Newsletter, Feb 3rd 2023
Apparently, Punxsutawney Phil did see his shadow, predicting 6 more weeks of Winter, which here in Minnesota is not even a question. The real question should be how many more books are you going to read before the end of Winter?
The children of Deephaven Elementary are off to a great start this Month - kicking off the Read-a-thon and vying for prizes for the most minutes read! Good luck Kiddos! As mentioned before between now and Feb 14th a percentage of all purchases for the Read-a-thon will go back to the school PTA ! Thank you for encouraging your kids to read, for as they say - ‘A Child who Reads will be an Adult who Thinks’ - and who doesn't want that?
UPCOMING EVENTS AT THE SPOT
Saturday Feb 11th 6:30pm - Evening in a Bookstore Bookstore scavenger hunt, beverages, dessert, prizes and more! Come by yourself, bring a partner or a book-loving friend! $30/person includes drinks, desserts, and a “blind-date-with-a-book” selection! Plus, prizes and discounts on purchases made that evening! Join us for a fun evening! Limited to 10 participants.
Sunday Feb 26th 2p - Intro to Generative AI - Whether you're just hearing about it ChatGPT, know the basics, and are curious about how others are using it or you consider yourself an expert in Generative AI, come join us, let's discuss the ideas and implications!
ONGOING EVENTS
Thursday Feb 9th open till 8pm - Family Board Game Nights are every Thursday until 8 pm. Here's that survey I promised for Game nights going forward. Please provide your input, should only take a couple of mins, and Thank You!
BOOK CLUBS
Sunday February 5th 2p - FICTION - * NEW BOOK CLUB ALERT * This is the first meeting for a fiction book club. Please join us as we pick the first book and pick out regular meeting dates/times. If you are an avid fiction reader, this is your chance to share the love!
Sunday February 5th 4p - FICTION - Smart Reads Ages 8-12 meeting for “Once upon a Camel” - a novel by Newbery Honoree Kathi Appelt that follows a creaky old camel out to save two baby kestrel chicks during a massive storm in the Texas desert. March pick is “A Rover's Story” - from another Newbery Honor–winning author, the tale of a small machine with a big heart, Resilience, a Mars rover determined to live up to his name.
Sunday Feb 19th 10am - BUSINESS-TECH - * NEW BOOK CLUB ALERT * - This Book club will be run by Arun. The group plans to read “Artificial Intelligence for Dummies” as their first book to level set before they dive into deeper topics around AI. If you were waiting for a business/tech book club, wait no more. Signup/show up to participate and influence the next pick.
Sunday Feb 19th 2p - NON-FICTION club is reading “Four Lost Cities” by Annalee Newitz. Named a “Best Book of the Year” by NPR, it is a quest to explore some of the most spectacular ancient cities in human history - and figure out why people abandoned them. Come join our growing group of book lovers for fun discussions and digressions on a Sunday afternoon!
Sunday March 26th 2p - NATURE- * NEW BOOK CLUB ALERT * We have a Master Naturalist group that meets in-store for a monthly book club. Many of you have expressed interest in joining but the group is limited to those with “Master Naturalist” credentials. However, one of them has agreed to host another group for all of us without the Naturalist designation who nevertheless love nature and would love to read those books. I'm one of them! So, starting in March with the book “Buzz” by Thor Hanson, we will host a Monthly Nature Bookclub in parallel with the Naturalist club.
OTHER UPDATES
Blind-Date-With-A-Book packages are ready! I had so much fun picking out the books and writing up the hints! I know my wrapping skills leave much to be desired, but I promise to make up for it in book selections :) See if you can figure out from partial hints below, come check out the full set of hints in-store OR be brave and order unseen! Call/email to reserve one for yourself. This is a great opportunity to give a random book a chance and read something that maybe you'd never pick up yourself. Each selection is $20 and comes with a heart cookie!
Book #1 - Business Biography - Story of a scientific maverick, a connoisseur, and something of an aesthete
Book #2 - Memoir - Does for botany what Oliver Sacks’s essays did for neurology, what Stephen Jay Gould’s writings did for paleontology
Book #3 - History - Thorniest scientific dilemma of the 18th century
Book #4 - Fiction - A breakout contemporary fantasy that's "1984 meets The Umbrella Academy with a pinch of Douglas Adams thrown in.
Book #5 - Historical Fiction - Buried secrets. An ancient fossil. And one woman’s determination to unravel a nineteenth-century mystery.
