thursday july 17
What does it take to get into the Tour de France? Blood, sweat, tears, and a ton of determination. Lance Armstrong won an unpredecented seven consecutive events. Johan Bruyneel, a Belgian cyclist and trainer, told Lance in 1998, "if we're going to ride the Tour, we might as well win". Bruyneel's new book, We Might As Well Win: The Road to Success With the Mastermind Behind Eight Tour de France Victories, describes his well-proven training regime.
To understand the level of hysteria that rises throughout France for this event, think March Madness here in the U.S. While the finish line is always on the Champs Elysee in Paris, the route of the course changes every year, causing much competition and speculation amongst people in the Provinces. The Tour's official website is loaded with information and videos providing every detail about the 2,000+ mile race, which was first run in 1903. There are also some very cool ways in which you can watch live coverage: via Google Maps or through the tips on this Silicon Valley site.
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wednesday june 18
Amanda Ripley, a writer for Time magazine has written a fascinating exploration of The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—And Why.
This isn’t a Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook, although Ripley certainly advocates planning ahead to meet the disasters you’re most likely to face in your life, since in a catastrophic situation you may not be able to rely on emergency response teams.
It’s more about the reaction process people go through as they face sudden disaster and how each individual’s combination of instinct and experience and training can be lifesaving or fatal in the circumstances.
Through interviews with experts and with survivors of well-known disasters—9/11, the 2006 tsunami, Katrina, the Columbine shootings, and even the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire—Ripley tries to trace the common factors in people’s reactions to catastrophe.
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tuesday april 22
Last month, the science fiction community lost one of its great icons when Arthur C. Clarke died at age 90. His passing caused pause for me because of the role Clarke’s work played in my life as an introduction to the world of science fiction, a role Clarke has filled for readers of many generations.
I still have the tattered copy of Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey I bought in the sixth grade at a flea market stall selling used 50-cent paperbacks. I couldn’t say for sure now what compelled me to buy the book, and I probably couldn’t have told you at the time I bought the book why I was making the purchase. More than likely, I had heard of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick’s eponymous film and figured this was the best way to see what all the fuss was about.
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friday april 04
April is National Poetry Month; Earth Day 2008 is April 22. There are lots of poetry books that celebrate Spring and the Earth on the library bookshelves.
The 2006 Caldecott Honor book Song of the Water Boatman & Other Pond Poems (2005) by Joyce Sidman makes a lovely connection between Earth Day and Poetry Month. Beckie Prange's gorgeous hand colored woodcuts pull together the poetry and scientific information on pond life.
Pat Mora and Steve Jenkins' This Big Sky (1998) brings us to the desert Southwest in words and pictures. Katharine Boling's New Year Be Coming!: A Gullah Year (2002) is illustrated with Daniel Minter's fascinating linoleum block prints illustrating the Gullah life of the Southeast coast, so closely tied to the earth and seasons.
Marilyn Singer's Turtle in July (1989) is a collection of poems about animals, stunningly illustrated by the great Jerry Pinkney. Fireflies at Midnight (2003) by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Ken Robbins, also celebrates animals and insects.
Pause and enjoy these charming tributes to our Earth. The simplicity and uncomplicated joy will refresh you, and make you realize how universally appealing "Children's" poetry can be.
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tuesday february 26
As I write this in late February, there are four candidates in the running for the office of President of the United States. By now, we are all way too familiar with the sound bytes and the TV ads. For a look into their heads before they got to this point, check out the memoirs that have been published in recent years by Barack, Hillary, John, and Mike.
Barack Obama - Dreams from My Father, 2nd ed., 2004, and The Audacity of Hope, 2006
Hillary Rodham Clinton - Living History, 2003
John McCain - Faith of My Fathers, 1999, and Worth the Fighting For, 2002
Mike Huckabee - Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork, 2005, and From Hope to Higher Ground, 2007
Life is hard for when your dad is running for President. You have to leave your overseas boarding school to go on the campaign trail with your parents and on top of that your father’s PR guru renames you with what she deems an Americanized nickname and then has a thirty-something year old man ghostwrite a vacuous blog for you. What is an adopted South Asian teen to do?
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friday february 22
Turning the Page had the opportunity to conduct an interview with Robert Olmstead, author of Coal Black Horse, Cincinnati’s 2008 On the Same Page novel for adults. We asked Mr. Olmstead some general questions, because we wouldn’t want to include spoilers for those of you who haven’t yet read this gripping tale of a young boy seeking his father across the landscape of the Civil War.
But once you have read Coal Black Horse, be sure to bring your own questions to the book-signing with Mr. Olmstead at the Main Library on Sunday, February 24, or to one of the other events at which he’ll appear. Meanwhile, check out the official Web site for the book.
TTP: Where did you get the inspiration for Coal Black Horse?
