Bethany the Librarian

I'm too busy

2009-05-21T11:17:00.001-07:00

I have so many post ideas in my head but so much is going on right now that they never make it to the computer! Summer is a different world in the Hamptons and it has already begun. I am again coordinating our Adult Summer Reading Program and I have some big events in my personal life as well. So, until I get to sit down and write about all the books and authors that I love (and hate), I had a guest sit down and give us a list of 8 books to read this summer. This is a man whose reading advice I would take!

Don't be a stranger...

2009-05-10T13:48:00.000-07:00

I was thrilled to wake up this beautiful, sunny, Mother's Day to a review of Sarah Waters' new book in my newspaper. And what a great review it was! I feel like maybe too many details were given away but if it gets more readers for Ms. Waters then it's worth it!

You can read the review here.

Aren't you lucky

2009-05-08T07:46:00.000-07:00

I was lucky enough to see Sarah Waters for the second time the other day. She has published her fifth book, The Little Stranger, and crossed the pond to do a Barnes & Noble "one on one" interview. And lucky you, the interview is available online. So while I had to find parking near Union Square in NYC, you get to just click here.

Luckily, the video only shows the interview portion, not the book signing portion. I think I babbled a bit when I tried to tell Ms. Waters how much I love her writing ... I'm glad that wasn't captured on video!

An interview with Martin Millar

2009-05-08T07:22:00.000-07:00

Again, stolen from Shelf Awareness.

Martin Millar is Scottish, from Glasgow, but has lived in London for a long time. He writes books under his own name and has also written a series about Thraxas under the name of Martin Scott--in 2002 he won the World Fantasy Award for Thraxas. He's published 16 books, "sometimes successful, sometimes not so successful." Soft Skull Press has been publishing Millar in the U.S., with Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation, The Good Faeries of New York, Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me and Lonely Werewolf Girl. His latest is a novel, Lux the Poet, is being published this month.

On your nightstand now:

Complete Letters of Pliny the Younger. His correspondence dates from 97-112 A.D., and contains all sorts of fascinating information about ancient Rome, including his first-hand account of the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii. I'm interested in anything from ancient Rome and Greece.

Also, quite a few volumes of manga, including Claymore by Norihiro Yagi, Naruto by Masashi Kishimoto and others. I like Japanese comics, and recently I've been reading a lot of them.

Favorite book when you were a child:

The Biggles books by Captain W. E. Johns. Biggles was a fighter pilot in the First World War. As I child, I often imagined myself heroically piloting a Sopwith Camel biplane over enemy lines.

Your top five authors:

P. G. Wodehouse, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Somerset Maugham, Cicero. I appear to be living in the past.

Book you've faked reading:

Moby Dick. Turgid. I hated it. Nothing would induce me to finish it. But I did pretend to read it because a girl I knew really liked it. Seems strange now I think about it. Why on earth did she like Moby Dick so much?

Book you're an evangelist for:

Hmm. I can't think of any. If I was recommending anything, it would probably be Somerset Maugham, but I doubt anyone would listen. He was a really fine storyteller. His writing was quite plain and unadorned, and I like that.

Book you've bought for the cover:

None that I can remember.

Book that changed your life:

Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. I doubt I'd have got started on my writing career if I hadn't read that. That led me on to Slaughterhouse-Five, which was also a very important influence.

Favorite line from a book:

"A lesser man, caught in this awful snare, would no doubt have ceased to struggle; but the whole point about the Woosters is that they are not lesser men."--From Right Ho Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse. (I've borrowed and adapted that line a few times.)

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

I wish I could read all the Jeeves and Wooster novels by P. G. Wodehouse again for the first time. They're the funniest books ever written.

Name a really great filmed version of a book:

Election, a novel by Tom Perrotta, film version directed by Alexander Payne, starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon. Election was a good novel, and I thought the film version was brilliant.

Spring is here!

2009-04-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

How do I know? There have been a few clues. First, we have had glorious weather the past few days and the flowers are blooming. Second, Madonna stopped by the Hamptons to go horse back riding, fell off, and was taken to our local hospital. Then, as I was leaving work yesterday evening, I slowed my car as I drove through the library parking lot for an attractive older gentleman in a white suit. Yup, Tom is back. For me, this means spring!

It's time to pull out my hammock. This is where I do the majority of my reading in the spring, summer and fall. My dog lies in the sun and I gently rock and turn the pages. It's heaven in my back yard. And I better get that hammock up quick: I have a lot to read!

A story: when I was in elementary school the school Librarian told us that an author was coming to visit our school. A real, live author! I had never met an author before and I was so excited (things never change). I got a copy of the book, called Where It Stops Nobody Knows by Amy Ehrlich. It was a great book and I have vivid memories of listening to a REAL, LIVE author talking to my school. Recently, I was thinking about this book and wanted to read it again. None of the libraries in my library system had it. I checked amazon.com and there were a few used copies available but it seemed to be out of print. I was bummed, so I googled around the Internet, looking for information on Amy Ehrlich. I remember from her visit that she had said she wanted to name the book Joyride but that the publisher had changed it to Where It Stops Nobody Knows and that blew my mind - it never occurred to me that an author might not have complete control of their book. Suddenly, I came across an interview with Amy Ehrlich, who was talking about her book Joyride. Huh? Did she like the title so much that she used it on another book? As I read on, it seemed the plot of this Joyride was the same as the plot of my well-remembered and well-loved book. I clicked back to the library online catalog as quick as I could, and searched for Joyride. Bingo. Then I looked in amazon.com again. There it is. With a cool new-millennium cover. So Amy Ehrlich finally got her way after all, and republished her book with the title she preferred. I have the book in my hands now and I can't wait to reread it. It may have a new title and a new jacket, but it is the same book I read 20 years ago. And I can't wait to get on my hammock and take the joyride again.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Pulitzers and Oranges!

2009-04-21T07:14:00.000-07:00

The Pulitzers were announced yesterday, as well as the shortlist for the Orange Prize for Fiction. This information was cut and paste (stolen) from Shelf Awareness.

Book-related winners and finalists for the Pulitzer Prize were announced yesterday. The winners are:

Fiction: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Drama: Ruined by Lynn Nottage (not yet published)

History: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed

Biography: American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham

Poetry: The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin

General Nonfiction: Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon

The shortlist for this year's £30,000 (US$43,701) Orange Prize for Fiction has been named and chair of judges Fi Glover said, "We were right down to the wire on several of the books and choosing just six was far harder than I had imagined, but we all left the judging room proud of the list we have chosen. We have stretched our heads getting to this shortlist," the Guardian reported.

The Orange Prize finalists are:

Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman

The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey

The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt

Molly Fox's Birthday by Deidre Madden

Home by Marilynne Robinson

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie

The winner will be announced June 3.

This is a blog.

2009-04-13T08:20:00.001-07:00

At the Reference Desk this weekend, a women runs up and wants to know how she can print an article from the computer. This is a question we get a lot, so I get up to help her. She begins to tell me, in a very concerned voice, about this horrible and scary thing that is happening (it involves international politics, and I won't get into it here). She is offering to make me copies of this article, and how no one seems to know what is happening, and it is so scary, and on and on. A partial quote is, "Can you believe this? I found it on the Internet!"

When I get to her computer, her and her husband are pointing, enraged, at this article. It has a cute orange "B" logo in the upper right corner, and the web address is blankyblank.blogspot.com. It's a blog. Someone, like me, is sitting somewhere writing whatever they want and posting it. It's a very simple process really, and there is absolutely no policing, editing, or verifying the content.

Aliens are attacking.

Fact? No. But according to many of my patrons, since it is in print, on the Internet, it MUST be true.

So Many Books, So Little Time (to blog)

2009-04-10T13:54:00.000-07:00

Oh, I've been reading. I've been a reading maniac. Let me tell you what I've enjoyed.

My friend Heidi was right. I did get my hands on an advanced copy of The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.

This book will be released on April 30, coincidentally, the day I will be seeing Ms. Waters in NYC! This book is different from Water's other historical novels: it is a slow, creepy, slightly supernatural novel. It has her astonishing writing and detailed historical accuracy but feels like an old-fashioned novel - which is a good thing! I just think she may lose some of her fans, even if she picks up more hard-core historical fiction fans (as she did with Night Watch). In the realm of "Sarah Waters novels" it is a very good book. In the realm of "all novels" it is exceptional. I stayed in bed for 12 hours straight with this book, slowly reading and absorbing the expertly drawn characters and constantly being surprised by the subtle historical details that just suck you into a time and place.

After Waters, Trigiani felt like a shock. I read Very Valentine by Adriana Trigiani and, after shifting gears and getting used to the severe genre change, very much enjoyed it.

Valentine is one of three daughters in an Italian-American family in New York. She runs the family business with her grandmom - get this - making shoes! Of course, times have changed since they opened in Greenich Village in 1903 and the business is drowning in debt. Valentine is asked by Bergdorf Goodman to compete for the opportunity to have her custom designed and custom made shoes grace the Christmas window displays. She is up against huge names (Prada among others) and this could make or break the family business. Add a trip to Italy, an on-again, off-again New York boyfriend and the possibility of a fling in Italy, plus some family drama and surprises and it makes for a really satisfying, quick read. This is the first of a new trilogy and is cute, stylish and fun.

I've discovered two new authors that I cannot get enough of. The first is Simon van Booy, a British short story writer who will be giving a talk at my library in early summer. While he edits books of philosophy and is working on a children's book and a novel, his two books of short stories is what really caught me. His first, The Secret Lives of People In Love, takes place all over the globe but deals with themes that effect everyone: love, loss, loneliness.

His next collection of short stories, out in June, is titled Love Begins in Winter.

My other new favorite is a Canadian writer named Helen Humphreys. I only took her new book - The Frozen Thames - out of the library because, well, it was about the Thames.
But it turns out, that didn't matter. This is a writer so skilled at short stories, that she could write about doorknobs and it would be beautiful and fascinating. The Frozen Thames is forty short stories - the Thames has frozen forty times - that touch on what was happening in London during each freeze. The point of view is always different - sometimes royalty, sometimes peasants, sometimes children, sometimes third person. The stories are very short but incredible effective. Each story is based on facts from Humphrey's research.

When I discovered that Humphreys has been publishing books since the late 1990s, I was thrilled! I grabbed Wild Dogs next from the library (which is rumored to be on its way to Hollywood) and I can't wait to start it.

2009-04-08T07:55:00.000-07:00

“After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer’s breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer - perhaps more.”
This was a new approach; I mulled the idea around in my head.
“Really?” I replied, slightly doubtfully.
“Of course!” Snell laughed. “Surf pounding the shingle wouldn’t mean diddly unless you’d seen the waves cascade onto the foreshore, or felt the breakers tremble the beach beneath your feet, now would it?”
“I suppose not.”
“Books” - Snell smiled - “are a kind of magic.”

From The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde.

Duh.

2009-03-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

An angry patron comes stomping down the stairs to the Reference Desk. He is angry because he borrowed a book from us and then mailed it back. (Why did he mail it? I have no idea.) He is being charged for the book because it apparently never arrived. So he is here to check the shelf. Ok, no problem. He wants me to check with him. Ok, again, no problem. He tells me that he'll know it's the copy he borrowed because he UNDERLINED huge segments of the book and wrote notes in the back. When we locate the book he triumphantly shows me the blue and red ink all over the front, inside and back cover of the book. Great. Now we will know who to charge to replace the returned book.

Duh.

Drood is heavy

2009-03-18T09:50:00.000-07:00

Seriously. It weighs about 4 pounds and is 777 pages. This will keep a lot of people from reading it which is incredible unfortunate.

It is an amazingly well done book. Dan Simmons took the last few years of Charles Dickens life (1865 - 1870), added accurate and beautiful descriptions of Victorian London, created a mystery with an air of ghosts and mysticism to create a book that is a historical fiction/mystery told through the eyes of novelist Wilkie Collins.

