Aug. 4, 2025 – The Cedar Rapids Public Library is made possible by our incredible staff. And we are staffed by book lovers. To celebrate the people who keep our library running, we're highlighting different staff members and books they love.
Event Specialist Andres has officially worked at the library for two years, but was a volunteer before that. Event specialists help manage room reservations at the library and make sure people using library spaces for everything have what they need. They also do library outreach to festivals, fairs, and beyond.
"As the event specialist, I am uniquely positioned to be involved with a such a diverse and fascinating range of individuals, organizations, events and programs. I never know what my day might look like – it could be a wedding or a book club, a gender reveal or a business meeting, a local movie screening or a cat cafe," Andres said. "A lot of the people that use these spaces might not be regular library patrons, so often I am the only face and interaction they get with our library. It's a serious responsibility, a heck of a good time, and a valuable part of what makes our library so unique and purposeful."
The library only has a couple of Andres' book picks in our collection, but you can browse his entire list below.
"Viscera Objectica" by Yugo Limbo
A beloved and 'bound by nothing' tailor discovers the only place where he feels complete is in the arms of a puppet named Theu. The playful and disarming black and white illustration tells a perplexing but universal story of finding a love and companionship you never expected. One that stitches you together and puts patches on the exposed, weathered parts of yourself. It's a unique showcase of the strange and fascinating ways we fill our lives with love, and it's a reminder that what we choose to love often chooses us.
"The Enchanted April" by Elizabeth von Arnim
This book perfectly and brilliantly writes about nothing at all. There is no horrendous tragedy, there is no profound love story, no war to fight, no revenge to seek. It is simply the story of what happens when a group of people, from every walk of life, get together for a vacation in a beautiful place. The transparency of their interactions and connections makes the culmination of the story so impactful and leaves you with a warm and lovely feeling.
"Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille" by Steven Brust
Woven in the ink the words are printed with is a sense of comfort. There is time travel and space ships, but somehow it is written with a simple and digestible familiarity that makes it so impressionable. The story follows a literal "band" of misfits, with their music and the safety of Feng's Space Bar and Grille being the only thing keeping them together while they mysteriously bounce through time and space. It makes the unimaginable seem like a memory. It places you at the center of the story and forces you to read your way out. A harrowing, whimsical and adventurous story about what the bond of friendship can get us through and how rare it is to get to the end of the story and not look back with regret.
"The Scarlet Pimpernel" by Baroness Orczy
With 'La guillotine' sending both aristocrats and commoners to their grizzly end by the thousands, the story is centered around a league of the bravest men to ever defy the French Republic and their daring leader; The Scarlet Pimpernel! Regarded as the blueprint for the daring masked hero such as Zorro, the Green Hornet and Batman; Baroness Orczy creates a story bolstered by historical events and rich with battles of wit and courtship and daring rescues. Some of the best characters to ever take shape on a page.
"All Tomorrows" by C.M. Kösemen
This is one of the most mystifying, terrifying, uplifting, and intriguing things I have ever read. It chronicles the multibillion-year course that humankind takes as we traverse the stars, evolve beyond our home world and confront things we can't yet conceptualize. It is not so much a story as it is a history lesson, told from the future, of the human race adapting to the stars, meeting superior civilizations, fighting wars on a universal level, and ultimately being scattered to the stars.