RO: In the 1980’s I was living in Pennsylvania not far from Gettysburg. Visiting the battlefield for the first time was a powerful experience. I didn’t know that much about the Civil War, just the usual stuff. So living there, walking that ground, it is my way that I wanted to know as much as I could. And of course everything I learned simply made me all the more curious to learn even more.
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friday february 15
The writers' strike is finally over, so the 80th Annual Academy Awards are still set to air on Sunday, February 24th at 8:00 p.m. on ABC. In honor of all things Hollywood, I decided to write about Toby Young’s gossipy memoir, How To Lose Friends and Alienate People.
Young is a British journalist obsessed with American celebrity. He leaves London to accept a job as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, but after years of inappropriate office pranks, drinking too much, desperately trying to crash Oscar parties, and offending celebrities like Nathan Lane and Mel Gibson, he is fired. As the New York Times wrote, “Young has an instinct for annoying the rich and famous that crosses over into the self-destructive.”
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saturday january 19
Plum Island is usually described as "porkchop shaped," which is ironic, because Plum Island porkchops could be even more unhealthy than salmon from China. Indeed, the main thing Plum Island has in common with a sanitary modern slaughterhouse is that the animals that go in don't come out alive.
Except that sometimes they do--or might--and the consequences could be bad, since, as everyone who has watched The Silence of the Lambs knows, Plum Island is home to the United States's Animal Disease Control Center. Michael Christopher Carroll's Lab 257 tells the story of the Island, focusing on decades of inept management, which led to serious maintenance and safety problems on the island, which is just a few miles from Connecticut and Long Island.
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monday january 14
The American Library Association (ALA) today announced the top books, video and audiobooks for children and young adults - including the Caldecott, King, Newbery, and Printz awards - at its Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia.
The following is a list of all ALA Youth Media Awards for 2008:
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tuesday january 08
Bestselling author Sara Paretsky will be in town next week, speaking at a program and book signing sponsored by the library on Thursday, January 17.
She’s most famous of course as one of the “founding mothers” of crime fiction. Her mystery series featuring Chicago private detective V. I. Warshawski was one of the first to feature a female p.i., showing that a woman detective could be as at home on the mean streets as at the tea table.
In her latest novel, Bleeding Kansas, she returns to her roots for an eerie story of neighbor turned against neighbor. Like her other non-series novel, the 1998 Ghost Country, the story is a showcase for her passionate social convictions.
Paretsky draws on the legacy of violence in her home state—both the bloody battle over slavery in Kansas in the 1850s and the Civil Rights struggle and generational divide of the 1960s and 1970s.
The novel’s contemporary story parallels those historic conflicts. Paretsky sees another generation bitterly divided, this time over religious convictions, sexual practices, and the war in Iraq.
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wednesday december 26
I recently noticed on the library's book discussion group calendar that the Miami Township Branch Library book club will be discussing Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer on Tuesday, January 8th at 10:00 a.m.
I read the book this past summer and was blown away. I found myself wanting to talk about it with anyone who would listen--much to the annoyance of my husband and coworkers, I’m sure. But Krakauer’s book is that good. He grabs your attention and doesn’t let go.
Under the Banner of Heaven tells the true story of Mormon fundamentalists Dan and Ron Lafferty, who murdered the wife and infant daughter of their younger brother Allen in 1984 but claimed they were acting on direct orders from God.
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Steve Martin, noted actor and comedian, will be among the honorees at the 30th Annual Kennedy Center Awards this evening.
He has written a book about his own life, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life (2007), which I enjoyed as an audio book. Martin tells affectionately about his life so far and his road to fame. He originally wanted to be a magician, and for years he had magic (and poetry reading!) as part of his act.
Martin has a fascinating and very smart mind, but really I don't know why this should be a surprise. His comedy and acting are clever and easily accessed by almost everyone but especially people around my age, baby boomers who weirdly have things like flower power and air raid drills in our common history. He seems to sum us up, somehow.
It's not a long book. It is succinct. I loved it. And if I have gotten to know Steve Martin at all, I think he is probably a bit bemused by his prestigious honor this evening.
tuesday november 27
Alan Weisman's provocative and deeply depressing book The World Without Us does offer a few optimistic scenarios. The good news (1) Look at the New England forests. Early settlers chopped them down but later abandoned their farms, and now the trees are all grown up again. In a few more generations the forests will look pretty much like they did before the European settlers came. Already, three coyotes have made their way across bridges from New Jersey and into Manhattan.
The other good news (2) In the long run, global warming isn't that big of a deal, because in 5 billion years the sun is going to expand and suck in all the planets, anyway. Also, given the wobble of the earth and its slightly erratic orbit, unless we've really screwed things up, another ice age is inevitable no matter what we do, and it certainly would be more convenient to have one in 14,000 years rather than in 1,000 years. Think of New York City and England as tundra, for example.