The reality of daily life in London as well as Dickens and Collins' lives are not sugar coated. Dickens was a workaholic and adulterer and Collins was a drug addict. They were best friends, collaborators and competitors. While Dickens becomes more and more obsessed with corpses and crypts, Collins loses his mind and all his money in the underground opium dens of London. The pages fly by as Simmons takes us from the sewers to the countryside of London and as Dickens and Collins' reality becomes blurry and they seem to go mad we wonder if it is the drugs, sickness, or real life ghosts.

Read this book! Don't let the number of pages disuade you - by the end you will be wishing for more. Publishers Weekly and others are reporting that Guillermo Del Toro will be directing the film version of this book. It may end up being 6 hours long!

The Lisa Files

2009-03-18T09:40:00.000-07:00

McNally Jackson books, an independent book store in New York City, is not only clean and spacious but is also full of good books and helpful people. I was also impressed by their displays - numerous and well done. But the real reason I stopped by McNally Jackson books was for their author event.

Lisa Lutz, promoting her third installment of the Spellman series, was at the bookstore this week. She seemed younger then I'd imagined but just as funny and sarcastic as her main character, Isabel Spellman.

When an audience member asked if it was true that she would never write more than 4 Spellman books (and she is finishing writing the fourth - it is due out next March) Lisa winced and looked at her editor, publisher and agent, all sitting in the front row. "Were you planted by my editor?" She demanded. There are no promises of Spellman books after the fourth installment, although she added that she had trouble tying up all the loose ends.

Loving Lutz

2009-03-09T08:19:00.001-07:00

I just finished listening to the first two books in the Spellman series by Lisa Lutz: The Spellman Files and Curse of the Spellmans. These were great books to listen to. Isabel Spellman is a private investigator from a family of private investigators. She works for Spellman Investigations in San Francisco - the company is Isabel, her mom and her ex-cop dad. Isabel is a sarcastic, heavy drinking, ex-vandal with a bit of a record. She is overly suspicious in everyday life - which leads to family fights and losing over 9 boyfriends. These part-mystery, part-comedy books are quick reads or great listens: narrator Christina Moore gives a fabulous performance.

If you, like me, have finished the first two Spellman books and are left wanting more, there is not long to wait! The third installment, Revenge of the Spellmans, will be released tomorrow (March 10)!

I couldn't wait until March 10, so I did the next best thing - I found a copy of the movie Plan B. This is a 2001 straight to video movie starring Diane Keaton and Paul Sorvino. It was written by Lisa Lutz before she wrote the Spellman books. As movies go, it's not fabulous. But if you have read Lisa Lutz you can find that Spellman humor in this movie, as well as similar themes (she must have a brother - both Isabel Spellman and Fran from Plan B have brothers with OCD). Lisa Lutz wrote an article about her 10 years of writing and rewriting the screenplay of Plan B for Salon.com.

Still, not enough Lisa Lutz for me. So I will be driving into the city on Monday, March 16 to meet the woman behind the sarcasm in person. Lisa Lutz will be at McNally Jackson Books in NYC to sign and read from her new Spellman book.

Woo-hoo!

2009-03-09T07:40:00.001-07:00

Long Island Reads is in the New York Times!

Sigh.

2009-03-03T16:30:00.000-08:00

I just shushed two patrons. Finger to lips and everything. They did not teach me that in Librarian school ... I guess it just comes natural.

My new boyfriend

2009-02-26T16:13:00.000-08:00

I'm in love.

His name is Martin Millar but sometimes he goes by Martin Scott. He is a writer who was born in Scotland but lives in London. Most of his books were published years ago in the UK, but thanks to Soft Skull Press here in Brooklyn, they are slowly being released with nifty American covers.

I read Lonely Werewolf Girl after reading an odd review of the 560 page book. The back explained only enough to make me curious:

"While teenage werewolf Kalix MacRinnalch is being pursued through the streets of London by murderous hunters, her sister, the Werewolf Enchantress, is busy designing clothes for the Fire Queen. Meanwhile, in the Scottish Highlands, the MacRinnalch Clan is plotting and feuding after the head of the clan suddenly dies intestate. As the court intrigue threatens to blow up into all-out civil war, the competing factions determine that Kalix is the swing vote necessary to assume leadership of the clan. Unfortunately, Kalix isn’t really into clan politics — laudanum’s more her thing. Even more unfortunately, Kalix is the reason the head of the clan ended up dead, which is why she’s now on the lam in London. . . This expansive tale of werewolves in the modern world — friendly werewolves, fashionista werewolves, troubled teenage werewolves, cross-dressing werewolves, werewolves of every sort — is hard-edged, hilarious, and utterly believable."

It was the funnest book I've ever read. And now, Soft Skull has just released Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation, which was originally published nearly 20 years ago. When I was flipping through the New York Times Book Review last week and saw a review of this "new" Millar book I just about peed my pants. And it's a great review! You can read it here.

My boyfriend's other books include The Good Fairies of New York, Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me and Lux the Poet. Writing as Martin Scott, he received the World Fantasy Award for his series Thraxes. Warning: these books have the worst sci-fi cover art I have ever seen and people WILL judge you and your book by the cover. I am hoping Soft Skull will release these with cool new covers soon.

You can check out my boyfriend's blog here.

oh NO you di'nt!

2009-02-26T15:51:00.000-08:00

My MAINE guy, Stephen King, was doing an interview with USA Weekend earlier this month and he totally dissed Stephenie Meyer. Kim, from our Teen Department, rushed down to reference to insist I blog about it. She is also considering pulling all of Stephen King's books off the shelves. Here is what has got all the teenage Twilighters online abuzz:

"The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn," he said. "She's not very good."

But it wasn't just Stephenie ...

King declared Perry Mason author Erle Stanley Gardner "terrible," Dean Koontz "sometimes…just awful," and James Patterson "a terrible writer" who is nonetheless "very very successful."

I saw Stephen King, J.K. Rowling and John Irving read from their works a few years ago. They seemed to be good buddies, and Stephen King had a great comment (I don't know the exact quote - but something like "Rowling writes books that get kids ready for the books Irving and I write.") I don't think he has an issue with overhyped authors, just bad writing. King is a very well read man (and he doesn't just write horror - try On Writing) and I actually trust his opinion. And, I admit, I have not yet read the Twilight books. For shame.

I couldn't make this up ....

2009-02-20T10:38:00.000-08:00

These are the problems our patrons have:

A patron called and Terry answered the phone. She wanted a book that we don't have in our library. Another library in the county has it, and we can inter-library loan it. This takes about 3 days. The patron wanted the book now, so Terry called the other library and had them hold the book for the patron, who was going to go get it. The library requires the patron's library card number, which Terry gave them.

The patron calls back. She has sent her driver and her housekeeper to pick up the book at the other library. She is concerned now about whether the library will give the book to her housekeeper and her driver, since they don't have her library card.

Terry is currently calling the other library back to explain that the patron will not be there, but the patron's driver and housekeeper (why both of them, I don't know. Apparently the driver must drive the housekeeper).

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Perks

2009-02-20T10:11:00.000-08:00

Isabella Rossellini was just here, sitting at a study desk. We all pretended we were not looking at her.

The Generation Gap

2009-02-17T15:05:00.000-08:00

An older, rich couple came in to the library the other day. Despite being computer illiterate, they decided to find a hotel in Paris using the Internet. Mrs. Rich continuously waved her hand and "yoo-hoo'd" me to help while Mr. Rich sat patiently next to her. For half an hour I bopped up and down, showing them how to do a Google search, suggesting they use our travel books to recommend a hotel instead of the Internet, showing them how to close the countless advertisement boxes that popped up, found the "rates" link in each web page, and so on. The entire time Mr. Rich silently sat next to Mrs. Rich, watching me navigate the mouse. Finally, as they were asking for help on how to log off, Mr. Rich spoke up.

Mr. Rich: "This is bad."
Bethany the Librarian: blink.
Mr. Rich: "I have a doctorate."
Bethany the Librarian: "Oh?"
Mr. Rich: "But you were BORN with computers, right?"
Bethany the Librarian: "Pretty much."
Mr. Rich: "I was born with a secretary."

NYC Comic Con 2009!

2009-02-10T15:26:00.000-08:00

I had so much fun at this year's Comic Con in New York. I got to see Mo Willems (author of the Pigeon children's books, among others) read out loud while jumping, running and screaming around the stage. He was amazing. I also got to meet Bryan Lee O'Malley, author of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels as well as Ryan Kelly and Brian Wood, who illustrated and wrote Local. I saw Jeff Kinney, author of the Diary of Wimpy Kid series but his line was too long!

I could never explain the amount of people crammed into the massive Javits Center, the elaborate costumes, the horribly overpriced foods or the feeling of camaraderie with other geeks - it was an amazing experience. Here are a few photos to illustrate.

This doesn't do the crowd justice - I needed a wide angle lens to capture that space. There were booths with publishers, artists, tv, films, video games, dolls, toys, clothes .... and on and on.

I had to wear comfortable shoes.

Checking out our signed copy of Local while waiting for Mo Willems.

Mo! He taught us how to draw the pigeon.

Long line for Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

I love to see people excited about books!

As they say in Family Feud ... good answer!!

2009-01-29T11:08:00.000-08:00

Between Coraline and Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman is being interviewed everywhere you turn. In one interview I was reading today, the last question seemed a bit strange ... but Neil had a beautiful answer.

"So what do you think about children's books?"

"They're terrible; they should be banned. What kind of question is that? I think they're wonderful. When I was a kid, I was a kid with a book. As far as I was concerned, had you asked me at the age of seven what the most important things in the world are, I'd probably say the first six Narnia books, the first three Mary Poppins books. . . . Had I discovered The Hobbit yet? Not yet. The books that took pride of place on my shelves were Stig of the Dump by Clive King, Tales of Ancient Egypt by Roger Lancelyn Green. I was the kind of kid who, during my summer holidays, would persuade my parents to drop me off at the library in the morning, and I'd spend my day there. Sometimes I'd pack a lunch. At 6:30 when they closed, I'd walk home.

Children's fiction, for me back then, was the most important thing there is. It has a holy place and position that adult fiction doesn't have. Adult fiction is a wonderful thing and enriching to the soul and mind, and it takes you to great places. But children's fiction can change the world and give you a refuge from the intolerable. It can give you a place of safety and show you the world is not bounded by the world you live in--there's more than that."

James Brady, local writer, dies

2009-01-28T12:34:00.000-08:00

James Brady, a resident of East Hampton and author of books set in the Hamptons has passed away. A full obituary from Newsday is here.

From the article:
"I'm a city boy, born in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn," Brady told Newsday in 1997, upon publication of his Hamptons novel, "Further Lane." I have never lived in a place - and I've lived in Paris, London, Washington, Manhattan - which I've found as beautiful, as comfortable and as wonderful as East Hampton. Part of that is the strangeness of it."

It seems we have lost so many writers lately ... I hope they have a good library in heaven.

His story is now complete.

2009-01-28T12:28:00.000-08:00

John Updike has passed away. The New York Times has a story here. Pay your respects: read one of his books.

Rabbit novels

(1960) Rabbit, Run
(1971) Rabbit Redux
(1981) Rabbit Is Rich
(1990) Rabbit At Rest
(2001) Rabbit Remembered

Bech books

(1970) Bech, a Book
(1982) Bech Is Back
(1998) Bech at Bay

Buchanan books

(1974) Buchanan Dying (a play)
(1992) Memories of the Ford Administration (a novel)

Eastwick books

(1984) The Witches of Eastwick
(2008) The Widows of Eastwick

Other novels

(1959) The Poorhouse Fair
(1963) The Centaur
(1965) Of the Farm
(1968) Couples
(1975) A Month of Sundays
(1977) Marry Me
(1978) The Coup
(1986) Roger's Version
(1988) S.
(1994) Brazil
(1996) In the Beauty of the Lilies
(1997) Toward the End of Time
(2000) Gertrude and Claudius
(2002) Seek My Face
(2004) Villages
(2006) Terrorist

Neil's Newbery!

