Staff Picks: Books
Staff-recommended reading from the
KPL catalog.
Rumor has it that Jane Austen is falling out of vogue and that Charlotte Brontё and her sisters are the new literary IT women. With the recent economic downturn, it seems that readers have turned their interest towards the Brontё’s who were more materially and economically impoverished than Austen and did not have Austen’s social standing. I have been a longstanding Jane Austen fan so I was intrigued. Austen and Brontё have been under the comparison microscope for a long time. I can imagine many of you took a high school or college class where their works were part of the discussion and literary paper “fighting ring” of criticism.
Jane Austen was born in 1775 and died in 1817. She was the seventh child (second daughter), and her father was a Reverend. Charlotte Brontё was born in 1816 and died in 1854. She was the third child (third daughter) of six children, and her father was also a Reverend. Charlotte’s well-known sisters Emily and Anne were born in 1818 and 1820 respectively. Whether you have a preference or are now curious about one or all of these famous British women authors, KPL has a wonderful selection of their materials for you to check out and decide for yourself. Just click on these links to our library catalog to explore works by Jane Austen or works by the Brontё sisters to decide for yourself. Maybe you will enjoy reacquainting yourself with an old favorite of yours or perhaps you will find a new one. Who knows, maybe you will discover you are an Austen fan, a Brontё fan or maybe both. Happy Reading!
Books
The Brontё Myth
0375412778
One of the great things about fiction is the wonderful variety of places and times where you can be transported. I recently listened to Mala Nunn’s A Beautiful Place to Die and was instantly taken to apartheid South Africa in the 1950s.
A white police captain has been murdered in the small town of Jacob’s Rest, on the border of Mozambique and South Africa. Sent to investigate is Detective Emmanuel Cooper, and he is immediately resented as an outsider from the big city of Johannesburg. Cooper has to cope with an understaffed local police department and officers from Special Branch with their own political agenda, not to mention residents with secrets of their own.
As much a glimpse of apartheid as it is a mystery, this is a promising beginning to a planned series for South African born author Nunn. If you listen to the CD version, the reader does an excellent job, and I guarantee you will be pulled right into the story.
Book
A Beautiful Place to Die
9781416586203
Dit is disappointed to learn that the new postmaster’s child is a girl, not a boy, as he’d been led to expect. The whole town of Moundville, Alabama is surprised that the newcomers to town are black. Emma, the postmaster’s daughter, is as different from Dit as she could be – smart, well-read, a very thoughtful only child. Dit is a white boy from a family of twelve. He loves to fish, play baseball, skip stones, and hunt. How could they ever be friends?
Despite their differences, Dit and Emma each learn from the other, and they develop a close friendship. Together, they witness a horrific, unthinkable incident and learn more about how different ‘justice’ is for ‘coloreds,’ than it is for white folks in 1917 Alabama. The two devise a courageous plan to alter the course of justice.
Kristin Levine is a fabulous storyteller. This book kept me up late at night, turning pages and reading ‘just one more chapter.’ You know the deal. It's her first novel, and I hope we may look forward to many more.
Book
The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had
9780399250903
I was excited to see that Mark Haddon had written a new book but was rather surprised to find that it was heading for the children’s department. I am a fan of Haddon’s adult fiction works The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (a past Reading Together selection) and his less acclaimed Spot of Bother. It isn’t uncommon for authors to cross genres and audiences and I decided it was worth giving Haddon’s latest book, Boom!, a read.
In the book’s introduction I learned that it was originally published in 1992 under the title Gridzbi Spudvetch!. Haddon jokingly states that only twenty-three people bought this difficult to pronounce title. At the time it was first published, Haddon had not received his notoriety so it isn’t all that surprising that the author and his publishers decided to update, rename and republish this book.
Boom! is the story of two young friends who find themselves in a life-changing misadventure after bugging their school faculty’s staff room. Overhearing a conversation between two teachers in a secret language, the boys’ curiosity is piqued. They boost their spy skills to a new level in order to find out what their teachers are up to only to find that they are now the ones being targeted! As the plot unfolds with amusing and lively twists and turns, the boys find that the “evaluation” they are receiving might be out of this world! I’ll leave the rest for you to discover.
The book is both humorous and fun. While I believe that Haddon’s writing skills have improved in his more recent works, I found that his knack for character development is his talent and true foundation. If you’ve read his other novels, you know that no one writes an innocent, naïve character better than Mark Haddon. It’s easy and fun to get lost in his work.
Book
Boom!
9780385751872
Agatha Christie’s 120th birthday will be celebrated by fans this coming September 15. I decided to do some research and look up a biography about her using the Library’s research database Literature Resource Center. The source cited on Literature Resource Center for Christie’s biography is Contemporary Literary Criticism Select.
