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Celebrity Memoirs with Carla in UT

The Checkout Stack

38 Plays23 days ago

Introduction and Guest Welcome

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, Carla Gordon from Provo City Library in Utah. Carla, thank you so much for being here today. Can you introduce yourself to our listeners and tell us a little bit about you and your library?

Carla's Journey and Library Challenges

00:00:45

Speaker

Sure. Thank you so much for letting me come on. This is very fun.

00:00:49

Speaker

I am the director here at the Provosty Library. Again, my name is Carla Gordon, and I've been here at this library for over, I'm just going on 26 years. So a very long time. I came here right after graduate school, and it's been a great place to work. We are housed in an amazing old historic building. We moved into about 25 years ago. They took a really derelict old building and made it beautiful, and it is a gem in our whole community. Everybody loves it. We've wonderful supportive community and it's been a great place to work. As far as my reading habits, I read everything except for teen books and juvenile books. Anything for an adult audience. But I love talking about books and it's one of the things that I love most about my job. Yeah. but Were you always the director or did you kind of work up the ladder to that?

00:01:47

Speaker

totally worked up the ladder. I've only been the director for two years. So 20, almost 24 of those years I was a librarian working with adults and teens. Nice. Do you like the director position? Sometimes I really like it.

00:02:04

Speaker

there that the and This historic building is beautiful, but it's a lot of work and they didn't teach me what to do about historic bricks that are crumbling every once in a while.

00:02:17

Speaker

Oh, in my library school classes, they just, they didn't teach that. So there's this beautiful building and i we're keeping it going and taking care of it, but it definitely is a challenge. Oh, that's interesting. It's like a whole different aspect of the job that you wouldn't have faced before. Like how do you actually do building in maintenance? and Yes, all of that. it's it's been It's been a learning curve, but it's been great.

00:02:42

Speaker

All right, well, let's move into some book talk.

Book Discussion: Themes and Reviews

00:02:46

Speaker

Let's chat about our recent reads. I will kick us off and I'm going to talk about a book that I finished in the end of December and it actually ended up being my favorite book of the year, which is kind of fun because all year you're trying to figure out what your book was that you love the most. And mine turned out to be almost the last book I read. and So the book that I loved in 2024 was Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors. This is pretty popular right now. And the storyline, if you haven't heard about it, is the story of a family of sisters. There are four of them. And one of them, this isn't a spoiler, passes away. And so the the book is about the three remaining sisters

00:03:33

Speaker

dealing with their grief, coming together, going through their sister's things, and then also just reflecting on their own lives and the challenges in them. I love this book for a lot of reasons, but I'm going to pick like my favorite themes and talk about them a little bit.

00:03:49

Speaker

The first theme was the dynamics of your age in your family. I'm an oldest sister, and I related to the oldest sister character in this book so much, which was surprising because I don't i don't really think of myself in that way as having characteristics because I'm an oldest sister, but I definitely did see themes there where I i could see them in my own life, and that was fun.

00:04:17

Speaker

And then just that whole concept of sisterhood, I love, I have a younger sister and we're very close. I also really liked the book explores the topic of addiction through a few different lenses. Three of the four sisters have some kind of relationship with drugs and alcohol that it would be considered unhealthy. And they're all kind of in different levels of that relationship and dealing with recovery. So that was really cool.

00:04:45

Speaker

And then the last thing I loved was that each of the four sisters is a very dynamic, interesting person with like interesting careers. And so just reading about their personalities and lives was very fascinating in and of itself. So one sister is like a recovering heroin addict who turned into this big time lawyer who makes a bunch of money.

00:05:06

Speaker

One is a boxing world champion trying to decide whether or not she'll continue to fight. Another is like a model. So their lives were very fascinating in of themselves. And so the whole book just came together really well and and I loved it. So that was The Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors. Karla, what was the book that you recently read? I recently finished a piece of nonfiction called Boys of Riverside by Thomas Fuller. So he was a sports writer that found out about this team, a high school football team in California who was, it's an all deaf high school. So the team itself was all deaf as well. And they won a, this isn't a spoiler because it happened. They won a championship and it was the first time an all deaf team had won

