Tag: books

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Programs

Beloved – Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison

by Programming Librarian Zach Parish

February 18th is Toni Morrison’s birthday and is officially recognized as Toni Morrison Day in Ohio. This year marks what would have been Toni Morrison’s 95th birthday and is being commemorated with a year-long, statewide celebration led by Literary Cleveland with Ohio Humanities, Ohioana Library, and the Toni Morrison Society. Beloved. Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison officially kicks off on Wednesday, February 18, 2026, with a conversation between Namwali Serpell, author of the book On Morrison, and Hanif Abdurraqib held at The Columbus Foundation and available to attend via livestream.

Every February I return to a Morrison book that I’m moved to revisit for any number of reasons or choose one that has spent far too much time in my ever-growing TBR stack. Morrison’s work is always relevant but I enjoy the ritual of dedicating my February reading, when the late winter weather in Ohio all but demands me to seek refuge in a book, to something that requires self-contemplation and has the power to disarm, rearrange, and deliver me transformed into the new spring season.

Last year I picked up Beloved for the fourth or fifth time, its spine and pages beginning to show their wear, but my first time as a parent and it felt as if I was meeting Sethe and Denver for the first time. Reading one of Morrison’s most remembered passages from Beloved, “She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.” I thought once again how this passage captures the transformative power of Morrison’s work, where the reader comes away with a few more truths unlocked and pieces of themselves rearranged for the better.

This year I am picking up Song of Solomon for the first time, one that has silently judged me from the top of my TBR stack for too long, motivated by the looming February BPL Book Club discussion.

I’m also returning to the all too relevant 2017 documentary, The Foreigner’s Home, that reflects on Morrison’s guest-curated 2006 exhibit at the Louvre. The documentary serves as a meditation on what it means to be a foreigner, remembering one’s own home in memory and ancestry and seeking a new home in belonging and citizenship, and challenges us to consider how we, as people and as a society, react to being, fearing, or accommodating the stranger.

The film also serves as a celebration of art and a call to arms for those who create, with Morrison stating, “The mission of art is the destruction of barriers and walls, things that prevent people from connecting, with their home or with each other.” It is with this spirit that we hope to bring people together and build community through celebrating Toni Morrison’s art and legacy with a suite of programs at the Bexley Public Library this month:

“My faith in the world of art is not irrational and it’s not naive. Art invites us to take the journey from data to information to knowledge to wisdom. Artists make language, images, sounds to bear witness, to shape beauty, and to comprehend. My faith in their work exceeds my admiration for any other discourse. Such conversation with the public and among various genre of art and scholarship, this conversation is vital to our understanding of what it means to be human.”

Opening of The Foreigner’s Home – Toni Morrison at the Louvre, 2006

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Reading Life

 The Magic of Made-Up Words

by Patron Service Associate & Creative Content Coordinator Hannah

Every so often, a word gets stuck in my head, taking up residence for a day or so, alongside the occasional tune, lyric, or jingle. Recently, that word was Dushegubs, the name of a species of calculating, homicidal, tree-like beings from Sweep of the Heart by Ilona Andrews.*

But much to their indignation, this isn’t a blog post about Dushegubs. It’s about something bigger: the magic of a writer’s ability to invent words that land in a reader’s mind and mean something!

One of the most well-known examples of a writer who shaped new words to capture concepts, feelings, or humor that existing language couldn’t quite capture is William Shakespeare. Scholars credit him with the earliest known written examples of some 2,000 words. What’s fascinating is that Shakespeare’s made-up words often feel completely natural. That’s because many of these words were created using recognizable linguistic strategies.

One of the most common was combining existing words to form something new and precise.

  • Eyeball (eye + ball) and bedroom (bed + room) were both first recorded in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Though the components would have been familiar, the combinations were new and almost immediately understandable.

Shakespeare also expanded English through prefixes and suffixes, transforming meaning with subtle shifts.

  • Lonely comes from lone + -ly and appears in Coriolanus.
  • Savage already existed, derived from the Old French sauvage and the Latin silvaticus (“of the woods”), but Shakespeare extended its use into forms like savagely, first recorded in Othello.

