King County Library System - Library Talk. - November 2009

 

 

 

Many thirteen-year-old girls fantasize about the man they are going to marry.  They might even go as far as to picture their dress, the brides maid dresses, and the setting for their wedding.  For Kyra in The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams finding out who she's supposed to marry is more of a nightmare than a fantasy.

Kyra is the member of a polygamous cult in which each man has several wives and many children.  To question any custom or decision of the head prophet is to put ones own safety at risk.  Some have lost their lives for chosing who they want to be with and sneaking a romance.

Kyra herself hides several shameful secrets for which she lives in constant fear of discovery.  Not only does she check out and read books from the local library bookmobile, but she's also fallen in love with Josh, a boy her age in her cult.  They meet to kiss and talk on a hidden stairway where no one can see them.

Then the most shocking thing that Kyra can imagine happens.  The head prophet announces that he's picked a husband for her and it is her sixty-year-old uncle.  While some of her family get caught up in the excitement of planning for her wedding, Kyra desperately searches for a way out.

Could she or Josh convince the elders that she and Josh should marry?  Would that put them in danger?  What about running away from this place?  But she'd miss her sisters, her father, and her mothers who she adores.  Yet what thirteen-year-old girl wants to marry her sixty-year-old Uncle?

Will Kyra risk everything to get out of this obligation and if she does what punishment will come down on those she loves?  Would she ever see them again?  And what about the future for she and Josh?  Find out how far the God Squad in this cult will go to keep order and control.

I haven't read all the Obama books for children, but I've seen a fair number come through the library.   I thought I would post my favorite and my least favorite.  Please send your comments!

Our Enduring Spirit: President Barak Obama's First Words to America illustrated by Greg Ruth is, in my opinion, the best I've seen so far.  Our Enduring Spirit is an abridged version of Obama's inaugural address (the full text of the address is in the back of the book).  I like this book because it presents Obama in his own words. It allows children to interpret Barak Obama for themselves without putting adult significance on then man. The illustrations by Greg Ruth are also wonderfully done, adding meaning to the text without overpowering it.

My least favorite Obama book isn't really about Obama at all, but about Bo, the Obama family dog.  First dog by J. Patrick Lewis and Beth Zappitello is entirely awful.  In this book, a Portuguese water dog travels the world "looking for the perfect place to live." After travelling the world, he finally finds himself at the White House door. Not only is this book full of really terrible stereotypes ofthe people and places he visits, it has an un-original ending that will make you groan out loud. 

Let me know your favorite and least favorite Obama books.  Comment here!

Love You Hate You Miss You is the newest book from Elizabeth Scott. 

Amy was the only one to survive the car crash. She was the one who made them leave the party. She was the one who told Julia to drive. Amy feels responsible for killing her best friend.

Amy and Julia were inseparable. Julia was one of those amazing people. She had the best attitude, the coolest outfits and knew of all the great parties. They were a perfectly matched team and no one will ever be able to replace her.

Amy's parents made her go to rehab to deal with her alcohol problems. Her perfect parents are trying to be loving and encouraging, but Amy is frustrated by their attentive support.

Surviving high school without Julia is going to be impossible. Everyone knows about her drinking problems and what she did to her best friend.

How can you apologize to someone when they're no longer here?

Which of these Kennedy stories isn't real?

A. Bobby and Jackie: a Love Story
B. Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived: Virtual JFK
C. Dead Kennedys: How Martyrdom Changed Politics
D. Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years

Puget Sound is home to more than its fair share of great writers -- Sherman Alexie, Tom Robbins, Ivan Doig, to name a few. But Washington's best current novelist, in my opinion, hails from the sunny side of our state. Spokane resident Jess Walter is one of the funniest writers alive! If you don't believe me, then read his latest book, Financial Lives of the Poets. Don't let the slightly misleading title fool you.

The book's main character, Matthew Prior, is an ex-newspaper journalist suffering through a midlife meltdown brought on by the bursting housing bubble. Matt's internet startup business that dispenses financial wisdom in the form of free verse poetry is in shambles (go figure!); his over-leveraged house is weeks from foreclosure; and his wife is on the verge of an affair with an old high school flame who "friended" her on facebook. Who can blame him for taking a drag on a potent marijuana joint offered up to him by some teenage misfits he encounters on a midnight milk run to 7-Eleven? After he finds himself making repeated midnight "milk runs" to the 7-Eleven in search of stress relief, Matt and his new buddies hatch a plan that just might save him from "financial ebola." If it doesn't land him in jail first.

