LE CLAIRE, Iowa — While we love our adventure, thriller and romance novels, we also love a deep dive into real people, places and events! It's why nonfiction is the star of this Current Reads edition.
Twice a month on our 4 p.m. show, The Current, we bring you a book-club-style segment called "Current Reads." We chat with libraries all over our viewing area to hear what people are reading in their community. For this edition, we're going just a hop, skip and a jump away to the LeClaire Community Library.
The library's director, Melita Tunnicliff, joined us with the three most popular nonfiction books in LeClaire this summer:
- "An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s" by Doris Kearns Goodwin comes straight from the author's own experiences and heart, as the famed historian takes readers on a journey that's part biography, part memoir and chock-full of history. Doris and her husband Dick were married for 42 years. In his twenties, Dick was part of John F. Kennedy's New Frontier. His journey then took him into the designing of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Decades passed as Doris and Dick watched leaders rise and fall, achievements come and go, and progress unfurl in the country they both loved. Years later, they realized they had an unparalleled time capsule of the 1960s, in the form of more than 300 boxes of letters, diaries, documents and memorabilia that Dick had saved.
- "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness" by Jonathan Haidt was only published in March 2024, but has already become a #1 New York Times Bestseller. Haidt examines the severe decline of adolescent mental health in the early 2010s. Why did rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide rise so sharply? The author fleshes out a clear call to action that parents, teachers, tech companies, governments and individuals can take to restore a "more humane childhood."
- "The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year" by Margaret Renkl has been described as the perfect gift for nature lovers, birders and gardeners. Each of its 52 chapters follows the creatures and plants that lived and died in Renkl's backyard over the course of a year. Along the way, it gives glimpses into the changing rhythms of human life, as people move out, move home, move on and move through life. But, as Renkl writes, “radiant things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world.”
For seniors in the area, the LeClaire library hosts a Senior Social Hour once a month. Attendees are invited for socializing, activities and refreshments on the second Tuesday of each month, from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. The next gathering will be on Tuesday, Sept. 10 in the Community Room.
Plus, the library's year-long, total renovation project of its interior space is finally finished! There will be a special celebration coinciding with the library's 20th Anniversary Celebration on Sunday, Oct. 20. There will be children's programming, music and live entertainment.
Tune into The Current from 4 to 5 p.m. on weekdays to catch live interviews impacting you, your family and your hometown as well as all of the biggest headlines of the day.