Book Review

The Public Libraries of Suffolk County recently announced that its patrons reached a new milestone: 3.6 million digital books borrowed on Livebrary.com in 2023. Consisting of over 56 libraries in Suffolk County, Livebrary.com is #15 of all public library consortia and one of 152 total public library systems worldwide that surpassed one million checkouts last calendar year.

Livebrary.com member libraries have been providing readers 24/7 access to e-books, audiobooks, comic books and other digital content for several years through the award-winning Libby app, the library reading app created by OverDrive. Member libraries include Smithtown Library, Sachem Public Library in Holbrook, Emma S. Clark Memorial Library in Setauket, Middle Country Public Library in Centereach and Selden, Longwood Public Library in Middle Island and Northport–East Northport Public Library. 

“The Public Libraries of Suffolk County continue to meet the needs of their communities by providing patrons with much-needed access to a wide variety of entertainment and learning opportunities through e-books and audiobooks,” said Kevin Verbesey, Director of the Suffolk Cooperative Library System. 

The highest-circulating title Livebrary.com readers borrowed in 2023 was Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. The New York Times bestseller tells the story of Elizabeth Zott, who becomes a beloved cooking show host in 1960s Southern California after being fired as a chemist four years earlier.

The top-circulating genre, romance, represents the most popular in a vast catalog that also includes thriller, suspense, mystery, children/young adult and more. 

The top five e-book titles borrowed through Livebrary.com’s digital collection in 2023 were:

1. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

2. Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult

3. It Starts with Us by Colleen Hoover

4. Verity by Colleen Hoover

5. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

The top five audiobook titles borrowed through Livebrary.com’s digital collection in 2023 were:

1. Spare by Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex 

2. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus 

3. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros 

4. It Starts with Us by Colleen Hoover 

5. The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

Suffolk County residents just need a valid library card from a member library to access digital books from Livebrary’s OverDrive-powered digital collection.  Readers can use any major device, including Apple(R), Android™, Chromebook™ and Kindle(R) (U.S. only). Download the Libby app or visit livebrary.overdrive.com to borrow e-books, audiobooks and more.

This article originally appeared in TBR News Media’s Prime Times senior supplement on 01/25/24.

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'Hope and Freckles: Learning to Live in a New Land' cover

By Melissa Arnold

Author Bill Kiley

Four years ago, Bill Kiley of East Northport published his first book for children, Hope and Freckles: Fleeing to a Better Forest. The book follows a mother deer, Hope, and her young fawn, Freckles, as their lifelong home in the Olden Forest becomes increasingly dangerous. Food is also scarce, and the pair have no choice but to run away in search of a safer place to live.

Now Kiley has published a second book in the series, Hope and Freckles: Learning to Live in a New Land.

As the newest residents of the Big Pine Forest, Hope and Freckles each struggle in their own ways to adjust to life in their new home. The language spoken in Big Pine Forest is unfamiliar, and while young Freckles catches on quickly, Hope lags behind and needs help communicating with others.

Big Pine’s reaction to Hope and Freckles is mixed, and not all of their neighbors are kind. Some are curious about the newcomers, who have a different fur color and eat strange foods, while others are suspicious or even rude. Hope and Freckles have to make daily decisions about when to blend in and when to honor their own ways of doing things.

As in the previous Hope and Freckles installment, this story gives young readers a first glimpse into the difficult choices made by refugees and immigrants seeking a fresh start in the United States. The book gently and compassionately explains concepts like asylum-seeking, discrimination, cultural traditions and assimilation in an age-appropriate way.

There’s something for everyone in this book — toddlers will love the vivid wildlife art and adorable faces of the characters. Illustrator Mary Manning has a classic style that’s perfect for a children’s book, and it’s hard not to think of Bambi while moving through the story.

For older readers who are ready to explore the book’s deeper message, a useful collection of vocabulary words, questions and resources will help kick off discussions about real-world issues. Teachers, parents and other adult leaders can easily build a lesson around this material.

Kiley spent more than 30 years in law enforcement and was profoundly impacted by the experiences of immigrants and refugees he met. Their reasons for leaving home spanned from famine and drought to political upheaval and oppression.

Following his retirement, political issues and humanitarian crises around the world led Kiley to do more research on refugees. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates there are currently 37 million refugees around the world.

“I became frustrated by the negative opinions held by some people toward all immigrants, and I wanted to do what I could to change those views. So I thought, what if I wrote a book series geared toward children that could introduce them to the difficulties faced by refugees, while also making an impact on the adults who read along with them?” he recalled.

Since then, he’s spoken in schools and churches about immigration issues, and even visited college students to talk about writing children’s literature.

While the Hope and Freckles books are geared towards younger readers, one especially poignant memory for Kiley came from a visit to a local high school. He told the students to imagine coming home from school and being told they needed to leave their home forever in 30 minutes, and could only bring a backpack.

Their teacher had the students do the exercise at home, then write a reflection about what items they packed and how they felt throughout the process.

“I was so impressed by the feelings they shared about that experience … most importantly, that they had never considered what it would be like to have to leave everything you love behind and that their eyes were opened to what other people are facing,” Kiley said. 

