GPL Blog

Our Favorite Recipes

The holiday season has us in a cooking mood, and we’re taking to the blog to share some of our staff’s favorite recipes. Have a favorite family recipe? Share it with us! Send to reference@galesburglibrary.org and your recipe will be featured in a future blog post!

Spinach Casserole

4 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 (24 oz.) small curd cottage cheese
3 (10 oz.) packages frozen chopped spinach
10 strips bacon, cooked crisp
1 stick butter
6 eggs, beaten until smooth
5 tbsp flour
2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1 tbsp lemon juice …

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Book Review | The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

From the publisher: Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches…

Disclaimer: I haven’t read Rebecca or Mexican Gothic (but I’ve got the ARC!). Regardless, I enjoyed this book immensely and immediately gave it five stars. I also knew next to nothing about the Mexican War of Independence before starting and was able to follow along without any issue.

After her father’s execution during the overthrow of the government, Beatriz is desperate to find a home again for herself and her mother. She eagerly accepts the proposal of the…

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Book Review | The Guest List by Lucy Foley

From the publisher: On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed. And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?

I remember a lot of hype and buzz about this book last summer, and now that I’ve (finally) gotten around to reading it for a “mystery” Halloween bingo square, I see what all the fuss…

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Book Review | Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson

Artemisia is training to be a Gray Sister, a nun who cleanses the bodies of the deceased so that their souls can pass on; otherwise, they will rise as spirits with a ravenous hunger for the living. She would rather deal with the dead than the living, who trade whispers about her scarred hands and troubled past.

When her convent is attacked by possessed soldiers, Artemisia defends it by awakening an ancient spirit bound to a saint’s relic. It is a revenant, a malevolent being that threatens to possess her the moment she drops her guard. Wielding its extraordinary power almost consumes her—but death has come to Loraille, and only a vespertine, a priestess trained to wield a high relic, has any chance of stopping it. With all knowledge of vespertines lost to time, Artemisia turns to the last remaining expert for help: the

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Book Review | The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich

From the Publisher: Omakayas and her family live on the land her people call the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker. Although the “chimookoman,” white people, encroach more and more on their land, life continues much as it always has: every summer they build a new birchbark house; every fall they go to ricing camp to harvest and feast; they move to the cedar log house before the first snows arrive, and celebrate the end of the long, cold winters at maple-sugaring camp.

This is a highly recommended read for any Little House on the Prairie fans (along with Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park), as well as other readers interested in the mid 1800s and pioneering time period and aspects of American history. Louise Erdrich, an enrolled…

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Staff Picks — August 2021: Meghan

Curious what the staff of GPL likes to read? Every month we’ll share five titles we’ve read recently. All titles are available for checkout at the library — give us a call or visit the catalog to put one on hold!

STAMPED: RACISM, ANTIRACISM, AND YOU by Jason Reynolds
A remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning for ages 12 and up. This is NOT a history book. This is a book about the here and now. A book to help us better understand why we are where we are. A book about race…

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Book Review | Condor Comeback by Sy Montgomery

>b>Sibert Medalist, National Book Award Honoree, and New York Times best-selling author Sy Montgomery turns her formidable talents to the story of California condors and the scientists who have fought against their extinction. In April of 1987 the last wild California condor was captured and taken to live in captivity like the other twenty-six remaining birds of its kind. Many thought that the days were over of this remarkable, distinguished bird that had roamed the skies of North and Central American for thousands of years.

Condor Comeback is a fantastic nonfiction book lavishly illustrated with photos by…

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Book Review | The Godmothers by Camille Aubray

From the publisher: Filomena, Amie, Lucy, and Petrina become godmothers to one another’s children, finding hope and shelter in this prosperous family and their sumptuous Greenwich Village home, and enjoying New York life with its fine dining, opulent department stores and sophisticated nightclubs. But the women’s secret pasts lead to unforeseen consequences and betrayals that threaten to unravel all their carefully laid plans. When their husbands are forced to leave them during the second World War, the Godmothers must unexpectedly contend with notorious gangsters who run the streets of New York City.

I found The Godmothers to be an excellent novel that kept me distracted through a day of…

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Book Review | Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire

From the publisher: They have names for her all over the country: the Girl in the Diner. The Phantom Prom Date. The Girl in the Green Silk Gown. Mostly she just goes by “Rose,” a hitchhiking ghost girl with her thumb out and her eyes fixed on the horizon, trying to outrace a man who never sleeps, never stops, and never gives up on the idea of claiming what’s his. She’s the angel of the overpass, she’s the darling of the truck stops, and she’s going to figure out a way to win her freedom. After all, it’s not like it can kill her — you can’t kill what’s already dead.

“No matter what form your soul takes when it hits the ghostroads, it has rules it has to follow. I can borrow flesh and blood from the living for the span of a night by putting on the…

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Book Review | Baby Zebra Rescue by Tamsyn Murray

From the Publisher: There’s paws, claws, feathers and fur — welcome to Tanglewood Animal Park! Zoe loves living with her family at Tanglewood — splashing with penguins, feeding lemurs their breakfast, and even seeing baby zebra, Flash, being born! Then disaster strikes when Flash goes missing. Can Zoe help rescue him in time for the grand opening?

Zoe’s parents have bought a failing zoo and now she lives in the manor house on zoo grounds and helps out with taking care of the animals. The short description provided by the publisher makes this seem a lot lighter and fluffier than it actually is. I was expecting this to be similar to some of our other animal-based chapter book series for younger…

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