Book of the Month

Book of the Month - The Passage

2010-10-01T15:06:00.004-04:00

The Passage by Justin Cronin

There aren't too many 766-page books that I can read in less than two weeks. As much as I love books, my leisure reading over the course of a day amounts to 15 minutes at lunch and 5 minutes before I fall asleep at night.

But Justin Cronin's 2010 sci-fi novel, The Passage, simply begs to be devoured. I was hooked by the second page, and enthralled by the time I got to the second chapter. It's the kind of book that you don't want to know too much about before you get started, so I will just say this: it's a vampire story, but it's nothing like the bestselling vampire titles you've seen recently. It's a bit like Stephen King's The Stand, and it certainly reminded me of Matherson's I Am Legend,but unlike these The Passage is absolutely impossible to put down. It will keep you up at night and it might just creep you out.

You can cram a lot of characters and situations into 766 pages, and Cronin does that. But I never got bored of any characters; if anything, I wish I'd read it a more slowly so I could have followed the relationships and personalities a little better. The only criticisms I could come up with are nit-picky so I won't even mention them here. The writing is frequently beautiful, such that the book never feels like the breezy, hyper-readable vampire yarn it really is. Mind you, I've nothing against breezy, hyper-readable vampire yarns. Cheers to Justin Cronin for writing one that was such a joy to read. LO

Book of the Month - Tin Roof Blowdown

2010-09-01T12:24:00.005-04:00

Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke

Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana and the area around the Gulf Coast on August 29th, 2005. This past week was the five year anniversary of that hurricane strike, and the area is still working to re-build after the devastation.

Tin Roof Blowdown is a complex and dark mystery, starring Burke's Sherriff's Detective, Dave Robichaeux, that takes place amidst the chaos and confusion that was New Orleans during and shortly after the Hurricane's landfall.

Mr. Robicheaux, currently working out of New Iberia, is on loan to the New Orleans Police Department because they are short staffed (to say the least). He is asked to investigate the murder and assault on two young men who were looting. Unfortunately for them, the house they chose to plunder belonged to Sidnet Kovick, a New Orleans mob figure, notorious for his wealth and cruelty.

Robicheaux's prime suspect in the case is a mild-mannered insurance salesman who lived next door to Kovick. Otis Baylor had chosen to ride out the storm at home. He owns a rifle similar to the one that did the shooting, and his daughter had been raped by four black men whose description matched that of the looters. To add to the complexity, Dave is also seeking a good friend, Jude Leblanc, who has disappeared into the storm and who might just be another victim of the looters.

Amidst the plot stands the descriptions of New Orleans during and after Katrina, a hurricane that struck with greater force than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. "New Orleans [had been] reduced to the level of a medieval society," with no electricity, grossly overburdened medical facilities, little law enforcement, and no place to put the dead - who lie rotting and bloated in the filthy water that surrounds and fills the city.

This is truly a powerful book that is not for the squeamish, and that offers a portrait of a city in ruins and citizenry in despair. It is a disturbing but highly worthwhle read. Meg

Book of the Month - The Lace Reader

2010-07-14T15:46:00.005-04:00

The reviewer for Bookletters said, “If you choose to read just one novel in these waning days of summer, it should be the lovely and terrifically paced The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry.” This book is part historical novel (did you know that lace making was a key industry in Salem, Massachusetts?); part romance and part mystery.

The opening sentences drew me in immediately. “My name it Towner Whitney. No, that’s not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time.”

And it gets better. Towner has returned home to Salem after a long absence because her Aunt, Eva, has drowned in the harbor during her daily swim. The death is suspicious and involves an accusation of witchcraft (of course – it’s Salem, after all), a local evangelist and the tea room Towner’s Aunt has been running.

And through it all runs the thread of lace and lacemaking and the women who can read the future in the patterns the lace makes. This is “a mesmerizing tale that spirals into a world of secrets” that leave you pondering the difference between fact and fiction, real and make-believe, the scientific and the fantastical. Meg

Book of the Month - Dark Tide

2010-06-28T11:47:00.006-04:00

Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo

Did you ever hear of the “great molasses flood” in Boston? I grew up hearing about this event – probably because it took place in and around Boston’s North End, and we had ties to and visited the North End frequently. But even I took the reality of this event with a grain of salt.

But it actually happened. Around noon on January 15th, 1919, a fifty foot tall tank FILLED with over 2 million gallons of thick, black molasses collapsed – creating a massive tidal wave (fifteen feet high, some say) that traveled at a speed of over 35 miles per hour and transformed Boston’s North End into a disaster area. Twenty one people were killed, many animals were destroyed, and the injury and destruction left in its wake were devastating.