2009-01-27T07:59:00.001-08:00

I nearly drove off the road this morning when I heard on the radio that Neil Gaiman had received the Newbery Medal for The Graveyard Book. I am a huge fan of Neil and he has won numerous awards in the past - but mostly sci-fi or graphic novel related. The Newbery - as he said in an interview - is like winning the Nobel or an Oscar. It is extremely prestigious.

I met Neil when he was on tour for his last collection of short stories, Fragile Things, and he said my favorite quote of any author at any signing. Someone from the audience asked about his tendency to wear dark colors and Neil responded that he liked his clothes to be "a reassuring shade of black."

This comes at a perfect time for Neil. Another children's book that he wrote to great reviews will be released as a movie on February 6. Coraline the book is a great read-aloud (as it the Graveyard Book) and Coraline the 3D movie will be showing soon! I will be in New York City that weekend for Comic Con so I may just slip into a late showing of Coraline after a day of rubbing shoulders with Art Spiegelman, Bryan Lee O'Malley and Brian Wood.

Beautiful Children: Pretty Ugly

2009-01-21T15:56:00.000-08:00

I started out liking Beautiful Children by Charles Bock. It is a novel set in Las Vegas and begins with a missing boy. From the publisher:

"In this masterly debut novel, Charles Bock mixes incandescent prose with devious humor to capture Las Vegas with unprecedented scope and nuance and to provide a glimpse into a microcosm of modern America. Beautiful Children is an odyssey of heartache and redemption–heralding the arrival of a major new writer."

At times Bock's writing is almost beautiful - most of the time it is tedious. It verges on pseudo-philosophical and there are scenes that have actually turned my stomach. I was excited to read a book based in Vegas - with Vegas as a character - but I have been sorely disappointed. It seems only the dirty, seedy side of Vegas is of any interest to Bock. Missing children, pregnant runaways, porno, strippers, pawnshops, and drugs surround a family that is falling apart.

I don't mind dark books, or mysteries and thrillers where bad things happen. But I don't like books that seem to try to shock me with each new chapter. As I progress I think, "Maybe he is getting at something with this .... I'll just trudge through this and get back to the plot ..." Alas, something disturbing is happening in Vegas with every turn of the page.

NOT recommended.

Happy Anniversary!

2009-01-12T07:17:00.001-08:00

January 11 was my one year blogging anniversary, and this article in the New York Times was the best present ever!

"...for the first time since 1982, when the bureau began collecting such data, the proportion of adults 18 and older who said they had read at least one novel, short story, poem or play in the previous 12 months has risen."

Yes, Doctor!

2009-01-08T15:39:00.000-08:00

In the other blog that I contribute to, I reviewed a fabulous book: Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain by Kirsten Menger-Anderson. To my great surprise (and delight ... I am an author groupie) Mrs. Menger-Anderson quoted part of my review on her blog!
Here is my original review.
Here is the author's blog.

Books and Movies: The Good, the Bad, the Overhyped

2009-01-08T12:26:00.000-08:00

So much blogging I want to do, so little time. I have been enjoying so many books and movies lately, I just had to share. Here are my mini-reviews:

Books made into movies:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: the short story is fabulous, the movie is great but too long and really just takes Fitzgerald's general theme and creates a whole new story with it. Worth seeing in the theatre for an amazing naval war scene.

The Reader: Powerful, beautiful and well acted. Be warned, sex scenes and nudity abound. Worth seeing in the theatre.

Doubt: (based on the Pulitzer-prize winning play). An amazing play, an amazing cast, and the playwright-turned-director is fantastic. Bring a friend, you will want to have a discussion when this film is over. Worth seeing in the theatre.

Books:

I finished the last pages of Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, reading through the tears in my eyes. Outdated and lengthy, the core story is timeless and the book is well worth a read.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stied Larsson: I know one person who is enjoying this book ... I know two who gave up. I am the third person to give up. The beginning is wordy, confusing, has many characters and keeps flashing back. I kept getting lost, then I started day dreaming, then I returned it to the Library.

The Lagoon by Lilli Carre: eh. This is a short, beautifully drawn, sci-fi-ish graphic novel. It is worth checking out because the full page pictures are so great and, while the ending was really neat, it didn't really make sense and I kept looking for more pages to turn. A sequel maybe? Or just a short, pretty, weird book.

Beautiful Children by Charles Bock: a first novel, I can't decide if this is fiction, mystery or literary fiction. It is set in Las Vegas and is the story of a missing boy. But not a cute, 4-year-old with rosy cheeks. This is a 12-year-old brat who uses horrible language and is beyond rude to his parents. The author goes into the lives of surrounding characters - his parents, a comic book artist, a stripper, teen runaways. It's weird but I like it.

The Angel Maker by Stefan Brijs: I wasn't quite sure at first, but now I'm loving this creepy mystery. In a small town in Belgium, a geneticist returns after being mysteriously gone for 20 years. He brings with him 3 identical infants that he keeps in his house - no one sees them or hears from them. When Charlotte, a local retired teacher, is hired to take care of the three boys she begins to unravel the mystery of the doctor and his strange sons.

You know you are a Librarian when...

2009-01-04T10:36:00.000-08:00

you are stuck in traffic so you begin to translate licence plate numbers to Dewey numbers. Hmmmm... NY 746, must be a knitter.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-02T08:55:00.000-08:00

Whew, the holidays are over! They really get in the way of my reading time. Currently, I am very much enjoying Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. It was published in 1992 and won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. According to Wikipedia (which means, take it with a grain of salt...) it is the most-honored work of science fiction in recent history. It was recommended to me by Elizabeth, our head of Reference.

What is so cool about this book is that it blends science-fiction with historical fiction. While I have a few sci-fi books that I really love, I am not first and foremost a sci-fi reader. But when you throw in time travel, I'm there! Connie Willis is also a great writer - keeping up the pace in a somewhat lengthy book while sprinkling in humor and great character studies. And did I mention a historian from 2054 gets sent back to 1320 and there is a mysterious plague in both times?!?!

One drawback to the plot is, because it was written in 1992, cell phones were not such a prevalent part of society. However, the book is set in 2054 and although there are "video phones" in use, the author did not predict cell phones. While there is a massive epidemic and historians lost in time, much of the tension is around characters not being able to get in touch with each other, or waiting around for phone calls from this specialist in Scotland or that archaeologist at a dig. It seems funny, but if I can let go of reality enough to imagine time travel, I think I can imagine a world without portable telephones.

I have also just received my copy of The Angel Maker by Stefan Brijs from the Library and it looks so amazingly creepy:

The village of Wolfheim is a quiet little place until the geneticist Dr. Victor Hoppe returns after an absence of nearly twenty years. The doctor brings with him his infant children—three identical boys all sharing a disturbing disfigurement. He keeps them hidden away until Charlotte, the woman who is hired to care for them, begins to suspect that the triplets—and the good doctor— aren’t quite what they seem. As the villagers become increasingly suspicious, the story of Dr. Hoppe’s past begins to unfold, and the shocking secrets that he has been keeping are revealed. A chilling story that explores the ethical limits of science and religion, The Angel Maker is a haunting tale in the tradition of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein. Brought to life by internationally bestselling author Stefan Brijs, this eerie tale promises to get under readers’ skin.

Also, I stumbled across a review of a book in the newspaper - The Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar. I was thrilled that our library owns it, but I have been enjoying hanging out in 1320 so much that I didn't want to start a new book. Terry caught sight of it and got just as excited as me - werewolf fashion designers and werewolf outcasts running the streets of London and being called back to their Scottish castle to take over the royal werewolf family. So, I shared and let Terry borrow it first. She loves it so far and I'll be reading it before long!

New Years Resolution: read more.

I love Mondays...

2008-12-10T12:20:00.000-08:00

...because that is when my New York magazine is delivered! This week's issue contained the culture awards for 2008 .... movies, art and .... BOOKS! They have their top 10 lists on the website. Here are the best books of 2008 and here are the best graphic novels.

Zelda, Benjamin and Olaf van Schuler

2008-12-10T10:51:00.000-08:00

I keep stumbling onto tiny, hardcover books that pique my interest. Of course, I have to take them home immediately because they are so cute and bite sized ... surely I have time for just one more. Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain is a collection of related short stories by Kirsten Menger-Anderson. It begins with Doctor van Schuler coming to New Amsterdam (New York) in 1664 with a bag of medical instruments and a mad mother. Each story then follows a different van Schuler physician - from phrenologists to psychosurgeons. Menger-Anderson writes: "We are all limited by the sophistication of our tools and the generally accepted theories of our times."

The next book I grabbed is actually a short story, but it has also been released as a tiny, 54 page book. It is the Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald and it is the basis for the new movie of the same title. This is the story of a man who was born old and became younger as time passed. Everyone around him ages normally and he requires assistance as an old man (just born) and an infant (at the end of his life). We shall see how the movie adapts this concept, but I'll put my money on Fitzgerald doing a better job in 54 pages than Hollywood does in 2 hours.

Finally, my small pile of books is topped with Once Again to Zelda by Marlene Wagman-Geller. This is a groovy collection of the stories behind 50 famous book dedications from Frankenstein, Alice in Wonderland and Peyten Place to Eat, Pray, Love, The Bell Jar and The Satanic Verses. Not only is this an adorably small book, but each story is short and concise. You can leave this on your coffee table or in your car and read it bit by bit.

All of these books are at your local library, but if you are looking for stocking stuffers, these mini books are surely at your local independent bookstore, too!

Forget Rolling Stones ... this is the Times!

2008-12-04T17:46:00.001-08:00

Amazing review - bordering on retrospective - of Alison Bechdel's Essential Dykes to Watch Out For in the New York Times.

I love when the authors come to me!

2008-12-04T15:44:00.000-08:00

Not only did I get to meet Paula Uruburu yesterday, but it was in my beautiful library! Mrs. Uruburu is professor and writer, the author of American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, The Birth of the "It" Girl and the Crime of the Century. It is what we call "nonfiction that reads like fiction", meaning it is pure fact but still a fun, fast read because it is written like a bestselling novel. This is a book for anyone interested in New York City history, sensational trials, architecture, crime, rags-to-riches stories, pop culture and society during the turn of the century or well written books.

Needless to say, I was a bit excited about the author visit. I was able to sit with Mrs. Uruburu beforehand and I asked her about what she was working on now. She is writing a book on Lizzie Borden (and recently stayed in the house where the murder took place) and a book on Emily Dickinson. I can't wait to meet Lizzie and Emily through Mrs. Uruburu's thorough research and skillful writing. Her talk on Evelyn Nesbit was fascinating and patrons really enjoyed it - asking questions, buying copies of the book and lining up to talk to Mrs. Uruburu after. She is a brilliant woman; I wish I had brought a paper and pen because she was mentioning so many books and people and events! From Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow to Shakespeare's Sister by Virginia Wolfe. And of course I got my book signed! It is a lovely inscription.

Here is an interview with Mrs. Uruburu from May 2008 New York Magazine.

I'm sorry I still have no author horror stories. One of these days I'll meet a real jerk!

Alison Bechdel

2008-11-18T11:06:00.000-08:00

Last night I had the pleasure of meeting Alison Bechdel at a Barnes & Noble in New York City. Alison's autobiography, Fun Home, is a full-length graphic novel memoir. The packaging is brilliant, as it looks like any hardcover book. But when you open the pages, you see the pen and ink art and witty, intelligent dialog that Alison is known for. In The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Sean Wilsey called it "a pioneering work, pushing two genres (comics and memoir) in multiple new directions." It was also nominated for many awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and three Eisner Awards.