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wednesday october 17
The finalists for the 2007 National Book Awards in Young People’s Literature have been announced. What a great slate of candidates, including some of my absolute favorites for the year so far!
In his first book written for teens,
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Soon after the start of his freshman year, Junior leaves the troubled school on the reservation, boldly transferring to a school in a tiny town 22 miles away, where the only other Indian is the school mascot. It is a funny and poignant look at one adolescent’s attempt to break away and make his own future.
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tuesday october 16
New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey surprised many, including his wife, by his 2004 announcement that he was a "gay American." He left office three months later. It wasn't just that he'd had an affair with Golan Cipel, but that he had hired him to be New Jersey's homeland security advisor--not a tiny job in 2002--although Cipel had no particular credentials. After outcry forced McGreevey to fire Cipel, the governor found him four other jobs, which he didn't keep for long.
Eventually Cipel threatened to sue McGreevey for $50 million on sexual-harassment charges. Dina Matos McGreevey published her memoir of the experience, Silent Partner, a few months after Jim McGreevey published his, The Confession.
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friday september 28
September 29-October 6 libraries and booksellers across the country will celebrate Banned Books Week (BBW.) Now in it’s 27th year, BBW celebrates “the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them.”
In 2006, the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom received 546 challenges (formal, written complaints), a 30% increase over the previous year. They estimate the number of unreported challenges to be four or five times this amount.
How many banned books have you read? It’s probably more than you think! The most frequently challenged books of the past ten years include those titles we hear a lot about- The Color Purple and The Catcher in the Rye, but also some that might surprise you such as Martin Hansford’s Where’s Waldo, appearing at no. 88 on the list. Apparently quite a few people have spotted a topless sunbather on one of the spreads.
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monday september 17
Just when I'd become okay with the idea, gathered from my college history text, The Middle Ages, 395-1500, that the western part of the Roman Empire fell because the upper-class Romans who ruled it all moved out to the country and lost interest in even having an empire, let alone paying taxes to support it, a new book, The Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History of Rome and the Barbarians comes out and says no, it really was the barbarians after all. My own ancestors were among the worst barbarians, but you can't blame them because at the time they were too barbaric even to think about attacking anyone. Later, when they did, The Middle Ages, 395-1500 scornfully says they mistook some small Italian hamlet for Rome. The Middle Ages, 395-1500 authors hated my ancestors.
Still, I'm sorry about the Dark Ages, what with being the beneficiary of many centuries of Western culture, as well as other cultures.
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tuesday september 11
I was one of those kids who left the library each week with a new stack of books, getting carsick on the way home because I couldn't wait to start reading. From Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden to C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, my childhood books usually involved misfits and hidden worlds of one kind or another.
Madeleine L'Engle passed away last week at the age of 88. She wrote more than two-dozen works of fiction as well as volumes of poetry and non-fiction.
After I read about L'Engle's death, I immediately retrieved our copy of her most celebrated book, A Wrinkle in Time. This book has some of my favorite misfits and hidden worlds. Meg is a high school student (or junior high? We're never given an exact age) who never seems to work to her potential. She wears glasses and braces and is belligerent toward adults and other students alike. Charles Wallace, Megs brother, didn't start talking until he was four; he now speaks, at age five, in complete sentences with perfect diction. Calvin is one of the popular kids in high school, but only because he pretends. The three of them--with help from Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which--embark on a journey through time and space to find Meg and Charles Wallace's father.
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wednesday september 05
It’s hurricane season once again, with the recent anniversary of Hurricane Katrina serving as a grim reminder. On September 8, 1900, an even deadlier hurricane swept the coast of Galveston, Texas, killing as many as 10,000 people and changing the city forever.
Erik Larson, bestselling author of The Devil in the White City, tells the story of this hurricane and its impact on Isaac Cline, the meteorologist who believed no storm could ever seriously damage Galveston.
Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History combines the science of weather with personal accounts of survivors to track the hurricane from beginning to devastating end. At the eye of the storm are Isaac Cline, the rivalry with his fellow weatherman (and younger brother) Joseph, and the overconfidence of the age, when turn-of-the-century meteorology (and the newly formed United States Weather Bureau) could not prepare the residents of Galveston for a hurricane of this magnitude. By the time they realized evacuation was necessary, it was too late.
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thursday august 23
Last year I went to see the exhibit Diana: A Celebration at the Dayton Art Institute. I got a rare look at Princess Diana’s childhood photographs, mementos, and home movies, as well as a collection of her dresses worn at both royal and charity functions.
The highlight of the exhibit was the dress worn at her wedding to Prince Charles at St. Paul’s Cathedral on July 29, 1981. Featuring a 25-foot train trimmed with lace and an 11-foot veil hand embroidered with 10,000 mother-of-pearl sequins, the dress was stunning to behold.
