wednesday may 07
Maybe it’s something about radio. I really loved Penelope Fitzgerald’s Human Voices, a marvelous little novel about the BBC during World War II. Now here’s a Canadian novel about a radio station crew, Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air, and I’m charmed and impressed by it, too.
It’s 1975 in the little town of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. Here we meet Harry Boyd, an old-time radio man who is acting as temporary station manager. Harry was once a promising young broadcaster till he had a shameful failure in TV and got this second chance in this backwater radio station. He and Eleanor Dew, the cool, competent receptionist, hold the station together as they wait for corporate decisions on its fate. Two new staff members join them, rookie Gwen Symon and Dido Paris, a glamorous new announcer.
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saturday april 26
If you like to dance, or like to laugh at people who dance, then you'll want to check out The Best Dance Moves in the World--Ever! 100 new and classic moves and how to bust them by Matt Pagett. Granted, a book may not be the most effective way to learn to dance, but the illustrations in this one are too great to pass up. From standards like the Twist and the Swim, to a breakdown of Michael Jackson's Thriller choregoraphy, to Cincinnati's own Ickey Shuffle, this book has it all.
And if you're looking for a DVD to give you some tips, try Breakdance: Completely Street, Series 1 or try out the library's new digital video collection and download D's Hip Hop Aerobics, Fitness on Demand.
thursday april 17
Back in the day, it was called Alternative Music. Since then, the name has changed many times--College Rock, Indie Rock or Pop, New Music, etc.--and this library has done a commendable job of keeping up with many of the polymorphous group of artists who make up this genre, or collection of genres. If you want to learn more of the nomenclature and history, Wikipedia has an interesting article on Alternative Rock. It is a chunky topic, as a subject search in the library's catalog for "alternative rock" yields 375 titles. Like all of my blogs and lists, this one will be highly selective, subjective, and lacking a bunch of great music I have overlooked. If you feel personally offended or frothing-at-the-mouth enraged by something I have left out, please feel free to comment. I have listed the most recent library-owned release to date by each band/artist (or the most comprehensive/representative in some cases).
So here's yet another list from me to you:
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wednesday april 02
I'm passing this along to all of you who enjoy a nice, quirky memoir. Another librarian recommended Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone: Growing up at the Table to me. It's not a new book, but that just means there are two sequels, Comfort Me with Apples and Garlic and Sapphires to put on your list, too, if like me you didn't read them when they came out.
Reichl is a food writer, the editor of Gourmet magazine, a one-time chef, and most famously a former restaurant critic for the New York Times. Tender at the Bone is the story of her childhood and youth.
How she ever became a foodie is something of a mystery, given the stories she tells about her manic-depressive mother's odd ways of dealing with food, particularly her blithe habit of scraping the blue layer off of leftovers and declaring, "It's only mold."
But a long line of mentors and fellow enthusiasts helped Reichl to some memorable meals, and she lovingly remembers every friend and every bite. How a boarding school friend's French father introduced her to fois gras, how two courtly locals fed her couscous in Tunis on a college trip, the time she asked a lower Manhattan matron to teach her to make gefilte fish, to the days when she whipped up the daily specials at a Berkeley collective restaurant--Reichl fills her pages with warm and delicious stories.
And she includes recipes.
wednesday march 26
I’ve read a whole string of great new books lately. Some I won’t blog, like Richard Price’s new novel, Lush Life, since you probably already have your place staked out in line for them (do if you don’t), but here’s one you may not have heard much about: Robert Hellenga’s The Italian Lover.
It’s a fairly direct sequel to his debut novel, The Sixteen Pleasures, but you don’t have to have read that novel (I haven’t yet), nor The Fall of a Sparrow (whose protagonist shows up in a major role here, too) to appreciate it.
Margot Harrington is an American book conservator living in Florence, where she came in 1966 to restore books damaged in the great flood of the Arno. In 1975 she wrote a book about her experiences as one of the foreign “mud angels,” her discovery of a book of Renaissance erotica in the convent where she was working, and the grand love affair she had then with an Italian art conservator. Now, some fifteen years later, there is going to be a film made of her memoir.
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sunday march 16
Nicola Barker’s extraordinary novel, Darkmans, published in 2007 and short listed for the Man Booker Prize, didn’t reach my desk until January of this year. So it’s still “new fiction” to me. I’ve been thinking about Darkmans for a while now since finishing it. There's a lot to consider.
Barker sets her wildly strange book in Ashford in Kent, the western terminus of the Channel Tunnel. Ashford is a town whose medieval heart is circumscribed by modernity. In Barker’s novel, it’s a place where the past seeps into the present, with characters influenced by the malevolent spirit of one John Scrogin
, a jester at the court of Edward IV. Scrogin’s infamous act (can’t really call it a prank) was luring beggars to a barn then torching it.
