Happy Galentine’s Day!

If you don’t know about Galentine’s Day, welcome to your introduction to one of the best holidays ever! Galentine’s Day started as a fun holiday made up by the character Leslie Knope on the television show Parks and Recreation. In a nutshell, it takes place the day before Valentine’s Day and is an opportunity for women to celebrate their friendships with each other – go out to dinner, have a drink or two, watch a favorite movie together, go rollerskating – Galentine’s Day is what you and your lady besties make of it. In honor of Galentine’s Day, here are a few items you can check out from FDL that feature awesome ladies being awesome together.

  • The Rook and Stiletto by Daniel O’Malley. These two books are part of the same series but each features a different pair of best friends using their mutant powers to save the world in service to the Queen. In The Rook, Myfanwy Thomas and Shantay Petoskey become fast friends as they try to work through Myfanwy’s amnesia and find out who’s trying to kill her. In Stiletto, we change perspectives and follow Felicity Clements and Odette Leliefeld, who begin as enemies but finish the book as invaluable friends (still with mutant powers).
  • Orphan Black. Friends, sisters, clones? Does it matter how these ladies define themselves or their relationships to each other? They have each others’ backs and are the ultimate sisterhood.
  • Parks and Recreation. I can’t write about Galentin’s Day without mentioning Leslie Knope and Ann Perkins. They represent ultimate best friend goals and regularly pass the Bechdel Test with their eyes closed and one hand tied behind their back.
  • Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang. Paper Girls is a little like Stranger Things but with girls with a paper route instead of boys with D&D. Erin, MacKenzie, KJ and Tiffany are loyal to each other whether they’re combating the crappy boys in their neighborhood or the weird aliens who might cause the end of the world, or the *other* weird aliens who also might cause the end of the world. There are also dinosaur geese. If you’re not reading this comic, I highly suggest starting.
  • Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay. This isn’t a book about besties. It’s kind of a letter to women everywhere to try to be nice to ourselves and each other. Gay uses pop culture and writes about her own life in discussing feminism and how instead of striving for an abstract ideal, the important thing is to build each other up instead of tearing each other down.

Post by Carey Gibbons, Reference Specialist

About #FDL

Welcome to #FDL! #FDL is a twice weekly update on all things Fondulac District Library and East Peoria. Twice a week, library staff will make posts that highlight some aspect of library life and relate it to you – our readers. Have you ever wanted to know which Dewey number represented a certain topic? Are you looking for book recommendations based on your favorite television show or television recommendations based on your favorite book? Have you ever wondered about the secret details of librarian life? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then #FDL is for you. We look forward to writing posts that are informative and entertaining and hope that you enjoy getting better acquainted with Fondulac District Library.