The author hopes that his books encourage readers to reach out to people who are different from them, including those of various races, cultures, economic backgrounds and social identities.

Kiley is currently working on a third Hope and Freckles book that focuses on what causes “othering” and discrimination. He aims to include animal characters with disabilities, as well as different family structures and religious beliefs.

“I have a deeply-held belief that we are all brothers and sisters,” he said. “We can choose to ignore people who are suffering, we can choose to reject or demonize them, or we can educate ourselves, talk to one another and work to find solutions.”

Hope and Freckles: Learning to Live in a New Land is available at your favorite online booksellers. For educational resources, updates and more from Bill Kiley, visit www.hopeandfreckles.com.

The Whaling Museum & Education Center, 301 Main St., Cold Spring Harbor has announced its third season of Beyond the Book club. After two successful seasons of this unique, thematic book club, the museum has gained a consistent member base. Even so, there is still room for more bookish folks enamored with the sea to participate. Participants will enjoy fascinating stories paired with the museum’s collection and a special matching snack.

This unique book club series has the museum education team hand selecting texts that are inspired by the sea and utilizes the museum’s collection of over 6,000 artifacts to bring club members closer to the story. Participants are invited to make connections, personal and historical, through up close interactions with relevant objects and facts from Long Island’s maritime past.

Through this tangible way of interacting with objects, book clubbers are immersed in the theme of the text and find new perspectives to understand the narrative. In addition, the museum education team pairs a special snack with the text for each session, further engaging participants. 

Liz Cousins, a participant in this past fall and spring book club sessions, had this to say about Beyond the Book — “Thanks again for putting this book club together! I’m not usually a “book club” type  […] but THIS, I LOVE.” The Whaling Museum’s book club aims to gain a new audience of readers through this unique approach. 

The January session will take place on Jan. 25. Book clubbers will gather to discuss The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery followed by an examination of historical documents from the museum’s collection that reveal how 19th century whalers viewed whales and how these views have changed over time.

The February session will take place on Feb. 29 featuring Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar. Enjoy an intimate look at the museum’s special exhibit From Sea to Shining Sea: Whalers of the African Diaspora and discover the surprising role the whaling industry played in carrying people to freedom.

Lastly, on March 28, book clubbers will gather to discuss Ahab’s Wife, or The Star-Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund. Participants will inspect artifacts and writings left behind by Cold Spring Harbor whaling wives to see how closely Naslund’s fiction imitates fact.

“It has been an absolute joy to watch our book club continue to grow and to be a part of the wonderful community that has formed during these sessions.  We can’t wait to share more of our collection and explore new stories with this group in the new year,” said Brenna McCormick-Thompson, Curator of Education.

Each book club meeting will start at 6:30 p.m. and is approximately 1 hour long. Coffee (compliments of Starbucks of Huntington Village), tea and cookies will be served.

Beyond the Book club sessions are free for museum members and patrons of the museum’s partner libraries, Huntington Public Library and South Huntington Public Library. All others may attend for $15 per session. Register at www.cshwhalingmuseum.org/bookclub. For more information, call 631-367-3418.

This article originally appeared in TBR News Media’s Prime Times senior supplement on 01/25/24.

Douglas Pfeiffer. Photo from SBU

Douglas Pfeiffer, associate professor in the Department of English in the College of Arts and Sciences at Stony Brook University recently received an honorable mention from the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) for his book “Authorial Personality and the Making of Renaissance Texts: The Force of Character.” The MLA recently reported Pfeiffer’s distinction through a news release announcing the 2023 MLA Prize for a First Book, which was awarded to Vanderbilt University’s Akshya Saxena.

According to the MLA, this annual award honors an exceptional scholarly work authored by one of the association’s 20,000 global members and published the previous year as their first book-length text. Eligible works include literary or linguistic studies, critical editions of important texts, and critical biographies. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the award.

“I feel extremely gratified and proud to see a project that I’ve been following since its early stages get recognized as a major contribution not only to Professor Pfeiffer’s field of early modern studies, but to the general field of literary scholarship,” said Andrew Newman, professor and chair of the Department of English. “Anyone who reads it will come away with a much richer understanding of authorship.”

In addition, Pfeiffer’s book was also recently awarded the Roland Bainton Prize which was selected  by the Sixteenth Century Society which recognized its quality/originality of research; methodological skill and/or innovation; development of fresh and stimulating interpretations or insights and the book’s literary quality.

Professor Pfeiffer is an expert on the history of rhetorical and literary theory, Renaissance humanism, and English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A former professor at the University of California, Irvine, he joined the faculty at Stony Brook in 2007 and went on to receive a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in teaching in 2022. He holds a PhD from Columbia University.

The MLA announcement cites Professor Pfeiffer’s book as “a tremendous achievement. In this substantial volume,” it continues, “Pfeiffer traces the phenomenon of author centrism to the scholarship of early Renaissance humanists. Focusing on several well-chosen case studies, this deeply researched multilingual monograph brings welcome new interpretations and insights not only to Renaissance studies but to literary studies more broadly.”

The Prize for a First Book, along with 21 additional MLA awards, will be presented at the association’s annual convention in Philadelphia on Friday, January 5, 2024.

