Andy @ Redmond Archive.

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. 

Here is a beautifully written baseball book that might appeal to sports non-fans. Of course, baseball fans will love it that much more.

The Girl Who Threw Butterflies tells the story of eighth grader, only-child Mollie Williams and her attempt to play on her school's all-boys baseball team. Mollie has recently lost her father in a single-car accident, an "accident" she suspects might have been a suicide. Mollie shares a love for playing baseball with her late father, and possesses a "secret weapon" taught to her by him. Mollie can throw the impossibly difficult knuckleball pitch, sometimes called the "butterfly ball."

Best friend and budding feminist Celia convinces her to try out for the team, and motivates Mollie with true tales of women who have competed against professional male players, including the tale of Jackie Mitchell, who struck out Babe Ruth in the 1930s: "None of that All-American Girls thing with Madonna and Geena Davis," Celia tells her. While supremely self-aware Mollie struggles to keep the memories of her father alive, her mother undermines the effort by trying to eliminate all household traces of him, including items that Mollie treasures, such as her father's old baseball mitt.

Here lies the true conflict at the center of the story, that between Mollie and her mother:"Things had gone missing... it was a gradual, invisible, but profound disappearance, like erosion. The surface of the earth being transformed. But this was worse, really--it was intentional. It was thievery." Excellent inner dialogue captures Mollie's insightful views about her mother, and about her own life, in general. If it sounds too heavy, it's not. The book provides plenty of sports action, school humor, and baseball lore.

Another baseball themed book that may appeal to sports non-fans is Bette Lord's In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. This one tilts towards historical fiction. If anyone knows of other books featuring girls playing baseball feel free to post a comment.

Life in the suburbs rarely seems so funny as Richard Thompson would have you believe in his amazing and relatively new comic-strip, Cul de Sac. Thompson's strip about a loveable family of four, the Otterloops, is centered primarily around preschool aged Alice and her friends from the Blisshaven Preschool Academy. Alice's world is replete with all the things you would expect from a strip about the burbs: the econobox cars, the mega-marts, the mandatory soccer practices, and even the occasional visit to the neighborhood library. If you're thinking Family Circus then you've got it wrong. Thompson's humor has a satiric quality that will make you think while you're laughing, not unlike Calvin and Hobbes.  

Discovering Cul de Sac in my library made me wonder about other great new comics I've been ignoring.  I decided to scour the shelves and ask around. I discovered two strips worth noting here, Lio and Pearls Before Swine. Mark Tatulli's comic strip, Lio, is an ode to the imaginative powers of 7and 8 year-old kids everywhere, but especially those with a soft spot for monsters and nature. Stephan Pastis'  award winning Pearls Before Swine has been in syndication for seven years. Pearls Before Swine follows the off-beat and often irreverent antics of Rat, Pig, Zebra, Goat, and the Fraternity of Crocodiles (my favorite.) 

Do you have a favorite new comic strip that wasn't mentioned? Let us know by replying to this post. You don't? Then head over to the library to catch up on what you've been missing.

World Vital Records (WVR) is the name of a new online service that functions much like the popular Ancestry Library Edition. It is a collection of hundreds of genealogical databases, large and small, that beginning researchers can search in one fell swoop. Unlike Ancestry Library Edition, WVR offers KCLS patrons the convenience of being able to search from home.

Experienced researchers can limit their searches to individual databases for more precise results. The best way to do this is to click on "record types" and to "browse" by category You will be surprised to find many unique resources available in categories such as immigration, newspapers, military, and census. Many of the larger collections found in WVR - the U.K. Census, and two popular newspaper databases (Newspaper Archives to 1923 and Small Town Papers,) for example - are fully indexed and searchable. The U.S. Federal Census collection contains only partial records for many states and is not indexed. However, fully indexed U.S. census information is available through Ancestry Library Edition, which is available inside any KCLS library branch.

A nice feature of online services like World Vital Records and Ancestry Library Edition is the fact that they are constantly growing, adding new databases every month. Check out WVR's free online newsletter to find out about recent database additions and changes to the service. When it comes to genealogy, nothing ever stays the same for too long!