Betty Martin
Host, Martin's Must-ReadsBetty Martin was born in Boston, Massachusetts to a Lutheran pastor and his organist wife. Betty’s love of books was inspired by her father who read to all four children each night.
After graduating from the University of Connecticut with a B.A. in American History in 1975, she followed her mother’s advice and earned a Masters in Library Science from the Southern Connecticut State University. In her first professional library position she served as the children’s librarian for the Wallingford Public Library in Wallingford, Connecticut, for fifteen years.
In 1992 she moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she served as a Regional Youth Services Coordinator for the St. Louis Public Library. She moved to Cape Girardeau, Missouri in 1994 to marry Mark Martin and was hired by the Cape Girardeau Public Library to serve as the Adult Services Coordinator which she did for three years until being promoted to director. She served as director for twenty-one years and counts leading the organization through a building project as the highlight of her career.
She retired in July of 2018 and now has plenty of time to read. Her reading tastes lean towards historical fiction, any well-written novel with quirky characters and a few nonfiction titles. Her ultimate hope in recording book reviews is that, someday, someone will make an action figure of her just like Nancy Pearl has, or maybe a bobble-head.
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“I didn’t mean to keep count of how many people I’d watched die since Mrs. Heyland thirty-one years ago, but my subconscious was a diligent accountant. Especially since I was nearing a pretty impressive milestone - today the tally nudged up to ninety-seven.” -
“We slept on the ground,” Charlie told me. “We were so exhausted. Sometimes we got a bath in a horse tank.” Though I heard Charlie tell this story a number of times, I never dulled to his marvelous self-confidence. Not only had he set out at age sixteen to cross the country on unpaved roads. Not only had he done it without letting anyone know where he was going or when he would return. He did it with empty pockets sure that he could make his way somehow.” -
“For a long moment, the command post is silent. All eyes study the drone video feed on the screen. A sea of red heat signatures is moving through the jungle, heading directly for Jericho City. We’ll never survive contact with this many E. Rex. Even before we came down to the planet, we knew that the Eos Rex was the most dangerous predator on this world. We call them E. Rex because they resemble the T. Rex from Earth’s past.” -
“I see a young man on TV, riding a horse out of a barn, hugging a little girl. Let’s face it, I’m in the market for a useful idiot, and he’s strong and has that big goofy grin. So voila, there he is, the ideal candidate. He doesn’t have the brains of a plate of spaghetti, or seems not to. A cipher even to himself. Never even voted, can you believe it. Perfect, absolutely perfect. I’ll create him. I’ll be his Henry Higgins. And he’ll repay me with votes.” L.D. chuckled. “I had no idea what I was in for.” -
Many years ago, while visiting Coventry Cathedral, my mother was taken by the beautiful needlepoint kneelers that were in every row. She asked the guide if they sold the pattern for them and the guide went off to check. She returned with a packet of four of the original pattern papers and simply gave them to my mother. -
“Prologue. Altha. 1619. Ten days they’d held me there. Ten days, with only the stink of my own flesh for company. Not even a rat graced me with its presence. There was nothing to attract it; they had brought me no food. Only ale.” -
“Your education will prepare your to be splendid wives and mothers, and your reward might be to marry Harvard men.” Wilbur Kitchener Jordan, president of Radcliffe College, in his welcoming addresses to incoming students, 1950’s.” -
“Deep in space, billions of miles from Earth, an ancient machine awoke. The machine ran several simulations, quickly settling on the optimal way to eliminate the target. The question wasn’t whether it could wipe out the primitivism.” -
“Approaching the museum, ready to hunt, Stephane Breitwieser clasps hands with his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, and together they stroll to the front desk and say hello, a cute couple. Then they purchase two tickets with cash and walk in. It’s lunchtime, stealing time, on a busy Sunday in Antwerp, Belgium, in February 1997. “ -
Anthony Peardew has been collecting lost things for forty years, ever since he lost the St. Teresa medal that his wife-to-be gave him right before she died. Every day he goes for a walk, picks up lost items, brings them back to his study, and labels them.