If you weren’t able to see the dress in person, then reading the book A Dress for Diana by David and Elizabeth Emanuel is the next best thing. The Emanuels became instantly famous when they were hand picked by Diana to design the most famous dress in the world.
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tuesday august 07
Several years ago, my friend and I went on a weekend bus trip to Graceland, Elvis Presley’s home in Memphis, Tennessee. On the way, I listened to Elvis: 30 #1 Hits and watched his movies Jailhouse Rock and King Creole. By the time we arrived on the front porch of Graceland, I was ready to meet the King.
Ever since that trip, I’ve enjoyed reading about his fascinating life. As the 30th anniversary of his death approaches on August 16th, I decided to read Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. Considered the definitive biography of Elvis, Peter Guralnick recounts Presley’s early life and music before the rhinestone jumpsuits and peanut butter and banana sandwiches.
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The winners of the career-making Eisner Awards were announced the last weekend in July at Comic-Con 2007 in San Diego. These awards, named for legendary innovator Will Eisner, are determined by a panel of five judges; this year, they included librarian Robin Brenner, creator of the excellent reader’s advisory site No Flying No Tights.
In addition to the winners listed below, check out the nominee list for more great graphic reading.
Best Graphic Album – New: American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. See my post about this first graphic novel nominated for a National Book Award.
Best Graphic Album – Reprint: Absolute DC: The New Frontier, by Darwyn Cooke. The Library has the original edition.
Best Reality-Based Work: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. See Jennifer’s post.
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monday august 06
Every day at the library, customers check out the newest titles by authors such as Janet Evanovich and James Patterson. But they aren't just checking out the books. Many seek out these titles in audio book form. I was surprised last week by an article in the New York Times that debated whether listening to a book on cd was equal to reading that same book:
"Dain Frisby-Dart, 40, an avid audio book listener from Trempealeau, Wis., told her book group a few years ago that she was listening to the current selections. One of the members, a man in his 70s, reacted as if she had been reading CliffsNotes."
The article describes how many of the people who listen to audio books do so in private: in the car, at home, or while wearing headphones. But with book clubs growing in popularity, people's reading - and listening - habits are being made public.
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monday july 23
A few days ago I heard a NPR story about a woman who decided to forego buying things from China for a year. It reminded me of the book I'm currently reading by an author who decided to opt out of the consumer market by not buying anything for one year. As I listened to the news piece and connected the books I thought how nice it must be to make the decision to not buy anything as opposed to not having the money to purchase, which is the way it is for some Americans.
As John Edwards continues his poverty tour during his bid for the '08 democratic nomination, we are again reminded of the lines drawn between the haves and the have-nots in this country. The poor's approach to consumerism is completely different than those of financial means because they don't have the wherewithal to spend. There's no statement they can make on mass consumption by withholding their dollars because more than likely they don’t spend frivolously enough to be missed
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tuesday june 12
Mildred Loving doesn’t give a lot of interviews anymore. She doesn’t see herself as that spectacular. She sees herself as just a girl who fell in love with boy and they got married. But at the time their marriage was against the law in many states, especially her home state of Virginia.
On June 12, 1967 the Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws and made it legal for interracial couples to marry. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Loving case a few cities across the country are having Loving Day parties.
Randall Kennedy’s book Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption examines the long history of race relations in the United States. The book’s introduction opens with the story of Jacqueline Henley, a young New Orleans orphan whose aunt relinquishes custody because neighbors suspected Jacqueline was black.
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friday may 25
Cincinnati has a wonderful tradition of welcoming spring and summer with magnificent singing – first the May Festival, held during two May weekends, then the opera season with four productions in June and July.
This tradition has a very long history! The May Festival, established in 1873, is the oldest continuous choral festival in the Western hemisphere. Music Hall was built to house it. Cincinnati Opera, founded in 1920, is the second-oldest opera company in the United States.
The Library will join the celebration this year by unveiling treasures from the Cincinnati Opera Archives, which were entrusted to the Art & Music Department last year. The exhibit Highlights from the Cincinnati Opera Archives, on view in the department from June 13 through September 2, will showcase photographs of the many legendary stars who performed with the company, along with historic programs, posters, scrapbooks, and other documents.
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thursday may 17
The plight of young black male America has been discussed ad nauseam for the last year. Are we to believe the recent report that aired on
Marketplace about young black men dropping out of the job culture?
Then there is the article from the New York Times that warned about the litany of problems facing black men?
And what about the stories presented in last year’s series from The Washington Post that gave an overview of black men? The series Being a Black Man reported on the varied lives of African American males.
In their latest book, Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip Hop Generation, writers Natalie Hopkins and Natalie Y. Moore sift through varying images of the black male in current media and social thought. Divided into eleven chapters, each portion is a different view of black men and their walk in life.
