turns out these are his six previous brides.
00:13:15
Speaker
who are still there. He's still married to all of them. But he is a wizard and he magically steals things from them and traps them there in the house. And he starts setting tasks for her to do that if she cannot complete them, he will do the same thing to her.
00:13:39
Speaker
he'll steal something from her and trap her there forever. So then she and the other six wives have to work together to try and escape. Did you say his name was Lord Craven? Yes. That's a good name. Yeah. Perfect for that character. ah And so then she's having to do these tasks. And I would imagine the tasks probably like are meant to be failed, right? Because he wants to capture her. Yes. They're very difficult and she's going up against his magic too. So that's... So the other six wives are trapped, but they want to help her? Yes. Yeah, they're very bitter about being stuck there. They want to escape. Nice.
Alabama Ghost Stories
00:14:31
Speaker
That sounds like a good kind of spooky read too. That was The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher.
00:14:40
Speaker
Next up, we're going to talk about a local author. So this part of the show, we try to highlight the communities that we are having as guests on the show. So Abigail, what where is the author that you're bringing to the table from? She was from Alabama, local author. The book is called 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey, and the author is Catherine Tucker Windham.
00:15:10
Speaker
The book was published in 1969, so it's quite old. Oh, wow. but This is another good backlist. Yeah. So the forward of the book tells you that she was working with the local newspaper and they were taking pictures in her house.
00:15:31
Speaker
and an image popped up in one of the pictures that they could not reproduce, could not explain a away of what it was. So she named this image Jeffrey and tells you that there was occurrences going on in her house even prior to this picture where you know you would hear somebody walking when there was nobody actually there, where you'd put a cake on the table and walk away and come back and the cake would have moved or things like that occurring.
00:16:01
Speaker
So because of this, she went and talked to a vocal um like researcher on hauntings and ghosts, and together they compiled 13 ghost stories that occur around Alabama.
00:16:20
Speaker
the book includes photographs and sketches so sometimes there would be photos of like if it if there was a haunting in a courthouse you'd have a picture of that courthouse and then sometimes there would just be sketches of the dancing ghost or whoever it might be most of the ghost stories are set in antebellum times ah You got stories of like ghostly ships or women at women's colleges, all dressed in red, just walking up and down the hallways. You've got floor floating orbs in the woods and in through mazes.
00:17:01
Speaker
you've got people talking about fires that they could see up in like second floors of buildings but then when you go to investigate there would be no fire so all sorts of different kinds of hauntings are covered in this story and because they're local and you have the pictures and everything if you want you can go to those sites now and see what do you see. Yeah so Jeffrey Katherine Tucker Wyndham's ghost. This is like, this is what she really experienced in her own house. That's not fiction. Yes, yeah. According to her, this is what she experienced. Was Jeffrey scary or was he nice to her? He was a friendly ghost. Yeah, they were not scared of him. Are all the ghosts friendly or just Jeffrey? Are any of them not friendly? I would, yeah, I would say they're all
00:17:59
Speaker
ambivalent, more so than friendly. and And none of them were really mean. They're just there. Yeah. That sounds like a really fun little road trip, though, if you're in Alabama to go find all these sites and then yeah just walk around them. Are they like all over the state or are they pretty concentrated in one part of Alabama? I think it was all over Alabama. And then what year did you say that this came out?
00:18:29
Speaker
1969.
00:18:32
Speaker
People were very much into ghosts. Yeah, I think people have always been into ghosts. They're just there's something about it. They're fun. wow Okay, that sounds really fun, especially if you're in Alabama and you want to check out some spooky sites post Halloween season. And that was 13 Alabama ghosts and Jeffrey by Catherine Tucker Windham.
00:18:59
Speaker
Listeners, I am quickly interrupting the recording to give you a heads up. We had some small audio issues um during the book and topic. You'll notice a crackling noise that starts about two-thirds of the way through Abigail's first book and lasts through the second book.