Reviewed by John Turner 

We humans have done a pretty good job at mucking up the planet, scraping away the planet’s skin for minerals and timber, farms and ranches, not to mention the type of development that characterizes so much of Long Island — shopping centers, industrial parks, and residences. These impacted places, especially the first few, lend themselves well to rewilding to restore the natural, living fabric that was once there.  

You might reasonably ask “What is rewilding?” not to mention what wilding means. As we learn in The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding Big and Small (Bloomsbury Publishing  PLC) by Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell, it is a form of ecological restoration (to restore to the wild condition). What separates it from typical ecological restoration efforts, however, is that the rewilder may not try to restore exactly what was once there or definitively know what species end up colonizing a rewilded site. In this regard rewilding falls in between active, intense hands-on ecological manipulation and non-intervention or just letting “nature take its course.” 

The concept of rewilding developed in the late 20th century when several conservationists offered a vision of North America, rewilded through the implementation of three “C’s” as guiding principles — cores, connectors, and carnivores. Cores involve the expansion of national parks and other public spaces; connectors involve land protection work to connect these expanded public spaces so wildlife can move between sites to promote genetic health among species through genetic exchange and as a hedge again local extirpation in one area; and, lastly, carnivores means the introduction of predators such as wolves, bears, etc. where possible, recognizing the critical role they play in maintain the health of ecosystems.

In Europe, where there are not the expansive wilderness areas like those found in North America, rewilding has taken on a slightly different definition or tone. Here it is viewed as “kickstarting the ecosystem” or as the authors state: “Putting nature back in the driver’s seat.” They do this by restoring rivers and wetlands by restoring their hydrology, promoting keystone species (species that play a disproportionate role in maintaining the stability of a natural community just as a keystone in an arch keeps an entire arch intact), reintroducing missing species (or if they cannot be reintroduced due to extirpation introduction of surrogate species that behave in a similar way ecologically) and implementing strategies to promote biodiversity, which as its name suggests is the full suite of living things in a specific area.       

We learn this and so many other things in this rewilding guide. And what a guide it is, all 559 pages worth, providing both breadth and depth on insights, principles, ideas, and strategies on rewilding. It is easy to get intimidated by this book given its level of detail and the sheer amount of information it contains. However, it is written in a clear and straightforward style, the authors recounting years of experience in their effort to rewild  a 3,500 acre estate in West Sussex, Great Britain. 

The book is a “how to guide,” covering all the elements necessary to make places that have been compromised once again ecologically diverse and stable, thereby providing the numerous benefits in the form of goods and services intact wild areas provide (e.g. clean water and air, soil creation, timber and wild food production). 

While some chapters on wilding have limited applicability to Long Island or New York State, such as introducing large herbivores, a number of chapters in the book have specific relevance to Long Island.

One such chapter is the discussion on “rewilding water.” As the authors note,  wetlands — rivers, streams, ponds, lakes, bogs, marshes etc.  — cover a tiny percentage of the Earth’s  surface, estimated to be about 1 to 2%, but contain habitat for 10% of  all animal species and 30% of all vertebrate species. It is clear: wetlands are important from an ecological and biodiversity perspective. 

What are the elements of rewilding a wetland, say, a stream? 

◆ Restore naturally meandering, S-shape channels in the waterway if previously straightened (so many streams and rivers have been in an effort to carry water away); 

◆ Revegetate the banks to eliminate erosion and plant trees along the banks to create shade that create cooler water conditions conducive for fish like trout (the authors recommend 50% of the water surface be shaded);

◆ Leave tree trunks and branches that have fallen in the stream since they provide hiding places for aquatic wildlife; 

◆ Create pools in the stream bed so water remains for invertebrates and fish during low water periods and create gravel bars that provide microhabitat for invertebrates; 

“Daylighting” streams by unburying them and removing structural conduits; and

◆ Removing weirs, dams and other impediments to the movement of fish and other aquatic animals.  

This last recommendation has special relevance to Long Island as the overwhelming number of streams contain obstacles from past road and railroad construction and placement of grist mills. Dam removal would immediately help a number of species such as river herring and American eel. 

The book makes similar constructive recommendations relating to other rewilding elements such as vegetation and with animals. A section entitled “Rewilding Your Garden — Applying rewilding principles in a small place” may be of special interest to homeowners. It contains great tips on how to make the surroundings around a home more diverse and environmentally friendly, not to mention beautiful.  

Each chapter has an introduction and then for ease of reading has distinguishing green colored pages which highlight a separate but related section providing informative specifics of the rewilding effort; these are called “Putting It Into Practice”. This approach is useful in distinguishing theoretical and scientific underpinnings of rewilding from the practical steps needed to achieve the desired rewilding element.  

Underpinning this book is an optimistic perspective that with careful, sensitive and appropriate human intervention, nature can heal itself, if given half a chance. 

As the book makes clear, if the ideas, strategies, and recommendations flowing from rewilding principles are implemented in your backyard garden, neighborhood park, or on a much larger scale knitting together national parks, the natural world will be a more healthy, diverse, richer and beautiful place.  