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wednesday may 02
If you haven’t yet seen the Andrew Wyeth exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum, make time for a visit during this last week! The collection, loaned by the Marunuma Art Park, consists of 114 watercolors and drawings that lovingly capture the life and seaside Maine home of Christina and Alvaro Olson.
The independent Christina, who had an undiagnosed degenerative disease, refused all help but that of Alvaro, her brother. She preferred to crawl and drag her body through her increasingly dilapidated home and grounds rather than use a wheelchair.
Hence the posture and power of her reaching figure in Christina’s World (1948), Wyeth’s most famous work and one of the best-known works of American art. Christina’s World belongs to the Museum of Modern Art and does not travel because of the fragility of the tempera paint Wyeth used. But this exhibit features 10 studies, such as early compositional notations, detail studies, and the final watercolor sketch.
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thursday april 26
You're not imagining things if you've been seeing Imperial Stormtroopers at the library.
In conjunction with the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, we're launching GalaxyCon, an out-of-this-world celebration of all things science fiction.
It hasn't even started yet, and already it's a blast. I've had some great conversations with fans of all ages and families who plan to join us for the stellar events we have planned.
Science fiction is such a part of our culture, in fiction, film, and TV. Were you one of the wide-eyed kids who watched Flash Gordon serials on Saturday mornings, or did you stand in line for Spiderman and its sequels? Did you get your kicks from superhero comics or have your consciousness raised by the sociological sf of Sheri S. Tepper or Margaret Atwood? Are you hooked on Heroes or daffy for Dr. Who?
Even if you're not a techie, a Trekker, or a towel-carrying hitchhiker through the galaxy, how can you resist? (Resistance is futile, you know!)
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saturday april 14
April 15th marks the 95th anniversary of the sinking of the steamship RMS Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean on a calm, starry night in 1912. What better way to commemorate the event and honor the 1,523 lives lost than by attending Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition, closing May 6th at the Cincinnati Museum Center.
If you’re looking for a good read on the subject, why not try a book published in 1955 that still makes the disaster come alive today: A Night to Remember by Walter Lord. I decided to pick up my copy (after many sad years of gathering dust on my bookshelf) and was surprised by its immediacy.
Lord interviewed Titanic survivors before writing his classic tale and the result is a minute-by-minute account of the ship’s sinking and its aftermath. His narrative “you are there” style is considered groundbreaking and influential, and when combined with a viewing of the Titanic artifacts, you can’t help but be moved.
friday april 13
The whole world is a little dimmer now. Kurt Vonnegut passed away at the age of 84.
Indianapolis, his birth city, is celebrating 2007 as The Year of Vonnegut. The Indianapolis Marion County Public Library has lots of events planned, too, and the One Book One City selection, announced just day before yesterday, is Slaughterhouse Five. Now this will all sadly be In Memoriam.
Slaughterhouse Five was written a long time after his experiences in WWII as a prisoner of war in Germany. He was actually there in the bombing of Dresden, and he survived it with other POWs in an old slaughterhouse cellar, which is why I feel this event is so poignant in the book.
I miss him already. Chances are, he doesn't miss us much, being up there talking to Newton and Shakespeare and all those folks he was looking forward to meeting.
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tuesday april 10
I'm trying to find a connection between two books I've read lately, Running Away With Frannie, by Renée Manfredi, and Un seul crime, l'amour, by Mary Fualaau (formerly Mary Kay LeTourneau) and Vili Fualaau, with a couple guest chapters by Vili's mother, Soona Fualaau.
I can't talk too much about Manfredi's strange and memorable novel without giving away the plot, which takes an unexpected turn about halfway through, and then another one at the end. The protagonist is Sam, a 25 year old from a household without a lot of money, one of ten siblings with an alcoholic father and a mother who works in an Elvis-Presley commemorative-plate-making factory. The mother expresses her opinion of dinner guests through her table settings. If the visitor gets a young-and-healthy Elvis plate, the mother likes the guest. Old washed-up Elvis means Sam's mother is not amused.
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monday april 09
Debra Dickerson is ubiquitous.
For the last two months she has been everywhere. I have never really thought of her before although I have read a few of her articles on Salon and Slate. Maybe I have heard her on NPR. But after her article positing the question is Barack Obama black enough and then her article about raising her biracial children "aracial" I decided to pick up the book The End of Blackness. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about it at first or even if I wanted anyone --especially African Americans-- to see me reading it, fearing that my black card would be immediately revoked on the spot.
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On March 27 it was announced that
Haruki Murakami won the
Kiriyama Prize for his latest book,
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. "
Blind Willow" is a collection of short stories that have appeared in various magazines over the last 20 years.