Dark Tide by Steven Puleo presents us with a fascinating story – not only of the tragic flood, but of the social and cultural drama that led up to the tragedy – from the tank’s construction (in 1915) all the way through the inevitable lawsuit that followed. Mr. Puleo is an award-winning newspaper reporter and his style is highly readable. If you have never heard about the Great Molasses Flood – and would appreciate a detailed look at Boston’s history- this is the book for you.

Book of the Month - Willie Mays

2010-04-07T19:22:00.003-04:00

Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend by James S. Hirsch

Just in time for baseball season! James Hirsch, author of the 2000 bestseller, Hurricane, (about Rubin Carter), produces a definitive biography of one of baseball’s greats – Willie Mays, considered by some to be the best player in baseball.

From a Bookletters review: “Willie is perhaps best know for “The Catch” – his breathtaking over-the-shoulder grab in the 1954 World Series. But he was a transcendent figure who received standing ovations in enemy stadiums and who, during the turbulent civil rights era, urged understanding and reconciliation.”

A great read to get you in the mood to “play ball.” Meg

Book of the Month - Beauty

2010-03-03T12:13:00.006-05:00

Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper

Remember Fractured Fairy Tales from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show? They took a standard fairy tale and mixed it up a bit, often with hilarious results. Jon Scieszka does the same kind of thing for kids with his The True Story of the Three Little Pigs or The Frog Prince, Continued.

Beauty by Sherri Tepper is not a fractured fairy tale so much as the tale of Sleeping Beauty told through a dark and sometimes bizarre and mysterious lens. Beauty is able to escape her wicked aunt’s curse, set for her 16th birthday, but that escape does not lead to happy-ever-after. Beauty is the half-daughter of a fairy queen herself, and the rest of the book explores the world of Faery and what it means to be “special.”

As Beauty searches both for her mother and for answers to the mysteries that surround her, we move, not only through Sleeping Beauty, but also glimpse elements of Cinderella, Snow White and even meet a frog prince. The land of Faery is not a place for the naïve and unaware, and Beauty’s journeys are fascinating and dangerous.

Beauty is a fairy tale for adults and even if you are not a fairy tale or science fiction fan, I highly recommend it. Meg

A note about the author: Sheri Tepper is a fairly prolific author of science fiction, horror and mystery novels. Beauty won the Locus Award for 1992.

Book of the Month - Song Yet Sung

2010-02-11T11:14:00.006-05:00

Song Yet Sung by James McBride

The Plot: Liz Spocott, slave, breaks free from her captors and escapes into the labyrinth of the creeks and swamps of Maryland’s Eastern shore. What follows is a chase story that involves slave catchers, small plantation owners, watermen, runaway slaves and a secret underground network of free blacks helping their fellows. Mixed into this adventure tale is also the story of Liz’s special talent of visioning the future. As the New York Times said, in its review, Song Yet Sung is a story of tragic triumph, violent decisions, and unexpected kindness.

I don’t generally like historical novels, but Song Yet Sung brought me to the Eastern Shore of Maryland before the Civil War and showed me a face of slavery and small farm living that has been hard to forget. The power of the tale – which is an exciting adventure, by the way, as well as an historical novel – comes from the fact that McBride never directly rails against the evils of slavery. He shows you – with a powerful narrative and complex and unforgetable characters – that no matter how much “the whites” cared for their slaves, or how much the slaves cared for their masters – the institution of slavery, by its very nature, is evil. And no good can come of evil – ever.

If you are looking for something really special to read in honor of Black History Month try McBride’s Song Yet Sung.

Book of the Month -- The Great Gatsby

2010-01-13T10:18:00.003-05:00

Our book of the month to open the year 2010 is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic The Great Gatsby. It may be familiar to you from classrooms long ago, or it may be one of those books you’ve always meant to read but haven’t. But there will never be a better time to check it out—again or for the first time—than during The Big Read in Newport, brought to you by the Newport Preservation Society and the Newport Public Library. The Big Read runs from January to March, 2010, and features film screenings, lectures, book discussions, and even a jazz concert. You can see a complete listing of events on our online calendar.

Despite all these wonderful events, though, the novel itself is well worth the read. Set in the glitz of the roaring twenties, The Great Gatsby nevertheless survives as a uniquely American story of hope, love, and tragedy.

The Plot: Midwesterner Nick Carraway comes East to start out in the stocks and bonds profession and is quickly drawn to the fashionably excessive parties thrown at his neighbor’s mansion on Long Island. The neighbor happens to be a mysterious man known as Jay Gatsby, who is fabulously rich, supernaturally charming and totally mysterious. Where did he get all his money? Was he a German spy during the war? Nick soon finds himself befriending Gatsby and learning of Gatsby’s desperately romantic infatuation with Nick’s cousin, Daisy, who is unhappily married. Her husband, Tom Buchanan, a Yale athlete from an elite East coast family, happens to have a mechanic's wife for a mistress. As you can imagine, this tangled web of parties and extramarital intrigue ensnares the characters and the readers as well. Mysteries are revealed, love is declared, but doom lurks just around the corner for these characters. The narrator ends one scene with the ominous sentence, "So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight."