00:05:59

Speaker

a championship like that. And it was so fascinating to hear about the different team members and the coaches and the people involved, their stories of how they deal with being deaf and their interaction with a hearing world and the non-hearing world and the culture in that. And then just interesting to hear how they had some special benefits as being deaf and that they could communicate as a team on the field from across the field like there were like interesting things like that but they couldn't hike the ball the same way other teams do because is that they listened for the hike and so they would do it different ways and they like never got penalties for false starts because they're doing it by sight which is always accurate. Anyway it was just so fascinating and the characters were fun. This reporter that writes the story you can tell he cares about the

00:06:58

Speaker

boys and the team and was just fascinated by their the rise to winning all of these all these games. It was really fun. That's very interesting. Can you tell me would you have to know football to enjoy this book? ah I don't think so. I think you would be fine. I only know football because I am married to a huge football fan, but he was surprised I stayed awake for the whole book because usually when I'm having a hard time sleeping, I'll like say like, talk football to me. I just need to go to sleep. and It was a little bit risky reading this book, but I did stay awake during it. And there wasn't too much football talk. It was a lot more, you know, development of the characters and the stories of these people. But football is in there and he does a really good job.

00:07:57

Speaker

i of like describing the game without like getting too in the weeds. Awesome. That was The Boys of Riverside, a Deaf Football Team in a Quest for Glory by Thomas Fuller. Next up, we are going to go into the recommendation segment of the show. And first, we are going to talk about a new book. So this is something that has been released within the last year. Carla, what new book do you have for us today?

00:08:26

Speaker

um I also just finished The Small and the Mighty by Sharon McMahon. And if you're familiar with her, she is a podcast host, but she was a high school teacher. And she is now, she considers herself the leader of the governors. And she just gets way into American history and government. And her current podcast our podcast is called Here's Where It Gets Interesting. And I love listening to that. So I was kind of a fan already. I was excited for her book to come out.

00:08:56

Speaker

But this book tells the story of people. The subtitle is 12 unsung heroes or sorry, 12 unsung Americans who changed the course of history from the founding to the civil rights movement. So she goes through and talks about 12 people who are adjacent to history and made a really big impact in their lives and on America.

00:09:21

Speaker

but aren't really found in history books. These are names that are not familiar to us. um And her point, which I love, is that every life matters and we can all make a difference even if we're not lauded for it, even if we're not pointed out by others necessarily by just standing true to what we believe in and fighting for the rights of others and ourselves. And like that just, it makes a big impact even if Again, it's not something that is recognized universally. So she just always has an interesting span on stories. She's an incredible storyteller. A few times you can tell that she found she was like digging into a story and she would find like a little side story. And you can just tell that she didn't want to not tell this little interesting side back. It doesn't really matter over here, but it's so fascinating and fun that she just

00:10:16

Speaker

ties that into whatever she's talking about. But she's passionate, she's witty. It was such a fun book to read and just learned so much about these individuals that just didn't have the power or like a big soapbox that they could shout out their beliefs from but through the lives that they lived and the things that they did. Some of them very quietly. They changed our lives. They changed our country. So, so good.

00:10:45

Speaker

um That's beautiful. where had Did you know any of those 12 people beforehand, or was it all brand new to you? No, they were all new to me. I hadn't heard of any of them. And are are all their stories related to like politics? Because you were saying government is kind of her specialty, right? who A lot of them are related to the Civil Rights Movement or women's suffrage So fighting for the rights of people. So it is mostly government related, but again, not someone who's necessarily in office, but people that but made a stand. Interesting. Yeah, that's really cool. So that was The Small and the Mighty by Sharon McMahon.

00:11:30

Speaker

Next up, we are going to go into the backlist.

Historical Fiction and Mystery Highlights

00:11:33

Speaker

So this is a book that has been on the shelves for a while, and it just might not have a hold list, or if it does, it'll be pretty short. So you could pick it up. Carla, what is your backlist title today? I did check to make sure it was something that was actually on my shelf. And we had a bunch of copies. Some were out and some were in, but I chose The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah.

00:11:56

Speaker

And I've been a huge fan of Kristin Hannah for a long time. People usually know her for The Nightingale, which I think is one of her most famous titles. But this book, The Four Winds, is actually my favorite of all of them. It's historical fiction about the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression from the perspective of one family in Texas. Kristin Hannah writes strong women really well, strong women facing really overwhelming difficulties. And this story starts in 1921 with kind of a shotgun wedding at a time when America was enjoying prosperity and a bountiful season. And then it kind of skips ahead. And by 1934, the world has changed drastically. and There's depression and then these relentless dust storms, which I remember hearing about in history classes that there was the Dust Bowl.