Fluent in Latin, French, and Italian, Shakespeare frequently borrowed and reshaped words, anglicizing them or recombining roots for expressive effect.

  • Assassination comes from the Italian assassinare.
  • Dexterously derives from the Latin dexter, meaning skillful.

Other authors followed similar paths. Charles Dickens is thought to have blended scrouge (to squeeze) and gouge (to cheat) when naming his 1843-character Scrooge, a name that has since become shorthand for a miserly person.

Meanwhile, Theodor Seuss Geisel—better known as Dr. Seuss—prioritized sound and rhyme. Words like wocketh, yuzz-a-ma-tuzz, and sneeches rely on phonetics and sound symbolism, and align with Seuss’ broader goal of helping young readers recognize sounds and patterns. Lerkim perfectly captures the lurking nature of the Once-ler’s shack in The Lorax. Grinch sounds unpleasant, grumpy, and sly before you even know who he is, let alone if you have any knowledge of the French word grincheux.

Interestingly, Dr. Seuss’ If I Ran the Zoo is often credited with the first printed appearance of the word nerd, though not in its modern sense. Unfortunately, National Word Nerd Day, an unofficial celebration of language, vocabulary, and wordplay, fell on January 9, so we’ll have to catch it next year.

Invented words are such a novelty! They interrupt our habit of skimming, forcing us to pause and decode, and I find that moment of engagement rewarding. Some invented words don’t stop at being memorable. They migrate out of our books and into everyday language to fill a gap or because they are simply too good to ignore. Like John Milton coining pandemonium in his epic poem Paradise Lost for the capital of Hell, combining Greek pan (all) and daimon (demon). 

And then there’s J.R.R. Tolkien, a master of immersive world-building who didn’t just invent words, he built entire linguistic systems! Terms like hobbit, ent, and orc feel ancient and inevitable, even though they were newly minted. His words stick because they sound rooted, purposeful, and perfectly suited to the world they inhabit.

So, when a word takes up residence in your head, pause and enjoy it. Chances are, it was made with care. 

*Dushegubs comes from the Russian dusha (soul) and the verb gubit (to destroy).

Recommended Reading:

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staff favorites

Staff Favorites: Best of 2025

by Public Service Associate Juliana

I love compiling this list. Even though the internet is inundated with lists around this time, I still really love this one. It’s full of character and personality, highly specific and individual based on our tastes and preferences. Out of those of us who submitted responses, we had zero overlap! No one favorited the same book, film or album as someone else.

That means there is so much to explore here. Our interests range from nature documentaries to culinary memoirs, comedy tv series to fantasy romance, atmospheric music to alternative metal, and many things in between.

We here at BPL hope you find something new for yourself in the following selection and that you have fun exploring what we enjoyed this year!

Owen

Novel

  • Fun for the Whole Family by Jennifer E Smith. This one was really good for a few reasons, the split perspective done right, the really thoughtful interactions between the four main characters and their relationships as siblings, and also just for the aesthetic pleasure of watching these adults get stuck in a snowstorm and think about ruining their lives.

Documentary Film

  • Every Little Thing dir. by Sally Aitken. Beautiful and moving documentary about Los Angeles hummingbird rehabilitator Terry Masear. The documentary treats its subject much as she treats hers, as something delicate and special, filled with stunning images of the hummingbirds she cares for, and injected with Masear’s own gallows humor about the ephemerality of life.

Album

  • Eusexua – FKA Twigs. FKA Twigs has never been so back on this truly exciting release. She is at her most creative, most original and most experimental in this album, and the accompanying music videos are just as much to die for. I’m highlighting the title track and also Striptease as the best songs on the album.

Honorable mention to Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s memoir Far from Home. I can’t say I care much for Murkowski herself or her politics, but she does offer an interesting and fairly novel insight into the politics of wild Alaska and gives the same treatment to Washington D.C. that I would probably give to Anchorage.

