World UFO Day will be celebrated on July 2, 2024, so I hope you have your telescope set up to scan the skies for otherworldly objects. Whether or not you believe in UFOs and ETs (extraterrestrials), the idea of life on other planets is a fascinating one. What do I think? There’s a line in Carl Sagan’s novel “Contact” that resonates with me: “The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” Indeed.
The Roswell, New Mexico incident in 1947, the Betty and Barney Hill abductions in 1961, the disappearance of Travis Walton in 1975 (which inspired the 1993 film “Fire in the Sky”) are but a few examples of alleged encounters between humans and aliens. UFOs have been reported all over the world, but mention the term “flying saucer,” and one can’t help but think about Area 51. Located within the Nevada Test and Training Range, the Air Force facility is near State Route 375, dubbed the Extraterrestrial Highway. Apparently, Nevada is a magnet for extraterrestrial activity. If you’ve ever been to Las Vegas, you know what I mean.
Are we alone? Maybe we are, maybe we aren’t. What I can tell you for certain is that the library has a variety of out-of-this-world books. If you’re out there, ET, please call home…and visit the library.
- The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs by Mark O’Connell
- Cover-Up at Roswell: Exposing the 70-Year Conspiracy to Suppress the Truth by Donald R. Schmitt
- The Day After Roswell by Philip J. Corso
- The Little Book of Aliens by Adam Frank
- Space Oddities: The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe by Harry Cliff
- UFO Secrets Inside Wright-Patterson: Eyewitness Accounts from the Real Area 51 by Thomas J. Carey
New at the Library
Fiction
- Followed by the Lark by Helen Humphreys
- If Something Happens to Me by Alex Finlay
- The Shadow of War: A Novel of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Jeff Shaara
Nonfiction
- The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt
- Ghosted: An American Story by Nancy French
- The SalviSoul Cookbook: Salvadoran Recipes & the Women Who Preserve Them by Karla Tatiana Vasquez
Children
- Fergus and Zeke and the Great Farm Field Trip written by Kate Messner, illustrated by Heather Ross
- Interrupting Cow Meets the Wise Quacker written by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Joelle Dreidemy
- Mini Origami to Fold with Flair by Rebecca Felix and Ruthie Van Oosbree
This is just a small sampling of the many new titles added each week to the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District collection. Visit the district’s 15 locations, our website at www.fvrl.org, or call (360) 906-5000 to reserve titles or find additional listings.
You can email Jan at readingforfun@fvrl.org.