Financial Lives of the Poets is biting satire about the choices we make in a world filled with unchecked consumerism, online addiction, and potent BC Bud. Time Magazine calls it "the funniest way-we-live-now book of the year." Jess Walter's writing style has been compared to other well-known humorists like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and Carl Hiaasen. This is his most accessible and entertaining novel to date. 

Whodathunk?  I mean, my mom was a birder for years, and those folks aren't usually your cage match types.  But every year, a number of competitive birders strain just about everything - their budgets, eyes, sleep cycles, health, relationships - to come out on top in the number of bird species sighted in North America in a single year.

This is another one of those subjects I had no interest in until a good book smacked me across the noggin (hurray for good books, and good authors).

Every year there is a Big Year, but there has never been a Big Year like 1998's epic battle between three very (very) different birders.  Mark Obmascik channels Howard Cosell as he narrates The Big Year:  A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession.

In one corner, a New Jersey roofing contractor.  In another, a corporate executive; and in the third, a nuclear power plant software engineer (all men - is it always guys who are this crazy?).  Obmascik follows the three on their wacky, sometimes hilarious sometimes tragic galavants around North America.  Like any good competition, it's neck and neck (and neck) the whole way.  I think readers of Bill Bryson will really enjoy this book, and I need to credit a co-worker for lobbing this one my way.

I was just reading an article in Booklinks about Jonah Winter when I noticed not one but two of his books displayed on the new book display at the Woodinville Library. Coincidence?  I think not!

Jonah Winter got into writting books for children through his mother, award winning illustrator and author, Jeanette Winter. He's done some fabulous collaborations with her but has also written some fine books on his own. 

I first became aware of him as an author with the book The 39 apartments of Ludwig van Beethoven.  This is wonderfully funny (mostly) true tribute to Beethoven. I read it to a first grade class and they thought it was hilarious! and we have the added bonus of a (sort-of) biography that introduces kids to a world past.

Jonah Winter's two new books are also outstanding.  The Fabulous Feud of Gilbert and Sullivan presents a snapshot into the famous light opera creators.  The illustrations are delightful. The story, just a snapshot into the friendship between the two, is something kids will relate to.  Factual stories prove more interesting than fiction. 

On a more serious note, Peaceful Heroes is a tribute to 14 people who risked their lives to help others and make the world a better place.  These range from people you're heard of (Jesus of Nazareth, and Martin Luther King Jr) and some that you may not have (Paul Rusesabagina and Marla Ruzucka).  It's remarkably well written, in language kids will understand without being watered down or over dramatized.

Some of you have probably heard about the new HBO series, "True Blood".  If you have tried watching it and found it a bit too graphic, you will have a blast reading the series that it is based  upon:  The Sookie Stackhouse Novels by Charlaine Harris.  It is often described as a Southern Vampire Mystery  Series, but I found them to be a combination of mystery, fantasy, romance and absudity (and not nearly as graphic as "True Blood").

Normally, I am not drawn to vampire stories, but these are just absolutely fun to read.  Sookie narrates her adventures as a barmaid and telepath when she becomes involved with vampires who have recently "come out of the coffin".  She tells her story with a sunny outlook, Southern manners, and a sense of humor. 

The stories get more and more wonderfully crazy, but these light reads are so entertaining, I couldn't read them fast enough.  I don't want to say much more about the plot, because of the surprising twists and turns it takes,  and the very interesting characters that become a part of Sookie's  life.

If True Blood has piqued your interest (or you are a big fan), try the first book in the series, Dead Until Dark.  I bet you will have to read the entire series to find out what happens to Sookie Stackhouse, a character you will wish you could meet.

The Longest Night by Marion Dane Bauer and illustrated by Ted Lewin exactly fits my mood today.  With sunrise today at 7:18AM and sunset at 4:30PM, I'm feeling the short days and long nights. 

This book has the look and feel of a long northwest night.  Each of the animals, in turn, tries to bring back the sun. But only when the chickadee sings her little song, does the sun return. 

Pair this one with Raven a Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest by Gerald McDemott. 

I can be a real snob. I hate to admit that, but it's the truth; my first instinct is to look down my nose at things that are "popular" (reality TV, Facebook, Star Wars movies, and the like). This attitude has carried over into my reading life as well. Case in point: Stephen King. He might very well qualify as the world's most popular author and yet until very recently I'd never read a word he'd written. Thankfully, I'm aware that my sometimes uppity nature gets in the way and I take steps to work around it. With that in mind, I'm happy to report that I just finished 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King and I'll tell you something that you already know: this guy can write!