00:19:18
Speaker
That's about three minutes total of audio crackling. um So you might want to pull your headphones off and listen to this out loud, or if it gets to be too much from you, you can skip ahead those three minutes. But I hope that you try and stick it through because there's some really good book recommendations coming up. Thanks.
Halloween Bookend & Spooky Reads
00:19:36
Speaker
All right. And now we are going into our Halloween themed bookend topic. So what was the bookend topic that you picked today? Spooky books.
00:19:48
Speaker
Nice. For Halloween. For Halloween. Yep, I know we're coming out on Halloween, but sometimes I think it's fun to get those wrecks in the season. Maybe you won't read them until next year, or maybe you'll have like a late spooky read season, but fun to hear them. So what is bookend top or what is the book number one for our bookend?
00:20:08
Speaker
So book number one is the one I was talking about earlier. It's called Plain Bad Heroines by Emily Danforth. And it came out in 2020. And it has won a Logis Stonewall, Shirley Jackson. It was named an ALA Alex, which is a award for adult books that will ah appeal to teenagers. It also won a British fantasy award and is a Goodreads Choice Award winner.
00:20:37
Speaker
Oh my gosh. All sorts of awards.
00:20:42
Speaker
And this was the one you were saying is maybe your favorite book? It's definitely up there for me. I think I read it in 2021, and I still think about it. Okay. Years on, I still think about it. So this story, there there's separate parts. There's a part that occurs in 1902 at a girls' school called the Brooke Ants School.
00:21:09
Speaker
And a group of girls get this book and create a little society around the book called the Plain Bad Heroin Society and they all meet and they discuss the book and odd things start occurring and one day two of the like lead girls of the club go and have a little tryst out in the woods and they are stung to death by yellow jackets. Oh no. Yeah.
00:21:45
Speaker
And so then there's this whole thing of where is the book that they had? And every time somebody succeeds in finding the book, bad things happen. The like principal of the school, she starts having odd things occur to her as well because she finds the book and is like hiding it. And she starts seeing visions and like her mind starts going so eventually the school closes because there are several deaths like the first two deaths first two girls that are stumped to death by the Yellow Jackets are just the first there are multiple deaths all connected to this book and the school closes but then flash forward to today and
00:22:36
Speaker
A movie studio decides that they're going to make a movie based on all the lore that has built up around the death of the girls and everything. And so the director of the movie tells the actresses that he's going to be messing with them to try and make their fear as they act out all this scary stuff more real.
00:23:05
Speaker
And so as things occur throughout the book, you're left wondering, is this actually happening? Is it just in their heads? Is it a ghost? Is it the director? You don't know what's going on. And I absolutely love that kind of thing, that kind of psychological horror like that. Very good book, highly recommend. OK, that was Plain Bad Heroines by Emily Danforth.
00:23:32
Speaker
What is book number two for our spooky book theme? So book number two is called Daughters Unto Devils by Amy Lukavix. It came out in 2015 and was a yalsa quick picks for reluctant readers. It is set in the 1800s and it follows this family. So last winter,
00:24:02
Speaker
The mother had given birth to a sickly baby who was just crying and crying and crying. And all winter long they were snowed in and everybody had kind of been giving in to cabin fever and having visions and kind of freaking out. So now they're moving out to the prairie for a fresh start.
00:24:27
Speaker
But when they get there, they find that the house is just like the inside of the house is splattered in blood. It's just covered. So they don't know what happened prior to occupants, but they're there now. They have nowhere else to go. So they're going to try and make the best of it and clean everything up and just get on with their lives. But as time passes,
00:24:50
Speaker
more and more odd occurrences and visions and spooky things and the neighbors, their closest neighbors are just kind of off.
00:25:02
Speaker
And you just, again, the whole psychological horror thing of you're wondering, are they being tortured by a devil? Is it all in their head? Is it being done by their odd neighbors? You just don't know. And I love that. And this is also one of like like the only book I've ever read where I went to bed that night and I could not sleep. I just kept on like looking out my bedroom door expecting something to come down. the so sorry Is that is that like an enjoyable thing for you? Or were you like, Oh man, I can't read before bed night next tomorrow night. It's it's not something that I usually seek out. but Definitely made it memorable. Yeah. o Creepy.
