Greetings, salutations, and welcome back to another Supreme Court snubbing,
man-made climate change believing, free and fair election loving, zeitgeist
consuming edition of the High Demand Hold Digest - your slice and sliver of
what our beloved patrons are requesting at a faster rate than we are
purchasing.
So welcome to the strangest time of summer, where the air is still humid,
the streets are still flooded with out-of-state plates running a little
late, and pastel tainted book jackets flood the beaches, benches, and front
porches across our land. But it also the time when you can hear the far-off
school bells of distant lands start to ring, when the earliest traces of
fall red start to show on the tops of trees even in 100-degree weather, and
we all experience that feeling of something slipping through our collective
fingers. It is August, that time when the vast highway of possibilities of
June slams headlong into the reality of September. But don't fret, there's
still time for more summer readings, more late-night movie binging, more
believing that colder days are just a dream, and this sweltering warmth is
the never-ending reality. Falling or flying feels the same, until you hit
the ground.
So once again I must offer my apologies for my lapse in delivery of last
month's edition. The words I try to pluck from the ether were backordered
due to a supply chain issue, and were last seen on a barge somewhere off the
coast of Portugal. If they ever arrive, I'll send them along. I had a
notion of attempting to do some kind of wrap-up for the last two months of
our collective experiences, took one quick look at how the world has heaved,
hoed, twisted, and evolved since your eyes and these words last met, and
immediately realized there might not be enough space on the internet to
contain that rant. But in that sensation of being completely overwhelmed by
the daily drudge of history and current events in closing days of the first
quarter of the 21st century, I also felt that pride in my (and our) chosen
vocation.
Trying to keep up with the "news" of the day is akin to Patrick Swayze
riding out for that final wave in the magnificent film Point Break. You
know the wave is too high, that the rage of the storm is too intense, that
there is too much water to fight, and there is no chance of catching that
perfect wave, yet you paddle out into the thick of it because you must give
it a try. The news is geared to feed us a constant click-bait cycle of
inflammatory headlines, misleading presentations of facts, and creating an
overall compulsion to continue to watch on instead of digest and consider.
There are no context for events, just the blood. There are no lessons to be
learned, only new breaking news to consume.
And, because of this, I value my work in fields of libraries even more. We
act as the exact counterpoint to the rapid-fire presentation of spectacle,
terror, and titillation. Libraries are where you go to reflect on a point,
to delve into the deeper issues, to find that context of what came before to
better understand what is happening. We act as the space where people can
breathe, can lament, and can quietly sit plunging into the deepest depths of
any subject, thought, or event under the sun. We present whole books
instead of headlines, entire albums instead of song snippets, entire films
and series instead of sound bites, and primary documents instead of
fragments used to prove a point. And in doing that daily work, we continue
to prove some basic truths to still hold true - namely that, for the most
part, people are good, trustworthy, and crave information and enlightenment
more than spectacle and doom scrolling. Keep up the good work - we haven't
been proven wrong yet!
Now, for the uninitiated and the new, what you are seeing is the Minerva
High Demand Hold Digest, a "monthly" list of the most requested items in the
Minerva consortium of public, academic, school, and special libraries. To
make the list, the item must have at least twice as many active requests as
there are items in the system. So while "Let's Go For A Ride: The Wild Life
of Maine's Longest-Tenured Undercover Game Warden" has 13 holds (more than
the lowest ranked non-fiction book), there are 10 copies in the system,
hence it is not considered "high demand" and is absent from the list. The
list is distributed via various Maine library list-servs. If you happen to
be digging a well and found a printed copy of it buried in the Earth and
find yourself wanting more of it without subscribing to the list-servs,
please send me an email and you will be added to a direct distribution list.
Thank you for your patience with my highly erratic recent deliveries of this
list and these missives. And special thanks to those who have reached out
to me and found only silence. Sometimes even the most positive of messages
must travel slowly through the mud to get to the final destination.
As Michael Franti recently belted out, "Life is amazing, then it sucks.
Then it's amazing again."
Be well, good people in Maine's library-land (and to the more distant shore
where sometimes these words reach). Keep proving that humanity is good and
trustworthy, and keep moving in the direction of your dreams instead of your
fears.
Until we meet again, keep the faith, keep trying, and keep believing.