Ben Mears, a successful author, returns to the quiet little New England town of Jerusalem's Lot ('Salem's Lot, for short) in order to work on a new novel and hopefully lay some childhood demons to rest. He soon meets and becomes involved with local beauty Susan Norton, much to the disapproval of her mother and her former boyfriend, Floyd Tibbets. Meanwhile, the Marsten House, the dilapidated but imposing structure that that keeps an eery watch over the town, is after many years reoccupied by a pair of eccentric antique dealers, the urbane Mr. Straker and the unseen Mr. Barlow. Suddenly, strange things start to happen. Dogs are impaled on cemetery fences, people become severely ill and then quickly die, and other people...living and dead...disappear outright. Soon it becomes evident to Ben, Susan and a small group of comrades that vampires are in their midst and that the new residents of Marsten House are somehow at the center of the increasingly sinister happenings in the rapidly dwindling town of  'Salem's Lot.

I was surprised how much I liked Stephen King's writing style. The prose is stylish without being contrived or self-consciously hip. The plot unfolds fast enough to keep one's interest but not so fast that we don't get to know the characters; indeed, I was impressed with the level of character-development in this book. As for the horror quotient, I was told by a Stephen King aficionado that this book is tame in comparison to some of his other work (such as Pet Sematary, a book that is now on my list). And its true that 'Salem's Lot is rarely bloody or graphically violent. But that doesn't mean that it's not scary. "Ominous" and "foreboding" are words that well-describe this book; you get this gradually escalating sense of doom as the events unfold and that, I believe, is what makes this book really creepy.

Long story short: I thoroughly enjoyed 'Salem's Lot and look forward to my next excursion into Stephen King's psyche. I hope you check him out, too. 

But I still hate reality TV...  

Imagine the obliteration of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, Olympic National Park, North Cascades National Park, Mount Rainier National Park, Mount St. Helens National Monument, and then some.

1910's worst wildfire in U.S. history was not just a tragic loss, but an event that galvanized citizen support for forest conservation.  Timothy Egan, National Book Award winner, chronicles the events leading to the fire, the heroic and tragic stories from those few horrific days, and the nation's response in The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America. 

Although Roosevelt is listed in the subtitle, Gifford Pinchot and, indirectly, John Muir, were the driving forces behind the development of the National Forest system, and Egan spends the first portion of the book summarizing this backdrop.  Pushed through by the force of Roosevelt's will, the expansion of the National Forests was vehemently opposed by some of the most powerful senators in Congress.  Backed by timber, mining, and grazing lobbies, Congress effectively gutted Forest Service funding.  Idealistic young rangers lived a meager existence in towns that made Deadwood look like a kindergarten, desperately trying to control illegal logging and mining in an ocean of graft and hostility.

When hurricane force winds hit thousands of small fires during a summer of no rain, a handful of these poorly equipped rangers (the legendary Ed Pulaski among them) walked into a maelstrom.  Egan, again, marvelously captures a landmark natural event that changed the West.

[ see Timothy Egan at the Redmond Library:  December 3, 7pm ]

Literature, the best literature, both reflects and critiques the human condition.  Professor Arnold Weinstein uses novels, films, paintings and short stories to show how the world's best authors confront death, joy, dreams, love, and madness.

"Through art," Weinstein notes, "we discover that we are not alone."  Feelings and experiences are understood best by situating them in a social context, by discussing them with others either directly or through producing art such as novels, paintings and films.  Feeling, embodied by the heart, is at the center of Weinstein's book.  As the seat of popular conceptions of feeling, the heart also stands for the biological fact of being alive-- having a heart beat, pumping blood through the body, etc.  The convergence of this figurative and literal importance in what the author calls "the world's heartbeat" is the collective experience of which art brings each of us into closer awareness.  Weinstein discusses paintings, stories, novels and films revered for their exquisite depictions of human feeling, from the obvious choices of Hamlet and Oedipus Rex to the paintings of Swedish artist Lea Cronqvist.

The most intimate and complex of sentiments, grief and love, are explored through Faulkner's Tender is the Night and Edvard Munch's paintings after the death of his sister, Sophie.  As the examined works bear out, these emotions can be powerfully intertwined.  Themes of exposure, to plague (Camus's The Plague and Bergman's The Seventh Seal) to AIDS (Kushner's Angels in America), to smallpox (Dickens's Bleak House) allow authors to explore the objectification of the patient in modern medicine and the impulse to seek meaning through processes such as diagnosis.  Hamlet's "disposition turned heavy" echoes in Quentin Compson of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.  In an age more interested in banishing depression as quickly as possible, these two characters depict the depressed mind in great detail as a tragic melancholia, deeply compelling and ultimately deadly.