The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding Big and Small is available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

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From Angels to Werewolves: Animal-Human Hybrids in Myth and Art

By Elizabeth Kahn Kaplan

St. James resident Philip F. Palmedo has produced a beautifully written and generously illustrated book on a subject that has intrigued, delighted, and frightened children and adults from ancient days to the present: therianthropy, the mythological ability of humans to metamorphose into animals or animal-human hybrids.  

“The concept of the therianthrope can catalyze the creative imagination,” writes Palmedo. 

The first that we know of is the Upper Paleolithic Lion-Man carved out of woolly mammoth ivory some 40,000 years ago. While we can only conjecture why it was created, we know that more recent animal-headed deities like the jackal-headed Egyptian god Anubis played important roles some 5000 years ago in weighing the worth of a person after death.

In the Hindu pantheon, elephant-headed, four-armed Ganesha is widely revered as a bringer of good luck; in Christian art winged angels abound, by turns avenging and comforting. In the 20th century, the ancient Greek legend of the fearsome Minotaur, a man with the head and tail of a bull, served as Pablo Picasso’s “allegorical alter-ego . . . with many of his etchings, paintings, and sculptures featuring this mythical bull-man.” 

Imaginative minds past and present have created talking animals, from the wicked snake in Genesis that tempted Eve in the Garden to the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, Disney’s Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, and lovable Big Bird of Sesame Street. 

Shape-shifting, the ability to change from human to animal or to an inanimate object, abounds in Greek mythology. One rather improbable example is that of the god Zeus changing into a swan to seduce Leda. In another example, as retold by the ancient Roman poet Ovid, the beautiful river nymph Daphne was “shapeshifted” by her father, morphing into a laurel tree to defeat the unwelcome advances of Apollo, the Greek god of the arts. The sadder but wiser Apollo paid tribute to her by adopting the laurel wreath as his crown. 

In America, therianthropy is on display in The Wolf Man horror films, from Lon Chaney’s 1941 portrayal to Benicio del Toro’s in 2010. More recently, the widely consumed Harry Potter tales spun by prolific British writer J. K. Rowling charmed children and adults with a talking bird, Hedwig, and with Firenze, the centaur who rescued Harry from the villain Voldemort. 

Centaurs, mythic creatures with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse, are the land complement to creatures with human upper torsos ending in huge fish tails — mermen and the alluring mermaids sighted by lonely mariners whose names derive from the French word for the sea, La mer. Palmedo’s chapter, Merpeople, is richly illustrated with examples in art from 6000 BC Serbia and 4th century BC Greece to 19th and 20th century India, Japan, Great Britain, and Denmark, including the bronze sculpture The Little Mermaid that overlooks the harbor in Copenhagen. Based on Hans Christian Andersen’s tale published in 1837, that fable might bring tears to one’s eyes. 

On the other hand, Norman Rockwell’s 1955 Saturday Evening Post cover, The Mermaid, can only make us chuckle with its depiction of an elderly fisherman hauling a beautiful mermaid home, her long elegant tail protruding from the large wooden fish trap on his back. 

This elegant, art-illustrated book written with clarity, printed on glossy paper, will entertain and enlighten. It can be purchased from Amazon. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

A Ph. D. in Nuclear Engineering from M.I.T., Philip F. Palmedo, former head of the Energy Policy Analysis Division at Brookhaven National Laboratory, was for many years Chairman of the Washington-based International Resources Group, which he founded. A former Trustee of Williams College in Massachusetts, where he majored in Physics and Art History as an undergraduate, Palmedo formed and was President of the Long Island Research Institute. He also serves on the MIT Council for the Arts, and is a fellow of the Williams College Museum of Art. Palmedo’s previous book was Deep Affinities: Art and Science.

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Reviewed by Jeffrey Sanzel 

“I had a couple of script pages in my hands (my palms were also good and sweaty): I had six lines to read. The show, titled Happy Days, was to revolve around a group of wholesome high school kids in 1950s Milwaukee. The character I was reading was the group’s one renegade. His name was Arthur Fonzarelli, aka the Fonz.”

Henry Winkler fittingly opens his extraordinary autobiography Being Henry (Celadon Books) with his audition for the television sitcom that would make him one of the most memorable cultural icons of the 70s. Happy Days would run for eleven seasons: Winkler (along with Tom Bosley) would appear in all 255 episodes.

But Winkler is not solely defined by this. In a nearly sixty-year career, in addition to a wide range of acting, he has been a producer, a director, a philanthropist, and a children’s book author. With Being Henry, Winkler offers an honest, engaging, and thoroughly entertaining memoir. At that heart is a man who “can’t remember not feeling an intense need to perform.”

Born in New York City to German Jewish immigrants who fled Berlin in 1939, Winkler shares his difficult childhood with emotionally distant parents and dyslexia—undiagnosed until he was thirty-four. He “was the kid who couldn’t read, couldn’t spell, couldn’t even begin to do algebra, or geometry, or even basic arithmetic.” His failing grades led to humiliation; his parents referred to him as dummer Hund—dumb dog. With these challenges, he marvels at graduating from high school and college (a BA in drama from Emerson College, with a minor in psychology) and a Masters in acting (Yale School of Drama). 

