thursday august 31
Ruth Rendell lost the job in Essex, England, after writing an article about a tennis club event that she was supposed to attend but didn't, thus missing the mid-speech death of the keynote speaker. Whoops! Fortunately for us, she took up mystery writing.
In a superficial way, she resembles Agatha Christie--British, terrifically prolific, lots of murders. Rendell's books are more character- than plot-driven, though. She breaks all the rules of mystery writing, but her books are wonderful. I don't want to give any plots away, so I'm not going to name titles here. In one serial-killer novel, the murderer only appears as a walk-on for about a page; so much for rules about planting clues. In another, we learn halfway through the book who the serial killer is, and the question in his mind, as in ours, as how he chooses his victims? Why do certain women just have to go, while others arouse no murderous interest? And why didn't he pick up on the serial-killing game until his 40's?
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It might seem frivolous to write about cookbooks for the anniversary of the Katrina disaster but for many survivors of the storm, finding their favorite recipes is a way to reconnect with family memories and local culture.
To lose one's collection of recipes, whether from cookbooks, church notebooks, recipe cards, or newspaper clippings, is to lose your family history. Where do you find Grandma's recipe for potato salad or your child's favorite cookie dough?
People in New Orleans, a city where food is more integral to the culture than perhaps any other city in the country, have turned to university archives, libraries and used book shops to make some attempt to replace their lost treasures.
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tuesday august 29
The RITA (Romance Is Treasured Always) Awards were presented at the 26th Annual Romance Writers of America National Conference in Atlanta on July 29. Although they tend to be overshadowed by other more “literary” awards, the RITAs are a big deal in romance publishing circles.
This year’s winners include:
- Romantic Suspense: Survivor in Death by J.D. Robb
- Inspirational Romance: Heavens to Betsy by Beth Pattillo
- Short Historical Romance: The Texan’s Reward by Jodi Thomas
- Contemporary Single Title: Lakeside Cottage (Susan Wiggs)
- Novel with Strong Romantic Elements: Lady Luck’s Map of Vegas by Barbara Samuel
- Long Historical Romance: The Devil to Pay by Liz Carlyle (this book is on order—keep your eye on the catalog, it should show up shortly)
- Paranormal Romance: Gabriel’s Ghost by Linnea Sinclair (this one is also on order)
You’ll find the complete list of winners on the Romance Writers of America website.
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The Great World is a war novel without battle scenes and a POW novel with only a few chapters set in a prison, but quietly and obliquely it conveys the devastation of war through the story of two men drawn into reluctant lifelong friendship by their shared experiences in Malayan and Thai POW camps during World War II.
Digger Keen, a quiet, steady man with an eidetic memory, lives in the house he grew up in in a backwater Australian town. Apart from the war, he has hardly ever left, and for twenty-six years he has kept in his memory the roll call of his fellow soldiers and their fates that he memorized during his years in the prison camp.
Visiting him now and then (more frequently as the years pass) is Vic Curran, who had a hard-luck childhood but has become wealthy in the years since the war. He fastened onto Digger’s close group of buddies in the service and ended up in the prison camp with him.
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saturday august 26
It's called We Need to Talk about Kevin. It's written in the voice of the mother of a fifteen year old who's murdered nine people. It's even more upsetting than the blurb indicates. Don't read the last chapter and skip all parts about the character Celia.
I put it in the Friends Collection box today along with a bunch of Disney cassettes.
So I turned to Miss Read, whose real name is Dora Jessie Saint. I was surprised to learn she was still alive; her books give the impression of having been written long, long ago. "Quaint" is a word one might use. Her books definitely fall into the "good reads" category; there is little major conflict--mostly character development and interaction. There are a lot of characters, and they reappear from book to book, so you may have to read several books (there are about 30) to get them straight in your mind.
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I've been so busy at work lately. Flying from one thing to the next, hurry, scurry out to the reference desk and then back to the office to work on everything else I have to do. Busy is good. It's fun to be involved in all the great things the library is doing, but sometimes when I get home I need a little help winding down.
Enter Hamish MacBeth. No, I haven't found a pleasant Scotsman to greet me at the door with dinner when I arrive home; Hamish is a character in a series of books by M.C. Beaton. A cozy mystery with a pleasant main character is a great way to unwind, and though Hamish can't beat an actual man bearing dinner, he is pleasant to curl up with nonetheless.
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friday august 25
Curious about graphic novels but haven’t taken the plunge yet? Wondering what all the fuss is about? The short answer is – comics are a lot more interesting than they used to be.
The creative explosion of “the ninth art” in the U.S. market began during the 1970s and produced one milestone after another during the next decade. Here’s a sample:
Mainstream comics veteran Will Eisner created A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories (1978), a collection of powerful tales about immigrant life in New York that he called a “graphic novel” to distinguish it from traditional comics.
Underground comix artist Art Spiegelman founded the cutting-edge journal Raw (1980), where he serialized Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, a complex, very moving account of his parents’ Holocaust experiences, which in book form won a Pulitzer Prize (1993).
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