Weinstein is a professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University and is widely renowned for his teaching exellence.  This book reflets decades of study and refinement of his argumentation in dozens of classrooms.  The scream that goes through the house, Weinstein shows, is the primal, universal expression of feeling projected into the world through art and literature.  Even reformed English majors will enjoy his thoughtful, insightful discussions of how art can make us better people.

Karl Shoemaker, the protagonist at the center of Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance 1973, has one goal for his senior year of high school: be normal.  Karl is attempting to break away from the affectionately-dubbed Madman Underground - the school therapy group he's been stuck in since fourth grade - make new friends, and survive high school so that he can enlist in the military.  But how can Karl be normal when his life is completely chaotic?  His father, the town's beloved former mayor, passed away four years ago, and his mother is a hippie alcoholic who steals Karl's money and spends it on benders, justifying her excesses by saying things like, "I really needed some freedom last night."  The books' cast of characters also includes the other "Madmen" in the therapy group, some not-so-smart high school bullies and the umpteen cats - with names like Prettyangel and SkyMusic - that share the house with Karl.

Karl's acerbic, profanity-spewing voice is painfully truthful and recalls Holden Caulfield, and I loved his descriptions of small-town life.  There's plenty of pathos in this novel - most of the parents of the Madmen are either drunk, emotionally distant, or entirely absent, and the teens certainly suffer for it - but Karl's sarcastic wit keeps the story moving without wallowing in woe-is-me self-pity.  Readers of a certain age will appreciate Karl's journey to adulthood in the freewheeling 1970s.

What book (that ended up selling over 100,000 copies in the first three weeks of its mainstream release) was originally picked up by a company that mostly published pornographic titles?  What enormously successful novelist worked as a grave digger, gas station worker, English teacher, and laundry mat attendant before his first novel was accepted for publication?  And, just who IS Pansy O'Hara?

If you want the answers to these questions and many others, here's the book for you.  If you've ever wondered how some of your favorite books ended up getting published, here's the book for you.  If you like little-known facts about well-known novels, here's the book for you.

Who the H*** is Pansy O'Hara? takes 50 of what the authors call the "world's best-loved books" and gives you the back story.  They dish on Charlotte Bronte's unrequited love, on Emily Post's divorce (gasp),  and on the World War II intelligence work of Ian Fleming.

The authors include both classic and modern fiction from Pride and Prejudice to The Da Vinci Code as well as nonfiction works like The Origin of Species and even Encyclopedia Britannica.  It's a fun read for bibliophiles and for people who wonder how and where classic novels come from.  And even though some of the stories are a bit sensational and the title sounds a little flip, the scholarship of these authors is serious and their writing is top notch. 

By the way, here's the answers:  Lolita was too hot for American publishers until Olympia Press out of Paris put out a modest 5,000 copies.  Stephen King worked a variety of jobs until Carrie was accepted by Doubleday for $2500.  Margaret Mitchell originally named her fiery Gone With the Wind heroine Pansy, but after multiple revisions, decided Scarlett was a more fitting name.  Happy reading.

A ninety year-old woman recently refinanced her home six times before the bank took it away. She gave all the money - a half million dollars - to her son, he never repaid her, and now she has nothing. It reminded me of something I first read years ago, Shel Silverstein's classic children's book The Giving Tree.

The book takes three minutes to read, and here is the story: a tree gives everything to a boy that she loves; her apples, her branches, even her trunk. It makes her happy each time she's able to give something more to the boy, though each time he leaves her without a thank you. In the end after the tree is cut down the boy sits on her stump to rest, and the tree is happy.

Reading this book was always unsettling, even when I was a child. It could be a warning about the environment, but I find it interesting to think about its views on human relationships. Wouldn't the boy be better served with some solid advice rather than her branches and trunk? Can you really be happy giving everything to someone who will take everything you have?

I don't want to be too cynical. Most parents give more to their children than they receive, and most are happy in the giving. Is this a story about parenthood? Or more generally is there something transcendent about giving with a full heart, so that it doesn't matter who receives the gift or what they do with it? Maybe. But there's something awfully sad about that tree, cut to a stump, with the boy on top.

Bee Bim Bop by Linda Sue Park

This is one of my favorite story time books. Kids and adults alike often leave the story time room singing: "Hungry, hungry, hungry for some Bee Bim Bop!" In this book, a little girl helps her family prepare her favorite meal. Bee Bim Bop is Korean stir fried vegetables and meat on top of rice. June, from Readers to Eaters is Korean-American. June tells me that Bee Bim Bop is a traditional meal made from leftovers. In the back is this delightful recipe. I just know you'll want to make this at home.