From there, he paints a portrait of a struggling New York actor working in commercials to support low and non-paying theatre. His film break came with The Lords of Flatbush. Soon after, he moved to Hollywood, making a memorable guest appearance on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Continuing through rounds of auditions and disappointments, he landed the role of Fonzie when he was twenty-eight.

The career-defining rebel eventually became a bit of a trap, but Winkler shows enormous gratitude for Happy Days. He is particularly generous in praise of his colleagues on both sides of the camera. He is forthcoming about his relationship with the cast, especially Ron Howard, who was the original focus of the series. Howard’s frustration with the shift from ensemble to a Fonzie-centered show moved him towards his directorial pursuits. Winkler and Howard maintained a personal and professional relationship, with projects spanning from Night Shift to Arrested Development.

He claims many of his initial movie jobs came from fame and not necessarily talent; he spent years trying to escape the shadow of the Happy Days persona. “The truth was that the Fonz aside, I was half-baked as an actor. Self-conscious.” Few performers are as brave and self-reflective. 

Winkler is honest about his insecurities, his frugality, and even his occasions of obliviousness. He addresses the double-edged dangers of stardom. He talks about his verbosity, which increases when he is insecure or nervous. He admits when he feels disconnected or unsure, he talks too much.

He finds humor in his early failed romantic forays and smartly lets his wife, Stacey, speak for herself in various junctures in the book’s narrative. He does not shy away from his guilt and frustrations with intimacy and communication, something he did not fully deal with until therapy in the last decade. (He has been married to Stacey since 1978. He helped raise a son from her first marriage, and they have two children together. In addition, they have six grandchildren). 

After the Happy Days run, he did not act for seven years. Rather than retreating, he embarked on new vistas. He started a production company, began directing, and developed into a sought-after voice artist. Years later, he added best-selling children’s author, collaborating on twenty-eight “Hank Zipzer” novels about an elementary school student with dyslexia. The books became a well-received television series. 

Eventually, his acting career blossomed again. Scream, The Water Boy, and Royal Pains, along with “a string of authority figures lacking authority,” were hallmarks in later years. He returned to the stage, appearing in two Broadway productions, including a Neil Simon premiere.

His most recent sensation, HBO’s Barry, rewarded him with a much-deserved Primetime Emmy Award. (Note: He had already received two Daytime Emmy Awards.)

Winkler analyzes his initial meteoric fame and values its many gifts; he remains humble in his over half a century of remarkable and unique achievements. He is philosophical, embracing “that you couldn’t have known then what you know now. That only the process of living gets you there: you must do the work in order to eat the fruit of growing—of being.”

Henry Winkler’s beautiful account is, of course, a book for Happy Days fans. But it is also for readers seeking to understand the world of show business as told through a transparent and often profound narrator. And finally, Being Henry should be read by every actor or artist who has ever questioned their own value.

Being Henry: The Fonz…and Beyond is available on Amazon and at your local Barnes and Noble bookstore.

Author Carl Safina with Alfie

Reviewed by John L. Turner

Perhaps it’s due to an owl’s forward facing eyes, imparting a humanlike aspect to its face, that is the source of the long-held belief that owls possess great wisdom and intelligence. Actually other birds, most notably members of the crow family like ravens, crow, and blue jays do best in intelligence tests but you wouldn’t know it from the photo of Alfie, a screech owl, that adorns the cover of Carl Safina’s new book Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe. With an intense stare suggesting human level concentration possessing sickle shaped talons clutching the branch, Alfie is a vibrantly alive bird,  an impressive predator that fully “knows” how to be an owl.    

The book involves the author raising a young screech owl dealt a terrible hand that would have been a fatal one were it not for the intervention of the author. Along the way Alfie learns to become more independent, finds a mate and raises a family of three.     

Author Carl Safina

What becomes immediately clear and what I did not know despite being neighbors and friends of Carl and Patricia, but what I should have known given their abiding and deep interest in the natural world, is just how much time they spent closely watching Alfie reach her potential, blossoming into a fully functioning adult owl, one member of a five member family — all during the COVID pandemic. 

They both, but especially Carl, spent what must be hundreds of hours observing Alfie.  And as a reader of the book will soon discover, this world enlarges with the appearance of her mate Plus-One and the logical results of Plus-One appearing on the scene — three young baby screech owls. These babies, individually and together, are variously described as: “little spheres of fluffiness,” “a fat ball of a baby,” and a “fluff-jacketed cutie.” The quintet were named “The Hoo,” who together “remained down-jacketed, fluffy, light as the clouds above them.”

In this way the book is a classic story of a scientist delving deeply into the world of a wild animal, along the lines of Douglas Chadwick’s The Wolverine Way, Bernd Heinrich’s Mind of the Raven or Maria Mudd Ruth’s detailed study of the Marbled Murrelet in Rare Bird. There’s exploration and analysis, observation and interpretation, study and understanding, and most importantly the development of a strong relationship. 

What’s unique in Alfie & Me is this all takes place in an acre or so around their suburban home, and within that area most within a 50-foot envelope around the house. This story, the development of an intimate “around the house” wild bird-human relationship, ties Alfie & Me with Julie Zickefoose’s Saving Jemima, in which the author spends a good part of a year raising a blue jay to health and independence. There are many delightful parallels between the two books.  