Jen

Nonfiction/Memoir

  • Non-Fiction was all I read in 2025. Just keepin’ it real. HA! See what I did there? The book? How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love and Plenty by Bonny Reichert. It is a culinary memoir about the author’s relationship with her Holocaust survivor father through the lens of food. It’s a slow burn, but well worth it. 

TV show

  • Without a doubt. The Studio. It is the funniest. It is the swearingest. It is a breakneck-speed, homage-laden, fun-fueled comedic delight. And it is simply the best show TV had to offer in 2025.

Album

  • Debí Tirar Más Fotos – Bad Bunny. Resoundingly my favorite record of 2025. As a tried-and-true punk rock Gen-Xer, this record would not be my typical jam. But I was all like, why are people being a little extra about this Bad Bunny character and his upcoming halftime show, I’d better investigate. Turns out THE KID IS A PHENOM. Such fun! Such positivity! Such joyousness! Bad Bunny’ll make you shake your boom-boom and make you a happier person while listening. Which is, frankly, what we can all use right now. 

Hannah

Novels

Nonfiction/Memoir

  • Carpet Diem by George Bradley caught my eye with the pun, pulled me in with the patterns, and was an interesting look at one person in this human world.  

TV Show

Albums

  • From the Pyre – The Last Dinner Party, if you need something atmospheric.
  • Skeletá – Ghost for the catchy and theatrical things you may hear me humming.

Juliana

Novel

  • Counting Backwards by Binnie Kirshenbaum. This is the second novel I’ve read by Kirshenbaum. I found it completely absorbing and maximally devastating. And I loved it.

Movie

  • Train Dreams dir. by Clint Bentley. I cried as the credits rolled. This is such a lonely and beautiful movie. Next on my list is to read the novella of the same name that the movie is based on by Denis Johnson.

Album

Josh

Nonfiction/Memoir

Movies

  • Sinners. Not in 100 years would I have guessed I needed a movie about vampires playing blues music set in 1932 Mississippi. I’m mostly allergic to musicals and horror films, but this movie highlights the music without taking the viewer out of the story (think O Brother, Where Art Thou?) and it’s not over-the-top gory. 10 out of 10!
  • One Battle After Another. Another absolute banger by Paul Thomas Anderson. The chase scenes are so intense that, at one point, I felt relief when someone was caught and tased. 
  • Phoenician Scheme. Out of all of Wes Anderson’s films, this one feels the most like Looney Tunes to me, which warms my heart!
  • Minecraft. My kids love Minecraft. I love Jack Black. There’s really nothing else to say.

Albums

  • Bleeds – Wednesday. These guys just have an old-school indie rock feel to them that can slide into americana all the way to punk rock.
  • For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) – Japanese Breakfast. The title says it all: this is music for melancholy brunettes (& sad women).

Gabrielle

Novels

  • Silver Elite by Dani Francis. Great dystopian fantasy romance. Keep ya on the edge of your seat kind of book. Sorry if I annoyed anyone talking about it incessantly. 
  • Enchantra by Kaylie Smith. Fantasy romance and book 2 in a series. Was pleasantly surprised that this book held its own to the first book. Love a good enemies-to-lovers romance.

Nonfiction

Albums

  • Space of the Heart – GoldFord. Described as soulful pop. Love every song on this EP.
  • Even in Arcadia – Sleep Token. Alternative Metal. Amazing blend of genres and impressive musicality. 
  • Portal – Balu Brigada. Indie pop. I prefer the funkier songs but still enjoyable.
  • Pressure – Julia Wolf. Been listening to “In My Room” on repeat and will continue to do so until I hate it. 

Kelly

Well, I have been reading a LOT of romance, so here you go.