Best,
Josh
Joshua Tiffany, MLIS
Director of Communications, Libraries, and Information Technology - Town of
Gray
Minerva Cataloging Committee Member
Minerva Circulation Standards Member
(207) 657-4110
<mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask]
<http://www.graypubliclibrary.com/> www.graypubliclibrary.com
The America I love still exists at the front desk of our public libraries -
Kurt Vonnegut
_____
This electronic mail message and any attachments hereto, as well as any
electronic mail message(s) that may be sent in response to it, may be
considered public records, and may therefore be subject to public record
requests for review and copying under Maine's Right to Know Law (Title 1,
401-521 of the Maine Revised Statutes).
Fiction Books
1. Hatchet Island (Doiron) - 413 holds on 119 items
2. The Midcoast (White) - 247 holds on 53 items
3. Hotel Nantucket (Hilderbrand) - 209 holds on 76 items
4. Horse (Brooks) - 154 holds on 49 items
5. Fellowship Point (Dark) - 141 holds on 35 items
6. The It Girl (Ware) - 134 holds on 45 items
7. Night of the Living Rez (Talty) - 132 holds on 43 items
8. Lessons in Chemistry (Garmus) - 119 holds on 46 items
9. Portrait of an Unknown Woman (Silva) - 106 holds on 37 items
10. Verity (Hoover) - 75 holds on 22 items
11. Shattered (Patterson) - 59 holds on 24 items
12. The Foundling (Leary) - 58 holds on 23 items
13. Every Summer After (Fortune) - 57 holds on 15 items
14. Black Dog (Woods) - 53 holds on 13 items
15. Book Lovers (Henry) - 46 holds on 19 items
16. The Bodyguard (Center) -44 holds on 17 items
17. The Measure (Erlick) - 40 holds on 14 items
18. Counterfeit (Chen) - 39 holds on 17 items
19. The Bodyguard (Center) - 42 holds on 17 items
20. Reckoning (Coulter) - 32 holds on 14 items
Non-fiction Books
1. An Immense World: How animal senses reveal the hidden realms around
us (Young) - 60 holds on 23 items
2. Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell
(Miller) - 53 holds on 6 items
3. Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the
Price of Submission (Leibovitch) - 36 holds on 5 items
4. Rough Draft: A Memoir (Tur) -33 holds on 15 items
5. Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional (Fitzgerald) - 33 holds on 11
items
6. Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 (Puleo) - 16
holds on 7 items
7. The Big Lie: Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of
American Politics After 2020 (Lemire) - 15 holds on 4 items
8. Things to Look Forward To: 52 Large and Small Joys for Today and
Every Day (Blackall) - 11 holds on 5 items
9. If We Break: A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction, and Healing (Buhle) -
10 holds on 3 items
10. I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet: Discovering New Ways of Living
When the Old Ways Stop Working (Niequist) - 10 holds on 2 items
Large Print
1. Hotel Nantucket (Hilderbrand)- 60 holds on 28 items
2. The 6:20 Man (Baldacci) - 44 holds on 11 items
3. Shattered (Patterson) - 40 holds on 4 items
4. Horse (Brooks) - 35 holds on 9 items
5. Lessons in Chemistry (Garmus) - 31 holds on 7 items
6. Portrait of an Unknown Woman (Silva) - 29 holds on 7 items
7. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Huge (Reid) - 18 holds on 6 items
8. Flying Solo (Holmes) - 17 holds on 7 items
9. The Lioness (Bohjalian) = 16 holds on 8 items
10. Sugar and Salt (Wiggs) - 8 holds on 3 items
Pre-publication
1. Hatchet Island (large print) (Hilderbrand) - 72 holds
2. A World of Curiosities (Penny) - 58 holds
3. The Maze (DeMille) -48 holds
4. It Stars With Us (Hoover) - 41 holds
5. The Boys from Biloxi (Grisham) - 40 holds
6. Carrie Soto is Back (Reid) - 39 holds
7. Going Rogue (Evanovich) - 38 holds
8. The Family Remains (Jewell) - 38 holds
9. Ink Black Heart (Galbraith) - 36 holds
10. No Plan B (Child) - 34 holds
Graphic Novels