Unlike Safina’s earlier books like Song for a Blue Ocean, A Sea in Flames, Voyage of the Turtle, and Eye of the Albatross, Alfie & Me, is more of an extension of, and elaboration upon, some of the concepts advanced in Safina’s three most recent books: The View from Lazy Point, Becoming Wild and Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. These later books explore the intellectual, emotional, and sensory world of animals, their societies and culture, and complexities in the relationship and attitudes of humans with other life forms, specifically, and the natural world generally. 

A fundamental aspect of the book is, of course, the interspecies relationship between a few humans and a few owls with colorful side notes on a few dogs and a flock of chickens; an overlapping connection between the one world of the two species, the author aptly emphasizing Alfie being able to place “a wing in ours, I, with a foot in hers.” Or “….the ability to walk the bridge Alfie had opened between their world and ours.”  

The Eastern Screech Owl (Megascops asio) is one of two common woodland owls that find breeding habitat here on Long Island. Along with their much larger cousin, and sometimes mortal enemy the Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus), Screech Owls are surprisingly common in forests both large and small. Even parcels as small as ten acres are likely to host a breeding pair. Less common woodland owls here include Saw-whet (Aegolius acadicus) and Long-eared Owls (Asio otis) “whoo” are joined by open country visitors during the winter months — Snowy Owls (Bubo scandiacus) and Short-eared Owls (Asio flammeus), coastal and grassland inhabitants respectively.  

And unique to the owl species found in eastern North America, screech owls come in two color forms or morphs. Alfie and Plus-One are red or rufous morph individuals which is the more common form on Long Island. Or as Safina notes “a magical russet comet.” The grey form, however, is more common throughout the species range.  

Safina is a highly gifted writer, quite adept at turning a phrase and the book is replete with colorful imagery and strong sentences, to wit: “I have always felt that my generation existed in a time spanning the last good years and the beginning of the end of the world,” “The air was stock still. Leafy canopies of maples and the spires of cedars formed a denser darkness against the star-studded vault of space”,  and “If they fell to the ground, they’d still climb straight up a trunk, but they were also realizing that crossing distances involved flapping their interesting upper limbs. In a way, they were finding their inner owl.”  

This book would be a worthwhile read if all it presented was a highly articulate description of  screech owls and their behavior and ecology. But it’s so much more. Alfie provides a feathered springboard for the author to discuss how western thought, espoused by western thought leaders (think Descartes, Bacon, Dawkins, et al.) has led to the dangerous result and our current predicament where so many members of human society are estranged from animals and nature with the resultant deterioration of the global environment. Their “reductionist” thinking of animals as being nothing more than soulless machines incapable of thoughts, emotions, even the ability to feel pain, was all pervasive resulting in the view that humans commanded a lofty and unique perch above lowly forms of life that gave them full dominion over all animals.   

In contrast, Safina documents, Eastern and North American Indigenous cultures and religions held views that better harmonized humankind with the animal kingdom and the natural elements of the world. A world with more passion and less consumption. Clearly, the book is an exploration of proffered beliefs, strongly held. 

This book also is an exultation of life and living things, a fundamentally and qualitatively unique aspect in this otherwise lifeless universe, a concept that Safina notes and embraces and Alfie illustrates. Life is something worth celebrating, cherishing, and protecting. “The owls gave us the opportunity to pay attention. That was their main gift to us: to be present for a while in the always magical here and now.”

Through Safina’s prose we all can take delight in his decision to intercede and change what was clearly a fatal trajectory for Alfie. We are all the richer for his intervention. Safina ends: “It was amazing how quiet and empty the air could feel once you subtracted owls. But now I knew they were out there, livening up the nights with or without me. Yes, I felt an empty nester. But I’d been dealt a full house, a winning hand.”   

Both Carl and Alfie have a lot to say. And we gain pleasure in listening. Alfie & Me is a most important book and a most compelling and worthwhile read — we too have been dealt a winning hand. 

Image from LIM

Culinary Historian Sarah Lohman returns to the Long Island Museum, 1200 Route 25A, Stony Brook on Sunday, November 12 at noon to talk about endangered American food traditions featured in her latest book, Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods. Lohman has traveled the country learning about and documenting ingredients at risk of being lost to time, from those who are passionate about keeping those traditions alive.

After her talk, join Sarah in the LIM Visitors Center for an Author Meet & Greet and Book Signing! Copies of the book will be available to purchase on the day of the event.

The event is free with Museum admission. No registration required.

For more information, visit www.longislandmuseum.org.

By Kevin Redding

“There’s nothing like stories on a windy night when folks have found a warm place in a cold world.”

— Stephen King, “The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole”

As the air gets chilly, and the season drifts from spooky toward snowy, there’s no better way to spend the long stretch of time indoors than slipping into comfy clothes, pouring yourself a hot drink, and curling up with a good book. We asked eight local librarians about their favorite novels and new recommendations to ensure you’ll be enthralled, entertained, and enriched in the coming months.

 

Lorena Doherty

 

Lorena Doherty

North Shore Public Library, Shoreham

What is your favorite book and why?