But most importantly, I was so very curious to see how a graphic novelist would do a reading. Would she just read from the comics? Would she act out the parts? Would she skip the reading and just talk about the process of creating graphic novels? I was happy to discover a multi-media presentation. Alison projected panels from various publications on a screen, let the audience read the talk bubbles, then made comments. After, she did an extensive question and answer period.

Of course I got my book signed, and while I was at it I questioned her on her next book. She is working on another graphic novel autobiography, which will pick up where Fun Home ended (around the college years). She was so sweet (thanking us for coming and waiting in line) and nice - some day I'll meet a mean author and blog all about how horrible they are, but so far I've only had great author interactions.

After the talk, we drove home through Central Park and down 5th Avenue. All of the stores had people working in the windows, setting up the elaborate Christmas displays. Some of the trees in Central Park were covered in lights already and lit-up snowflakes lined 5th Avenue. The tree was shipped in and set up at Rockefeller Center yesterday too. I guess the Holiday season is upon us!

LIREADS 2009

2008-11-14T11:55:00.000-08:00

It is official, we have chosen Pulitzer Prize winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin and her book, Wait Till Next Year, as 2009's Long Island Reads. This means that libraries across Long Island will read the book, discuss the book, take part in programs and events related to the book (growing up on Long Island, the Brooklyn Dodgers, life in the 1950s) and come together in April to hear Mrs. Goodwin speak! It is all very exciting, especially when I opened my newspaper this morning to see our President elect quoting our Long Island Reads pick!

"Obama hinted broadly during the primaries that he would reach out to political rivals and even Republicans to fill his cabinet, at one point noting he was studying Lincoln's approach, reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's book "Team of Rivals."
'She talks about Lincoln's capacity to bring opponents of his and people who have run against him in his cabinet,' Obama told CBS' Katie Couric in a January interview. 'And he was confident enough to be willing to have these dissenting voices and confident enough to listen to the American people and push them outside of their comfort zone. And I think that part of what I want to do as president is push Americans a little bit outside of their comfort zone. It's a remarkable study in leadership.'"

You can see Mrs. Goodwin's website HERE.

Her books:

Fitzgeralds & the Kennedys: An American Saga, 1991

Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream, 1991

No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt -- The Home Front in World War II, 1994

Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir, 1997

Leader to Leader: Enduring Insights on Leadership from the Drucker Foundation's Award-Winning Journal. Editors: Paul M. Cohen, Frances Hesselbein, 1999. Includes an essay by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Bethany, in the Library, with a Hardcover book

2008-11-14T07:41:00.001-08:00

Ever play Clue?

As I read The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale I feel like I'm playing a game of Clue. This is a true-crime nonfiction book. In 1860, a 3 year-old boy was snatched from his bed and murdered at a large country estate outside of London. A detective - Mr. Whicher - is sent to investigate the parents, step-siblings, maids, gardener, cook and other household staff. The book comes complete with a map of the home and grounds. You can follow the investigation through the carriage drive, into the drawing room, library, pantry, passages and spare rooms.

This book does what all good nonfiction should do: it teaches while it entertains. Summerscale does a admirable job of explaining currency in 1880's England, the origins of detective work, what work was like for policemen; and brings in Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Edgar Allen Poe and other writers of the time. There are a number of suspects: family members, townspeople, servants as well as other players: police, detectives, other villagers. Summerscale writes clearly and keeps the many names easy to remember. There is also a family tree and list of characters if you forget someone.

I have not finished the book yet but I cannot wait to find out who committed this dastardly deed!

As this rainy fall weather turns to snow, don't pull out the board games - take a book out of your local library!

Brrr

2008-11-06T13:20:00.000-08:00

CNN.com has a great interview with Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked, Son of a Witch and the brand new Lion Among Men (and other books). In the third Wicked installment, the main character is Brrr (the Cowardly Lion). Check out the interview to see where he got the name Brrr from!

Maguire on Brrr:

"His character arises in the hollow space in our perceptions between that giant roaring lion at the MGM logo ... the ideal lion, and the kind of sad, sacked, out of work, vaudeville performer in lion pajamas that we see when Dorothy actually runs into the lion on the Yellow Brick Road.

In other words, there's a huge disconnect between the image we project of ourselves -- the best we might ever hope to possibly be -- and the way we feel about ourselves at our absolute worst -- when we're the most down in the dumps. There's a huge space in between there. So the novel's really in some ways about character and taking control of the destiny of your own character."

Michael Crichton

2008-11-05T10:53:00.000-08:00

We were all shocked to learn, just a minute ago, that author Michael Crichton passed away at 66. Crichton was involved in TV, movies, directing, producing and was a doctor ... as well as a writer. I love him best for Jurassic Park. The movie was fun but the book was spectacular. It gives you chills and makes you think about the effects humans can have when they start tinkering with nature.

The New York Times has a family statement here.

I'm glad I made a difference....

2008-11-04T12:02:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a month since I gave a lecture and tour of our local history collection. We had 8 patrons attend (as many as the room will comfortably hold). I went over resources, how to search them, and how to use them in genealogy or local history research. I created a handout with quotes and search tips. I felt I did a good job.

Today an older, stooping gentleman with grey hair and glasses came up to the Reference Desk. He looked familiar.

Gent: "Hello!"

Bethany the Librarian: "Hi!"

Gent: "That class in the Long Island room was really great."

Bethany the Librarian: "Oh! I'm glad you liked it. I had a lot of fun."

Gent: "And you had really great shoes on. They were kinda pink .... and pointy."

Bethany the Librarian: (Surprised). "Oh. Um. Yes, pink and pointy. Those are good shoes."

Gent: "Yeah!! They were really nice! I like nice shoes!"

Bethany the Librarian: (Getting up from behind the Reference Desk) "Did you see THESE? I got them in London!"

2008-11-04T10:15:00.000-08:00

I voted today! I hope you did too!

Lobsters and Songs

2008-10-29T07:01:00.000-07:00

My daily email with book stuff arrived today with a mini interview with Stewart O'Nan. I love Last Night at the Lobster and I can't wait to read his new book, Songs For the Missing. The interview is from Shelf Awareness Daily News.

Book Brahmin: Stewart O'Nan
Stewart O'Nan was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pa., and worked as an aerospace engineer before turning to writing. He is the author of a dozen novels, including Snow Angels, A Prayer for the Dying, The Good Wife and Last Night at the Lobster. His latest novel, Songs for the Missing, is being published this month by Viking and has been praised by Dennis Lehane as the "best novel I've read all year."

On my nightstand now:

Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. Next up, Woolf's To the Lighthouse, then Evan S. Connell's Mrs. Bridge. And then Alice Munro's Selected Stories, because you can't have enough Alice Munro.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Alfred Hitchcock's The Three Investigators and the Mystery of the Green Ghost. Three boys, led by the roly-poly Jupiter Jones, run a makeshift detective agency out of an old trailer buried in a scrapyard.

Your top five authors:

Shakespeare, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King.

Book you've faked reading:

Does skimming count? In that case, Pynchon's Mason & Dixon.

Book you're an evangelist for:

The True Detective by Theodore Weesner. An unsettling yet moving story of a kidnapping in Portsmouth, N.H.

Book you've bought for the cover:

The movie tie-in paperback of Breakfast at Tiffany's with Audrey Hepburn on it.

Book that changed your life:

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell.

Favorite line from a book:

"The reason life is so strange is that so often people have no choice."--William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The Stand by Stephen King.

Ghosts of Southampton

2008-10-28T16:42:00.000-07:00

The New York Times article that Lily Koppel researched at the library and at the Southampton Historical Society is here. It is very well done and perfectly spooky!

Motherhood

2008-10-28T16:19:00.000-07:00

I cannot read two books at once for the same reasons I could not have two children.

I always have a book on CD going in my car, but for some reason that doesn't count. I do make sure that my CD book and my "real" book are very different genres or topics but I think reading a "real" book invades my mind more completely than listening to someone else read to me. Whatever bound pages I am carrying around is what I consider the "book" I am reading.

Well, I thought I would reread The Grapes of Wrath (in preparation for the first Winter Discussion Group of 2008) while also reading Obscene In The Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Both books are fabulous. That is the problem.

Whenever I am reading one book, I am wondering about the other. Have I read both equally today? Am I getting more ahead in one? Does the other book feel neglected? Am I paying attention to what I am reading right now? My god, imagine if these were children! I would be counting hugs and timing conversations.

I only have one dog and I will only have one child and from now on I'm a one book at a time girl.

Post script: Jodi from circulation brought me a cookie in the shape of a shoe. It was beautiful and I was going to take a picture or scan it for the blog but I was hungry and I ate it. It was delicious.

I love to meet authors....

2008-10-23T16:45:00.000-07:00

...especially at my library!

I was excited when the New York Times called the other day for help with a story. I was thrilled when I learned that I was speaking to Lily Koppel, young and amazing New York Times reporter and author of The Red Leather Diary.

I loved the book and was giddy to do some research for Ms. Koppel. We exchanged emails and today she came into the library. Of course, I asked her to sign my book.

She was very sweet and we even discussed her doing a book talk here at the library.

I can't say it enough: I have the best job in the world.

What is the article about? Check this weekend's New York Times!

Lily Koppel's website is here and an interview/reading with her is here.

Awww, shucks

2008-10-22T14:50:00.000-07:00

I received staff recognition for November/December at my library! It was very nice and very embarrassing. Not only do I get a prime parking space, but the staff does a little write up about me for the newsletter. Being the newsletter compiler and editor, it was a little funny to edit my own blurb.

And of course they mentioned my fabulous taste in shoes. Because of this, all of the patrons who read it come up to congratulate me then go into their own shoe woes. One lady was forbidden by her family to buy any more shoes. But (she whispered) she had just gone to T.J. Maxx and bought 4 pairs.

You can see the newsletter here.

Photo contest

2008-10-22T14:42:00.000-07:00

The Suffolk County Clerk is compiling a calendar to celebrate Long Island archives. She asked for photo submissions showcasing local collections. Terry and I took a hundred (ok, more like 10) photos today but they just didn't show how pretty our local history room really is! Finally, we decided the picture needed a person to make it come alive. I was selected for my pretty pink attire. Too bad you can't see the shoes. I'll let you know if we get in the calendar! I hope I am Miss December!

The Good, The Bad and The Disappointing

2008-10-20T09:05:00.000-07:00

I have been listening to The Other Queen, Philippa Gregory's new historical fiction, and I have to say that I am very disappointed. The narrators are great but the book itself was not what I expected and I find my mind wandering.

I am a fan of The Other Boleyn Girl and The Constant Princess but the things I like best about these books (the dialog, the historical detail of dress and royal tradition) I do not see in The Other Queen. I think I will return the book on cd, as there are a number of holds on it, and take out something entirely different: World War Z. Maybe Halloween is getting me in the mood for zombie stories.

I am also reading The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton. I cannot link this book to our catalog because it does not come out until April, 2009. Morton's first book, The House at Riverton, is a great read. It is part historical fiction, part modern fiction, and beautifully written (I have reviewed this book here). The Forgotten Garden is just as great! I am happy that Morton is not a one-book wonder. Her mysteries are complex and have satisfying endings, her books are literary genre-mixers that keep the twists coming and the pages turning.

By the Book

2008-10-14T10:34:00.000-07:00

If you just can't get enough of my reading tastes here at BethanyTheLibrarian than you can check out a new blog I am part of. It is called By the Book and it is the Rogers Memorial Library blog, available through the library website. Book reviews, recommendations, comparisons and general book blog blabber will be posted by RML Librarians. So, it's like BethanyTheLibrarian only with less pink and fewer spelling and grammatical errors. Check it out! I'm off to blog there now ....

Ouch.

2008-10-08T09:08:00.001-07:00

Are Americans stupid? Are our writers second rate? Would we recognize literature if it stomped on our toe?

My feathers are ruffled ... yet it has a ring of truth ...