Though finishing at just under 200 pages, The Great Gatsby has an unusual depth of meaning for such a breezy read. And its themes of wealth, aspiration, unrequited love, and mortality appeal to us all. The setting, with its sea-facing mansions and tiny cottages, should be familiar to Newporters in particular. Many locals will remember the filming of The Great Gatsby movie at Rosecliff mansion in the early '70s. The Big Read offers an opportunity, within our unique and historic community, to engage with this wonderful book, the accompanying film, and that particularly glittering, decadent period in American history.

Big Read Calendar of Events

The Big Read at the Newport Preservation Society website

Book of the Month - The Girl Who Played With Fire

2009-12-03T15:13:00.016-05:00

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

Bookviews’ Book of the Month for October was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – a highly popular page turner with a unique set of characters and a wonderfully exciting plot. Well, Stieg Larsson’s sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire is just as good, if not better than his first attempt.

Lisbeth Salander, the unique, at times bizarre and always fascinating young woman, introduced in his first book, is back and carrying on as she began.

The Plot: Dag Svensson, a young journalist, comes to Mikael Blomkvist and the Millennium (magazine) Board with a proposal: his fiance is writing her dissertation on the sex trade in Sweden and how it is supported by public and private officials who should know better. In order to expose this scandal widely, Svensson asks that Millennium devote its May issue to the sex trade and at the same time publish a book based on the dissertation. Needless to say, many important and several very dangerous folks object.

Because Lisbeth has been doing a bit of her own sleuthing, she becomes linked to this project and manages to become the primary suspect when three people (one of whom is her former guardian) are brutally murdered. Mikael and his magazine are determined to prove her innocent and to publish their expose no matter the cost.

The Wiki article on The Girl Who Played With Fire calls Lisbeth “a punk, avenging angel with boxing skills and a photographic memory.” Despite seeming to be amoral, Lisbeth has a fine-tuned sense of justice and a strict personal moral code upon which she will act (aggressively), if she feels she is right.

I highly recommend The Girl Who Played With Fire. It is a page turner to the very end.

A little bit about the author: Stieg Larsson, a noted Swedish journalist, activist and writer, died in November, 2004, of a heart attack. The three books that form the Millennium Crime Trilogy are being published posthumously. Book three is entitled The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and is due to be published in May 2010. Meg

Book of the Month - The Street Gang

2009-11-10T14:17:00.010-05:00

The Street Gang by Michael Davis

Sunny day, sweeping the clouds away,On my way to where the air is sweet.
Can you tell me how to get…how to get to Sesame Street?

As the Google seach page has been reminding us this past week, Sesame Street is 40 years old! Big Bird, the Cookie Monster, Burt and Ernie, Oscar the Grouch – all are names that parents and grandparents and their kids know well. And just in time for this anniversary comes Michael Davis’ Street Gang: The History of Sesame Street.

For those of you who remember back before there was Sesame Street, the concept of combining early childhood education with a television show was, to say the least, unique. Getting a toddlers’ attention by singing the alphabet or using a vampire to learn numbers (remember Count von Count?) was entirely new and many of Sesame Street’s revolutionary ideas were reponsible for the early educational development of many children.

Michael Davis, who was a writer and editor for TV Guide for 9 years, brings his reporter’s expertise and writing skills to the many characters – both real and imaginary – that created the Muppets and peopled Sesame Street for a long time.

Davis begins with a watershed moment for the Sesame Street Gang – the sudden death of creator and master-puppeteer, Jim Henson. As Davis lists some of the people who attended Henson’s funeral (over 5,000 people crowded into the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City) you begin to realize how this “simple” children’s show touched many. As Davis says, Henson had invented characters (think Kermit) “that made you smile just thinking about them.”

But Street Gang is more than just a tribute to Jim Henson. It is a look inside that creation called the Children’s Television Network and all the people and effort that went into starting Sesame Street and keeping it up and running despite money crises, critics and detractors.

Street Gang is subtitled The Complete History of Sesame Street and I highly recommend it. It’s fun and educational….and brought to you by the letter “A.” Meg

Book of the Month - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2009-10-06T10:24:00.004-04:00

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Sometimes I like to read books that have a “buzz.” Such is true for this month’s book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was published in 2008 and its sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire is already out, but the Dragon Tattoo book still has lots of people reading it and talking about it.

Here’s a hint. For me (and many people I have talked to about the book) it took about 30 pages to really get hooked. The first chapter is all about a libel trial wherein our protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist, is tried and convicted of libel due to a story he wrote and published in Millennium, the magazine Blomkvist co-edits. The tale of the trial and its results is rather dry reading, but, as the reader comes to find out, everything that happens in that first 30-page chapter is important to later developments.