00:25:52
Speaker
i I like a good cabin fever book. I live in Montana, so we get lots of snow and I i'd get cooped up in the winter. So I think a good cabin fever can be kind of enjoyable for me. My husband and I are reading The Shining out loud right now, very slowly, but that gives similar vibes. That was Daughters Unto two Devils by Amy Lukavix.
00:26:17
Speaker
Okay, and let's jump into the third book for our spooky book end. What is our third book? So our third book is called Shiver by Maggie Stivater. It came out in 2009. I picked this one because I wanted to have something for people who aren't so much into the super scary spooky, but want to get into the Halloween spirit. So this is just more of a sweet paranormal.
00:26:45
Speaker
It is the first book in the Wolves of Mercy Falls series, and it won an Inky Award. So this story follows two protagonists and the chapters switch up between them. So you've got Grace, who has been watching the wolves that show up in her backyard every winter, and then you've got Sam, who shows up on her doorstep.
00:27:21
Speaker
wounded. And you come to find out that Sam is actually a werewolf. But these stories, they're not controlled by the moon, like you are traditionally. Rather, they are controlled by the weather. And when they get too cold, that's when they change. So this one that she's been watching is actually werewolves. That's why they only show up in the wintertime. Okay.
00:27:51
Speaker
I don't think all copies are like this, but so some of them, they have this really pretty blue ink for the words, the the cover of the first book is blue. And so the the story itself is in blue. And then like the next book is red. And so the ink used for the print in there is red. And it's just so beautiful. I absolutely love it. With the actual ink on the pages in the book or just on the cover?
00:28:20
Speaker
Yeah, no, like the the print throughout the entire story is in blue for the first book because the cover is blue, red for the book that's in red. And the other one is green. It's a trilogy. So they're all like that. It's so pretty cool. Oh my God. I have never seen a book that was printed in a different color. Was it hard to read? It didn't bother me, but I, you know, I'm not colorblind. I imagine for somebody who's colorblind, that might've been an issue.
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah. Is it like, okay, the red one, is it like bright red or is it like a dark red? It's a darker red. It's not so dark that it's like almost black brown. it's It's definitely red, but it's not like bright, almost pink kind of stuff. Interesting. I definitely feel like if you want the experience of this book, you need to find the colors because that that's that's a very unique feature. I've never heard of that.
00:29:16
Speaker
So the story is about the werewolves. There isn't a paranormal theme in this one other than like the werewolves? Yeah, that's the paranormal is the werewolves and every time you change how long you change increases and so they are trying to find a cure for this before he changes into a werewolf permanently or into a wolf permanently.
Community Engagement & Episode Conclusion
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah. So he's on a timeline. There's a sweet little love interest going on between the two and very good series. Fun. And that was Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. Stiefvater. That wraps up the recommendations portion of our show. So next up, Abigail, I want to give you some space to see if there's anything you want to plug for your library.
00:30:10
Speaker
which is the library of the Aniston Calhoun County in Alabama. So coming up in November, we do a Cards for Hospitalized Kids program. Throughout November, you can come and make cards, and then we send them off to this organization who sends them out to kids who are in hospitals all across the nation.
00:30:35
Speaker
It's a really good program. If you're not, if you are local, please come by and use our supplies. But if you're not local, I highly recommend checking out cards for hospitalizedkids dot.com and supporting them because they are a great organization. but And I can put a link to that in the show notes. So if you're interested in interacting with that, check out the show notes for a link.
00:30:57
Speaker
This has been a wonderful episode. Listeners, if you enjoyed the episode, please give us a five star review to help us grow our numbers or share us with a friend. If you are a librarian and you're interested in being on the show, please reach out to me at the checkout stack at gmail dot.com. Alrighty, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Now go forth and use your public library.