00:12:51

Speaker

And I didn't really understand what it was, but in this book, you understand how deadly those were, that it was just dust everywhere. You couldn't breathe. You had to leave the house with something you could wrap around your face in case you were caught in one of these or else you wouldn't be able to breathe. And it would just bury people and farms and animals and crops and just an overwhelming devastation in the area. So she's in Texas.

00:13:20

Speaker

And her family starts falling apart. The farm is dying. Her marriage is almost over. And then she has to save her children and find a way when so many people were struggling um and find a way to to make sure they had food and to have a future for her family.

00:13:40

Speaker

And she ends up going to California and that's a whole thing. It is just a powerful, powerful book, powerful story that I think a lot of us don't know much about that period of history. And like when I tell people, it was so good and I cried. I always cry in our books, but it's a good cry. It's a like you've been touched. It's just such a powerful story.

00:14:06

Speaker

Yeah, I agree. I read this one and I think the thing that strikes me about the story is is kind of what you're saying, which is like we just we don't talk about the Dust Bowl a lot or like I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about what it would have been like.

00:14:20

Speaker

And one of the things I think is so interesting about the Dust Bowl is like it was an entirely human-made climate catastrophe that happened, and we changed. We changed our farming practices, and that resolved it. And so the story doesn't 100% get into that, but I think it's an interesting thing to think about, a successful coming together of the country to solve like a really difficult problem that was affecting people.

00:14:49

Speaker

So yeah, that was, I also very much so enjoyed it. The Four Winds by Kristen Hanna. Next up, we're going into a local author. So ah Carla, you are in Utah. Is the author, ah where in Utah are they from? So the author is from here in Provo. She's actually on my library board. Oh, fun. And what is the title?

00:15:15

Speaker

Yeah, so I picked The Unwedding by Allie Conde. So Allie Conde is known for her young adult series, mostly matched. And then she had a children's fiction title, Summer Lost, that also got her quite a few awards and notoriety. But this is her first adult mystery that she's written. And it was actually a Reese Witherspoon read. So we were so excited for her. Because again, we're good friends at the library. She is a wonderful person. And she's so supportive of us.

00:15:45

Speaker

We were excited when she got that. But this book is about a woman who had planned a big trip to Big Sur, California for her 20th wedding anniversary. And when it comes time to take the trip, she finds herself divorced and her marriage has dissolved. And she decides to go on this trip anyway, because it's a place where she always wanted to go. And she is staying in this very high class resort and she's just She's like, i I'm just gonna go. My kids are with my ex-husband right now and I should just go enjoy this and fulfill this dream of mine. So she goes and it's really interesting as she's there because she is this kind of outsider, she notices a lot of what's going on with the other people at the resort. And at the same time at that resort, they're having a wedding. And so it kind of makes her think about

00:16:38

Speaker

you know, her wedding and when she thought everything was new and exciting and her future was bright and then reflecting on where she is now, which is kind of a disappointment to her. And so as she kind of gets to know the other people at the resort, she goes for a walk and comes and finds the groom dead in the water in the pool. So, yeah, exactly. Shulkingly in the mystery, there is a body found and then You know, there's going to be a mudslide that traps everyone at the resort. Police can't get to them. And somebody else winds up dead. And so there's a murderer amongst us. And it's a fun mystery that also, again, kind of has this. She's just a really fun character to follow along as she kind of comes to terms with with her life and where she's at and the things that have been happening to her. So we love Ali. We love her books. And this was a really fun mystery to read.

00:17:39

Speaker

It reminds me of like the white lotus is what I'm imagining. Did you watch that TV show? I didn't. Okay. Uh, it is definitely, it's like a resort and then there's murders at it, but it's kind of like a really high end. So very fancy resort is that was this like upper class people at the resort or is it kind of middle class? This one, this one is very upper class. So it was some very wealthy people.

00:18:08

Speaker

Yep. Rich people behaving poorly. Yes. Yes. Okay. I've touched on this a few times in the show, but definitely one of my favorite sub genres, rich people behaving badly.

00:18:21

Speaker

Great. That was the Unwetting by Allie Conde. And it's a Reese Witherspoon pick, which I generally speaking love her picks. I think that there's only been one or two I read that weren't a hit for me. So I will definitely be picking this one up.

00:18:37

Speaker

And what an awesome thing to have happened to your book and especially your friend's book. We were so excited. It was so fun. Yeah. All right. And then last up, we are going to go into the bookend section of the show.