There are many levels of plot. There is the libel trial and Blomkvists’ efforts to prove that what he said about ruthless industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerstrom was, in fact, true. There is the research (into the many generations of the Vanger family) and the investigation (into the disappearance of Harriet Vanger 23 years ago) that Blomkvists agrees to undertake for Henrik Vangar. There is the series of horrendous murders that Blomkvist accidentally stumbles upon in the course of his investigations. And then there is Lisbeth – the girl with the dragon tattoo, incidentally – her unusual (to say the least) life, her unusual appearance, her unusual outlook and her incredible talent for finding things out. (This is due in no small part to her photographic memory and hacking ability with any computer or program known to man – or woman.)

One of the things that kept me reading was the characters. Blomkvist is a really honest, likeable journalist with a passionate concern for Sweden, its politics and its economy. His co-editor, Berger, is also an honest and hardworking woman. Their relationship is a curious blend of the traditional and very modern. The Vanger family, from Henrik the patriarch, to his sisters and brothers, their wives and sons and daughters are all well-drawn and memorable. But Lisbeth is the character that, once met, held my interest and astonishment throughout.

And Steig is very clever, because he intersperses what are sometimes longish explanations of what Blomkvist is investigating with a single paragraph that keeps tabs on Lisbeth and her sometimes bizarre activities.

This book is not for the faint of heart or the squeamish. It is, however, a very good story, with some real suspense and dread. I highly recommend it. I am planning to read The Girl Who Played with Fire very shortly! Meg

Book of the Month - The Magicians

2009-09-14T11:06:00.000-04:00

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Reason for reading: I read lots of reviews about lots of books, but the review of Grossman’s latest book (he also wrote The Codex), intrigued me. First of all, the reviewer compared it to Harry Potter and Hogwarts and I have been looking for books that are as good and as enjoyable as J. K. Rowling. Also, it sounded like a very clever mix of science fiction, reality show and magical realism.

First line: "Quentin did a magic trick. Nobody noticed.”

Plot in a (not so short) nutshell:

A group of young people are selected to attend Brakebills, a college for young magicians. They muddle through several years of magical education, pass some unusual tests, graduate and arrive in the “real” world, with not a clue what to do with themselves. (Clearly guidance counselors were not a staple at Brakebills.)

After drifting and drinking around for a while, they decide to go on an adventure to Fillory (read Narnia) to put some meaning into their lives. In Fillory they certainly have adventures, only the adventures are very real, difficult, desperate, and lead to several casualties. Our “hero” Quentin winds up in a coma for several months, gets well, shoots a Questing Beast, gets three wishes and wishes to go home.

Once home he tries to shut off all magical impulses, as well as all emotions and ambitions. He is finally rounded up by the friends who survived the Fillory expedition and they decide to return – and do it right this time.

Quite frankly I did not know what to make of this book. It seems to be a cross between (among?) Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Dead Poets Society and the Matrix. And if that doesn’t confuse you, imagine how confused I was.

When children go through the looking glass or into a wardrobe, they bring all their innocence and child-like beliefs with them. When adults (or, as in this case, young adults) push a magic button and find themselves in another dimension they bring all their character flaws, doubts and cynicism, bad manners and bad habits.

The Magicians was slow to start (I kept waiting for something to happen); full of surprises and incongruities; peopled by characters who are not very admirable. The only thing is I couldn’t stop reading it. You decide if you want to try. Meg

Books of the Month - The Hour I First Believed and Columbine

2009-08-03T10:42:00.005-04:00

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
Columbine by David Cullen

Mr. Lamb’s book, The Hour I First Believed, is a work of fiction whose main characters are a young couple, one a teacher and one a school nurse, who both happened to have worked at Columbine High School on Tuesday, April 20, 1999 – the day when 12 students were killed by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, seniors, who then took their own lives.

Lamb describes well the horror of that day, but his focus is the effect of the tragedy, first on the narrator's wife, and then by extension on the narrator's own life. Worlds were changed forever that day, and Wally Lamb does a credible job of taking us inside the event and it aftermath.

David Cullen’s book, Columbine, is, in many ways, revisionist history. Reporters, law officials and the general public have, for a long time, had a certain “take” on the events at Columbine – and Cullen’s thesis is that this “take” has been incorrect. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were not social outcasts on the fringe of their high school world. Klebold had been accepted at college, had recently gone to his prom with a date, and was part of a definite circle of friends. Harris was a bit more on the periphery, but was also part of that circle of friends. He had a steady job and just recently been given a promotion.

Cullen’s bottom line is that Harris was a pyschopath and Klebold suicidal and malleable. It was a deadly combination.