DIC.TION.ARY

2008-10-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

I love the dictionary. I have a big, fat, brown one at home that my mom bought me one Christmas (yes! I was excited!) and I run into my library, plop it on the floor, kneel down and put my nose against the small type as often as I can. Usually, my dog is there sniffing the book and wondering why I am crouched on the floor and not playing with him.

Anyway, I just started Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Alison will be in NYC this November and I am very excited to finally meet her. I have only just started the book because my good friends Heidi and Sascha bought a house in Syracuse and moved away with my copy! They were good enough to mail it back to me. So in reading Fun Home, I came across a fun word that I didn't know: legerdemain. Great word, right? But in looking it up, the pages of the dictionary behind the Reference Desk fell open and the word in the upper right hand corner was floccinaucinhilipilfication. Wowzers! What a word!

The more you read, the more you have to read! And if you want to know what either of those words mean, go to you dictionary ... or your local library.

Emma Donoghue at Oscar Wilde in NYC

2008-10-05T11:41:00.000-07:00

On Friday I drove into the city to see a wonderful author, Emma Donoghue at Oscar Wilde Bookshop. She is the author of Slammerkin (Born to poverty in eighteenth-century London, Mary Saunders' love of fine clothes and a dream of a better life take her from the world of prostitution to life as a household seamstress in Monmouth to a search for true freedom) The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits (Donoghue finds her inspiration for these wry, robust tales in obscure scraps of historical records: an engraving of a woman giving birth to rabbits; a plague ballad; surgical case notes; theological pamphlets; an articulated skeleton. Here kings, surgeons, soldiers, and ladies of leisure rub shoulders with cross-dressers, cult leaders, poisoners, and arsonists) and the brand new Sealed Letter (Emily "Fido" Faithfull, a spinster pioneer in the British women's movement, is distracted from her cause by the details of her friend's failing marriage and affair with a young army officer, in this drama of friends, lovers, and divorce, Victorian style). She read from the Sealed Letter with a lovely Irish accent and a dramatic flair. After, the audience asked her the ususal questions: Who do you like to read? (Terry Pratchet, Sarah Waters). Are you writing something new? (Yes) What do you prefer, contemporary fiction or historical fiction? ("I have two woman in my life ... genre-wise"). Will you sign my book? (Yes!)

Other than the fact that Emma is a wonderful writer, what I love most about her is that she uses these strange little nuggets from history and creates entire books around them. The Sealed Letter is based on an actual Victorian divorce case that was in all the newspapers and was quite shocking for the time. She also sprinkles her books with fabulous words from the period (hugger-mugger, pettifoggery, chicanery) that adds an authentic feel to the drama.

Emma is back in Canada now, hopefully working hard on her next book. Until then, pick up one of her novels, short story collections, retold fairy tales, plays or literary histories and anthologies.

My favorite holiday!

2008-09-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again! Where we assert our right to choose for ourselves what we want to read! Yup, Banned Books Week is September 27 through October 4. Terry and I just put a great display together:

There is a list of banned books from 2000-2007 at ALA. Read one of these banned books and assert your fREADom!

Lucy and Anne

2008-09-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

I love the Anne books by Lucy Maud Montgomery. For my 7th birthday my Aunt Barbara gave the full set and the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (which I will gush about at a later date). I read Anne's story numerous times in my single and double digit years. I love them so much that, when I graduated from college, my mother and I took a road trip to Prince Edward Island to see where Lucy was born, where she lived, the inspiration for the forest and fields in the books, and her grave. I love them so much that my all-time favorite movie scene is from You've Got Mail: a customer tells Meg Ryan (owner of a children's book store) that when she bought Anne of Green Gables she was advised to read it with a box of tissues. I cry and laugh every time!

Well, 2008 is the 100th anniversary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables. There is a new book out on Lucy, called Looking for Anne of Green Gables: the Story of L.M. Montgomery and her Literary Classic as well as reprints of the books themselves. And in the September 19, 2008 Globe and Mail Lucy's granddaughter speaks out about the crippling depression Lucy suffered with her entire life. In fact, she reveals that Lucy actually died from an intentional drug overdose - suicide. It's a heartbreaking article and I think the revelations will force us to read Anne with new eyes.

I say Peeps, you say Peppys

2008-09-18T15:44:00.001-07:00

I woke up last night around 1:30 a.m. and picked up Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin and finished the last 3 chapters. It is a long journey, but a wonderfully done book.

There is some nonfiction out there that reads like fiction, but this book is straight up nonfiction. Tomalin doesn't hold back the dates, political details, meandering family trees or detailed medical and relationship dirt. But this is exactly what I love about her biographies. I read Jane Austen: A Life and when I finished it I had learned not only about Jane Austen's life, but also about her time. While reading about Pepys, I admit, I had to look up some events in other books. Perhaps because I bought my copy in England there were less explanations of political details that, as an American, I didn't understand (our library copy has a different - uglier - cover...perhaps there are additional footnotes or an Americanized version). Regardless, I feel that I know Pepys (incidentally, I understand the pronunciation is "peeps") and I have a much better understanding of London during the 1660s-1670s. He lived through so many major events - the plague, the great fire of 1666 that destroyed all of medieval London, the killing of Charles I and the creation of a commonwealth in London, the introduction of tea in London, and so on - his daily musings are well written and cover dramatic events.

As I was coming to the end of Samuel Pepys, I (of course) was already planning my next book. I had purchased so many anglobooks (my new word) while on vacation but I had just devoted so much time on Pepys, I felt it was time for something different. Ah-ha! I thought! The Red Leather Diary was in my "read soon!" pile in my library. This was the exact opposite of Pepys! He was 1660's London, this was 1930s New York! As I got into the book, however, I found that I managed to find a book that was a biography of a person based on their found diary. As opposite as the locations and times are the books are actually strangely similar.

Finally, as I go through my Pepys withdrawal (I feel like we are friends now) I have come across a really fabulous website. Each day it posts Pepy's diary entry for that day (revolving through, year by year). Today, September 18, for example, has Pepys' entry for September 18, 1665. You can also search the diary for terms or specific dates. How amazing! I can get my daily dose of Pepys and read his diary in "real time" ... day by day!

Sony Readers Just Don't Fill a Bookcase

2008-09-18T10:17:00.000-07:00

"Books, as any visitor to a civilised house knows, do furnish a room. Books never look untidy, even when piled in tumbling stacks ... There is something sensuous, possibly even erotic, about the book. It appeals to both the senses and the intellect as well as to your hidden interior designer. And what curious pleasures are to be found in antiquarian bookshops - the market for used Sony Readers will perhaps never be quite so attractive."

There are those who love to predict the end of books and there are those who say, "You're crazy!" Peter Crawshaw says "You're crazy" in the BBC News Magazine. He's got lots of great reasons why books will always be here ... including the decorative reason above. And for those of you who don't want to READ about why we need books, there is a nifty 3 minute video.

While he argues that books are here to stay, my New York Magazine arrived Monday with an article predicting the end of the book publishing industry ... as we know it. You can read about that here.

Pages turning like autumn leaves.

2008-09-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

Bring on the fall!

I love pumpkin carving and cooler weather and sleeping with the windows opened and passing out Halloween candy and putting on homemade sweaters. And I especially love all the books that are being published this fall.

Bring on the sequels!
Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked (basis of the Broadway play) and the sequel Son of a Witch has written a third installment, A Lion Among Men.

John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick was published in 1984 but the sequel, The Widows of Eastwick, is being published in 2008.

Nelson DeMille is a very popular author on Long Island. The Gold Coast, published over ten years ago, is finally getting a sequel. The Gate House will be published in October.

Bring on the new books for long winter nights!
Some of my favorite authors are going to keep me busy until spring.

Julia Glass' new book, I See You Everywhere, "Follows the intertwined lives of two sisters--Louisa Jardine, the conscientious older sister who yearns for a good marriage, an artistic career, and a family, and her younger sister Clem, an iconoclastic, daring rebel--over the course of twenty-five years."

Neil Gaiman returns to YA with Graveyard Book. "Raised since he was a baby by ghosts, werewolves, and other residents of the cemetery in which he has always resided, Bod wonders how he will manage to survive amongst the living with only the lessons he has learned from the dead." Like Coraline, this will be a read-aloud Halloween book.

Another Halloween pick is Just After Sunset, a new collection of short stories by the Maine master of the macabre, Stephen King. Until its release date, check out the animated graphic novel version of one of the short stories here.

So pour a cup of apple cider and open a book. If you see the leaves piling up on my front lawn it's because I'm too busy to rake!

13 to 6

2008-09-10T07:14:00.000-07:00

The longlist has become the shortlist.
The 2008 Man Booker Prize shortlist is as follows:

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

They cut Child 44 and A Case of Exploding Mangoes, among others. Any opinions on the above 6? I'm ashamed to say I have not read ANY of them!!

Year of Reading

2008-09-08T14:03:00.000-07:00

One evening in London, after walking all day until my feet ached, I was lying in bed and flipping through the television channels. I came across a commercial that made me stand up (aching feet and all) and cheer. 2008 is a National Year of Reading in the UK and THIS is the fabulous ad they are running on t.v.

I know my library is beautiful...

2008-09-08T13:50:00.000-07:00

but apparently NBC agrees.

It's my first day back at work and all day a group of people have been stamping across our lawn, looking up at our building, making strange hand gestures and running down the middle of the street with cameras. Yes, our building is being filmed as part of a pilot for a new NBC sitcom called Royal Pains. It is about a NYC doctor who somehow comes to work at a fictional Hamptons hotel (our library, with a big "West Wind Hotel" sign stuck on the front). So watch out for it, and when you see the shot of the "Hotel", look for me in the window.

The London Book Tour '08

2008-09-08T09:35:00.000-07:00

I'm back! I had an amazing two weeks in London. I bought a pair of shoes, went to museums, took a bus to Kent but mostly I tracked down bookshops, libraries and other literary places.
We stayed right down the road from Charing Cross Road, the place where the bookstore from 84 Charing Cross Road was and still the home of many, many bookstores (both independent and not - lots of used, rare and specialized but also the home of Borders).

Needless to say, I bought a few books.

I visited the British Library,

a library in Leeds castle (Kent)

and the Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

At the Tower of London I saw words carved into stone hundreds of years ago

and at Shakespeare's Globe I saw some of his works, hundreds of years old.

In Leister Square I came across a beautiful statue

and somewhere in London I bumped into Oscar Wilde! ... well, a statue of him.

I'll have more London stories later!

I'm not here right now, but if you leave a message ...

2008-08-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

I leave in 3 days and there is so much to do! We have our big end-of-summer and end-of-summer-reading club tea tomorrow so we are baking and shopping and calling and generally acting like headless chickens. Meanwhile, I am packing and sorting and organizing and trying to make sure I don't forget essential overseas travel things ... like face wash or passports. And to top it off, I'm trying to finish my two British-themed books before I leave.

Last night I was all cozy in bed (with the AC on and my doggie snuggled beside me) enjoying the cute, quaint, book-lovers book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Then I turned to page 178. Oh, I won't give it away but I lay sobbing for awhile. It's a wonderful, if slightly melodramatic, book. When it is finished I will quickly read The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (Queen Elizabeth finds she loves to read ... what could be better??) and then I'm ready to crack my crisp, new paperback copy of Jason Pinter's The Mark on the plane.

Needless to say, I'll be too busy browsing the British Library and shopping at every book store I can find in Central London to do any blogging! So until September, happy reading!