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wednesday march 05
Of all the literary sisters of Bridget Jones, Hester Browne’s Melissa Romney-Jones (a.k.a. Honey Blennerhesket) is one of the most charming.
Not that Melissa would really find Bridget a kindred spirit. Melissa is a more old-fashioned girl who would never let her standards down far enough to drink and smoke and slack off at work as much as Bridget and her friends, and she wouldn’t be at home with their sarcastic humor. (Melissa never gets double entendres.) Though of course she would make perfectly cheerful conversation with any of them at a party—nice girls do, after all.
But her spunky optimism and determination to find true love make Melissa Bridget’s sister under the skin.
We first met Melissa in The Little Lady Agency, when Melissa decided to put her unusual talents to use by opening a business under that name. All of her old-fashioned domestic accomplishments (not to mention her busty figure that fits 1950s-era clothes better than modern fashions) and her firm belief in the social niceties made her the perfect advisor for London’s clueless bachelors.
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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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wednesday february 13
Here’s one for all of you art history buffs, lovers of Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, and even readers of what are now popularly being called microhistories, those fascinating social histories that look at how a single insignificant object or place or event changed or reflected the course of world events.
In Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World, Timothy Brook uses the objects glimpsed in Vermeer’s paintings to explore how economy and culture became globalized in the seventeenth century.
The broad-brimmed hat of the dashing officer in Vermeer’s Officer and Laughing Girl becomes an emblem to explore the American fur trade and the search for the fabled Northwest Passage. A porcelain dish of fruit in the foreground of Young Woman Reading a Letter at an Open Window leads to a discussion of the Chinese porcelain trade, and so on.
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wednesday january 30
I’m partly through this new book and I just noticed that it has two front covers, two editors, two tables of contents, two introductions, and two sub-subtitles. On one side, it’s called The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic: The Arctic, edited by Elizabeth Kolbert. On the other side it’s called The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic: The Antarctic, edited by Francis Spufford.
Okay, so the publishers will be disappointed that I missed the clever upside-down, half-and-half presentation, but they should be pleased how much I’m enjoying the first inside half.
I started with the Antarctic, since as you may remember I’m a big fan of Beryl Bainbridge’s The Birthday Boys.
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monday january 21
In college, my major was graphic design, but by my senior year I discovered (or should have realized all along) that librarianship was my true calling. Even so, when I went to bookstores, I would naturally pick up books with interesting covers and check the back flaps to see who designed them. One name kept appearing again and again: Chip Kidd.
You’re already familiar with Chip Kidd if you’ve read some of my earlier blogs, because he designed the covers for An Anthropologist on Mars, Schulz and Peanuts, and my all-time favorite cover, The Secret History. But Kidd has designed many more (mostly for publisher Alfred A. Knopf), and you can see a 400-page retrospective of his work in The Chip Kidd Album: Book One: Work, 1986-2006.
Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, David Sedaris’ Naked and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain) are well-known Chip Kidd covers included here.
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wednesday january 16
I have to confess that I have become completely addicted to our new New Arrivals service. If you don't know, it's a part of our website that lists every new title we receive. You can look at it whenever you're in the mood for something new, or you can subscribe to all or parts of it as an RSS feed so that you can make sure you never miss a thing in the categories you're interested in. Still better, you can put holds on anything that tempts your fancy. Some of the entries include reviews, and some of them include cover images.
That's of course why I put a hold on this book, Ellen Highsmith Silver's Floorquilts! Fabric Decoupaged Floorcloths--No-Sew Fun. The cover is gorgeous, showing a floor covering that looks like a quilt. Silver describes the process with which she treats artist's canvas and decoupages fabric onto it, using traditional quilt fabrics and design principles, for colorful and durable floorcloths. It seems like a very do-able project, though time-consuming.
Now, will I ever actually make one of these? Maybe not. (Well, to be more accurate, very, very probably not.) But I love the fact that I know this book is in our collection and that if I ever get inspired to get out the fabric scraps, I know exactly where to find my inspiration.
thursday january 10
Anthony Bourdain has published a fantastic memoir of his travels in No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach (2007). It is mostly a book of photographs taken by his small crew who travels with him on the production of his Travel Channel series, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. Anthony comments on all the pictures and muses about how each location affected him.
On TV it looks like such a wonderful vacation, traveling around and eating as a way of life. These photos and the accompanying insights, however, reveal the bitter truth: They really are having a ball. Although the locations are not always plush, and they have to deal with some pretty hard things, these folks are true ambassadors for peace. They respectfully share food and lifestyle with real people in real places all over the world. I feel lucky to vicariously go along.
wednesday january 09
“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation."
That’s the first line of Donna Tartt’s cult classic The Secret History, and the first time I read the sentence, I was hooked.