What struck me in both of these books was that evil – as a force? an emotion? – was also a character. And the complicated nature of that force (whatever you call it) that drove these two boys to planning and carrying out a massacre with spirit and enthusiam is chilling.
I urge you to read both. It is quite an education. Meg

Book of the Month - Olive Kitteridge

2009-07-07T14:06:00.005-04:00

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Stout

Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Stout, won the Pulitzer Prize award for fiction this year. Olive Kitteridge is the title character in a series of 13 stories, all taking place in a fictional Maine town, Crosby, and all focusing on Ms. Kitteridge and her interaction with family and various townsfolk. What makes this novel special is Olive herself. Olive is a retired, seventh-grade math teacher who is “quick, sharp, big, gossipy and not an easy force to reckon with.”

Along with Olive’s character, the rustic locale of small coastal town Maine becomes a character in itself. Author Stout was brought up in small towns in Maine and New Hampshire and she knows whereof she speaks. The combination of town, town characters and Olive makes for a classy and captivating read.

Other Pulitzer Prize winners for 2009 are:

History – The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed
Biography – American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham
General Non-fiction – Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon. Meg

Book of the Month - My Sister's Keeper

2009-06-10T17:17:00.004-04:00

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

I am not a big Jodi Picoult fan, but I must admit that My Sister’s Keeper kept me reading (right through breakfast, at one point) until I had finished.

The story is about a loving family torn apart by one sister’s mortal illness and her parents’ attempt to deal with that illness. Kate comes down with APL, acute promyelocytic leukemia, a particularly nasty disease with a horrible prognosis. A subtle suggestion from one of their doctors leads Sara and Brian, the parents, to deliberately have a child that will be a stem cell donor for their sick child. Anna is born and does donate her umbilical cord stem cells to Kate, and all is well for a while. Until Kate has a relapse – and Anna is once again pressed into service as a bone marrow donor; a blood donor; and so it goes, until Anna turns 13 and is asked to donate a kidney. She takes all her savings and hires an attorney to file for medical emancipation from her parents.

It is the interaction and relationships of the famiily (mother, father, Jesse the older brother, Kate and Anna, her lawyer, Campbell, and her guardian ad litem, Julia that make this book of complex medical and moral issues come alive. Picoult uses all her characters as narrators and so you get various points of view – a device I often dislike, but that works very well in this instance.

My one quibble is an ending that is a total surprise and a bit contrived. But the issues brought up by this extremely difficult and complex situation and the real attempt by all the characters involved to act in a manner they consider morally sound makes for a fascinating and thoughtful read. Meg

[Incidentally My Sister’s Keeper has been made into a movie, starring Nick Cassavetes, Cameron Diaz and Alec Baldwin. The movie is due out mid-June.]

Book of the Month - Out of the Deep I Cry

2009-05-05T10:10:00.005-04:00

Out of the Deep I Cry by Julia Spencer-Fleming

I published a post in February about Ms Spencer-Fleming’s series of books featuring the Reverend Clare Fergusson and Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne. I’m back again, and calling book number three, Out of the Deep I Cry, a Book of the Month because I am so impressed by this series. Julia Spencer-Fleming’s website calls her books “novels of faith and murder for readers of literary suspense” and that is indeed a good description.

The plot of Out of the Deep takes place in two eras, and the author moves us back and forth between these time periods effortlessly. The story involves the Millers Kill free medical clinic and the disappearance of its one doctor. Dr. Rouse’s disappearance and the funding of the clinic are intwined with the history of a old-time Millers Kill farming family, their tragic loss of four children to a 1920’s diptheria epidemic, the subsequent disappearnce of the father and the widow’s decision to fund a free clinic for the town. How the current doctor’s disappearance is tied to that family’s ill-fated history forms the basis of the story.

What makes this book so special is not the plot however, but the characters Spencer-Fleming creates, and especially the developing relationship between Clare and Russ. Reverend Fergusson and Sherrif Van Alstyne, from the moment they meet, know they are soul mates. The problem is that the sherif is, if not happily married, at least well content with Linda, his wife and honorably bound to keep his wedding vows. Clare is an Episcopal priest who has not taken vows of chastity, but who is certainly expected to set a moral example for her congregation, her Bishop - to say nothing of her own moral conscience.

Their struggles with temptation and attraction are the stuff of Greek tradgedy and Spencer-Fleming handles their emotional dilemmas and the story’s detective problems admirably. Meg

Book of the Month - Sunshine

2009-04-06T09:09:00.002-04:00

Book of the Month - Sunshine

Vampires seem to be “in” these days – beginning with the Joss Whedon television series, Buffy (and its spinoff, Angel), right down to the current explosion of vampiric romances, the legendary figure of the vampire seems to have come into his/her own.

Laurel Hamilton’s series starring Anita Blake, vampire hunter, is a sexy, violent but enthralling look at a New York City where vampires, werewolves, zombies and those who hunt them are commonplace.

Christine Feehan writes vampiric romances that originate in the Carpathian Mountains. Her “dark” series is “peopled” with strange gods and wraiths and spirits as well as vampires.

