May We Suggest

Books Set in Asia

Many people are excited to think about future trips this year.  You can also travel the world while sitting in your favorite comfy chair by choosing books from this list.  Enjoy your adventure!

 

 

 

Have you ever wanted to try a new sport? If you said yes, you've landed on the right square!  So if you've always wanted to smack at a tennis or golf ball, jump on a bike or in a canoe, strap on some running or walking shoes, the summer months provide the best conditions to go outside, enjoy some fresh air and get healthy. In addition, you'll make new friends, challenge yourself, get out of your comfort zone and best of all have fun!  Take this BBC 60 second test to see what sport you are made for.*

There are many resources available to help you complete the Try a New Sport square in our 62 Days summer program.

*Before embarking upon any sporting activity, you should seek the advice of your physician.

Get Inspired!

Growing your own garden is a great way to save money, provide family fun and get exercise. Community gardening, Farmer's Markets and eating local are all the rage. Get help gardening, from learning the basics to more advance gardening, with these resources and activities to help you complete this 62 Days square and Grow Green.

 

Jump back to 62 Days of Summer for more ways to participate in the summer program!

 

Photo: Colleen O'Brien-Brumley

Books

Physical fitness can help you sleep, feel, think and manage your weight loss better. It can also energize your mind and body. Just a quick walk around the block can rejuvenate your body and mind. Get moving and inspired with these books, DVDs, e-media and other digital resources.

 

In the Summer of 2021 you can finally drop your tablet and go back to the movie theater. But that doesn't mean you can't still stream videos or rent DVDs from the library too. Here is a bevy of options for your movie enjoyment for this Summer.

At the Drive-in

As the world slowly reopens, more and more travel opportunities are available. Before you plan your trip, review domestic and international travel restrictions and safety precautions.

If you're looking for exciting adventures locally. please take advantage of the Michigan Activity Pass. Find countless destinations throughout the state and discounts on admission.

 

Travel eResources

In our unique genomes, every one of us carries the story of our species -- births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration, and a lot of sex. But those stories have always been locked away -- until now. Who are our ancestors? Where did they come from? Geneticists have suddenly become historians, and the hard evidence in our DNA has blown the lid off what we thought we knew. Acclaimed science writer Adam Rutherford explains exactly how genomics is completely rewriting the human story -- from 100,000 years ago to the present. A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived will upend your thinking on Neanderthals, evolution, royalty, race, and even redheads. (For example, we now know that at least four human species once roamed the earth.) Plus, here is the remarkable, controversial story of how our genes made their way to the America's -- one that's still being written, as ever more of us have our DNA sequenced. 

As war breaks out, Aurelie becomes trapped on the wrong side of the front with her father, Comte Sigismund de Courcelles. When the Germans move into their family's ancestral estate, using it as their headquarters, Aurelie discovers she knows the German Major's aide de camp, Maximilian Von Sternburg. She and the dashing young officer first met during Aurelie's debutante days in Paris. Despite their conflicting loyalties, Aurelie and Max's friendship soon deepens into love, but betrayal will shatter them both, driving Aurelie back to Paris and the Ritz-- the home of her estranged American heiress mother, with unexpected consequences. France, 1942. Raised by her indomitable, free-spirited American grandmother in the glamorous Hotel Ritz, Marguerite "Daisy" Villon remains in Paris with her daughter and husband, a Nazi collaborator, after France falls to Hitler. At first reluctant to put herself and her family at risk to assist her grandmother's Resistance efforts, Daisy agrees to act as a courier for a skilled English forger known only as Legrand, who creates identity papers for Resistance members and Jewish refugees. But as Daisy is drawn ever deeper into Legrand's underground network, committing increasingly audacious acts of resistance for the sake of the country--and the man--she holds dear, she uncovers a devastating secret . . . one that will force her to commit the ultimate betrayal, and to confront at last the shocking circumstances of her own family history. 

A fascinating, illuminating, and witty look at what the vast amounts of information now instantly available to us reveals about ourselves and our world -- provided we ask the right questions. By the end of an average day in the early twenty-first century, human beings searching the internet will amass eight trillion gigabytes of data. This staggering amount of information -- unprecedented in history -- can tell us a great deal about who we are -- the fears, desires, and behaviors that drive us, and the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than twenty years ago, seemed unfathomable. Everybody Lies offers fascinating, surprising, and sometimes laugh-out-loud insights into everything from economics to ethics to sports to race to sex, gender and more, all drawn from the world of big data. 

Anxious people : a novel / [kit] by 1981- Fredrik Backman

This is a poignant comedy about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined. Viewing an apartment normally doesn't turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers slowly begin opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths. As police surround the premises and television channels broadcast the hostage situation live, the tension mounts and even deeper secrets are slowly revealed. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people.

An enthralling story of how an unexpected romantic encounter irrevocably changes two families' lives. One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly--thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families. Spanning five decades. Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Commonwealth is a meditation on inspiration, interpretation, and the ownership of stories. It is a brilliant and tender tale of the far-reaching ties of love and responsibility that bind us together.

 "Do not question. Do not fight. Do not resist." Such is eight-year-old Noriko "Nori" Kamiza's first lesson. She will not question why her mother abandoned her with only these final words. She will not fight her confinement to the attic of her grandparents' imperial estate. And she will not resist the scalding chemical baths she receives daily to lighten her skin. The child of a married Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover, Nori is an outsider from birth. Her grandparents take her in, only to conceal her, fearful of a stain on the royal pedigree that they are desperate to uphold in a changing Japan. Obedient to a fault, Nori accepts her solitary life, despite her natural intellect and curiosity. But when chance brings her older half-brother, Akira, to the estate that is his inheritance and destiny, Nori finds in him an unlikely ally with whom she forms a powerful bond--a bond their formidable grandparents cannot allow and that will irrevocably change the lives they were always meant to lead. Because now that Nori has glimpsed a world in which perhaps there is a place for her after all, she is ready to fight to be a part of it--a battle that just might cost her everything. Spanning decades and continents, Fifty Words for Rain is a dazzling epic about the ties that bind, the ties that give you strength, and what it means to be free.

Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and re-energizes the conversation about racism--and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas--from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities--that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves. Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.

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