When narrator and native Californian Richard Papen transfers to Hampden College in Vermont, he joins an exclusive group of five other students studying ancient Greek taught by an eccentric professor. Gradually Richard earns their trust and becomes privy to the group’s secret history: they accidentally murdered a farmer during their recreation of an ancient Greek bacchanal.
One of the members, Bunny Corcorran, did not participate in the bacchanal and learns of the murder. As Bunny threatens to reveal their secret, Richard must decide whether to go along with their decision to silence him.
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monday january 07
The other day I saw a commercial where a family was in search of the father’s New Year’s resolution list. The fifth goal on the list was write a novel. I snickered. Who doesn’t think they have at least one good book in them?
Writer Walter Mosley thinks you do, too, and in his book, This Year You Write Your Novel, he gives you the tools and the motivation to get started.
A slender book with easy to follow instructions,
Mosley helps the beginning writer muddle through one year of constant writing, then re-writing. He encourages budding authors to write a thousand words a day without fail, finishing the first draft in three months then rewriting for the next nine months. He doesn’t promise the “Great American Novel” but hopes that in honing the craft every writer can accomplish their end goal: a completed book.
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wednesday january 02
You don’t really need me to tell you about Anne Enright’s The Gathering, since it won this year’s Booker prize. But I just read it in one big gulp, and I can’t resist telling you how gorgeous it is. And I have another book to suggest while you wait for your copy to be available.
The Gathering is a story of family and memory. An Irishwoman mourns her brother’s suicide while calling up the intensely tangible memories of him and their childhood and youth together, memories that coalesce around the year they spent living with their grandmother and what happened to them there.
Enright writes so beautifully, so specifically, evoking the dense physicality of memory and family emotions, that readers will be seduced with every perfect word and scene.
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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.
The most interesting aspect of the book for me was Krakauer’s detailed history of the Mormon faith, a religion I knew little about. If you have further interest in this subject, watch the acclaimed PBS documentary The Mormons on DVD.
Krakauer’s earlier book Into the Wild was recently adapted on film and just received four Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, two Golden Globe nominations, and two Academy Award nominations. His bestseller Into Thin Air (1997) is also a gripping read.
monday december 17
Hiding between the covers of a children's book is a very funny collection of grown-up cartoons. Steve Martin and Roz Chast have teamed up to create a gem, The Alphabet from A to Y, With Bonus Letter Z! (2007). It really almost comes across as a parody of children's alphabet books.
For example, Q: "Quincy the kumquat queried the queen, Cleverly, quietly, without being seen." Or how about, "Amiable Amy, Alice, and Andie, Ate all the anchovy sandwiches handy." The pictures, in classic Roz Chast style, mix the mundane with the weirdly worrisome, putting alligators under coffee tables and eels enjoying eggs at the dinette.
Adults will enjoy this book much more than kids will. It is an alphabet book, yes, but some of the sophisticated humor will go right over their heads. And it might prompt some awkward explanations, while you are trying to catch your breath from laughing as you put it into simple words why it's funny that Tough Tommy wants to try on Tina's tutu. Or that the man on the "D" page is, well, um, "dizzy".
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thursday december 13
Joe Boyd has written an amazing book, White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s. Joe Boyd is a music producer, who, in the years 1966-1974 produced records by the following luminaries: The Incredible String Band, Shirley Collins, Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan, John & Beverly Martyn, Nico, and Maria Muldaur, among others. For a bit more information on some of these folks, check out a couple of my other blogs, one about 1960s British folk rock, and another on Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's original songwriter. More than a roster of Boyd's accomplishments, White Bicycles is part memoir, part social history, and partly an intimate portrait of some very colorful, talented, and often tragic, individuals. Due to feeling a strong connection to Sandy Denny and Nick Drake, I was particularly moved by the chapters written about them. Poignant social commentary permeates the book as well, and he pulls no punches in describing his take on the myriad of differences between the world back then and what it has become. He even gets on the soap box for a superb chapter on the virtues of old school analog recording techniques versus today's omnipresent computer-based music making. I cannot say enough wonderful things about this book or recommend it more strongly...I was sad to see it come to an end. If you think you might be interested, put yourself on the holds list. If you like folk, folk rock, or 1960s/early 1970s music in general, wrap your head, ears first, around the companion cd, White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s. You won't regret either move.
wednesday december 05
Okay, last week’s entry was about a cool and formal book for readers who like to see how a writer thinks.
This week’s is for readers who like to plunge right into a sympathetic story about likeable characters.
Moon Women, by Pamela Duncan, is the story of three generations of Southern women learning to find peace with each other and with their changing lives.