But if you would like to try a “gentle” vampire romance that is romantic, adventurous, complex and unsettling at times, try Sunshine by Robin McKinley. McKinley is an award winning children’s author (The Hero and the Crown) and also writes for teens (Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast). Sunshine is her first adult book and she succeeds beautifully at drawing us in and telling a story of tragedy and love.

Rae “Sunshine” Seddon is living in a post Voodoo-War world, earning her living making cinnamon rolls in her stepfather’s bakery. One night she is captured by rogue vampires and imprisoned, in an abandoned mansion, next to a wounded vampire, Constantine, who is also being held captive. He does not attack her, however, but convinces her to distract them both by telling stories. It is at this moment that Sunshine comes into her powers, bequeathed to her by her grandmother, but forgotten until now. She turns a pocket knife into a key and releases them both.They escape back to town, despite a dangerous dawn, and together they decide to face Constantine’s enemies, who have now sworn to destroy Sunshine as well.

Booklist calls this story “a luminous, entrancing novel with an enthralling pair of characters at its heart.” Sunshine also won the 2003 Mythopoeic Society Award for Fantasy for Adults. Meg

Book of the Month - The Knitting Circle

2009-03-09T11:54:00.006-04:00

The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood.

This is actually the book that got me started knitting, because, in a way, I was looking for healing, too, and reading Ann’s book and actually learning how to knit as part of a knitting circle, helped in many ways.

The Knitting Circle is Ann Hood’s fictionalized account of the tragic death of her 5-year-old daughter, Grace, due to meningitis.** In The Knitting Circle, Mary Baxter has lost her small daughter, Stella, and after much doubt and reluctance, joins a knitting circle in Providence (RI) “as a way to fill the empty hours and lonely days.” The circle of friends she meets and the knitting she learns, which does soothe and calm, changes her life.

Each woman teaches Mary a new knitting technique, and, as they do, they reveal to her their own personal stories of loss, love, and hope. Eventually, through the hours they spend knitting and talking together, Mary is finally able to tell her own story of grief, and in so doing reclaims her love for her husband, faces the hard truths about her relationship with her mother, and finds the spark of life again.

This is a beautifully written, emotionally powerful novel.

** For a memoir that recounts the real events, read Comfort: A Journey Through Grief. For anyone who has lost someone close, this book is a gift and a burden. Publishers Weekly says Ann’s account reads “like a tightly controlled scream,” and the first chapter is as profound a description of grief as I have ever read. She does make her way through and up into healing and peace, but the journey is a difficult one. Meg

Book of the Month - Gone with the Wind

2009-02-10T16:50:00.005-05:00

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

When I turned to a friend for reading suggestions, she surprised me by asking, “Have you ever read Gone with the Wind?” Of course I have seen the movie several times. (Who could forget the dashing Clark Gable as Rhett Butler or Vivien Leigh’s portrayal of Scarlett O’Hara – that combination of independent Irish femme fatale and Southern belle?) But I had never actually read Margaret Mitchells’ 1,000 page opus.

So I took a chance and began. Let me say right up front that although (at least so far) the book follows the movie closely, there is a depth of character and place that I am growing very fond of.

The plot is the “love” story between Scarlett and Rhett, but the heart of the book is the tragedy that was the Civil War. Mitchell portrays this tragedy on many levels and you come to feel deeply for the characters as they lose their land, their livelihood and their world in a futile attempt to stop the march of time and Union troops.

Another book I read recently, Song Yet Song by James McBride, presented a different view of the Civil War and slavery. McBride’s setting was the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and where Mitchell focuses on large plantation owners and their scores of slaves, McBride talks about the very small farmer, ekking out a bare existance with 1 or 2 slaves who had become truly (at least in his book) part of the family.

Both books lead to the conclusion, however, that small farmer or large plantation owner, slavery is not a viable or moral institution and its collapse brings about other kinds of destruction as well. If you have not read Gone With the Wind, I highly recommend it. Meg

Book of the Month - Cross Bones

2009-01-12T11:46:00.006-05:00

Cross Bones by Kathy Reichs

I love the TV series, Bones, starring Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz (Angel of Buffy fame), so I thought I would try the book series that the show is based upon. The books are a bit different. Dr. Temperance Brennan is still a forensic anthropologist, but she works both in Quebec and North Carolina for two different forensic laboratories. There is no Seeley Booth (Boreanaz’s character).

The books are well written and Cross Bones, the first one I tried, seems to be quite good. A picture of a mystery skeleton shows up in the course of the investigation of a suicide, soon discovered to be murder. This skeleton is thought to be one of the discoveries found at an ancient dig in the fortress at Masada in Israel, and for some unknown reason, the skeleton’s existance has been kept a very dark secret. This secrecy might just be the motive behind the suicide/murder with which the book begins.