This is a Readers to Eaters pick!
Readers to Eaters is an organization who's mission it is to promote food literacy from the ground up. They use books and a strong connection to the publishing world to promote knowing about food and where it comes from. They are currently working with schools and libraries to promote good eating and good reading.

Which of these is not a real obsession?

A. Anatomy of a Beast: Obsession and Myth on the Trail of Bigfoot
B. Train in Vain: A Lifelong Obsession with Rail Travel
C. Cleaving: a Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession
D. The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: the True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession

Those of you with kids might already be familiar with David Small, an author and illustrator of many books for children (for a great example of his work, check out the delightful Imogen's Antlers).  But behind those cheery and brightly colored images lies a much darker artist, as is evident in his new graphic novel, Stitches: a memoir.  Spanning the author's life from ages six to fifteen, Small recounts how a supposedly minor operation left him literally speechless for many years after one of his vocal cords was removed.  It was only after the operation that Small found out, by accident, that he had had cancer and was not expected to survive.

Filled with stark black and gray images, this graphic novel explores not only his traumatic illness, but the deeply dysfunctional home from which Small came.  Emotionally distant parents and a mentally unstable grandmother caused him much grief throughout childhood, and his dreams from those times are haunting and unsettling.  There are few moments of kindness depicted here; the only scraps of love seem to come from his step-grandfather, someone Small rarely saw.

Despite the rather dark cast of this book, it is a compelling and fascinating exploration of a bright and talented young man desperate to break away from his past and start a new life as an artist.  This is a great choice for memoir and graphic novel fans alike.

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Dust Bowl , by Timothy Egan.

I thought I knew the basic facts of the Dust Bowl, but what I actually knew was the plot line for The Grapes of Wrath. I had no idea that the Dust Bowl was a man-made environmental disaster, and that most of the region's population were unable or unwilling to leave their land in the 1930's.   The Worst Hard Time set me straight on the facts, and deepened my understanding of that desperate era.

Now known as the High Plains, the region that was to gain notoriety as the Dust Bowl in the 1930's was nicknamed the Great American Desert in the 1800's.  It was an immense swath of arid, windswept, treeless land where tough grasses grew, buffalo roamed, and a few Indian tribes made their homes.  Once the Indians were forced to leave and the buffalo nearly exterminated, the U.S. government was eager to create white settlements in the area.  Railroad companies and land speculators were complicit in marketing the Great American Desert as the country's last great deal in agricultural homesteads.  New settlers plowed under millions of acres of prairie grass, then planted wheat. Several years of decent rainfall and high wheat prices in the 1920's gave them a nice return on their investment, but this success was short-lived.  Wheat prices dropped and drought returned to the Plains in the 1930's.  Since the prairie grass was gone, there was nothing to hold the soil in place.  High winds whipped up untold tons of topsoil from the land, creating blinding dust storms that killed people and livestock, buried buildings, and rendered the land unfit for farming.  Many families remained on the land, enduring tremendous losses through seven long years of drought and devastation.

Against this historical and ecological backdrop are the personal stories of several families who made the fateful decision to move to the High Plains in the early 1900's, then suffered through the dire conditions of the Dust Bowl era.  These first-hand accounts give the book an emotional power that stayed with me after I finished the last page.

The Worst Hard Time won the National Book Award and was chosen as Redmond's "One Book" for 2009.  The author, local journalist Timothy Egan, will be speaking at the Redmond Library on Thursday, December 3rd at 7 pm as the culminating event of the Redmond One Book program.  The event is free of charge and open to the public.  

And you can listen to Timothy Egan read excerpts from the book on this National Public Radio broadcast.

I read Somewhere in Time when I was a young teen and thought it was the most romantic novel, ever! So I decided to read it again, refresh my memory and enjoy the romance. Well there is a twist that I ignored the first time around, or maybe I just refused to believe. Now that I am a little older and of course much more mature, I am ready to entertain the thought that it might not be a romance but just a figment of the imagination of the main character who had a brain tumor. So it was all in his head! But on the other hand, the brain tumor might have helped, (added some space or pressure or created an aura) so it was possible for
Richard Collier to fall in love with a picture and will himself back in time to meet his true love.

Richard Collier decided to take the last four to six months of his life to travel and write a book. He packed two suitcases, got in his car and flipped a coin; heads north, tails south. Tails it was. He stopped at a lovely old fashioned hotel and as he takes in the sights he sees a photograph of the actress Elise McKenna and he falls in love immediately; he can even tell you the moment it happened, 11:26 am on November 17, 1971. He settles in and begins a search to find all he can about Elise. The more he learns about her the more he feels a connection and that he did travel back to 1896 to find her. He studies time travel books, checked out from the San Diego Public Library I might add, and he manages to transport himself back to November 19, 1896. If this seems familiar to you, you may have read Bid Time Return, which was the original title, but became Somewhere In Time when it was released as a movie with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.