Middle-aged, divorced mill worker Ruth Ann Payne is going to pick up her daughter, nineteen-year-old Ashley, from a rehab center. Ashley, always trouble, is now pregnant, too. Meanwhile, Marvelle, Ruth Ann’s mother, who has begun to suffer from dementia, has wandered away from her other daughter’s house, determined to stay with Ruth Ann. So Ruth Ann’s house becomes home for all three of them, and the delicate process of accommodating each other begins.
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friday november 30
Neurologist Oliver Sacks is back after a five-year writing absence with a new book currently on the New York Times Best Sellers List called Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. I’ve just picked up my library copy and am excited to read it. In the meantime, I thought I’d write about one of his earlier books.
In An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales, Sacks discusses seven medical cases that challenge our understanding of the brain and how it works. Here are a few:
- An artist loses all color vision after a car accident and now sees and paints only in black and white
- A young man has a brain tumor that leaves him with no memory of events past 1970
- A surgeon experiences the compulsive tics of Tourette syndrome except while operating
- An autistic boy named Stephen Wiltshire uses his extraordinary drawing skills to communicate with the world
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thursday november 15
Here are the rest of the titles I previewed last week.
The political love story is Letter to Lorenzo, by Amanda Prantera. Julia, the English wife of a wealthy young Roman, is devastated when she is told that he has been killed by a car bomb. Her agonizing grief for her husband is complicated by her bewilderment: why would Red Brigade terrorists kill her husband when the two of them were known for their own socialist convictions? It must be a neo-fascist plot to discredit him. But careful, relentless interrogation by the investigating magistrate reveals that the police think her husband was a terrorist transporting the bomb himself. Julia’s world is turned upside down again. Her grief is powerfully portrayed, and her painfully honest attempts to understand her marriage and her politics are utterly persuasive, as is the subtle characterization of the magistrate who forces her into this possible reconsideration of everything she believed.
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wednesday november 14
Last week I dug through my piles and files of books and reviews to post about some titles I thought you might have missed.
I got a little bit of response, including a few emails, from people who were curious about what the titles might be (no guesses, though!). No one commented about what kind of books they'd like to see more of in these posts, though, so I just want to repeat--don't be shy if there's something you're looking for. There's always more where these came from!
Anyway, read on if you were curious about any of the little blurbs and what the titles were. Did any of you recognize these titles?
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thursday november 08
A suburban teen skater is haunted by the gruesome death of a security guard in Blake Nelson's tense little novel, Paranoid Park. Marketed to teen readers, the book has just as much appeal for adults, and has recently been made into a film by director Gus Van Sant. The film debuted at Cannes film festival in 2007, and is scheduled for limited release in the United States in March 2008.
The story takes place in a downtown skate park in Portland. The narrator hesitates to get involved with a street kid who tries to befriend him, and when a dare goes wrong, the narrator's life changes forever. You can't help but be drawn in by the guilt-ridden complexity of this teen's situation. Recommended for skaters and non-skaters alike.
wednesday november 07
I knew a regular library user who carried a tiny notebook in his jacket pocket. It was the latest in a long line of notebooks he had kept over the years, stretching back to when he lived in Shanghai in 1945, neatly recording all of the books he had read since then.
I was always somewhat awestruck by this, but I couldn’t help but feel it was Too Late for me to follow his example, even if I weren’t Too Lazy to keep it up.
The wonderful LibraryThing, a website that lets you catalog your library and share it, is the modern equivalent (and much more!) of those notebooks, but even that strikes me as Too Exhausting when I look around at all of the books I’d love to add to it.
Still, looking around at all of those books does make me want to share them with you.
So here’s my question. What kind of books would you most like me to post about?
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wednesday october 31
Okay, I know it’s Halloween, but how about some romantic fantasy that’s a little less creature-of-the-night than the current crop of vampire romances?
The authors of these books would describe themselves as fantasy writers rather than romance writers, but I think their books have plenty of appeal for readers of both genres. Whether your heart lies with high fantasy or with grand romance, you’ll find yourself swept away.
I wrote last year about War for the Oaks, Emma Bull’s fantasy about a rocker chick who gets caught up in a faerie war. Here are just a few more suggestions of fantasies with strong romantic elements—lots more where they came from! Teen readers might enjoy these, too.
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friday october 26
Last year I wrote about some stunning pop-up books that adults might enjoy. There have been some new releases that you really shouldn't miss, especially if you are a fan of paper-engineered books.
Matthew Reinhart has come out with Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy (2007), an unbelievable treasure depicting the original 3 movies.
David A. Carter has followed up his terrific One Red Dot (2005) with Blue 2 (2006) and 600 Black Spots (2007), both as much fun as the first.
Alive: The Living, Breathing Human Body Book (2007) from Dorling Kindersley, engineered by Iain Smyth, is a fascinating look at the human body.