That’s a hard one because you have a favorite book in every period of your life. One of my favorites is an international book called “The Murmur of Bees” by Sofia Segovia and translated by Simon Bruni. It’s a book about love, family saga, history, healing, bees, Valencia oranges, a special boy, and really the ties that bind us as human beings. It was charming, delicious, and had a huge impact on me because of her ability to weave this brilliant story as a window into her culture. And the translation into English was done very well. Simon Bruni did not lose its essence or lyricism.

What is a new book that you would recommend and why?

“Flags of the Bayou,” a standalone historical fiction book by James Lee Burke. This is his 42nd book. What I love about him is that he writes from the landscape in which he lives, which is New Iberia, Louisiana. If you are new to this book and you’ve never read him, it is I think the best book he’s ever written and I felt that two-thirds of the way through. This is a work of historical fiction that is centered in the timeline of events near the end of the Civil Area in the area of New Iberia, the Bayou Teche, and the Mississippi River, where the North is waging and winning battle against the Confederates. It’s a unique window into the culture of plantations, social castes, freed men and women, those who live in servitude. There’s abolitionists and mixed cultures in that area. And in the midst of all the cruelty and chaos of the war, it’s also a love story. The characters are so fleshed out and the reader is carried away with the nuances of changing allegiances and how they choose to live with the possibility of their own deaths. He grounds you in there and there’s a huge level of the spiritual connection to the greater world. And if you love language and appreciate a writer who writes prose, he’s the kind of writer where I find myself going back and reading a sentence over and over again, like “Wow!” It’s a damn good read.

Jeff Walden

Jeff Walden

Emma S. Clark Memorial Library, Setauket

What is your favorite book and why?

Yeah, it’s an old classic but it’s my favorite book and I just reread it recently again. It’s “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien. For me, it’s just a great adventure story. It’s got dragons, hobbits, dwarves and elves, treasure, adventure. It doesn’t get old, it never ages to me. It’s a book I can read and enjoy just as much the fifth time as I did the first time. Tolkien  was just a great storyteller and for that genre, he was really the first to create that whole other world that you can immerse yourself in very easily. It’s the ring, it’s Gollum, there’s just so many amazing parts to it. It’s just a fun story to read over and over again. I was just reading an original book review by C.S. Lewis [“The Chronicles of Narnia”], Tolkien’s contemporary, and even he predicted in 1937 that it was going to be a book that was going to be read over and over again. It came out to be, for me, true.

What is a new book that you would recommend and why?

I have one I’m reading right now, “The Armor of Light” by Ken Follett. It’s the fifth installment in his Kingbridge series. He’s another great storyteller with good, deep characters that you really get to know. It does mention some of the other books because it’s set in Kingsbridge, this fictional town in England over the course of hundreds of years…I think they’re up to the French Revolution in the late 1700s…but it has totally different characters. There’s creative license with it but he does incorporate a lot of historical facts about the time period in the books. And I think you can still read this new one if you haven’t read the other ones and it might interest you in going back and reading the other ones. It does help to have a little bit of the background but I think they can stand on their own.

Jenna Ely

Jenna Ely

Comsewogue Public Library, Port Jefferson Station

What is your favorite book and why?

One of my favorites is “True Believer” by Nicholas Sparks and it’s actually what made me want to become a librarian. I worked in a different industry before this and worked in television, and I would read this book just as a way to escape while on my commute. The main character in this book is a librarian and while I was reading it, I was like, “Oh my gosh, that sounds like a dream job. Why did I never think of becoming a librarian?” and then I ended up going to library school and pursuing this career. So that book was really monumental and influential for me in that way. And it’s Nicholas Sparks, so it’s a great love story.

And then if I had to pick my favorite book of all time, it would be “Beartown” by Fredrik Backman, who blows me away with all of his books. I’ve read all of them and he just continues to outdo himself. “Beartown” was the first book in a trilogy and in it you’re introduced to this hockey town and the obsession with sports and teams and the impact that it has on the community as a whole. And there’s a tragedy and the town has to choose sides. A lot of people’s hearts are broken, someone is killed, and it’s really dramatic. I feel like the winter is a really good time to dive into it. All the books in that series are so worth the read.

What is a new book that you would recommend and why?

So this is a new book that I think is just phenomenal. It’s called “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt. It is actually her debut novel, so it was incredible that someone’s first novel really took off and was so astounding. I actually loved it so much that I wrote a mini review of it on Goodreads. I was so moved by it. The characters, the stories…it hooked me from the first page and I devoured it in like 48 hours. It was so good I couldn’t put it down. There’s so much heart in these characters and there’s so much love, you really root for them. They’re flawed and they might do something that aggravates you but almost like how your family or friends might do. Not a protagonist where you’re like “Oh my God I hate this person, why are they doing this?” but more like “I feel for you and want you to find happiness!” And one of the narrators is a giant Pacific red octopus, which is really cool and I felt like I got to learn so much.

Donna Brown

Donna Brown

Northport-East Northport Public Library, Northport and East Northport

What is your favorite book and why?