Dr. Brennan’s police side-kick in the books is Andrew Ryan, an SQ detective. They are totally involved with each other (unlike Booth and Brennan in the TV series – who just flirt on the edges of involvement). Together Brennan and Ryan try to puzzle out the reason for the secrecy and the reason for the murder.

The characters are well drawn; the dialogue often clever; and the forensic details as prominent and relevant as in the TV series. If you enjoy a bit of science and detail with your mysteries – give this series a try. Deja Dead, written in 1997, is the first title in the series. Cross Bones is number 8. Reichs has written 11 Temperance Brennan mysteries in all, the most recent being Devil Bones (2008). Meg

Book of the Month - The Year of Magical Thinking

2008-12-09T15:50:00.007-05:00

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support.

Just days later - the night before New Year's Eve - Joan and her husband were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.”

Joan Didion, author of A Book of Common Prayer and many other fiction and non-fiction titles, and John Gregory Dunne, author of the novels Dutch Shea, Jr., and True Confessions as well as some non-fiction titles, were a well-matched, devoted couple. The year of “magical thinking” refers to her efforts to think away her grief and loss. It is well written and a gripping story of loss and coming to grips with that loss. I highly recommend it. Meg

[Some text taken from BookLetters. Click on titles to check availability.]

Book of the Month... Michelle

2008-11-17T10:56:00.004-05:00

Michelle: A Biography, by Liza Munday

Liza Mundy offers this highly readable, thoroughly reported biography of the charming and self-possessed woman who could become the nation's first African-American First Lady.

She can be funny and sharp-tongued, warm and blunt, empathic and demanding. Who is the woman Barack Obama calls "the boss"? In Michelle, Washington Post writer Liza Mundy paints a revealing and intimate portrait, taking us inside the marriage of the most dynamic couple in politics today. She shows how well they complement each other: Michelle, the highly organized, sometimes intimidating, list-making pragmatist; Barack, the introspective political charmer who won't pick up his socks but shoots for the stars.

Michelle's story carries with it all the extraordinary achievements and lingering pain of America in the post-civil rights era. She grew up on the south side of Chicago, the daughter of a city worker and a stay-at-home mom in a neighborhood rocked by white flight. She was admitted to Princeton amid an angry debate about affirmative action and went on to Harvard Law School, where she was more comfortable doing pro-bono work for the poor than gunning for awards with the rest of her peers.

She became a corporate lawyer, then left to train community leaders. She is modern in her tastes but likes to watch reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Brady Bunch.

Drawing upon interviews with more than one hundred people, including one with Michelle herself, Mundy captures the complexity of this remarkable woman and the remarkable life she has lived. Meg

[Click on title to check availability. Text taken from BookLetters.]

Book of the Month...The Girls

2008-10-06T12:14:00.004-04:00

The Girls by Lori Lansens
[Click on title to check availability.]

The Girls is the story of two sisters, Rose and Ruby Darlen: their lives, their loves, their family and their friends. Rose and Ruby are 29-year-old conjoined twins – called craneopagus twins medically – because they are joined at the head. Born during a tornado to a shocked teenaged mother in the hospital at Leaford, Ontario, they are raised by the nurse who helped usher them into the world.

Rose says, if you take your hand, “press the base of your palm to the lobe of your right ear. Cover your ear and fan out your fingers” – that’s where Ruby’s head is. Joined to Ruby at the head, Rose's face is pulled to one side, but she has full use of her limbs. Ruby has a beautiful face, but her body is tiny and she is unable to walk. She rests her legs on her sister's hip, rather like a small child or a doll. In spite of their situation, the girls lead surprisingly separate lives. Rose is bookish and a baseball fan. Ruby is fond of trash TV and has a passion for local history.

Rose has always wanted to be a writer, and as the novel opens, she begins to pen her autobiography. Here is how she begins: "I have never looked into my sister's eyes. I have never bathed alone. I have never stood in the grass at night and raised my arms to a beguiling moon. I've never used an airplane bathroom. Or worn a hat. Or been kissed like that. I've never driven a car. Or slept through the night. Never a private talk. Or solo walk. I've never climbed a tree. Or faded into a crowd. So many things I've never done, but oh, how I've been loved. And, if such things were to be, I'd live a thousand lives as me, to be loved so exponentially.

This is a wonderfully written, beautifully told “fictional memoir” that is highly recommended. Meg

[Some of the above review was taken directly from BookLetters.

Book of the Month...September 2008

2008-09-09T11:08:00.005-04:00

The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson.

Subtitled Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, the Devil in the White City takes place against the backdrop of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and is about two men: Daniel Hudson Burnam, famous architect who designed New York’s Flatiron Building and who was director of “works” for the Fair, and Henry H. Holmes – a doctor and a serial killer who uses the Fair as his stalking ground for victims.

