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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“My Grandma Nene always said that early was on time, on time was late, and late was unacceptable. Fatty was unacceptably late again." -
“One evening, during that painful time, Samuel announced to Anita and Leticia that he had something important to tell them. ....He told the woman and the girl about his traumatic childhood, about losing his family and being exiled to a strange and hostile place, about being an orphan, always lonely, always in fear, until Luke and Lidia Evans came into his life, bringing him comfort and love. ...Finally, he opened his violin case, pulled out his medal, and placed in in Anita’s hand.” -
“The Grand Staircase. In the basement of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, below the Arms and Armor wing and outside the guards’ Dispatch Office, there are stacks of empty art crates. The crates come in all shapes and sizes... fit to ship rare treasures. On the morning of my first day in uniform I stand beside these sturdy, romantic things, wondering what my own role in the museum will feel like.” -
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks is a novel based on the fact of an ancient copy of the Haggadah, a Jewish text that lays out the order of the Passover Seder. This is an extremely precious, illuminated manuscript originally from medieval Spain. -
“At the heart of this vibrant saga is an old slave ship the Ibis. It’s destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean, its purpose to fight in China’s vicious nineteenth-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.” -
“The letter arrives on a Friday. Slit ad resealed with a sticker, of course, as all their letters are: Inspected for your safety-PACT...No return address, only a New York, NY postmark, six days old. On the outside, his name - Bird- and because of this he knows it is from his mother.” -
“Emma. For the past five months, I have watched the world die. Glaciers have advanced across Canada and England and Russia and Scandinavia, trampling everything in their path. They show no signs of stopping. The data says they won’t. Within three months, ice will cover the Earth, and life as we know it will end. My job is to find out why. And to stop it.” -
“My mind replays her screams as the orderlies drag her from the ambulance, an otherworldly mix of falcon and banshee interspersed with strangled pleas: Nonono don’t touch me and I will kill myself and - most chillingly of all: They are coming! Do you hear me? They are coming!" -
"Somewhere, out in the world, are the people who touched us, or loved us, or ran from us. In that way we will live on. We are in the back of hundreds of people’s photographs - moving, talking, blurring into the background of a picture two strangers have framed on their living room mantelpiece. And in that way, we will live on too. But it isn’t enough." -
"Somewhere, out in the world, are the people who touched us, or loved us, or ran from us. In that way we will live on. We are in the back of hundreds of people’s photographs - moving, talking, blurring into the background of a picture two strangers have framed on their living room mantelpiece. And in that way, we will live on too. But it isn’t enough."