This year Robert Sabuda gave us Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Mega-Beasts (2007), a wonderful study in ancient animals. And you shouldn't miss How Many? (2007) by Ron Van Der Meer, an intriguing study in shapes and paper sculpture. The mechanics and complexity of the book make us see things in new ways.
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wednesday october 17
I haven’t read Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India, and Indonesia, about the voyage of self-discovery she undertook after her marriage fell apart. (I’m in line behind many of you!)
But seeing her name in reviews brings back fond memories of her 2000 debut novel, Stern Men, a memorable coming of age story set in the islands off the coast of Maine.
Its heroine is young Ruth Thomas, born and bred on Fort Niles, one of two neighboring islands that survive on the lobster industry. (The island’s other main industry is suspicion of outsiders, including those from the other island.) Ruth is the daughter of a lobsterman and an outsider.
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thursday october 11
I am privileged in my work to serve the population of special needs children in our county. While I enjoy all of them, there is a special spot in my affections for the Autistic and Asperger's kids.
John Elder Robison's look me in the eye: my life with asperger's (2007) is the memoir of a life with Asperger's syndrome. Undiagnosed as a child, his unusual family did not really help this brilliant man on the road to normalcy (whatever that may be), and his younger brother Augusten Burroughs wrote his own memoir about that, Running with Scissors (2002).
Daniel Tammet's Born on a Blue Day (2007) also relates what it is like to grow up with Asperger's. This incredibly creative man, who recited Pi to over 22,000 digits, also has savant syndrome capabilities and synesthesia; but he has grown up to fit in to his everyday world and excel in it, developing a language-tutoring website for learners of new languages.
In their own words, these books describe how these incredible men grew up. I admire them.
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friday october 05
Charlie and I went on another road trip to Chicago, and of course, music was involved.
Dinosaur Junior and the related Sebadoh, with Dinosaur Junior's bass player, were great. They bring to mind the rock bands of 15-20 years ago, and the fabulous guitar playing of J Mascis took me back to the glory days of my youth, admiring the great guitar players. Oh wait...he was one of them!
The Hold Steady are kind of gritty, kind of bouncy, with folk music overtones but solid rock presentation.
Bright Eyes calmed us right down with mellow acoustic pieces, and the easygoing county music-like songs set a very nice no-stress atmosphere.
My pick for the day was Gary Allan's Greatest Hits, country music with a rough-cut rocky edge.
I must mention
It's a long drive to Chicago and back in one day, but it's a great time for music.
wednesday october 03
Here’s an oddball little title that has stuck with me for years: Claudia Casper’s debut novel The Reconstruction. It begins as a well-done but fairly predictable story of a woman at a loss at the loss of her marriage. But midway through, things get considerably more quirky and charming.
Artist Margaret has been plunged into a stagnating depression since her marriage fell apart. She’s not working or doing anything else too constructive until she is hired to make a museum diorama figure of a (presumed) female Australopithecus afarensis hominid. This recreation is to show the hominid pausing, half-turned, as recorded in the famous fossil footprints of Laetoli.
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saturday september 29
Ken Burns’ new series, The War, which debuted on PBS last week, has generated an enormous amount of buzz in the media the past few weeks. And why not? Not only is Ken Burns responsible for a number of absolutely terrific award-winning documentaries but World War II remains the most important event of the last century.
Despite this, I bet there’s more than a handful of folks out there who, like me, have only a sketchy understanding of the war that changed the world. Lucky for us, quite literally hundreds of books on the subject have been published. On the other hand…the sheer volume of titles can be bewildering. With that in mind, here are a few titles—some old, some new—to get you started.
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friday september 28
For those of you who think that British chick lit begins and ends with Bridget Jones's Diary, do I have news for you! The chick lit genre is teeming with great British authors. For a hilarious (and mostly true) introduction to British chick lit, check out A Yankee Girl's Guide to Brit Chick Lit. According to the author, some of the differences between British chick lit heroines and their American counterparts: the British "drink like fishes", "slather themselves with scent", and "always seem to be wearing disreputable, grayish underwear when Mr. Right finally comes along and sweeps them off their feet." Did I pique your interest? Then read on for a list of some of my favorite British chick lit authors and their most recent books:
wednesday september 26
I just read Stuart M. Kaminsky’s The Dead Don’t Lie, the latest Abe Lieberman mystery.
I’ve enjoyed the series since its 1991 debut with Lieberman’s Folly. That volume introduced the Chicago police detective—sixty-ish, feeling the first twinges of mortality in his arthritic knees, a world-weary basset hound of a man whose mild manner hid decades of street smarts. We also met Lieberman’s partner, Bill Hanrahan, a decent but troubled man who was drinking too much since his wife left.
Great minor characters rounded out the cast, from Lieberman’s energetic wife, Bess (leading light of their local temple); to Iris, the quiet Chinese waitress whom the Irish-Catholic Hanrahan found himself courting; to Lieberman’s brother, Maish, and the chorus of “alter cockers” who frequent Maish’s deli.