Their stories are told in parallel and both are equally as riveting. The architect who struggled to merge the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim and Louis Sullivan, to turn what was a swamp with the prosiac name of Jackson Park into the White City of the Chicago Fair: the physician who constructed his own “Fair” wherein he lured and tortured women to their deaths.

The Devil in the White City is a fascinating, true story of an intriguing time in our nation’s history and several characters that – for whatever reason – remain unforgettable. Meg

[Click on title to check availability.]

Book of the Month....August 2008

2008-08-12T08:55:00.005-04:00

Digging to America by Ann Tyler.
(Click on title to check availability.)

On the surface, this is a novel about two very different families thrown together by chance and their mutual decision to adopt a Korean child. But if you dig further, it is a novel about cultural identity and what happens to an individual’s identity when that connection to culture is lost.

The Donaldsons and the Yazdans meet at BWI (Baltimore/

Washington International Airport); both have adopted a child from Korea and both are meeting that child for the first time. The families are very different: Brad and Bitsy Donaldson are white, upper middle-class; Sami and Ziba Yazdan are Iranian Americans and far from well-to-do. But their new daughters draw them together, and as time goes one, the families become friends – although that friendship is sometimes strained.

Bitsy Donaldson is bound and determined to celebrate and keep her daughter’s oriental heritage alive. She names her Jin-Ho and dresses her in oriental costumes on her anniversary date. The Yazdan’s, who have been assimiliated themselves, are more comfortable letting their daughter, Susan, lose sight of her heritage.

Sami’s mother, Maryam Yazdan is the ambivalent one. She is bound and determined to retain her ties to her Iranian heritage, but this determination has effectively cut her off from friendship, community and love in America. As the two families and their children learn how to manage both heritage and acceptance so, too, Maryam must learn to let her culture not become a barrier to her future happiness. Meg

Book of the Month...July 2008

2008-07-01T09:54:00.004-04:00

Fallen Founder by Nancy Isenberg
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Villain or patriot? Scheming politician or forward thinker, way ahead of his time? Ms. Isenberg’s book of revisionist history explores all these questions and more while she relates the life and death of one of America’s most controversial figures, Aaron Burr.

In this challenging, but fascinating biography, Isenberg asserts that Burr was, in fact, “the only founder to embrace feminism” and the only one who “adhered to the ideal that reason should transcend party differences.” None of the founding fathers were without faults and human frailties, and Burr was no exception. But his character and contributions should not be ignored.

Fallen Founder is an interesting portrait and one that should lead to much discussion and thoughtful reflection. Meg

Book of the Month....June 2008

2008-06-03T09:47:00.004-04:00

Five Skies, by Ron Carlson
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One summer in the Rocky Mountains, three men are brought together to construct a ramp to nowhere – a causeway for a daredevil motorcycle rider to jump across a canyon. As the men work together, their wounded lives and backgrounds are gradually revealed: Darwin’s wife died and he is in the grip of grief and fury; Arthur, after betraying someone close to him, has abandoned his career as a Hollywood stunt engineer to build this road to emptiness; Ronnie, the youngest of the three, is a petty thief and runaway looking for a way back to a normal life.

Carlson, writing his first novel after several succesful short story collections, describes how these three men grow into a family of sorts. Redemption, tragedy, and grace come at the end. Meg

Book of the month.....May 2008

2008-04-30T16:06:00.007-04:00

The Great Swim, by Gavin Mortimer
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Why would anyone want to swim the English Channel?? Well – this book is about 4 women who, during the summer of 1926 –just after World War I – battled each other in a race to be the first woman to swim across that Channel. The 4 American women – Gertrude Ederle, Mille Gade, Lillian Cannon and Clarabelle Barrett – were each backed by various American newspapers from New York to Boston – and these newspapers made the most of the publicity that a woman, in a bathing costume on the front page of a national newspaper would produce.

Mr. Mortimer uses a great variety of sources to reconstruct the excitement and drama that accompanied an event that captured the heart of people on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Check the library's catalog for The Great Swim. Meg

Book of the Month....April 2008

2008-04-04T09:57:00.011-04:00

Mozart's Ghost, by Julia Cameron
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Meet Anna, a thirtysomething Midwesterner living alone in New York City. A schoolteacher by day, she is a medium by night, covertly helping people reunite with their lost loved ones. Anna leads a double life, guarding her secret as much as she guards her heart – until Edward, a gangly yet quietly handsome concert pianist, moves into her building.

Edward’s music fills Anna’s apartment with beautiful sounds that disturb her concentration and her lines of communication with ghosts. She and Edward fall for each other fast, but Anna is conflicted: by exposing her true identity, does she risk losing what may be her true love? And is music really his true love?

Then a ghost begins to interfere – Mozart’s ghost – and while making a pest of himself to Anna, he begins to play matchmaker with unpredictable results….**

Julia Cameron is also the author of several books about writing, including The Artists’ Way.

(**Text from book's fly leaf.)