Novels

  • What If You Fall for Me First by G.F. Miller. I’m always on the lookout for romance books I can give tweens and this one fits the bill perfectly. Yes, I already asked Heidi to order it, as well as the first book in the series, Not If You Break Up with Me First. Imagine The Duff if it was set in middle school. It’s adorably cute. Kitten sweaters and all 
  • Come As You Are by Dahlia Adler. I read this teen book in one day maybe two days and then I went back and reread all of the scenes with the two main leads because their chemistry is just *chef’s kiss*. 
  • Any Trope but You by Victoria Lavine. I’m not gonna lie, if you don’t like the main character, you won’t like this book. But there’s a lot of other things to love like the scene where she trips and sprains her ankle, so he has to carry her down a mountain, meeting the man of her dreams by literally jumping into his arms because she saw a moose (did I mention this is set in Alaska?), and you know, a sizzling sauna scene. Also, both main characters are the primary caregivers for family members, and I loved that this was a major part of the story. If you don’t like romance, I’d still read it because of the well-written relationship between the main character and her sister–think of The Notebook if it had been about two sisters–happy tears.

Albums

  • EPIC the Musical – Jorge Rivera-Herrans. I’m cheating a little bit because it originally did not come out in 2025, but there is a new complete collection 3 LP set that you can pre-order and –checks the website– is already SOLD OUT. Nooooooooo that was gonna be my Christmas present. Anyway, I put this musical about The Odyssey up there with other greats like Les Mis, Hamilton, and Phantom of the Opera. Every song on here truly is epic, and I am OBSESSED -IWYFILWYOAOAIDCHWOWNMHLIBYMDTMYNTSPAIBWWPWWPWWWOFY (IFYKYK)
  • K Pop Demon Hunters Soundtrack. I mean how can I not add this. 

Movies

  • The Accountant 2. It is just as good as the first one. Two Wolff brothers mean double the trouble, double the fun, and double the sarcasm (Brax has enough for both of them). My favorite scene is them both sitting on top of Christian’s trailer in lawn chairs and Christian’s brother, Brax gives him a hard time (as brothers do) about putting on sunscreen and eventually chucks it across the lot.

Debbie

Novels

  • Tilt by Emma Pattee. A slim but powerful book about Annie, a heavily pregnant woman, caught up in everyday worries, who is in IKEA picking out a crib when a massive earthquake hits. It’s both a journey across the city to find her husband, and a journey within.  
  • The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. A great historical horror novel with an interesting twist on vampires that I did not see coming!  Not to mention that the novel brought to light some real horrors from history.  

Movies

  • Eddington dir. by Ari Aster. A darkly funny look at how the pandemic made a lot of us crazy.  Great performances and a sharp message!
  • Mickey 17 dir. by Bong Joon Ho. The director of Parasite is back with a fun, sci-fi social satire that touches on issues of identity and class struggle, all while being a gonzo sci-fi adventure!
  • Weapons dir. by Zach Cregger. My favorite scary movie of the year. It had so many interesting twists, genuinely terrifying moments and strong visuals. But not for the faint of heart – there is one scene I wish I could un-see.
  • Ocean with David Attenborough was one of my favorite documentaries of the year!  Beautiful visuals and also a strong message about the real challenges facing the ocean, but ultimately hopeful on how everyday people can change things for the better.

Beth

Novels

  • A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar. A dystopian novel set in near future Kolkata following two characters as they navigate the despair, fear and urgency that accompanies climate induced famine. Majumdar writes her characters with such compassion that, despite their sometimes cruel and selfish choices, there is no villain or hero, but simply two characters desperately struggling to protect and take care of their families in a dangerous and uncertain world. 

Nonfiction/Memoir

  • Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy. Roy is one of my favorite writers and her first memoir is full of conviction and vulnerability as she explores her life, in particular her very complicated relationship with her mother. I listened to this on audiobook, and Roy’s wonderfully soothing, articulate voice – one I could listen to read a phone book – accentuates the beauty and poetry of her writing.

Television

  • The Rehearsal (Season 2) As a fan of everything that Nathan Fielder creates, the second season of The Rehearsal is the most absurd, chaotic, inventive and over the top stunt he’s pulled off. What other comedian would get a commercial pilot’s license – with a 737 rating – for a TV show? 