Roll Call

2008-08-18T13:11:00.000-07:00

If you reside in or are visiting the Hamptons this week, grab a copy of Hampton Style. It is free and available wherever you can get Dan's Papers (whose cover story this week is the annual Artist and Writers Charity Softball Game - the artists won for the second year in a row). Hampton Style's cover story is writers of the Hamptons and on the cover is my favorite patron, Tom Wolfe. He is looking elegant in a (BLUE?!) blazer over his white shirt and pants. My favorite part of the story is looking closely at the photos of Mr. White in his Southampton home ... you can see titles to some of the books on his shelves.
The issue also contains a compiled list of local writers, which we at the library contributed to. In case you are not lucky enough to be on the East End of Long Island, here is the list:

Edward Albee
Alan Alda
Arlene Alda
Julie Andrews
Marjorie Appleman
Philip Appleman
Ken Auletta
David B. Axelrod
Melissa Bank
Helen Barer
Richard Barrons
Louis Begley
Edward Bleier
James Brady
Ben Bradlee
Marie Brenner
Tina Brown
Tricia Brown
Robert Caro
Betsy Carter
Marilyn Church
Mark Ciabattari
Tom Clavin
Bob Colacello
Jennet Conant
Gwyneth Cravens
Sophie Dahl
Robert Dash
Jill A. Davis
Nelson DeMille
Morris Dickstein
E.L. Doctorow
Antony Drexel-Duke
David Ebershoff
Nora Ephron
Jason Epstein
Sir Harold Evans
Charles Ades Fishman
James Frey
Alan Furst
Steven Gaines
Philip Galanes
Danielle Ganek
Ina Garten
Stan Goldberg
Barbara Goldowsky
Barbara Goldsmith
Aaron Richard Golub
Alastair Gordon
Martin Gottfried
Gael Greene
John Jonas Gruen
Patricia Gussin
Angelica Harris
Ursula Hegi
Amy Hempel
Arthur Herzog
Barbara T. Hoffman
A.M. Homes
Robert Hughes
Bonnie Jacobson
D. Daniel Judson
Phil Keith
Pamela C. Keogh
Klaus Kertess
Chris Knopf
Jill Krementz
Alex Kuczynski
Lucette Lagnado
Denise LeFrak Calicchio
Margaret Logan
Robert Long
Mike Lupica
David Margolick
Peter Matthiessen
Renee Mauborgne
Nick McDonell
Jay McInerney
Hope McIntyre
Marijane Meaker
Sylvia Mendelman
Barbara Metzger
Danny Meyer
John Meyer
Judith Miller
James Monaco
Daniel Thomas Moran
Bob Morris
William Norwich
Josephine Nobisso
Sidney Offit
Joseph Olshan
Holly Peterson
Jean Marie Pierson
Nicholas Pileggi
Joe Pintauro
Jason Pinter
Allen Planz
Taylor Plimpton
Norman Podhoretz
Faith Popcorn
Anne Porter
Norman S. Poser
Georgette Preston
Richard Price
Sally Quinn
Nahid Rachlin
Phyllis Raphael
Dan Rattiner
Robert Reeves
Paul Reickhoff
Robert Borris Riskin
Roger Rosenblatt
Jim Rutenberg
James Salter
Lynne W. Scanlon
Karenna Schiff
Caroline Kennedy-Schlossberg
Bud Schulberg
Philip Schultz
Michael Shnayerson
Dani Shapiro
Wilfred Sheed
Julie Sheehan
Gail Sheehy
Carol Sherman
Dava Sobel
Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel
Warren St. John
Anne Surchin
Simon Van Booy
Eric Van Lustbader
Victoria Van Lustbader
Emma Walton
Kurt Wenzel
Barbara Wersba
Alexandra Wolfe
Tom Wolfe
Hilma Wolitzer

Newsflash

2008-08-13T07:50:00.000-07:00

It seems like every few months there is some sort of expose of school or library spending. Well, it's that time again. When I grabbed my soggy Newsday from my front lawn Saturday I opened it to find an article about the different taxes charged in different Long Island communities, and how just because some people pay more it doesn't mean they have a "better" library. You can see the full article here.
I found myself yelling at my dog (the only one who listens) over the paper. Yes, Sachem Public Library serves one of the biggest communities, but just because other libraries have more books does not mean they are misspending their money. Sachem does a dizzying amount of programs, trips and classes. They do so much because that is what their community wants and needs, so more of the budget goes to that department (actually, they have an entire staff devoted to programs, whereas other libraries have their programs coordinated by "reference" librarians, which means programming is not their only job). It is actually a GOOD thing that libraries differ so much. The whole point of a library is to be a community center that caters to its individual community. And on a diverse island such as ours, that means vast differences from community to community, library to library.

This morning's soggy paper yeilded less yelling. An opinion piece by Bob Keeler reminded me that there are patrons out there who will stand up for their libraries. Those who are looking for scandal to fill a newspaper are not patrons, just like those who bellyache about library taxes are not patrons. Community members who use their libraries for books, movies, classes, entertainment and as community centers know what a great bargain they are.

Authors, authors everywhere

2008-08-07T14:09:00.000-07:00

I missed seeing Paula Uruburu when she was at Cold Spring Harbor Library so I have decided to take it upon myself to bring her to my library ... even though we have a programming department that does an amazing job. So I have emailed Mrs. Uruburu and am anxiously awaiting her response. I figured I'd take a break from checking my email and post.

Twice now I've seen Zachary Lazar, local resident and author of Sway, here at the library typing away with a huge pile of typed pages beside his Mac. Is it totally rude to ask him what he is writing about next??

A reporter from Hampton Style contacted me yesterday because they are running a piece on all the writers who live full time or just summers in the Hamptons. She wanted to see if she missed any and between Terry and Elizabeth we thought of a number of additions. I won't post the list now (I don't want to scoop them!) but maybe after the issue is out ... it's amazing who is out here!!

I hope this is me someday!

2008-08-07T10:05:00.000-07:00

A woman who began her work as a librarian in 1934 is still at it ... at 100!
Full article here.

Q: What's better than a great book?

2008-08-06T11:47:00.000-07:00

A: Finding out the author is a nice guy!

Our final Summer Reading Program genre discussion group was Monday and we discussed mysteries. Thanks to Terry, our librarian/bookstore owner, we had a guest speaker. Jason Pinter, author of The Mark, The Guilty and the newly released The Stolen (all with protagonist Henry Parker) who came bearing homemade cookies and brownies. He gave our (large!) group a short biography and then took questions. We learned about what books he reads, how he constructs his mysteries and how he went about getting his books published.

Terry and I also had the pleasure of having dinner with Jason after the discussion. We got some great dirt on a big writer (he he) along with our Italian food. And Jason even let me follow him on the scary, dark back roads of the Hamptons to the highway.

The best part is that this nice, young guy is getting crazy buzz! From Publishers Weekly, "Parker's first-person voice dominates: it lists between Parker as gritty, desensitized journalist and young romantic who wants little more than to spend the rest of his life with one woman. The emotional dichotomy makes Parker a captivating and complex protagonist, one whose pithy observations about New York are dead on." Jason has also been nominated for a string of various awards.

I have a long flight in 17 days and I am a nervous flier. I need some good distractions so I purchased Jason's three books (from my local independent bookstore :) ). After meeting him and hearing so many good things about the character he has created I am anxious to start ... but I will hide the books from myself until the day I leave for London. And I'll finally get to meet Henry Parker high above the Atlantic Ocean.

The saddest thing I could think of

2008-07-31T10:45:00.000-07:00

A library in Maine was hit by lightening and burned to the ground. The entire collection of books and local history materials were destroyed.
Full article here.

Man Booker Prize 2008!

2008-07-30T07:31:00.000-07:00

The longlist for the 2008 Man Booker Prize:

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
From A to X by John Berger
The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant
A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

The shortlist will be announced on September 9, and the £50,000 winner will be announced on October 14 at an awards ceremony in London.

A surprisingly good book; A surprisingly bad book

2008-07-28T11:58:00.000-07:00

I just finished two books. One of the books had me excited for months and turned out to be completely mediocre. The other book I picked up assuming I would put it right down but it has surpassed my expectations to the point of enthralling me.
Let me say before I give a bad review - I own every one of David Sedaris' books and most of them are signed. I have travelled to hear him give a reading and when I read his essays I usually end up squirting milk through my nose or choking on salad (I like to eat while I read). So clearly, I was very excited to hear about his new collection, When You Are Engulfed In Flames. Others were excited, too. There are hundreds of reserves in the Suffolk County Library System alone and the book remains #1 on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list.
A few weeks ago I found myself at Penn Station with nothing to read (scariest thing I can imagine other than the giant spiders in Harry Potter). Browsing the Penn Station book store, I picked up Sedaris' book. I was one of the hundreds waiting for a library copy and figured I might as well purchase a copy. At the last minute I changed my mind (and picked up the latest issue of New York Magazine, which had a cover story by Tom Wolfe that was absolutely fabulous). Now that I have waited my turn and read the book I am sorry to say that I am happy I didn't purchase the hardcover at full price. It's just not that funny.
As a fan, I would say that the book is worth reading. The first essay had me giggling and the last (and lengthiest) essay on his attempts to quit smoking in Tokyo were interesting in an armchair travel sort of way, but not so much in a humorous story kind of way. But Sedaris' life is interesting, nonetheless. Who else gets to live in Normandy, Paris, and NYC while travelling to countless other countries large and small.

A librarian from another library had mentioned the book Three Junes in passing. I picked it up recently and it has taken me by surprise. I feel like this book is at a level beyond everyday fiction for three reasons:
1. This is a well-built book. I don't know if I have ever said that of any other novel, but the way this book is designed adds to the story. It is in three parts: the first through the eyes of Paul, an older Scottish man who has just lost his wife and is travelling through Greece. He finds himself attracted to a young female artist and through the conversations they have you learn of his three sons.
In the second part, Paul has passed away and the story is through the eyes of his oldest son, Fenno, who has left Scotland to open a bookstore in New York City. The final part takes place on Long Island when Fenno comes across the young artist his father had met in Greece.
2. The words. Yes, all books are made of words. But which words? Some are full of cliches and overly used adverbs, other are pretentious in their vocabulary but Three Junes is neither. Her descriptions are unique and efficient enough to be noticeable but are never show-offy.
3. Characters. This book is brimming with interesting, 3-D characters who are both everyday and extraordinary.

It's no wonder Three Junes, Julia Glass' first book, won the National Book Award.

What classic literary character are you?

2008-07-24T16:30:00.000-07:00

Make me a classic character!

This is a fun, short quiz that tells you what classic character you are. It's also an impressive website! Click on the link above, watch the nifty intro, than click on Which Character Are You? on the upper right hand side.

American Eve

2008-07-24T15:25:00.001-07:00

I have just finished a book so good that it has left me in mourning. I mourn the death of Evelyn Nesbit and the end of the book. I also mourn the fact that I missed meeting the author, Paula Uruburu, a week ago. She is a professor at Hofstra University here on Long Island and I look forward to another opportunity to meet her and get a copy of American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the "It" Girl and the Crime of the Century signed!
This book was an amazing read for many reasons. First, the story of Evelyn Nesbit and Stanford White has all the ingredients of a classic, tragic love story but could still satisfy today's gossip lovers (a la tmz.com). The fact that this story is told by Professor Uruburu makes it all the more enjoyable. She is an expert on the time period (1899-1900 turn of the century), the pop culture of the period and feminist history. This could all equal a big bore of a book in the wrong hands, but it is the definition of nonfiction that reads like fiction. I could not put this book down. The many photos of Evelyn and other "characters" throughout the text perfectly illustrate the narrative.

This book is HIGHLY recommended for anyone who enjoys reading about the history of Manhattan, architecture, gossipy and scandalous murder trials, rags to riches bildungsromans, or pop culture during the turn of the century.

So Many Books, So Much Eyestrain....