In The Dead Don’t Lie, our heroes have a few more years on them. And this time around, they’re working a pair of puzzling mysteries.
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tuesday september 25
This past weekend, I was looking at my mom’s September/October issue of The Bark magazine and saw a dog on the front cover that looked quite similar to our late family dog, Daisy. This dog had the same cute black-and-white face and was also a mix of Beagle and Border Collie, a fact I soon discovered as I turned the page and read the Editor’s Note.
The dog’s name was Nellie, and the owners are the founders of The Bark. Nellie sadly died of cancer this summer, but pictures of her can be seen in this issue and on the front cover of Dog is My Co-Pilot: Great Writers on the World’s Oldest Friendship, a touching anthology of dog writing compiled by the editors of The Bark magazine.
When our dog Daisy died of cancer, a good friend made a Pet Memorial Fund donation to the library, which was used to purchase a dog book to remember her. And if your child is grieving the loss of a four-legged friend, I highly recommend the tender children’s book Dog Heaven by Cynthia Rylant.
friday september 07
If you're looking for a new mystery series to delve into, I highly recommend Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan series. The Baltimore-based series began in 1997 with Baltimore Blues. Tess, an ex-reporter-turned-PI, enjoys rowing, food, and arguing with her large extended family. In this, her first case, a fellow rower asks Tess to investigate his fiancee, whom he believes is having an affair with her boss. When the boss, a prominent lawyer, ends up dead, Tess must fight to find the real killer and clear her friend's name. Tess is nothing if not a dogged investigator and has a habit of putting herself into dangerous situations. A statuesque redhead with a quick temper and fierce loyalty to both her boyfriend and slightly wacky (not to mention slightly corrupt) family, Tess is one PI you won't want to miss. If you enjoy Baltimore Blues, you'll want to read all of Tess's adventures, including the latest, No Good Deeds.
Lippman has won many awards for her work, including the Edgar, Shamus, Agatha, and Anthony awards. She is also the author of three stand-alone thrillers: What the Dead Know, about the disappearance of two sisters; To the Power of Three, about a school shooting; and Every Secret Thing, about the murder of a young child by two adolescents.
wednesday september 05
From Aesop to Animal Farm to the delightful mystery Mark blogged a few weeks ago, it’s a fine old literary tradition to dress up a sharp-toothed bit of satire in sheep’s clothing, so to speak, telling a telling tale by pretending you’re just talking about animals.
Or even insects. Yep, there’s precedent for that, too, of course.
So readers of Donald Harington’s The Cockroaches of Stay More shouldn’t be surprised to find a sly literary spoof and social satire between the covers of this cult classic, an immensely clever and entertaining novel that pokes fun at a whole range of human foibles—literature, sex, class, religion, and the atom bomb—all from the point of view of cockroaches.
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tuesday september 04
It's back to school time for all but a few lucky kids. What a great time for us "old people" to look back and remember our own school days. For instance, remember filmstrips?
Change Your Underwear Twice a Week brought it all back to me. Suddenly I recalled the filmstrips in their little plastic tubes, always wound backwards and requiring a quick rewind while the class waited. Then there were the old filmstrip projectors, made out of heavy metal and sitting on someone's tiny desk like a World War II battleship. I spent more than a little time sitting in a classroom with the shades drawn while the teacher, (or some
very lucky teacher's pet) waited for the "ding" that would signal them to turn the little dial and advance one frame.
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wednesday august 29
Sometimes it’s worth taking a flier on a debut paperback original. I found this was the case with Plague Year, Jeff Carlson’s post-apocalyptic science fiction thriller.
A small band of men and women cling to survival on a tiny peak in the Sierra Nevada. The group made it through a terrible winter, following the outbreak of plague worldwide. They've done so by eating their dead.
Most of the human and animal life on Earth perished two months after an experimental nanotech virus was stolen from a Sacramento laboratory. The nanotech was developed with the promise of ridding the human body of disease and pollutants – such as cancer – as well as offering greatly extended lifetimes. But the untested, self-replicating machine virus was released into the atmosphere hours after it was stolen. Simply breathing it was a death sentence.
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friday august 10
The weather's not the only thing that's hot and steamy these days. This summer's batch of new romances are just as sultry. If you're in the mood for a little romance (and perhaps one or two or ten scorching love scenes), check out these latest titles. They're guaranteed to raise your temperature a degree or two.
Historical Romance:
Romantic Suspense:
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wednesday august 08
Twenty-six years ago, Gorky Park transported American readers to a frozen crime scene in Moscow and introduced Senior Inspector Arkady Renko, a homicide specialist in a country "that had little organized crime and no talent for finesse." A murderer is frequently a drunk nearby.