The Kiriyama Award was established in 1996 as a way to recognize books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia with the purpose of creating an understanding of the peoples and cultures of that region. The award honors both Fiction and Non Fiction books. Greg Mortenson won for his autobiographical book Three Cups of Tea, which tells about his building a school in a small Pakistani town.
Other Finalists include:
saturday april 07
Years ago, while my daughter was still in diapers, we were having a picnic at the lake with some of my friends. One male friend was taken by the sun shining on the water and sand (what little there was) and picked up my daughter, cradling her in his two hands. He held her aloft, offering her to her to the sky he said, “Behold, the only thing greater than yourself!”
We all laughed, recognizing the opening scene from Roots.
This Easter Sunday TV One will rebroadcast the show to mark the 30th Anniversary of its first airing. When it originally aired, Roots made history by becoming the most watched miniseries of all time. It had an all-star cast and gave actor Levar Burton his start.
After viewing Roots, the show prompted a lot of African Americans to research their family histories. PLCH has excellent resources for those who are looking to discover their own past or just want to brush up on African American history.
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thursday march 15
I’ll be after the wearin’ o’ the green in this space during March, which makes a fine Irish History Month. It’s not just the St. Patrick’s Day that’s in it; rain and spring air recall the Emerald Isle, so fertile that the Sassenach (English, or “Saxons”) kept it “the most distressful country that ever yet was seen.” Bad as it could be to have a thriving neighbor, it was even worse for Protestant England to have Catholic harbors next door from which other Papist countries could (and did) try to launch invasions.
“They are going, going, going, and we cannot bid them stay.” My ancestors came to America over the past 300 years of increasing crisis in the homeland. The most fortunate ones were 18th-century refugees from the anti-Catholic penal laws. The Meade family and Stephen Moylan (first president of The Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick) fought alongside George Washington. Thomas Riley, one of the “wild geese” who found work as mercenaries, arrived in Lafayette’s Irish regiment to whack the Sassenach over here.
At the other extreme were my Toohey great-great-grandparents, who disembarked dead in New Orleans from a "coffin ship" during the Famine of the mid-19th century. In True History of the Kelly Gang, a Man Booker Prize-winning novel about the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, Peter Carey makes a beautiful immigrant song out of the lives of the luckless exiles, especially in a passage that intones the names of convict ships like Homer’s catalogue of ships in the Iliad.
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Break out that ugly green turtleneck you've been dying to wear and get ready to celebrate--St. Patrick's Day is almost here! Cincinnati's Annual St. Patrick's Day Parade is this Saturday. Corned beef, cabbage, and Guinness can be had at Newport's or Mason's Claddagh Irish Pub. If you're looking for a quieter way to commemorate the holiday, check out some of these novels set in Ireland.
In recent years, mystery writers have found Ireland a fertile ground for murder and mayhem. Lake of Sorrows, Erin Hart's sequel to Haunted Ground, is a prime example. In it, pathologist Nora Gavin is sent to the bogs of Central Ireland to investigate two recently discovered corpses, one ancient, the other recent. Other good mysteries set in Ireland include Ken Bruen's Priest, Carol Anne O'Marie's Murder at the Monk's Table, and Dicey Deere's The Irish Village Murder (all three are the latest titles in series).
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tuesday march 13
A friend of mine confessed--it seemed like a confession--that he was relieved when Theodore Kaczynski turned out to be the Unabomber, because a friend of his pretty much fit the profile.
I understood perfectly, having spent some time in high school trying to track down Patricia Hearst (really impossible from rural South Carolina before the Internet). I just finished reading Robert Graysmith's 2003 Amerithrax: the Hunt for the Anthrax Killer, and the most interesting part isn't about anthrax at all: it's the report of an interview between Mohammad Atta and Johnelle Bryant, manager of the Homestead, Florida, office of the U.S. Departure of Agriculture.
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saturday march 10
“One hundred nations descend upon us. The armies of all Asia. Funneled into this narrow corridor, their numbers count for nothing. They shatter with each advance.”
300, the film based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the 480 B.C. Battle of Thermopylae (“hot gates”), opened this week here and across the country. Typically for Miller, whose talents and concepts are equally extreme, the movie has drawn praise for its power, but also diatribes against its historical and (perceived) political content, as well as Miller’s trademark violence.
The book is certainly a fine example of Miller’s potent, “artful” storytelling, and the story itself can’t be told often enough. Stationing themselves in a narrow mountain pass, 300 Spartans faced certain death to hold the gigantic army of the Persian Empire at bay, enabling the Greek city-states to marshal their forces and eventually rebuff the invaders.
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friday march 09
Trenton Lee Stewart will discuss The Mysterious Benedict Society and sign copies at 7 p.m. on Monday at Joseph-Beth Booksellers and at 4 p.m. on Tuesday at the Blue Manatee Children’s Bookstore.