1. The Way of the House Husband vol. 7 - 3 holds on 1 item
2. The Sandman: Book 1 - 2 holds on 1 item
3. Komi Can's Communicate. 19 - 2 holds on 1 item
4. Dr. Stone 16: Medusa vs. Science - 2 holds on 1 item
5. Adventure Time Comics. Vol 2 - 2 holds on 1 item
Audiobooks
1. Remarkably Bright Creatures (Van Pelt) - 15 holds on 4 items
2. Fellowship Point (Dark) - 10 holds on 3 items
3. The Cartographers (Shepherd) - 4 holds on 2 items
4. As the Crow Flies (Archer) - 3 holds on 1 item
5. Wheat Belly 10-day Grain Detox (Davis) - 2 holds on 1 item
6. Molly: An American Girl (Tripper) - 2 holds on 1 item
7. The Girl Who Survived (Jackson) - 2 holds on 1 item
8. French: The Complete Course II - 2 holds on 1 item
DVD
1. The Lost City - 23 holds on 8 items
2. Mothering Sunday - 8 holds on 4 items
3. Factory Girl - 3 holds on 1 item
4. The Witch - 2 holds on 1 item
5. Paris Blues - 2 holds on 1 item
6. Museum Town - 2 holds on 1 item
7. The Last Victim - 2 holds on 1 item
8. Frances - 2 holds on 1 item
9. Desperate Character - 2 holds on 1 item
10. Bridge of Spies - 2 holds on 1 item
TV Series
1. The Gilded Age: Season 1 - 8 holds on 4 items
2. Evil: Season 2 - 5 holds on 1 item
3. Grace and Frankie: Season 4 - 4 holds on 2 items
4. The Waltons: Season 9 - 2 holds on 1 item
5. New Tricks: Collection seasons 6-8 - 2 holds on 1 item
6. Law and Order: The Second Year - 2 holds on 1 item
7. The Larkins: Series 1 - 2 holds on 1 item
8. Jack Irish: Season 3 - 2 holds on 1 item
9. Diagnosis Murder: Season 1 - 2 holds on 1 item
10. Batwoman: Season 3 - 2 holds on 1 item
Blu-ray + Blu-ray/DVD combo
1. Everything Everywhere All At Once - 15 holds on 7 items
2. Downton Abbey: A New Era (combo) - 10 holds on 2 items
3. The Bad Guys (combo) - 8 holds on 3 items
4. The Lost City - 7 holds on 2 items
5. Uncharted (combo) - 5 holds on 1 item
6. The Northman (combo) - 4 holds on 2 items
7. Drive My Car - 3 holds on 1 item
Music CDs
1. Watch my Moves (Vile) - 2 holds on 1 item
2. The Unforgettable Fire (U2) - 2 holds on 1 item
3. Toast (Young) - 2 holds on 1 item
4. NOW That's What I Call Country vol. 15 - 2 holds on 1 item
5. Meet the Moonlight (Johnson) - 2 holds on 1 item
6. 1972 (Black Crowes) - 2 holds on 1 item
Videogames
1. Kirby and the Forgotten Land - 13 holds on 5 items
2. Nintendo Switch: Sports - 6 holds on 2 items
3. Nintendo Switch: Sports - 5 holds on 2 items
BLAST FROM THE PAST - High Demand Digest of August 1, 2017
Books
1. Knife Creek (Doiron) - 246 holds on 74 items
2. Camino Island (Grisham) - 213 holds on 65 items
3. Into the Water (Hawkins) - 171 holds on 65 items
4. A Gentleman in Moscow (Towles) - 156 holds on 59 items
5. The Identicals (Hilderbrand) - 152 holds on 45 items
6. The Late Show (Connelly) - 141 holds on 49 items
7. House of Spies (Silva) - 112 holds on 44 items
8. The Girl on the Bridge (Hayman) - 34 holds on 10 items
9. The Lost Kitchen (French) - 34 holds on 17 items
10. Golden Hill (Spufford) - 30 holds on 10 items
DVD
1. Zookeeper's Wife - 105 holds on 22 items
2. The Boss Baby - 54 holds on 10 items
3. The Lost City of Z - 46 holds on 16 items
4. Gifted - 36 holds on 8 items
5. A Quiet Passion - 35 holds on 12 items
6. Table 19 - 32 holds on 11 items
7. Life - 28 holds on 13 items
8. The Circle - 27 holds on 2 items
9. The Fate of the Furious - 27 holds on 12 items
10. Smurfs: The Lost Village - 24 holds on 9 items
Music CDs
1. Dear Evan Hansen - 4 holds on 2 items
2. Bach Trios - 3 holds on 1 item
3. Lust for Life: Lana Del Rey - 3 holds on 1 item
4. Moana soundtrack - 3 holds on 1 item
5. The Essential Isley Brothers - 2 holds on 1 item
6. Kaya: Bob Marley and the Wailers - 2 holds on 1 item
7. Part Lies, Part Truth, Part Garbaga: REM - 2 holds on 1 item
8. TajMo: Taj Mahal & Keb Mo - 2 holds on 1 item
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