But evidence of a triple murder has emerged in the thawing ice and snow of April. A KGB major is already on the scene when Renko arrives. Renko's relationship with the KGB is testy and antagonistic. The victims—two men, and a woman wearing ice skates—will be difficult to identify. Each has a gunshot wound in the head and in the heart. The hands have been removed to prevent fingerprinting.
Renko lights a cigarette. His job is to find killers, but he can’t stand the sight of a dead body.
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I suppose there’s a downside to being a literary wonder boy. Each of Michael Chabon’s novels has been so extraordinary (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Summerland, and more--not to mention Wonder Boys) that I’m sure he’s kept awake nights thinking how to top them.
His newest, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, is probably not my favorite, though for sheer whiz-bang originality it’s tough to beat—it’s a playfully sophisticated, Yiddish-drenched, noir, alternate-world satire. Sitka, Alaska, was designated a protectorate for Jews displaced during World War II , but sixty years later it’s about to be reassimilated into America, along with its melancholy protagonist, policeman Meyer Landsman—a process hardly likely to go smoothly.
I admired it more than I liked it. But the author of the 2004 The Final Solution: A Story of Detection can rest on his laurels for the rest of his literary career, as far as I’m concerned (though I’m glad he doesn’t). It’s another highly literary and original takeoff on a familiar genre, though it, too, got mixed reviews. I think it’s breathtaking.
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friday july 27
In the category of winsome, anthropomorphic nature fiction, Timothy, or, Notes of an Abject Reptile by Verlyn Klinkenborg was last year's unexpected and delightful prize. This little study, translated from the German, is narrated by a tortoise named Timothy, who lived, in fact, in a garden belonging Gilbert White, an 18th century British curate and naturalist. White wrote The Natural History of Selborne, an enduringly popular work of scholarship, and recorded his observations of Timothy in his journals.
Verlyn Klinkenborg slyly turns Timothy, the object of scientific inquiry, into a watchful chronicler of the Selborne environs and a commentator on the strange ways of its human population. The action, if a turtle’s meander can be so characterized, occurs during a week of freedom that Timothy spends beyond the garden gate. I recommended Timothy, or, Notes of an Abject Reptile as an irresistible little gem in 2006.
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tuesday july 24
In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War is the sequel to This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff’s classic coming-of-age memoir about growing up with an abusive stepfather in the 1950s.
A National Book Award finalist, In Pharaoh’s Army chronicles Wolff’s decision to join the Army and ultimately, the Vietnam War. Wolff’s voice is painfully honest, rendering the horrors of war and its casualties (including his good friend Hugh Pierce) with both sensitivity and shattered illusions. He is equally hard on himself, examining his own close calls and survival amidst the loss of so many others.
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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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friday july 20
After turning the last page of a particularly breathtaking book, have you ever said to yourself, “Hmmm, I wonder where the inspiration for that came from?” You aren’t alone. Driven by the need to “tear down the invisible wall between us readers and them writers and see what’s really going on behind the page,” Dan Crowe and Philip Oltermann took an unusual approach to exploring the creative writing process. Instead of relying on the standard Q&A exchange, they asked the writers to “…think for a minute about which object, picture, or document in your study reveals most about the relationship between living and writing, and then send it to us.” The resulting essays and photographs, collected together in How I Write: The Secret Lives of Authors are surprisingly fascinating!
Some excerpts:
Jay McInery: “This is an Acheulian hand axe, approximately half a million years old, crafted by Homo Erectus, which was given to me by my friend Hamilton Russell…I like to heft it and hold it between paragraphs. It fits the palm beautifully. It reminds me of a friend and a beautiful landscape; sometimes I try to imagine its maker and his world.
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wednesday july 18
Thirty-something high school Latin teacher April Epner has never had any desire to find the woman who gave her up for adoption. Her adoptive parents were perfectly loving, if rather restrained, and she is contented with her single state and quiet career.
But into her tidy life bursts Bernice Graverman, a flamboyantly self-dramatizing woman who wears “toad sized clip-on earrings” and “wet-look white eyeshadow.” Bernice, who is a local talk show host, confessed to her TV audience that she once gave up a child for adoption, and the ratings were so good (“You didn’t happen to see the show, did you?”) that tracking down April was the inevitable next step.
That’s how Elinor Lipman’s 1990 debut novel Then She Found Me begins. The rest of it is just as wryly funny and perfectly pitched.
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friday july 13
One of my favorite mystery authors is Texas native Susan Wittig Albert. Of her series, her most well-known is probably the one starring former lawyer-turned-herbal shop owner China Bayles. China co-owns a tea shop and catering business with her best friend Ruby Wilcox in Pecan Springs, Texas, where the two women have a knack for stumbling across dead bodies and sticking their noses into dangerous situations. Every mystery includes some great recipes and tips for using herbs in either cooking or medicinally. The latest is Spanish Dagger.