That’s big news for two reasons. The Mysterious Benedict Society has earned rave reviews as a new ‘tween adventure series. The book’s success is no surprise, since Trent is an excellent writer – an Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate and instructor who has published many short stories and a fine adult novel, Flood Summer.
He’s also a former Library employee, now living in his native Arkansas, and we’re thrilled to welcome him back in triumph. If you have to lose a great colleague, the best way is to a book advance.
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It is, alas, time to set the clocks forward an hour to ostensibly "save" an hour of daylight every day. This coming Saturday night/Sunday morning at 2 AM it will suddenly become 3 AM.
According to Michael Downing in his 2005 book, Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, normal everyday people do not really understand why we change our clocks. As he says, however, quoting a friend, "Time is quantifiable, but that doesn't mean time is a quantity." Um, I still don't understand.
In Seize the Daylight by David Prerau, we learn that the idea of Daylight Saving Time goes back to Benjamin Franklin, but it was put into practice in Europe and the US during World War I. Don't blame the farmers, it wasn't their fault. It was war, manufacturing, and the government that did it.
The time change is a hot topic of conversation. Everyone has an opinion, probably because it affects everyone. David Prerau says, "It seems like such a simple gesture. Spring forward, fall back. Does anyone know what we're doing?"
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wednesday march 07
When you wonder how in the world Peter O’Toole missed winning an Academy Award for Lawrence of Arabia and then discover he lost to Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird, the famous gaps in Oscar honors seem less shocking. But – Rocky beating Taxi Driver? Best Picture and Best Director? Actually, Martin Scorsese wasn’t even nominated for directing Taxi Driver.
Oscar history is so full of surprises that it was painful to watch the aged O’Toole sitting among mere mortals at this year’s ceremony, hoping to end a record series of losses: seven fruitless nominations at the start of the evening, eight by the end. Fortunately, he had received an honorary award in 2002.
I saw the nearly four-hour Lawrence of Arabia four times during its initial run in 1963, when I was 13. Before I try to explain myself, some cover from Roger Ebert: “I've noticed that when people remember Lawrence of Arabia, they don't talk about the details of the plot. They get a certain look in their eye, as if they are remembering the whole experience, and have never quite been able to put it into words.”
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monday march 05
Michael Palmer will promote his new medical thriller, The Fifth Vial, at the Oakley Branch this coming Thursday, March 8 at 7:00 p.m. Turning the Page asked the author a few questions that he graciously found time to answer.
T.T.P.: Tell us a little bit about how you came to be a novelist.
M.P.: Robin Cook and I were classmates at Wesleyan in Connecticut, and trained together at Mass General Hospital. After I read Coma, I asked myself: If he can do this, why can't I? So I started writing an adventure story a page a night.
T.T.P.: Did it come from your experience with books and reading?
M.P.: When I started writing, I began to draw from everything I knew--books I had read and enjoyed; courses at Wesleyan; experiences in the ER and the office. Pulling those things together was, and is, one of the aspects of writing fiction that I enjoy the most.
T.T.P.: Or did your career in medicine serve as inspiration?
No doctor could write and not have his patents and life in medicine become woven into the fabric of his work.
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tuesday february 27
Cincinnati's citywide reading program, On the Same Page, is in full swing. Family and friends, neighbors, and co-workers are reading The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. For teens, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan is this year's action-packed selection.
You can participate any number of ways. Pick up a copy of the book at any Library location or contact a branch to get multiple copies for a book club or class. Host your own discussion or attend a Library book discussion group. Post your comments about the book on the On the Same Page web site.
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friday february 23
The Horror Writers Association has announced that Thomas Harris will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Bram Stoker Awards Banquet at the end of March during the annual HWA Conference that will be held in conjunction with the 2007 World Horror Convention in Toronto.
Harris hasn't written a lot of books, but his fiction is very finely crafted and creepy. He is, of course, recognized for his perfectly written saga of Hannibal Lecter, the compelling psychopath from Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal.
The latest and final installment, Hannibal Rising, is actually the first installment, starting with Hannibal as a young boy in Eastern Europe during World War II. It offers the reasons for Hannibal becoming the way he is.
Harris wrote the screenplay for the movie at the same time as the novel. Hannibal Rising is available in audio as well as print, and as a digital audio book for download from the Ohio eBook Project.
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wednesday february 21
Who can forget Jack Palance doing push-ups on stage after winning Best Supporting Actor for City Slickers? Or Adrien Brody enthusiastically kissing Halle Berry after his Best Actor win for The Pianist? If you don't want to miss all the excitement (plus an opportunity to make fun of the bizarre outfits some of the stars wear), tune into ABC this Sunday at 8 p.m. to see Ellen DeGeneres host the 79th Annual Oscar Awards. In past years, many of the Best Picture winners were adapted from popular works of fiction or non-fiction. Here's a small sampling (the date in parenthesis is the year the movie won the award for Best Picture):
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tuesday february 20
Few stories of African American triumphs in the arts are as moving as that of Marian Anderson’s 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Anderson, considered by many the greatest contralto of her time, was barred from using Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution, who owned the facility. In the widespread protest that followed, Eleanor Roosevelt and other prominent members resigned from the DAR, and Anderson performed instead at the memorial on Easter Sunday. A crowd of 75,000 attended the historic event.
