London Calling

The countdown begins for our trip to London! I have major homework to do. Piled next to my bed, I have all the latest travel guides as well as a collection of London-related fiction and nonfiction. Here is what I trip over when I get up to pee in the middle of the night:
London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd (800 pages of history)
London: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd (History of the greatest city through fictional characters)
Imagined London by Anna Quindlen (a tour of London's writers and their character's' haunts)
Night Watch by Sarah Waters (Well, all of Sarah Waters' books are amazing works set in London. Night Watch is set during the Blitz and it is sad and magnificent.)

Alison Weir - fiction or nonfiction, she will show you the London of Henry VIII. My favorites are The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Innocent Traitor (the story of Lady Jane Grey that the beefeaters tell) and The Lady Elizabeth.


Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (his name is synonymous with London)
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale (a true murder mystery that took place in a great estate outside of London)

Maisie Dobbs by Jacquline Winspear (quaint and cozy mysteries from the time between World War I and II. Full of details of London's high and low society, clothes, vacations, politics and more)
Jack the Ripper: The Complete Casebook by Donald Rumbelow (we went on a nighttime Jack the Ripper tour with Rumbelow and he was very informative. You can find him in random DVD extras or TV specials on Jack the Ripper too. This book is an oldie but goodie).

I know I tend to lean towards historical fiction but it is London's history that makes it so fascinating. As Anna Quindlen wrote in Imagined London, "Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life."

Nicholson Baker

I have read Nicholson Baker before. His 2001 book Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper was the beginning of many a debate while I was in library school. Nicholson argued that by dismantling collections of bound newspapers and "brittle" book and microfilming them, libraries were trashing irreplaceable records. Hmmmm. It's tough to find things to criticize libraries about, but he found something! (Debatable as it may be....)

Well Baker found a new controversial theory to defend - involvement in World War II. In his new book, Human Smoke, he "questions the popular notion of the just war and indicates that Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt share blame with Adolf Hitler" according to an article on CNN. Nothing like a book to stir the pot!

Sex Sells! Who Knew??

In an earlier post I mentioned Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) sniffing a library book in bed. Well, apparently you need a gorgeous woman sniffing a book to sell it. Everybody wants this "Love Letters From Great Men" book ... the only catch is that it was made up. Sales of books with similar titles are skyrocketing.
CNN had an article about it.
I guess ALA had it right with putting celebrities reading books on posters.

The Give Up Day

I give up.

I really wanted to love The Given Day by Dennis Lehane (see earlier post). Today I decided that I was not enjoying it and should let others get their hands on this highly coveted advance copy. James, a friend/patron, actually did a happy dance at the reference desk today when I showed him the book.

I don't blame Lehane. I honestly believe that, like the same book can mean very different things to different people, the same book can mean different things to you at different times. Books that I reread can reveal layers or subplots I never paid attention to before, or books that I had put down years ago now become new favorites. In other words, it's not YOU, Dennis, it's ME.

Although, this really is a man's book. In the pages I read, I am seeing the social, political and racial unrest in Boston in the 19-teens. But he is showing it with the one thing I HATE to read about: sports. (I even tend to skim the Quiddich matches in Harry Potter.) The entire Prologue of The Given Day is a baseball game. I fell asleep twice. Chapter one is a boxing match. I yawned and felt squeamish at the, "spitting white foam, then gouts of pink." Then there is the cast of characters list - 36 long. And the fact that the book is 704 pages.

So I have pulled out the bookmark and set the book aside. I will return it to Terry, who will pass it on to the next excited Lehane fan. Maybe it's too much pressure, having this tome of a book, toted as a "tour-de-force" before everyone else. Maybe I'll buy a copy at Borders after September 23 like everybody else and read it in my own sweet time.

Keep an eye on Kate

I just finished The House at Riverton by Kate Morton. It is the young Australian's first book and it's excellent. The main character (Grace) is a 99-year-old woman. She is insightful and sympathetic but never melodramatic. Most of the novel is a flashback of her time as a servant in a great estate outside of London. She works for a family with two sisters who become involved with a poet who takes his own life. Or that is how the story goes ...
Not only is this book an amazing work of historical fiction - set in the 19-teens through 1920s when the Victorian traditions began to give way to flappers and jazz - as well as a satisfying, suspenseful mystery; but most importantly a beautifully written book. Here is a passage when 99-year-old Grace sees a collection of old photos at a fair.

"It is a cruel, ironical art, photography. The dragging of captured moments into the future; moments that should have been allowed to evaporate with the past; should exist only in memories, glimpsed throught the fog of events that came after. Photographs force us to see people before their future weighed them down, before they knew their endings."

Haunting.

oh. my. god.

In my hands (right this moment! It's kind of hard to type) is a box. It's 6 inches by 9 inches, about 4 inches deep. It has an old map of Boston printed on it.

When you open the box, an assortment of replicated photos, maps and newspaper articles fall out. A New York Times article from 1919, a photo of Emma Goldman and another of Calvin Coolidge. A full map of Boston from 1902 and a replica Babe Ruth baseball card from his 1914-1935 Red Sox years. Under all of this ephemera lies a book. It is a heavy paperback (704 pages) called The Given Day: A Novel and it is Dennis Lehane's newest book, set to hit bookstores and libraries September 23, 2008.

Dennis Lehane wrote two of my favorite mystery/suspence novels: Gone, Baby, Gone (which of course was made into a hit movie) and Shutter Island (which is being made into a movie and wins BEST TWIST award). There are lots of others too, like Mystic River. Lehane is an amazing writer and his mysteries are always complex yet fun to read. But the thing about this new book?

It's historical fiction.

How did I come to hold this treasure box? Why, my good friend, fellow librarian and bookstore owner, Terry! This promotional advance copies are reason enough to open your own bookstore!!

Sex in the Library

So yes, I am one of the millions who ran to her local movie theatre to see Sex and the City! So why am I blogging about it here, on Bethany the LIBRARIAN?

In one scene, Carrie is in bed with Big. She is reading a library book. Big says, "You are the only person in New York City who still takes books out of the library!"
"I love the way they smell!" Carrie replies, sniffing the book.

Love it!

Later, when Carrie is planning her perfect New York City wedding, guess where it would take place?

In the New York City public library!

Whether it takes place or not, I cannot disclose.