China Bayles' Book of Days is a non-fiction companion to the series, complete with recipes, crafts, and gardening tips.
Albert also pens an Edwardian mystery series with her husband, Bill, under the pseudonym Robin Paige. Death on the Lizard is the latest entry. You might also want to check out her Beatrix Potter series, including The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood.
wednesday july 11
Shortly before the outbreak of Word War II, 16-year-old Paul Christopher resides in Berlin with his American father, Hubbard, and his beautiful German mother, Lori, a baroness. It’s a time of great tension for Jews and non-Germans in Berlin, especially for the Hubbards. They have helped Jewish families escape the Reich to Denmark on their small sailboat. The secret police, directed by an SS officer named Stutzer, are watching them.
The danger for the family increases after Paul meets Rima, a Jewish girl, and he falls in love. Their relationship possesses a fatalistic gravity far beyond their adolescent years. As the threat of arrest increases, Paul’s parents send him home to New York City for safety. But Paul can think only of Rima's safety, and he returns to Germany.
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I recently joined a book club where the members are all (we would admit this) women of a certain age. While we were making our list of must-reads, scribbling down titles of great books we always wished we had read, we discovered that not everyone in the group had read Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman.
Well, that was that. Half the room leaned forward and said in chorus, “Oh, you’ve got to read it!”
There’s something about living through an era of social change that makes you want to tell people about it and gives you an enormous camaraderie with other people who went through it, too. (Any social change—this summer, ask someone older what life was like before air conditioning, for example.)
If someone can do that telling as vividly and hilariously as Atwood does in this 1969 classic of the early women’s movement, you’ve just got to pay attention.
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wednesday july 04
I’ve been blogging mystery and suspense novels for the past few weeks. This one’s a mystery, too, but a delightfully charming period mystery quite unlike those other titles.
Kate Ross’s series debut, Cut to the Quick¸ introduced Julian Kestrel, a London dandy of the 1820s. Invited to a country house to be the best man at a wedding, he finds that the groom’s aristocratic family is being blackmailed into accepting a former stable hand’s daughter as the bride.
More startling still, Julian finds the body of an unidentified young woman in the bed of his guest room. When his own manservant (a former cutpurse) is accused of her murder, Julian steps in to find the real culprit, and of course discovers that the murder and the blackmail are linked.
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wednesday june 20
I just read Jo Bannister’s sixth Brodie Farrell mystery, Requiem for a Dealer. I’ve always liked her work—her Castlemere books are great police procedurals set in northern England—but I think I like these best.
Brodie is a brisk, resourceful woman who runs a finding service in a little coastal English town. She tracks down missing pets, locates china patterns in online auctions, whatever needs finding.
In the series debut, Echoes of Lies, she was given a photograph and asked to find the man in it. She quickly and cleverly identified him as a local teacher, Daniel Hood. What she didn’t know was that she was finding him for people who then tortured him for information they believed he had, and left him for dead.
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friday june 15
Do you love to cook? Are you always on the lookout for a fantastic new recipe? Then you might want to peruse the library's listing of recipe websites. If you prefer reading about food to cooking it (and don't mind a little murder mixed in here and there), then check out the following culinary mysteries:
- Dark Tort--Diane Mott Davidson--Colorado caterer Goldy Schulz tries to solve the mysterious death of Dusty Routt, a promising young paralegal.
- The Flaming Luau of Death--Jerrilyn Farmer--While throwing a bachelorette party in Hawaii for a valued employee, event planner Madeline Bean feels compelled to investigate when a body washes up on the beach.
- Key Lime Pie Murder--Joanne Fluke--When a teacher is found murdered during Lake Eden's bakery contest, Minnesota resident and bakery owner Hannah Swensen once again plays amateur sleuth to unmask a murderer.
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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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wednesday june 06
Hurray! TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society), my favorite crew of ghost-hunting plumbers, is back on the air, and starting June 6 there will be new episodes of Ghost Hunters on SciFi with new investigations! These Ghost Hunters take their investigations very seriously, coming at it from the point of view of disproving it. Sometimes they can't...
Along those lines, I have a little stack of books on my desk about proving and debunking paranormal events.
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Big Red Tequila is a great title for a Texas mystery, isn’t it? This novel gets it right right on the title page.
Rick Riordan is probably more famous nowadays as the author of a teen fantasy series based on Greek mythology—his bestselling The Lightning Thief was our teen book choice for On the Same Page.
But back in 1997 he debuted an adult mystery series set in San Antonio. He got more than the title just right. All of you readers who enjoy a nice semi-hard-boiled mystery with an appealingly thoughtful but smart-talking hero and a well-realized regional setting should try the Tres Navarre series.
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thursday may 31