Loyalty program - Is off to a great start! So many of you have signed up and some have even earned and redeemed rewards! I was on a one-month trial software but given the response, I think I will continue with the program. In fact, Tuesday, Feb 7th marks the one-month so I'm designating that as double star day! All purchases on that day will get you 2 stars for every dollar spent! Get to those free books sooner!
Our MAKE ROOM FOR 2023 sale is ongoing. 30-40% off select books from all categories, including kids' books. New books are added daily, come find your next read and help us make room for all the new releases starting to come in 2023.
SCIENCE NEWS
A team of engineers created miniature robots that can shift between rigid-solid and flexible liquid states. What good is that you say? Check it out, not only is it pretty cool to watch, the applications are mind-boggling!
Reading the Immense World gave me a new appreciation for all the amazing senses that animals have. Most of the time we, humans, are ignorantly getting in their way, however this heartening study shows how we can use some of those senses for the greater good - Ants can be trained relatively quickly to sniff out cancer!
Remember the book End of Bias? We had a great discussion on Bias with local Author Jessica Nordell late last year. If you missed that or would like to continue the discussion, the Science Museum has a traveling exhibit from the Smithsonian titled “The Bias inside us” that seems like great field trip material!
New Releases this week
Seaweeds of the World
By John Bothwell
January 31st 2023; Nature / Plants / Aquatic
A lavishly illustrated guide to the seaweed families of the world Seaweeds are astoundingly diverse. They're found along the shallows of beaches and have been recorded living at depths of more than 800 feet; they can be microscopic or grow into giants many meters long. They’re incredibly efficient at using the materials found in the ocean and are increasingly used in the human world, in applications from food to fuel. They’re beautiful, too, with their undulating shapes anchored to the sea floor or drifting on the surface. Seaweeds aren’t plants: they’re algae, part of a huge and largely unfamiliar group of aquatic organisms. Seaweeds of the World makes sense of their complicated world, differentiating between the three main groups—red, green, and brown—and delving into their complex reproductive systems. The result is an unprecedented, accessible, and in-depth look at a previously hidden ocean world.
Features close to 250 beautiful color photos as well as diagrams and distribution maps
Covers every major family and genus
John H. Bothwell is a phycologist in the Department of Biosciences at Durham University. He has studied seaweeds in the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Indian oceans for more than twenty years, and his group published both the first description of a brown seaweed sex chromosome and the first genome sequence of a green seaweed.
Lateral Thinking for Every Day
By Paul Sloane
January 31st 2023; Self-Help / Creativity
Harness the power of lateral thinking to develop powerful reasoning techniques, challenge assumptions and help you creatively find unexpected solutions to daily problems.
Not every problem has an obvious solution. Utilize the power of lateral thinking to think imaginatively and creatively to tackle everyday problems in a new, fresh way, Lateral thinking is about re-thinking your approach to problem solving and using an indirect method to come up with innovative results. But how easy is it to do it? In Lateral Thinking for Every Day, acclaimed writer Paul Sloane clearly explains how you can benefit from using a lateral thinking approach. Using inspiring examples from great lateral thinkers including Lady Gaga, Elon Musk and Tim Berners-Lee, this collection of practical tips, techniques, examples and challenges is guaranteed to help you deploy powerful reasoning techniques, become more persuasive and convincing and to come up with fresh solutions to creative challenges.
Paul Sloane is an experienced speaker, course leader and facilitator. A recognised authority on innovation and creative speaking, he speaks and gives workshops to leading corporations around the world. He is also the best-selling author of How to Be a Brilliant Thinker, The Innovative Leader, The Leader's Guide to Lateral Thinking Skills and editor of A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing, all published by Kogan Page.