2008-07-18T07:50:00.000-07:00

We have been noticing here at the Reference Desk - as we peruse Publishers Weekly and Booklist - that there are tons of exciting books being published in the near future. It gets us salivating as librarians but also as readers.
Usually I have a list of MUST READs 1 or 2 long, but lately the list is getting longer and longer. Some have already been published and some won't be released for another month or two. Here are the books I am drooling to read (in no particular order):
The Film Club by David Gilmour
Documents the author's efforts to impart key life lessons to his high-school-dropout son by showing him three movies every week, in an account that describes how such films as True Romance and Rosemary's Baby enabled father-and-son dialogues about a range of life issues, from relationships and work to drugs and culture.
Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir From an Atomic Town by Kelly McMasters
An evocative memoir of growing up in working-class Long Island describes her youth in a town known as a service town for the glamorous Hamptons, a place plagued by such disasters as a UFO, a childhood cancer cluster, and the nearby Brookhaven nuclear laboratory, which leaked nuclear and chemical waste into the aquifer from which town residents got their water.
The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran
Raised an outcast in the court of ancient Egypt after the deaths of her heretical relatives, Princess Nefertari is uncertain of her future until the heir to the throne, the future Rameses the Great, falls in love with her and offers her marriage, but his reign is beset with turmoil, in a story of Egypt's Nineteenth Dynasty. By the author of Nefertiti.
More Than It Hurts You by Darin Strauss
The lives of a family and a doctor are irrevocably changed and intertwined by a possible case of Munchausen by Proxy, a situation that forces a mother to question everything from her past and the doctor's concerns about her role in tearing a distressed family apart.
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale
Traces the 1860 murder of a young child whose death launched a national obsession with detection throughout England, nearly destroyed the career of a top Scotland Yard investigator, and inspired the birth of modern detective fiction.
Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo
Determined to seek her fortune in Beijing, Fenfang Wang leaves her rural farm to travel 1,800 miles to pursue her dreams in the city where, setting out to live a modern life, she lands a job as a film extra, falls under the spell of two unsuitable young men, and finally finds her true calling in an unexpected place. By the author of A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers.
The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue
Emily "Fido" Faithfull, a spinster pioneer in the British women's movement, is distracted from her cause by the details of her friend's failing marriage and affair with a young army officer, in this drama of friends, lovers, and divorce, Victorian style.

I spy .... books

2008-07-10T15:45:00.000-07:00

During a lovely visit to NYC I saw polar bears at the Central Park zoo, a man looking at a $32,500 diamond ring at Tiffanys, and people reading books. Everywhere. My favorite thing to do in NYC (along with the zoo and Tiffanys) is to sneak peeks at what people are reading. I admit - I do it everywhere I go - but it is the most interesting in big cities. I suppose that is because of the diversity of the people and their reading tastes but also because they have nearly every book available to them. Between the Barnes and Noble on every corner, to the world famous second-hand and rare bookshops, to the department store-sized comic book stores (we checked out Cosmic Comics and Jim Hanley's Universe), not to mention the incredible New York Public Library system, New Yorkers have their pick of books.

In my travels, I saw the ticket taker at the zoo reading a V.C. Andrews, a teen on the subway reading The Sign of Four (and another teen with a book in his short's pocket - I couldn't see what it was!), and a woman on the street reading A Thousand Spledid Suns (really, standing on the street. Waiting for someone, maybe?).

Susan Nagel

2008-07-08T12:23:00.000-07:00

My 4th of July weekend was spent spending. I stopped by Terry's bookstore The Open Book in Westhampton on Saturday to meet the author of (and purchase a copy of) Marie-Terese, Child of Terror: The Fate of Marie Antoinette's Daughter by Susan Nagel. Mrs. Nagel was friendly and clearly very passionate about her subject. She is currently looking for a third subject to write a book about and we discussed research opportunities. I look forward to reading about the fate of Marie-Terese. The New York Times reviewed the book here.

Wolfes in the library

2008-07-03T16:47:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you - the best time to come do some quiet work in the library is the evening before a holiday. The place is a tomb. I am sitting here, ironically, reading the fabulous book In The Hamptons: My Fifty Years with Farmers, Fisherman, Artists, Billionaires, and Celebrities by Dan Rattiner. All is quiet except a patron or two taping away at a keyboard and the murmering of voices in the lobby. We have a monthly art opening, where patrons can meet the artist of that month's exhibit and snack on crackers and cheese (which is otherwise illigal!). As I pass by the gathering on my way to circulation, Mr. X from the board of trustees says, "Hello Beth!" He is speaking with a tall man dressed in a white suit. "Hello" I wave back to the men.

Back at my desk, a regualar patron stops by. "Hey! Did you know Tom Wolfe just left?" he asks me.

It's never a boring night at the library!

London Calling

2008-06-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-12T12:30:00.000-07:00

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??

2008-06-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T14:16:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-03T17:43:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-02T09:14:00.002-07:00

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

2008-06-02T09:11:00.000-07:00

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.

Things I Should Have Said

2008-05-24T11:11:00.001-07:00

99.8% of the time, being a librarian is the most wonderful job in the world. Honestly. You get to hang out in a quiet, peaceful environment, surrounded by books and people who love books and information. You get to talk about books all day. Each person who walks up to the desk can ask you any question in the world - it is challenging, exciting and teaches me something new every day. Of course, there is that other .2%.

For example, today a woman came to the desk with her 5ish daughter, pulling on her arm and whinning.
Patron: "I need to fax something. Do you have a fax?"
Patron offspring: "whine whine whine."
Bethany the Librarian: "No, I'm sorry, we don't..."
Patron, cutting off Bethany the Librarian: "Is that a fax?" She points to the large machine behind the reference desk.
Bethany the Librarian, slowly turning to large machine, then back to patron.
WHAT Bethany the Librarian SHOULD HAVE SAID: "YES. IT IS A BIG FAX WE ARE TRYING TO HIDE ON YOU. DARN. YOU FOUND IT."
Bethany the Librarian: "Nope. It's a printer. Here is a list of nearby businesses that have faxes."
Patron, answering cell phone that has just played loud, obnoxious music: "Hello?"

Example number 2:
Patron: "Excuse me. I can't find my library card and I want to use the computers."
Bethany the Librarian: "Ok. I can print you a guest pass for today."
Prints guest pass, which is a sheet of paper with a temporary barcode and password.
Patron: "What is this?"
Bethany the Librarian: "This is your temporary barcode and password."
Patron: "What a waste! It's a whole sheet of paper! For just these numbers! Can't you find a better way to do this?"
WHAT Bethany the Librarian SHOULD HAVE SAID: "We did find a better way. It's called a library card. If you didn't loose yours, I wouldn't have to print this."
Bethany the Librarian: "That's true. If you bring the paper back to me when you are done, I'll put it in our pile of scrap paper to be used again."

Sigh.

Check out Book Mama!

2008-05-24T06:53:00.000-07:00

Terry, our new part time librarian, is also the owner of a bookstore here in the Hamptons. She started a blog and it's super fun! Check it out.

What Could Happen In 400 Years?

2008-05-16T08:30:00.000-07:00

Well, the adult summer reading program is just about ready to launch. It has kept me quite busy over the past few weeks. Our library does a series of genre discussion groups throughout the summer instead of regular individual book discussions. Each librarian coordinates a meeting for a particular genre - Mystery, Travel Narrative, Nonfiction That Reads Like Fiction and, yours truly's ... Historical Fiction! So I have been reading up big time, trying to fill my Historical Fiction gaps but of course I'm drawn back to my old favorites. Currently I am reading two historical fiction books set in London with female main characters...oh, what a surprise. One is set in the 1530s, one is set in the 1930s. The Lady Elizabeth is just what I expected ... wonderfully written with all the details of the time period that only Alison Weir could provide. To walk with Elizabeth as a 7 year old girl, recently declared a bastard, into the house that her dead mother, Anne Boleyn, grew up in brings tears to your eyes. Well, mine at least. As I am enjoying the book immensely, I must think of intelligent things to say about it as I will be meeting Mrs. Weir on Wednesday! I'll let you know how it goes.

Fast forward 400 years. I cannot get enough of my new BFF, Maisie Dobbs (by Jacqueline Winspear). She is a smart, independent British woman living in 1910s - 1940s London. She was a nurse during World War I and now she has her own detective agency. Each book is a new mystery and the one I am on now (# 3, called Pardonable Lies) won the Macavity/Sue Feder Best Historical Mystery Award. The second book, Birds of a Feather, won "Best Novel" for 2005 and her latest adventure (#5, An Incomplete Revenge) is a New York Times Bestseller! This is quite impressive for a "cozy" historical mystery series.

Next on my to-read list is something a bit different. The House at Riverton by Kate Morton is a mystery set in early 1900s London. Hmmmm. I need to read my own historical fiction bibliography.

Three Cheers for the Alphabet

2008-05-14T08:56:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school, our English teacher was trying to explain why it was so important to expand your vocabulary, reading and speaking skills. He told us, "Try to think about something without using any words." You may bring an image to mind, but any further thought requires some language. It's an interesting point. What would happen if you tried to write a book without using the letters of the alphabet? Our new librarian, Terry, was telling me about such a book. I'll explain.

Ella Minnow Pea:(pronounced like a 1st grader reciting "L M N O P")a Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable by Mark Dunn was published in 2001. The book is set in a fake town off the Coast of South Carolina where the inventor of "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog". A monument in town holds this sentence and as each letter falls off, no one in the town is allowed to use that letter. As the book progresses, less and less letters are available to use.
What a fun and challenging way to write a book! Terry said it was a lot of fun and very quirky. I can't wait to read it.

Freaks!

2008-04-30T13:09:00.000-07:00

I just finished Hubert's Freaks: The Rare Book Dealer, the Times Square Talker, and the Lost Photos of Diane Arbus by Gregory Gibson. It was a fun and fast read, although I would grade it a B overall.
Hubert's Freaks is part biography, bouncing back and forth between the photographer Diane Arbus (who committed suicide in 1971), Bob Langmuir (a rare-book dealer who comes across what he thinks is photos taken by Diane Arbus) and Charlie Lucus (the manager of a permanent side show act in NYC called Hubert's, which is where Diane took many of her photos). The best parts of the book is when Bob finds and researches the photos - are they really by Diane Arbus? How will the Met, the estate of Diane Arbus and art galleries react? How much are they worth? However, I felt like too much of the book lingered on Bob's biography: his mental instability, his marriages, his lengthy divorce. Although I was rooting for Bob as the photo drama unfolded, I didn't find Bob to be a very sympathetic character.
As we join Bob in his quest, we learn about the emergence of photography as an art, the ups and downs of the art trade and the history of freak shows like Hubert's. Photos as smattered throughout the book, but it seems that the author could not get permission for many of Diane Arbus' prints. For that, I checked out a copy of Diane Arbus: Revelations. It is a big, beautiful book with nearly every photo mentioned in Hubert's Freaks.
Overall, for anyone interested in "weird America" and it's sideshows, photography, or the excitment of finding undiscovered treasures, this book will hit the spot.

2008-04-22T14:40:00.000-07:00

I just finished a book recommended to me by my friend Heidi. It's called The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon by Tom Spanbauer and it's quite a journey. It is not a book I would normally pick up and during the first couple of pages I kept thinking, "How am I going to tell Heidi that I just can't finish this strange book?" But then it sucked me in. The writing is not only stream-of-conciousness, but it is coming from a charector with a limited vocabulary, so it is hard to read at first. Once you get in the groove, in the guys head, it becomes easier. It's hard to classify - it is set in 1890-1900s Idaho, mostly in a brothel, with the main charector being a "half-Indian" bisexual. I guess I would say it felt like Tom Robbins was writing Tipping the Velvet. I'm so glad she made me read it*.

*I must be careful recommending this book, however. It is VERY sexual - be warned. The cover should have a "explicit language" sticker!

Great Blog!

2008-04-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth, our head of reference, sent me a link to this blog. It's amazing! And it has a link to Nancy Pearl, superlibrarian. Check it out.

Reality TV leads to more memoirs?