Richard Matheson, the author, has written many horror stories (I am Legend for example) and has also done episodes of Twilight Zone. However, he tapped into his romantic side for this lovely evocative emotional story of time-crossed lovers.

Bailey, who is usually so nice, Bailey, my neighbor, my friend, my buddy, my pal for my whole life, knowing me better than anybody, that Bailey, that Bailey I am so mad at right now, that Bailey, I hate him today. 

Twelve-year-old Rosie and her best friend, Bailey, have been best friends forever, even though Bailey is blind. He can't read the same way Rosie does, he can't go to the same school... but that doesn't stop him from doing anything and it doesn't stop him from being annoying sometimes, even if he is her best friend. Granny Torrelli seems to know just what to do when things go wrong between Rosie and Bailey. All it takes is a free afternoon and some old family recipes.


This is a Readers to Eaters pick!  Readers to Eaters is a nonprofit who's mission it is to promote food literacy from the ground up. They use books and a strong connection to the publishing world to promote knowing about food and where it comes from. They are currently working with schools and libraries to promote good eating and good reading.

Each year, Fall brings with it the "Oscars" in outdoor literature.  After a season of scrambling, whitewater, equine ramblings, or the like, outdoor enthusiasts can treat themselves to a comfy chair and a good book.  There may be others, but I am aware of two sets of awards given out in the Fall.  The National Outdoor Book Awards are to be released November 12.  Numerous award categories are represented, including books related to history, biography, design, guidebooks, and children.

Also released every Fall are the Banff Centre's Banff Mountain Book Festival (they have an awesome film festival too, by the way).  Categories are similar, but be aware that you might not find the more Canada-specific titles in the KCLS catalog.  You can always request the purchase of a title, though.

I always find at least a few titles that inspire me, and awe me.  Now, get out your snowshoes and crampons!

A really strong friendship--one that will get you through death, divorce, and bad bathing suits--takes a while to develop.  Years, in fact.  But once you have it, it can weather many catastrophes.  In A Year on Ladybug Farm by Donnal Ball, Cici, Lindsay and Bridget, all in their 50s, have this kind of friendship.  They are at a point in life when they need to either put their energy into making their dreams happen, or admit that they won't.  Proving that it is easier to take that first step with a friend along, they find the perfect house--an old mansion in rural Virginia--and commit to living together for one year.

Their new home has a few things they don't need, like dry rot, a truant teenager, and thousands of hibernating ladybugs.  Accustomed to life in the suburbs, it takes the women a while to adapt to the country.  Bridget expects that growing a garden will involve some hard work.  What she doesn't expect is the disappearance of entire plants.  Cici, accustomed to the attitudes of men in the city, is pleasantly surprised when the men in her local hardware store politely ignore her instead of offering their opinions on what constitutes a project too big for a woman. And all three are amazed by their resident handyman, who charges $10 for any job, no matter how large or small.  They are determined to meet the challenges with a positive attitude, and start by hanging a sign at the driveway--Welcome to Ladybug Farm.

The women can't leave their old lives behind completely.  Bridget and Cici have grown children who think they have lost their minds.  Lindsay is offered the teaching job she has always wanted, just as she's deciding whether to throw in the towel on the farm.  As they search for a balance between their old and new lives, they find that making decisions isn't any easier the second time around.

As someone who moved from a small town to the big city, I confess to finding a lot to laugh about in this book.  It's a neighborly kind of laugh, though.  If you would like to share the ups and downs of three good friends who are young enough to go after their dreams, read A Year on Ladybug Farm by Donna Ball.

Yum! MmMm! Que Rico! America's Sprouting by Pat Mora and Rafael Lopez is a culinary treat you won't want to miss.

Pat Mora is the author of many beautiful bilingual books. This book is all about foods that are native to the Americas including: chile, corn, peanut, potato and pumpkin. Each food is presented with a haiku-style poem along with a side bar of information about the food. The colorful illustrations by Rafael Lopez are really a treat.

 

This is a Readers to Eaters pick!

Readers to Eaters is a nonprofit who's mission it is to promote food literacy from the ground up. They use books and a strong connection to the publishing world to promote knowing about food and where it comes from. They are currently working with schools and libraries to promote good eating and good reading.

Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother And Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart

I wouldn't have thought there would be enough material to fill a small pamphlet about deadly plants, let alone an entire book, but this fascinating and readable book proved me wrong.  Plants are labeled with headings to help the uninitiated discover plants covering these categories:  Intoxicating, Destructive, Deadly, Painful and Dangerous.  Briony Morrow-Cribbs etchings of the plants are accurate and Jonathon Rosen's illustrations are fanciful and sometimes surprisingly humorous, in a macabre way.  There are small sections set aside for special subjects like what you could plant in a Forbidden Garden - tagged with the Dangerous heading.  History, lore and interesting facts are shared for many of the plants.  For example, did you know that a medicinal dose of hellebore (a Dangerous plant)  is believed to have caused the death of Alexander the Great?  Can you guess what plant is so toxic it has taken the lives of 90 million people worldwide and is the focus of a worldwide industry worth over $300 billion?  Give up?  It's tobacco.  Once you start reading this book you will be addicted to reading it all!  (And no plant is necessary to enjoy it!)

Darkfever, by Karen Marie Moning

MacKayla is a beautiful and pampered young woman, the product of a happy childhood in comfortable Ashford, Georgia.  Her world is comprised of doting parents an older sister, handsome young men at parties, clothes and shopping and the perfect pink nail polish.  Then the unthinkable happens; her sister travels to Dublin to study and is murdered a few months later.  Mac's world falls apart as she listens to Alina's last frantic phone message before her death, to a sister who's frightened and calling on Mac to help her.  Wracked by guilt she decides to go to Ireland to discover what really happened and to harangue the local police until they find the killer.

But Ireland is not what Mac expects.  Not only have the police proven to do everything they can, but Alina's life turns out to be full of mystery and oddities.  Clearly Alina had changed over the months and now Mac must delve into her life not only to solve the murder but to understand her sister's erratic behavior.  As she searches for clues, Mac begins to see strange things; a Dublin full of magic and mystery, strange creatures only she can see, vast deserted areas where people no longer live but nobody seems to notice, and powerful beings who can kill with a thought.  When Mac runs for her life she stumbles in to an amazing bookstore owned by the handsome and enigmatic Jericho Barrons, but his answers only cause the mysteries to deepen and Mac doesn't know where to turn to find her sister's killer.

Which love story will not be true to you?

A. Bacon: a Love Story: a Salty Survey of Everybody's Favorite Meat
B. True North Strong and Free: A Love Story
C. Married to Africa: a Love Story
D. Aesop's Mirror: a Love Story
E. Late Edition: a Love Story

Come to the Bellevue Library November 14th, 2pm to learn from Mary Jane Beaufrand, teen author.  MJ will give us the basics on what makes a character memorable. Get some tips to make your fictional characters deeper and well rounded. After all, zombies have feelings too. Beaufrand is the author of Primavera, a young adult novel.

Space is limited so please register online or call the Bellevue library at 425-450-1765. 

This event is for students in grades 6-12.

Sponsored by the Bellevue Friends of the Library

Like many people, I enjoy cooking, and I love to eat. I always thought I had a passion for good food and cooking, but after reading this book, what I call passion seems lukewarm.

La Cucina is the story of Rosa Fiore, a woman who used cooking as a kind of therapy throughout her life. And no one in could blame her for needing some therapy. After Rosa's first love was murdered by his own father (who happened to be involved with the mafia), she locked herself in la cucina and prepared all types of pastas: rigatoni, ravioli, spiralli, cannelloni, linguini. She baked ciabbata and focaccia. She brewed sauces of tomatoes, anchovies, saffron, and pine nuts. She bottled fruits and jams, cured meats, and made ricotta by the barrel. Then, when she had cooked everything on their estate, she packed up a few clothes and her parrot, and left to become a librarian in Palermo.

It wasn't until twenty five years later that another man entered her life, a foreigner. L'Inglese, an English chef, arrived at her library and awakened desires and passions didn't even realize she possessed. As they spent the summer cooking and discovering each other, anyone could see that it was too wonderful to last...and besides, disaster always seemed to follow Rosa.

Fans of Like Water for Chocolate and Joanne Harris may enjoyLa Cucina by Lily Prior.

Charles Darwin was not given to rash decisions. When he was nearly thirty and needed to decide whether to marry, he sat down, drew a line down the middle of a piece of paper and made a list of pros and cons. On the plus side, marriage would offer the benefit of children ("if it Please God") and an object of affection, "better than a dog anyhow." On the minus side, he would miss the "conservation of clever men at clubs" and might not be able to read in the evenings.

His decision to take the leap and marry his cousin Emma Wedgwood is the subject of Deborah Heiligman's 2009 National Books Award finalist  Charles and Emma: the Darwin's Leap of Faith..