Eating to Extinction
By Dan Saladino
January 31st 2023; Social Science / Agriculture & Food
“What Saladino finds in his adventures are people with soul-deep relationships to their food . . . Enchanting.” —Molly Young, The New York Times
Over the past several decades, globalization has homogenized what we eat, and done so ruthlessly. The numbers are stark: Of the roughly six thousand different plants once consumed by human beings, only nine remain major staples today. Just three of these—rice, wheat, and corn—provide 50 percent of all our calories. Dig deeper and the trends are more worrisome still: 95 percent of milk consumed in the United States comes from a single breed of cow, while one in four beers drunk around the world is the product of one brewer. In Eating to Extinction, the distinguished BBC food journalist Dan Saladino travels the world to experience and document our most at-risk foods before it’s too late. From an Indigenous American chef refining precolonial recipes to farmers tending Geechee red peas on the Sea Islands of Georgia, the individuals profiled in Eating to Extinction are essential guides to treasured foods the rest of us have forgotten or didn’t know existed. Take honey—not the familiar product sold in plastic bottles, but the wild honey gathered by the Hadza people of East Africa, whose diet consists of eight hundred different plants and animals and who communicate with birds to locate bees’ nests. Or consider murnong—once the staple food of Aboriginal Australians, this small root vegetable with the sweet taste of coconut is undergoing a revival after nearly being driven to extinction. And in Sierra Leone, there are just a few surviving stenophylla trees, a species now considered crucial to the future of coffee. Throughout this original and entertaining book, Saladino shows that when foods become endangered, we risk the loss of not only traditional foodways, but also flavors, smells, and textures that may never be experienced again. And the consolidation of our foods has other steep costs, including a lack of resilience in the face of climate change, pests, and parasites. Our food monoculture is a threat to our health—and to the planet. In response, Saladino provides a road map to a food system that is healthier, more robust, and, above all, richer in flavor and meaning.
Dan Saladino is a renowned food journalist who has worked at the BBC for twenty-five years. For more than a decade he has traveled the world, recording stories of foods at risk of extinction—from cheeses made in the foothills of a remote Balkan mountain range to unique varieties of rice grown in southern China. His work has been recognized by the James Beard Foundation, the Guild of Food Writers, and the Fortnum and Mason Food and Drink Awards.
Wired for Love
By Stephanie Cacioppo
January 31st 2023; Science / Cognitive Science
From the world’s foremost neuroscientist of romantic love comes a personal story of connection and heartbreak that brings new understanding to an old truth: better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
At thirty-seven, Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo was content to be single. She was fulfilled by her work on the neuroscience of romantic love—how finding and growing with a partner literally reshapes our brains. That was, until she met the foremost neuroscientist of loneliness. A whirlwind romance led to marriage, to sharing an office at the University of Chicago. After seven years of being inseparable at work and at home, Stephanie lost her beloved husband John following his intense battle with cancer. In Wired for Love, Cacioppo tells not just a science story but also a love story. She shares revelatory insights into how and why we fall in love, what makes love last, and how we process love lost—all grounded in cutting-edge findings in brain chemistry and behavioral science. Woven through it all is her moving personal story, from astonishment to unbreakable bond to grief and healing. Her experience and her work enrich each other, creating a singular blend of science and lyricism that’s essential reading for anyone looking for connection.
Stephanie Cacioppo is one of the world’s leading authorities on the neuroscience of social connections. Her work on the neurobiology of romantic love and loneliness has been published in top academic journals and covered by The New York Times, CNN and National Geographic, among others.
100 Things to Know About Architecture
By Louise O'Brien
January 31st 2023; Juvenile Nonfiction / Architecture; Ages 5 to 8, Grades K to 3
The latest title from the In a Nutshell series, 100 Things to Know About Architecture is a fascinating introduction to amazing architecture from throughout history, with key terms, concepts and buildings all explored in 100 words.
Learn all about the world of architecture in only 100 words! This book explores the most iconic buildings from around the world as well as the history of architecture, from basic huts to incredible skyscrapers. From columns to pyramids, each of the carefully chosen 100 words has its own 100-word long description and colorful illustration, providing a fascinating introduction to amazing architecture from throughout history. From the familiar to the jaw-dropping, the medieval to ultra-modern, this is an inspiring look at some of architecture's greatest developments. With a clean, contemporary design, each word occupies a page of its own. A large striking illustration neatly encapsulates the accompanying 100 words of text. A fascinating introduction to cool buildings in a fun and accessible format, this is the perfect gift for aspiring architects or curious young minds!
Louise O'Brien lives in Sydney, Australia and is a registered architect who has taken her skills across the world having worked in London, Hong Kong and Shanghai. She has her own design firm called Apsara Collective. Louise’s passion for design and the opportunities it provides to inspire and empower young people has led her to education and she now lectures at a tertiary level and runs the ‘Architecture for Kids’ school based in Sydney (https://www.architectureforkidsschool.com/). She cares deeply about inspiring others to find their creativity and hopes to inspire future green leaders.