Albums

  • Man’s Best Friend – Sabrina Carpenter. I wasn’t sure how Carpenter would follow up Short n’ Sweet, which in my opinion was (near) pop perfection, but Man’s Best Friend is even more campy, playful and laugh out loud funny than its predecessor. Dance parties highly encouraged!
  • The Life of a Showgirl – Taylor Swift. A little indie project that you might have missed as it flew under most people’s radar, The Life of a Showgirl is a skip-less 12 track album that is pure, unapologetic fun from start to finish. Honestly, even if the rest of the album were duds, “Father Figure” alone would be enough to make it my favorite of the year. 
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Book Spotlight

Book Spotlight: The Witch’s Daughter

by Public Service Associate Juliana

The Witch’s Daughter: My Mother, Her Magic, and the Madness that Bound Us by Orenda Fink (2024)

Today’s book spotlight features a memoir I gravitated towards as if it was magnetic. I noticed it on the new shelf in the library lobby and felt literally pulled to examine it closer, drawn to the arrangement of pressed flowers on the cover, the unmarked sheet music background, and the black cursive typography of the title that appears to be scribed with a paintbrush. The title itself beckoned me; The Witch’s Daughter sounds like the stuff of dark fairytales and straight away inspired interest and intrigue.

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Recommendations

The Great Outdoors

by Content Coordinator Hannah

What began as just a week back in 1998 has grown into Great Outdoors Month, officially recognized by the U.S. Senate on June 5, 2019. It’s a national celebration meant to encourage people (you’re invited!) to explore and appreciate nature—for all its benefits: mental well-being, stronger communities, economic value, and of course, physical health.

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Recommendations

Walks with Mondo: A Book Lover’s Guide to Exercise

by Public Service Associate Juliana

Mondo among the violets

I wish I loved exercise as much as I love reading. Maybe even half as much as I love reading. I have no problem showing up for the current chapter I’m on. But lately I can’t get myself to exercise. For a while, I showed up for yoga, but now my mat gathers dust. When I started watching Scandinavian murder mysteries while on the stationary bike, I thought I’d solved my exercise problem once and for all. That felt like something I would and could do a couple times a week.

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Recommendations

Permission to Watch the Movie First: To the Lighthouse

by Public Service Associate Juliana

When it comes to “Page to Screen” movies, like many people, I almost always prefer to read the book before seeing the film. Occasionally I’ve done the opposite – watched the movie first and then decided to read the book it’s based on. When I’ve done this in the past, I’ve found myself bored out of my mind because I knew too much. But what I’d like to present today is an argument for when it is very much OK to watch the movie first. 

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Recommendations

Celebrating Women’s History Month: Reflections, Stories, and Empowerment

By Public Service Associate & Content Coordinator Hannah

I knew I wanted to write a Women’s History Month post, but I didn’t know how to go about it. After all, this month is an opportunity to celebrate the vast accomplishments of women throughout history and the ongoing contributions we make. It’s a time to acknowledge the resilience, creativity, and courage of individual women and the communities that empower them. It’s also a moment to honor and encourage women to support one another on our journeys whether on a grand scale or in quieter, more personal ways. So, with all that in mind, I turned to the library, a natural source of inspiration, and it came through.

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staff favorites

Staff Favorites of 2024

by Public Service Associate Juliana

I learned something while compiling this year’s list of favorites — I found that most of us here on staff at the library don’t read the most popular new titles. For example, we didn’t read James (except for Jen), The Martyr, The Women, or All Fours. I, for example, didn’t even read Intermezzo yet, and I am a (big) Sally Rooney fan. These titles will likely be on our TBR 2025 lists for when some of the hype falls away and we can get these items in our hands. What you will find below are some of 2024’s titles that we enjoyed and were able to snag off the new shelf in good time.

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Recommendations

Haunted Novels for Fall

by Public Service Associate Juliana

Many Octobers I have steeped myself in scary movies, but this year I feel driven to read something scary. There’s no better place to start than with a classic from horror queen, Shirley Jackson. When I searched the fiction stacks I found The Haunting of Hill House. Orange and black cover, inky, black-edged pages and the title in gothic font, I was immediately obsessed.

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