Anderson, who died in 1993, went on to other trailblazing achievements, notably her 1955 debut as the first African American member of the Metropolitan Opera. Her successor in breaking barriers was the magnificent soprano Leontyne Price, the first African American to achieve an international reputation in opera and one of the finest of divas by any measure.
This Little Light of Mine: The Stories of Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price celebrates these two artists through the talents of soprano
Adrienne Danrich. The Cincinnati Opera will present performances tonight at
Memorial Hall and tomorrow night in the Harriet Tubman Theater of the
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, both at 7 p.m. Touring programs are also available through February 23.
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saturday february 17
I've yet to find the perfect home-decor book (good-looking house without money or time investment) in the budget-decor department, so I decided to go the other way. In Dictator Style, English writer Peter York has compiled photographs of the interiors and exteriors of homes owned by notorious dictators, including Hitler, Tito, Ceaucescu, Idi Amin, and Saddam Hussein.
While admitting that some (though not all) of Slobodan Milosevic's rooms have that certain je ne sais quoi, York condemns most of the despots on grounds of bad taste--everything is too big, and they tend to put up photos and paintings of themselves all over the place. Idi Amin had tacky shag carpeting, and no one knows what the scary devices in the Ceaucescus' bathroom (p. 57) are.
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monday february 12
Shahtani Tropical Breeze. Thistleglen Margot. Freestyle Ocean Breeze. Sound like nice places to visit, right? If you were in New York City last year at this time, you would have been able to visit all of them at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. The 2007 show starts today and concludes tomorrow (live coverage both days from 8-11 pm on the USA Network). In all, 165 breeds in seven groups (working, terrier, toy, non-sporting, sporting, hound, and herding) compete against each other to be crowned Best in Show. Last year's winner was Rufus, the colored bull terrier (otherwise known as Rocky Top's Sundance Kid--I swear I'm not making these names up). Tune in to see the popular (beagles) compete against the unknown (Spinone Italianos) and the just plain weird-looking (pulis). While you're in the mood, you might want to peruse these dog-themed mysteries as well:
- A Deeper Sleep by Dana Stabenow--Alaskan PI Kate Shugak and her faithful half-wolf, half-Siberian husky, Mutt, try to gather evidence against a man who has killed three of his wives.
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thursday february 08
The next lecture in the Library’s weekly Black History Month series will be “Cincinnati’s Black Community in the Pre-Civil War Era,” presented by Nikki Marie Taylor (Saturday, February 10, 2:00 in the Huenefeld Tower Room). Professor Taylor, who recently joined the University of Cincinnati Department of History, is the author of Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati's Black Community, 1802-1868.
Frontiers of Freedom is a study of the determination, resourcefulness, and resilience of African American settlers in this Mason-Dixon border town, as notorious for racism – often violent – as it was distinguished by the work of abolitionists and Underground Railroad conductors, including Harriet Beecher Stowe and Levi Coffin.
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tuesday february 06
The Sundance Film Festival closed in Park City, Utah, on January 28, releasing onto the market a great many fine independent movies, to judge by the number that won at least one award. The festival, produced by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute, screens 125 dramatic and documentary feature films and more than 70 short films each year.
The Grand Jury Prize winners were the documentary Manda Balla (“Send a Bullet”), the first feature film directed by Jason Kohn, and the drama Padre Nuestro (“Our Father”), a Spanish-language film by first-time writer/director – and Fort Wright, Ky. native – Christopher Zalla.
Padre Nuestro follows the struggles of a Mexican boy to reach New York City and find the father he has never met, bearing as sole proof of his identity a locket and letter from his deceased mother. Manda Balla is a portrait of contemporary Brazil, focusing on its diversity, socioeconomic extremes, and a growing culture of violence and corruption.
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thursday february 01
For the past year or so, millions of children, teens, and adults around the world have been breathlessly waiting for an announcement about the publication date for the seventh (and final) entry in the Harry Potter series. Finally…the moment has arrived! Today, J.K. Rowling posted an announcement on her website that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is going to be published at midnight on Saturday, July 21. Typically, she’s being very tight-lipped about the plot—although there’s been of frenzy of speculation amongst the Harry Potter faithful since Rowling hinted that a couple of characters might die.
Anxious to reserve your copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Take advantage of the Library's Hot Authors service and a copy of the new book will be automatically held for you!
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