Memoir Reflections

00:18:52

Speaker

Karla, what is the topic you picked for today's bookend?

00:18:56

Speaker

I picked Celebrity Memoir, which is one of my favorite genres. I love it so much. Guys, Digi, I love them too. What is the first title in the Celebrity Memoir bookend stack? So the first title I picked was Finding Me, a Memoir by Viola Davis. And the thing I love about Celebrity Memoirs is is you think, like you have this public persona, like this person that you think you know,

00:19:23

Speaker

And then you get into a memoir and you start learning what's going on inside their heads and how they view the things that you've seen happen to them. And with Viola Davis, you also get an amazing writer. She is so good. Her writing was just reflective and and beautiful in a way that you don't necessarily always expect from a celebrity memoir. It goes either way.

00:19:50

Speaker

But this one her life is so fascinating. She writes with a lot of honesty and she talks about her the poverty of her childhood, which was really really deep poverty and how she rose to her success and For me the most interesting parts were how she continued to try to help her family because they remained in poverty and she was succeeding and you know, she really tried to give them money to try to help them improve their situations. But a lot of them would continue to make poor choices. And I just even with huge success and a huge amount of money, like you can't help people out of their own bad choices and breaking a cycle of poverty through families. Like that's just so difficult. And she was just

00:20:48

Speaker

so honest about it and talked about finding her husband and while working with a lot of other celebrities, how she was treated and how she felt about herself, she was just, it was beautiful. And and I find it just incredibly inspiring that she just kept trying so hard and continued to be a very positive person. Yeah.

00:21:12

Speaker

Yeah, that theme about being the first in your family to make that's really interesting. And Oprah Winfrey has kind of talked about that a lot as well as like you want to help people, but you also like don't always know how or like they ask you and it makes you uncomfortable. For those who maybe don't know Viola Davis's work, how how is she famous? So she was in the help, I think was the one that I most and remembered her for. But she's done a lot of other things, honestly, that I haven't seen. But she's an actress. Yeah, yeah, she's an actress. And I think she was also in Hidden Figures, I believe. Yeah, but I think you're right. I think she was in that one as well. So she's done some really big movies as well. But so interesting to me when people decide to go into acting, I think it's

00:22:10

Speaker

like nothing I would ever want to do. And so I find it fascinating. What could have driven you to do that? i Oh, that's funny. Well, that was Finding Me a Memoir by Viola Davis. What is the second celebrity memoir in the bookend? Second one is I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy.

00:22:34

Speaker

um And Jeanette McCurdy was also an actress. She was a child star on iCarly, which I am too old to identify her with. In fact, when I picked up the book, I didn't really know who she was, except for it had been recommended to me by several people, and they kind of told me about it. So I didn't really know her, have really an idea of who she was. But her, most of her book is about her relationship with her mother, who was very complicated and incredibly mentally unhealthy. There was some,

00:23:04

Speaker

Narcissism, there's just a lot of ah lot of stuff. hu Their whole relationship is just littered with issues of addiction and eating disorders. i mean Being told as like a tweenager that you know you need to stay little and don't eat. like just I think they said she showered, her mother showered her until she was 16. What's interesting, and I guess also why I just love memoirs like this, is She tells it from a perspective of she didn't think it was weird at the time. Like looking back on her life and it just, this is the way life is and this is the way mothers behave and this is the way I need to be. And, and you know, how she interpreted an OCD kind of a behavior, you know, entirely different way than what you would think just because she was trying to make sense of her life that was really out of the normal. And it took her mother's death

00:24:02

Speaker

And a lot of therapy and leaving acting entirely in order for her to come to terms with a lot of that. And she does it with humor, which I mean, just the title itself is kind of this morbid, morbid thing. Like, I'm glad my mom died. Why did you say like that? But like, she could never find closure or any kind of of healthy place in life, I think, without her mother having taken, been taken out of her life so that she can look back and with the help of others, see how unhealthy that was for her. So, so good. Yeah. Did you read it? I did read this. I was going to say, so my mom and I are friends on Goodreads. And so when I added it to my want to read list, she texted me and was like, what, what are you doing? And I was like, it's not about you, mom.