That’s a pretty easy one for me to answer. I am a Teen Librarian right now but I do read a lot of adult fiction, nonfiction, everything…I used to run the Adult Book Club, so I definitely have a broad range of reading. But for me, my favorite book of all time is “The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton. The movie came out in 1983, I was 10 years old and my mom would not let me see it but I read the book and it changed my life and the way I think forever. It is, I think, one of the best books of all time. I think it transcends. It’s a story about teenagers struggling to fit in, fighting, and bad incidents…but at the end of the day, all of them are pretty good kids and that’s one of my favorite things about that book. I can hand it to a teenager or an adult now and I overwhelmingly get such a great response. Most people want to meet a celebrity or a professional athlete, but it’s my dream to meet S.E. Hinton!

What is a new book that you would recommend and why?

My most recent one, which I’d recommend to anyone who likes to read realistic fiction with a little bit of imagination in it, is “Remarkably Bright Creatures.” It’s one of the only books that has made me sob in recent years because of what a beautiful story it is. It is the story of an octopus and the octopus’ caregiver in a marina in the Pacific Northwest. It is such a beautiful story that teaches you about humanity and mankind and how much every single person has worth in this world and makes a contribution in some way or another, even though a lot of the time people don’t see that. I run a book group and it overwhelmingly touched the hearts and minds of every single person.

Anne McNulty

Anne McNulty

Port Jefferson Free Library, Port Jefferson

What is your favorite book and why?

My favorite book has been my favorite book since 2013 when it came out…it is “Ancillary Justice” by Ann Leckie. It’s a sci-fi space opera novel and it won the Hugo and the Nebula awards. It is absolutely amazing. It’s just one of the most unique books I’ve ever read. I’m a really big fan of sci-fi and space operas, so I really love the kind of alien worlds they can make with them, and Ann Leckie did such a great job building the worlds and societies in her book. And she also did interesting things with playing with pronouns. So, in her book, everyone uses she/her pronouns, even if they’re not technically women. It’s very, very interesting and I love it. I love Tolkien so much and have read all of his books.  

What is a new book that you would recommend and why?

So it is Halloween time and I do love horror as well. I’m actually in the middle of this book “Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology.” It’s an anthology of short stories, which is nice if you don’t have time to sit and  read a whole book. All the stories are written by Native American authors and it’s really good so far. It’s horror so it’s perfect for the season and the stories I’ve read so far have been really creepy. I also love all Stephen Graham Jones’ books, especially “My Heart is a Chainsaw,” one of my favorite horror books.

Jennifer Zwolak

Jennifer Zwolak

Comsewogue Public Library, Port Jefferson Station

What is your favorite book and why?

I would say my favorite book in recent years has been “The Maid” by Nita Prose. It’s been popular but it’s very interesting for anyone who likes murder mysteries but ones that aren’t too graphic. The main character has a very unique perspective, which I enjoyed a lot. I’m actually rereading “The Maid” right now because I enjoyed it so much. I would recommend cozy mysteries when you really want to get that fall-winter feeling. 

What is a new book that you would recommend and why?

I would recommend reading “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus. It’s about a female scientist in the 1950s and all the struggles she goes through. Again, another unique perspective that gives a different type of person a voice. There’s a lot of science and a lot of feminism in it.

Erin Schaarschmidt

Erin Schaarschmidt

Port Jefferson Free Library, Port Jefferson

What is your favorite book and why?

“High Achiever: The Incredible True Story of One Addict’s Double Life” by Tiffany Jenkins, a nonfiction book about a woman who overcame a drug addiction. And she was married to a police officer so she had a double life. I love nonfiction and to read how she was able to hide from the police officer who she’s married to and all that was just amazing and then they all found out she was a drug addict and she went to rehab. And then something I read around this time every year is…I’m a huge Edgar Allan Poe fan so I always do his collected stories, like “The Raven,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” I re-read them every year just because it’s the spooky time of year and it’s very nostalgic. 

What is a new book that you would recommend and why?

I just finished reading “The Daddy Diaries: The Year I Grew Up” by Andy Cohen. I really like nonfiction and it was a fun read about his family because you don’t usually hear about his kids and stuff like that.

Connor McCormack

Connor McCormack

Northport-East Northport Public Library, Northport and East Northport

What is your favorite book and why?

It’s like choosing your favorite kid, but probably “The Left Hand of Darkness” by Ursula K. Le Guin in terms of fiction. It’s really well written. Ursula Le Guin is one of the most prolific sci-fi writers from the 60s and 70s, and this one is considered her best work. It’s just really unique world-building and explores a lot about human condition, psychology, gender roles…just explores a lot of themes in a really well-done way. And for nonfiction, I read a lot of military history such as “The Guns of August” by Barbara W. Tuchman, and “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland” by Patrick Radden Keefe. Those are probably my two favorite nonfiction books. 

What is a new book that you would recommend and why?

For a favorite one I’d say “Sea of Tranquility” by Emily St. John Mandel and then “Memory Police” by Yōko Ogawa. And then for nonfiction, there’s this book called “Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia” by Christina Thompson that I think I’ve recommended to everyone in my family at this point. It’s all about how the Polynesian culture spread across the Pacific Ocean — how they traveled between the islands, what their navigation methods were, the myths that they told, just like a whole view of their culture, and how it spread. 

A special thanks to all of the librarians who took part in this article.
Happy reading!

— Photos by Heidi Sutton