Dàlia Adillon is an illustrator from Barcelona. She studied Fine Arts at University of Barcelona, Illustration at Massana School and she did the Final Degree Project at ISIA Urbino, Italy. Her elegant artwork creates a unique synthesis of shapes and colors, with vibrant tones and a distinctive and characterful style. She has been recognized with several national and international awards, and her work has been exhibited worldwide.
Whose Egg Is That?
By Darrin Lunde
January 31st 2023; Juvenile Nonfiction / Animals; Ages 3 to 7, Grades P to 2
A nonfiction guessing game that explores the connections between an animal, its eggs, and its habitat. Written by a mammalogist at the Smithsonian, this clever preschool page-turner pairs seven eggs with information about the animals' survival mechanisms, asking kids to guess which animal laid which egg. Whose Egg Is That? reveals the animals--ranging from penguins to platypuses--in their own habitats. Series Overview: The Whose Is THAT series engages children in nonfiction guessing games that prompt them to make connections between animals, their bodies, and their habitats.
Darrin Lunde worked for more than twenty years as a mammalogist at the American Museum of Natural History and is now the collection manager in the Division of Mammals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. He's written several books for children, including the Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor book Hello, Bumblebee Bat, as well as Whose Poop Is That?; Whose Footprint Is That?; Hello, Baby Beluga; and Meet the Meerkat. Kelsey Oseid illustrated Whose Poop Is That? and Whose Footprint Is That? She received her BA with honors in Visual Communications from Loyola University Chicago. She works in both traditional and digital media and often mixes the two to create her illustrations. www.kelzuki.com Illustrator Residence: Minneapolis, MN
The Gentle Genius of Trees
By Philip Bunting
January 31st 2023; Juvenile Nonfiction / Science & Nature / Trees & Forests; Ages 4 to 8, Grades P to 3
Let trees teach you everything from how to branch out to how to stay rooted in this delightful blend of nonfiction and inspirational humor by author-illustrator Philip Bunting! What could we clever humans ever learn from trees? Find out when you take a stroll through the woods and learn a few life lessons from our foliaged friends in this truly special book filled with graphic illustrations. With humor and heart, readers will encounter a small forest of facts. They'll explore the brilliance of trees in creating one interconnected wood-wide web that enables their community to collaborate with each other, share resources, warn of threats, and survive and thrive together.
Philip Bunting is an author and illustrator whose work deliberately encourages playful interaction between the reader and child, allowing his books to create a platform for genuine intergenerational engagement and fun. Philip’s books have been translated into multiple languages and published in over thirty countries around the world. Since his first book was published in 2017, Philip has received multiple accolades, including Honours from the Children’s Book Council of Australia and making the list for the Kate Greenaway Medal in 2018. He lives with his young family on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
Pluto Rocket: New in Town (Pluto Rocket #1)
By Paul Gilligan
January 31st 2023; Juvenile Fiction / Comics & Graphic Novels / Humorous; Ages 6 to 9, Grades 1 to 4
Meet Pluto Rocket, a friendly alien, and Joe Pidge, a wise-cracking pigeon, in the first book of this hilarious new early graphic novel series, for fans of Narwhal and Jelly and Pizza and Taco! Joe Pidge, not just a pigeon but also the stylish king of the neighborhood, is bobbing his way down the street one day when, all of a sudden, Pluto Rocket enters the scene. It turns out, Pluto is from another planet, and is disguising herself for her secret mission — to find out what life in the neighborhood is really like. Lucky for Pluto, Joe Pidge has seen it all before, eaten it all before, and pooped on it all before, so he takes her under his wing and the two become fast friends. But Joe is the one who actually learns a thing or two and whose mind is blown by the out-of-this-world Pluto in this hilarious graphic novel series from Paul Gilligan, creator of the syndicated comic strip Pooch Cafe! Series Overview: This series follows the hilarious adventures of a naive but friendly alien on a secret mission and her new pal, a wise-cracking pigeon who is the self-proclaimed king of the neighborhood. Book 2 is scheduled for Fall 2023.
PAUL GILLIGAN writes and draws the syndicated comic strip Pooch Cafe with Andrews McMeel, which runs in over 250 newspapers around the world and has been twice nominated by the National Cartoonist Society for best strip. He is also the author-illustrator of King of the Mole People, which is in development for an animated series with Portfolio Entertainment, and its sequel, Rise of the Slugs. He also has other animated shows in development with Guru Animation and The Cartoon Network. Paul is based in Toronto, Ontario.