00:24:55

Speaker

but

00:24:58

Speaker

That's it. It's a funny title. Yeah, it is. It's very in your face. And then I think the other thing worth noting about this title is if if you are in the generation to know I, Carly, and Ariana Grande, there is a little bit of dish in this book about their relationship on the show. And it hints that Ariana did some things. they don't She doesn't say Ariana did this, but she was like a star on the show did this thing. So that was also kind of fun.

00:25:28

Speaker

I am young. I didn't watch iCarly, but I'm young enough to have followed Ariana Grande's career. So that part was really interesting to me, too. See, and that all just went right past me because I was like, who what? I don't know. But I enjoyed other parts of it. Yeah. Yeah, it was it was interesting on multiple levels. And that was I'm glad my mom died. Not my mom, Teresa, if you thats but that's Jeanette McCurdy's title.

00:26:00

Speaker

right Oh, sorry, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say I can go on with my next title if you want. Yeah, let's go on. What is the third book in your bookend for the celebrity memoirs? So I picked Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, who I don't know if he's considered an actor, but he is a comedian and he got his big start in The Daily Show. But his life started in apartheid South Africa.

00:26:27

Speaker

And his birth was actually a criminal act because at the time it was not legal for his parents to be together. The dad was Swiss and mom was a black South African. And so he spent much of his childhood hiding because again, his existence was actually illegal and so interesting to think of living your life in a place where you really shouldn't be. He then,

00:26:56

Speaker

eventually apartheid is turned over and the government changes so that he can come out of hiding kind of. And then he just talks about him and his mom and their struggle to put him in a place where he could improve his life and get out of poverty and all of that. There are there was a moment towards the end of this book and I won't say what it is, but like it was one of those moments where you're reading this book and you just put it down and say, shut up. That did not just happen. Like cannot be real. and i ran to my husband and told him about it and read him the book, which I don't do too often, but I was just blown away by the events that take place and so impressed with his mother who just worked so hard and had so much faith and and passed that on to her son. I'm not always 100% a Trevor Noah fan of all of his comedy and all of that, but I just think I'm a fan of his mother.

00:27:54

Speaker

and And I've really enjoyed reading about his life because it was completely fascinating and so far from anything that I've ever experienced. Yeah. Then this was another one that's kind of ah talks a lot about like him just normalizing something to us that you're like, what? I can't believe you went through that. And he's like, well, I just like stayed inside. Did you read this one or listen to it on audio book?

00:28:21

Speaker

You know what, I read this one, which is weird because I don't read anything. I am a listener, but I really wanted to read this book and it wasn't available on Libby in my library at the time. and so yeah i So I read it, but I have heard that the audio version is really good.

00:28:39

Speaker

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I also read it on paper and very much so enjoyed it in that format. But this one comes up a lot on lists of great audio books. So if you're an audio listener, this is a good one. And just in general, I think memoirs are fun to listen to because you usually will get the actual person reading it, which is fun.

Conclusion and Invitation to Library

00:28:59

Speaker

You are. You do have to be a little bit careful. I read or I listened to Barbara Streisand's memoir from last year.

00:29:07

Speaker

which I think was like 38 hours long and was the only book I listened to almost the whole thing on three times speed because she's like, she reads it, but she looks so slowly that you could just speed that sucker up and get through it really well. Still it took like 12 ish hours, but 38 hours. That's a commitment. I had to speed it up. how Funny.

00:29:32

Speaker

All right, that wraps up the bookend. So those are all of our recommendations for today. Karla, is there anything that you want to plug for your library out in Provo City, Utah? Oh, just that if you're ever in the area, come and visit. Again, we are a big, huge, beautiful historic building that it's hard to miss when you're driving down our University Avenue. It was the first building for BYU. And so it's called the Brigham Young Academy building and it it's beautiful. So come visit anytime. Wonderful. Yeah. If you're ever in Provo City, i me I got this from my father who is a librarian, but every time I go to a new city, I love to stop at the library. Even though I can't check anything out, like I just love to look around and see what they've got going on. So definitely on my like vacation at checklist when I'm in a new place.

00:30:24

Speaker

Excellent. Yeah. Great. Well, this has been a very fun episode. So if you enjoyed listening, please give us a five star review to help us grow our numbers and more importantly, share this episode with a friend right now. We are just trying to find an audience. So if you think the show is a good time, pass it along. If you're a librarian and you're interested in being on the show, I would love that. And you can reach out to me at the checkout stack at gmail dot.com.

00:30:54

Speaker

Alrighty everyone, thank you for joining us today and go forth and use your public library.