2008-04-17T13:44:00.001-07:00

Ever since James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, the memoir/fiction line has been scrutinized. You would think this would lead readers to be skeptical of memoirs but it seems to have had no negative effect on thier popularity. This article from CNN.com reports "Current memoirs in the top 10 of The New York Times' hardcover list include Julie Andrews' "Home," David Sheff's "Beautiful Boy," Jose Canseco's "Vindicated," Tori Spelling's "Stori Telling" and Valerie Bertinelli's "Losing It." The top two books on the Times' paperback nonfiction list are also memoirs -- Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin's "Three Cups of Tea" and Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love." Both have been on the Times list for more than a year." Even more interesting, "in 2007, more memoirs were accepted by publishers than debut novels, according to Michael Cader's Publishers Lunch newsletter, reported USA Today," a fact CNN connects to the popularity of reality TV.
If you click on the link for A Million Little Pieces, notice that while some Suffolk County Libraries kept the book in biography and some in non-fiction, other libraries moved it to fiction. I feel like a book labeled "biography" or "autobiography" is at one end of the "fact" spectrum, while a "fiction" book is at the opposite end. A "memoir" (the word is from the Latin memoria, meaning "memory") is a collection of the author's recollections. And we all know how reliable one's memory can be. "Memoirs" are somewhere between the two extreams of fiction/non-fiction.

For National Poetry Month

2008-04-17T11:51:00.000-07:00

Book Love
by Jerome Stern

I have just come from an exhibition
that told me that books
will be replaced by
electronic libraries,
talking videos,
interactive computers,
cd-roms with thousands of volumes,
gigabytes of memory dancing on
pixillated screens
at which we will blearily stare into eternity.

And so, in the face of the future,
I must sing the song of the book.

Nothing more voluptuous do I know
than sitting with bright pictures,
fat upon my lap,
and turning glossy pages of
giraffes and Gauguins,
penguins and pyramids.

I love wide atlases delineating
the rise and fall of empires,
the trade routes from Kashgar to Samarkand.

I love heavy dictionaries,
their tiny pictures,
complicated columns,
minute definitions of incarnative
and laniary, hagboat and fopdoodle.

I love the texture of pages,
the highgloss slickness of magazines
as slippery as oiled eels,
the soft nubble of old books,
delicate india paper,
so thin my hands tremble
trying to turn the fluttering dry leaves,
and the yellow cheap, coarse paper
of mystery novels so gripping that
I don't care that the plane circles Atlanta forever,
because it is a full moon
and I am stalking in the Arizona desert
a malevolent shape-shifter.

I love the feel of ink on the paper,
the shiny varnishes,
the silky lacquers,
the satiny mattes.

I love the press of letters in thick paper,
the roughness sizzles my fingers
with centuries of craft embedded in pulped old rags,
my hands caress the leather of old bindings
crumbling like ancient gentlemen.

The books I hold for their heft,
to riff their pages,
to smell their smoky dustiness,
the rise of time in my nostrils.

I love bookstores,
a perfect madness of opportunity,
a lavish feast eaten by walking up aisles,
and as fast as my hand reaches out,
I reveal books' intimate innards,
a doleful engraving of Charlotte Corday who murdered Marat,
a drawing of the 1914 T-head Stutz Bearcat
whose owners shouted at rivals,
"There never was a car worser than the Mercer."

I sing these pleasures of white paper and black ink,
of the small jab of the hard cover corner
at the edge of my diaphragm,
of the look of type,
of the flip of a page,
the sinful abandon of the turned down corner,
the reckless possessiveness of my marginal scrawl,
the cover picture-as much a part of the book
as the contents itself,
like Holden Caulfield his red cap turned backwards,
staring away from us,
at what we all thought
we should become.

And I also love those great fat Bibles evangelists wave like otter pelts,
the long graying sets of unreadable authors,
the tall books of babyhood enthusiastically crayoned,
the embossed covers of adolescence,
the tiny poetry anthologies you could slip in your pocket,
and the yellowing cookbooks of recipes
for glace blanche dupont and Argentine mocha toast,
their stains and spots souvenirs
of long evenings full of love and argument,
and the talk, like as not,
of books, books, books.

The Angel Has Redeemed Itself

2008-04-16T15:29:00.000-07:00

I'm getting near the end of The Third Angel. I'll have a full review later, but this section so perfectly describes the strong, strange love I (and many others) have for London.

“As Lucy stared up at the chaos of Euston Station, she felt the way some people did when they fell in love. London had won her over despite herself. She actually felt a quickening of her blood. Outside it was even better – darker and more bustling. The streetlights were yellow and Lucy felt she was in a dream. She could vanish into the hustle of London and yet still be herself. There were probably thousands – no, millions – of books she hadn’t yet read in this city. There were bookshops and libraries and bookstalls and publishers and guided tours of places where writers had made up whole other worlds out of nothing but words” pg. 205

Don't judge books by their matching covers...

2008-04-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

So Pat, who is my friend/patron, is patiently waiting for me to finish The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman. She is on reserve for the book, which she will recieve as soon as I return it. In the meantime, she somehow realized that this book has a long lost twin.

Crazy, right? I suppose the two publishers purchased the same photo from an outside company. Absolution, published in November of 2007, technically had the cover first; The Third Angel was just published this month.

As I finish Hoffman's lastest book (which is covered in starred reviews and raves from Amy Tan to Jodi Picoult), I can summerize my impression in one word:
eh.

We Love Chang-Rae!

2008-04-14T12:03:00.001-07:00

Our Long Island Reads event on Saturday was a smashing success. Mr. Lee was a wonderful speaker and we had a lively audience asking lots of great questions. Here are some pictures from the event:

Aloft is a beautiful book that so perfectly shares Long Island - the good and the bad - with the rest of the world. It was a pleasure to hear the author read from it in his own voice. Now for next year's pick!

HELP! I'm Drowning in Hardcovers!

2008-04-08T11:41:00.000-07:00

I think I'm so smart.
One of the (many) privileges of being a librarian is hearing about new books before they are published. We go through a number of professional journals and preorder books on a weekly basis. Then, you can request these books on your personal library card so you are usually first on the list when they arrive. Smart, right?

This is how I end up with 5 books, all due in 7 days, that I desperately want to read.

I was only on page 18 of People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks when The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman arrived in my inbox. Meanwhile, The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir is on it's way, along with Quakeland by Francesca Lia Block. It's very exciting to have all these amazing authors publishing, but do they have to all do it within the same month??

Last night was our monthly book discussion. As part of Long Island Reads, we discussed Aloft by Chang-rae Lee. It was a fabulous discussion, with some members loving the book and others not liking it much at all. That always makes for the best debates. The author event is Saturday, at Farmingdale Public Library. If anyone on Long Island or elsewhere wants to hear Chang-rae Lee speak and get your book signed, I have extra tickets!

After the event, the Long Island Reads Committee will be compiling a list of books for next year's pick. If anyone knows a great Long Island author or a book that would represent our whole island, send along the suggestions!

I'm off to read now.

What do you do after graduating Hogwarts? Go to college.

2008-03-26T17:30:00.000-07:00

Wow.
Don't get me going on Harry Potter. These books are not only an amazing read, but the series is dripping with meaning, metaphors, religious parallels (think Golden Compass, but subtler). Well, finally Yale agrees with me.
CNN has an article on Yale's new class: Christian Theology and Harry Potter.
"Harry Potter is unfairly maligned simply because of the audience for which it is intended. Children's literature is literature."
My college had a class on the literature of Stephen King but I never had time to take it. I think these classes are great ideas - they are like book discussion groups, but with a leader who has an expertise in subjects within the books. And anyone who has read a book with a class or book group knows that so much more information and insight is extracted when a group of people get together and share their opinions. If I reread a book that I had read years before it is an entirely different book to me. I think it is because we are always changing and growing, experiencing new things and focusing on different things throughout our life. When a book is read in a different context, it is a different book. It is the same with a group of people (in a discussion or a class) who all bring their individual experiences, concerns, passions or frustrations to their personal reading. Through these groups we can read the same book through other people's eyes. Like Harry Potter, it's a magical.

You think our fines are steep...

2008-03-26T16:02:00.000-07:00

So I'm listening to Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko while driving to work this afternoon. The main charector, Matthew "Moose" Flanagan, lives on Alcatraz in 1935 with his family. His father is the prison electricion. Moose is trying to impress the other students in his new school with terrorizing tales of Alcatraz.
"That's the thing about the cell house library," I say, "it's a high-risk operation."
"Really?" a girl asks.
"Books are overdue," I explain, "they lock you up. They have a special cell for it. Overdue library book cell. If it's more than ten days overdue, they put you in the hole. Solitary confinement."
"No kidding?" the fat kid asks. I can see him fingering his library book, which I'm guessing is past due.
"Oh, yeah," I say.

A Princess and a Thane

2008-03-25T14:47:00.000-07:00

A Charmed Life: Growing Up in Macbeth's Castle by Liza Campbell

Two things I try to keep in mind when reading memoirs: 1. Memoirs are based on the author's memory and impressions. That makes them a bit like historical fiction. 2. Memoirs are not autobiographies. They are bits and spurts of a life, not the events from cradle to grave. And so I am not as critical of A Charmed Life as I would be a straight work of fiction or nonfiction. The premise of this book completely intrigued me. Liza Campbell was born to Hugh, the twenty-fifth Thane of Cawdor Castle and Lady Catherine Campbell. Her family has occupied the castle that Shakespeare wrote into Macbeth since 1295. I loved the idea of medieval castles and traditions mixed with modern families (Liza was born in 1959). The book did not disappoint. Stories of Liza's ancestors make up a bulk of the book. As soon as a memory from childhood begins, she seems to slip into a fairy tale like story of a great-great-grandfather. I enjoyed the history but I wanted to know more about Liza and her family. Near the end of the book a more complete and concise story line of Liza's late teens and twenty's unfolds.
One of the best aspects of the book is Liza's vocabulary and descriptions. While I found the story line a bit jumpy, so many perfectly placed words (or ones that sent me to my dictionary) made reading a pleasure. A few examples of her descriptions: "Bagpipes are like a handsome man with halitosis: rather fabulous from far away, but taxing up close". On the tendency towards alcoholism in her family, "If you shake the family tree, bottles fall out."
This book, dedicated to her two children, seemed a written history of the Campbells for the next generation. I was happy to peek at the family files - Liza did not hold back and the book had a sad yet satisfying ending, with a dramatic turn of events and an explanation as to why her dad, the Thane, was a royal jerk most of his life.

The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory

Everyone seems to know Philippa Gregory's name since her best-seller, The Other Boleyn Girl, was made into a movie. I enjoyed the book and the movie but I took both with a grain of salt ... not only do we actually know very little about Mary, Anne's sister, but the facts that we do know were bent and reshaped to fit the plot of the novel. Not that there is anything wrong with that. We must just keep in mind that we are reading historical FICTION. That being said, The Constant Princess was mostly enjoyable. I find Catherine of Aragon (Henry VIII's first wife) a very interesting woman in history but I think that readers who do not have an already established interest and knowledge in her and her time period may not enjoy the book. Philippa is good at writing romantic historic fiction but this novel goes on forever. Points are made three times in a row. Dialog goes on for pages. Catherine sits in her chapel and talks to her dead husband ad nausuem. On top of that, Philippa has taken some hotly debated events and made them plot. For example, Catherine of Aragon was originally married to Arthur, Henry's older brother. Arthur, a sickly young man, died soon after their marriage. Catherine was then married to Henry because, the story goes, Arthur was so sickly that the marriage was never consummated. Of course, we do not know for sure what happened, but that seems to be the story everyone is sticking to. Everyone but Philippa. In The Constant Princess Arthur and Catherine have a hot, passionate marriage are are madly in love. When Arthur is on his death bed, he makes Catherine promise to deny ever loving him or making love to him so that she can marry his brother and become Queen. It's a little too far fetched for me. I feel the historical "facts" (such as they are) were stretched a little too far for a plot that is mostly ... well, boring.
I would only recommend this book to those who love this time period and want to read any and all related literature ... and keep in mind the FICTION in Philippa's historical fiction.

In her defense, Philippa's website has a nice essay on her novels and "fact and fiction."