Darwin was a pragmatist, an agnostic, and a scientist. Emma was his intellectual match and yet devoutly religious. Theirs was a true love story--a match of wits and wills, of science and religion. Despite her reservations about Darwin's theories, Emma helped edit her husband's work. She honestly feared for his soul and at the same time bore him ten children, three of whom died before the age of ten.

Heiligman is a skilled nonfiction writer. The Victorian Era is brought to vivid life through the couple's letters and other primary sources. This setting is the backdrop for one of the great marriages of history. Although originally published for the teen market, Charles and Emma will equally engage adult readers, who will know something more about the ups-and-downs of married life than its intended audience.  

It is a story that might have turned out quite differently if Darwin had decided to settle for the company of that dog after all.

Mission Control, This is Apollo: the story of the first voyages to the Moon
by Andrew Chaikin and Alan Bean

Chaikin, an NPR Morning Edition commentator and the author of A Man on the Moon, profiles each of the Apollo Missions, including the legendary Apollo 11 Mission which celebrated its 40th Anniversary this year. Each chapter briefly outlines the mission (dates, commanders, pilots, objectives, mission patches, etc), but also includes stories about the people involved. Armstrong, for instance, didn't spend a lot of time pondering his historic words; he was too busy avoiding craters! Of course, not all missions were so successful, as discussed in the chapter on the infamous Apollo Thirteen. Vintage photos show the jury-rigged filter that helped save the astronauts lives and another grainy photo shows the crippled module. Brief sections explore the finer points of space travel, from the rather discomforting physical side-effects as described in "The Dark Side of Zero-G" and "When You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go" to technical details like those in "The Moon Rocket" and "Clothes Make the Moonwalker". The brief introduction outlines the preceding Mercury and Gemini programs.

In addition to the wonderful photographs, Alan Bean contributes his amazing paintings to the book. Bean, who landed on the moon with Apollo Twelve and knows what he paints, brings a unique perspective to the book. An entrancing mix of color, light and texture, these paintings bring the lunar landscapes alive. A chapter at the end of the book explains how Bean paints, a process that includes small models astronauts, replica moon-boots and even fragments of capsule heat shields and foil insulation. Informational, but also celebratory, Mission Control, This is Apollo, is a treat for history and space buffs of any age.

I bet you think that feminism and pacifism were invented in the 60s. Not so. I'm not exactly sure when they first appeared but I can give you an example of a very early appearance of both: Lysistrata, a Greek comedy written by Aristophanes and first performed in 411 B.C. That's right, B.C....as in 2,400 years ago. But don't be put off the antiquity or the "loftiness" of the play. Earthy, racy, provocative, and laugh-out-loud funny...Lysistrata is a complete hoot!

The play is set during the then-current war between Athens and Sparta, just after the disastrous loss of Sicily by the Athenians. The war was not going well for Athens and the growing sense of futility in it all provides the backdrop for this play. The main character, Lysistrata, comes up with a radical idea: if all women from both sides of the conflict agree to refrain from having sex with their husbands, then they will be forced by their sheer ardor to capitulate to the women's demand, which is an immediate end to all hostilities. Of course, Lysistrata has a little trouble convincing her compatriots of her plan...it seems they have desires of their own...but in the end they all take an oath (a scene that is hilarious), take over the Acropolis, and proceed to hold out on their warrior mates. As the men's frustration increases, so too does Lysistrata's determination, though she does have a tough time keeping her female co-conspirators in line. One of the most amusing scenes occurs near the end when Lysistrata has to intercept a number of women that are driven both to distraction and defection by their own impulses. But in the end...well, you'll have to read the play to find out.

There were a couple of things that really struck me about Lysistrata. First of all, the various translations of this play (and, presumably all of the ancient Greek plays) differ greatly in terms of language. I read two versions: one was a personal copy translated by Benjamin Bickley Rogers from 1955 and the other was a KCLS copy from 1991 translated by Nicholas Rudall. The gist of the material is the same in both versions but on a line-by-line basis they differed greatly. For laughs, some of my friends did a reading of a few pages from the play, using at least three different translations. Though there was great variation in the verbage used, the meaning and the humor came through all the same. Here's the moral: if you don't like one translation, try another.

Another interesting facet of Lysistrata is, well, it's steaminess. Believe-you-me, those Greeks weren't all contemplating the ideal plane and that comes through loud-and-clear in this play. There are numerous instances of double-entendres, course language, and sexual explicitness. Clearly, Aristophanes wasn't an elitist; he was obviously aiming his work at "the masses" and he succeeded gloriously, for I found myself able to relate to the general tenor of this play in a way that I could not with other "classic" works. In a word, Lysistrata is universal.

So if you're in the mood for some burlesque that really makes you think, don't be afraid to check out Lysistrata!