The celebrated detective novelist and playwright was born in Torquay, England in 1890. “The Grand Dame of mysteries” studied piano and voice in Paris before she served as a nurse in World War I. Her first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920 was written during lulls in her work as a response to a challenge from her sister. It was the beginning of her series with famous character Hercule Poirot. Interestingly, it was rejected by six publishers before it was purchased for twenty-five pounds.
Christie lived a relatively quiet life and produced nearly one hundred mysteries. Her substantial body of works also includes romances, short stories, plays and poems, however. I encourage you to check out our Library catalog for works by Christie and also check out a dedicated website to her http://www.agathachristie.com/. Happy reading!
Books
Murder on the Orient Express: A Hercule Poirot Mystery
1579126235
There are great writers who harbor brilliant minds but whose works of poetry and fiction reside at the margins of my reading interests or framed another way, these sort of books achieve critical success in pushing art and its ideas forward yet fail to capture my willingness and attention, a prerequisite for engaging any kind of complex work of literature, especially when that book is almost 1100 pages long. One can always appreciate from afar the contributions of an artist who expands our intellectual grasp of what it means to be human while not delving into their work with the sort of zeal that a fan would.
I could spend all day reading about David Foster Wallace or watching the few interviews and public readings that are available on the internet. He was a larger than life sort of writer, who sadly passed away in 2008 at the age of 46. He had both his admirers and his critics, as do all great writers who make a cannonball like splash in the publishing world. His most well known and critically lauded work, Infinite Jest (1996), is a magisterial novel that firmly cemented him as a sort of Kurt Cobain of the literature world.
I’ve been reading a new book of interviews that Wallace gave just at the moment that Infinite Jest brought him notoriety. Wallace possessed a dazzling and erudite mind that is captured here as he discusses a wide range of topics. His quick wit, wildly learned analyses and self-deprecating views on his recent celebrity, along with intimate discussions regarding his battle with depression will help the novice reader understand this key writer prior to engaging his novels and essays or will provide his already established fans with greater insights into his life and works. Here is a clip of Wallace talking to Charlie Rose sometime during the late nineties.
Book
Although of course you end up becoming yourself : a road trip with David Foster Wallace
9780307592439
One of the latest juvenile historical fiction titles I have read is titled Good Fortune and which is written by Noni Carter.
New to the publishing world, Ms. Carter “was only a child when she first conceived of this story of a young girl’s journey from freedom to slavery and back to ultimate freedom…” (back jacket) Would that all first-time authors could pen something as engrossing and compelling as Good Fortune!
Written from the viewpoint of Ayanna Bahati, her African free self; and moving to being called Sarah, her slave self; and finally, to Anna (free in the North), this story details the daily happenings of a field hand on a Southern plantation. Sarah experiences horrible living conditions, appalling working conditions, beatings, and more until she meets John, an itinerant “preacher man” who begins to care for Sarah in a “womanly way”. The author keeps all situations in check, however, and only hints at things that Masta Jeffry might do to Sarah and the others.
Sarah, her brother Daniel and a friend take the big step: a leap forward in the freedom process one dark and stormy night and endure hardships that are almost unbelievable. They also find kindnesses in folk willing to help them on their way via the Underground Railroad to Ohio and eventual freedom. Their friend doesn’t make the entire trip, but Sarah and Daniel do, and are transplanted into an all Black community near Dayton, Ohio where they begin to make their way into a life previously unknown, or hardly remembered: that of freedom. They are able to work, save their money, buy things, marry, have children, get educated, etc. Part of the appeal of this story is that of female protagonist Sarah, who is about 12 years old when she begins her journey. Sarah teaches herself to read and write by covertly listening to the plantation owners’ children as they do their daily lessons. She capitalizes on her limited education, and eventually becomes a teacher for the community in which she lives in Ohio. Such determination! Such will! No wonder she is able to escape the bonds of slavery!
A must read for ‘tweens and older. This is an excellent glimpse into Southern plantation life and the life of the slaves that lived and worked there. I can see this book being awarded maybe a Newbery Medal, or a Coretta Scott King award (for new authors). Check it out today!
Book
Good Fortune
9781416984801
I read a review of Happy Marriage by Rafael Yglesias in one of the many book review sources I skim. It wasn’t an author I had read but it sounded good and I put a “hold” on it.
Although fiction, it is an autobiographical account of his nearly 30-year marriage told in alternating chapters as Margaret succumbs to cancer. The novel opens in 1975 when Enrique Sabas, a high-school dropout who has become the darling of the literary world with his first novel, meets Margaret Cohen, a slightly older, beautiful, budding graphic designer who will become the love of his life. The novel moves through their three decades together as Margaret says good-bye to family and friends and prepares to die.
It is brutally honest as her health declines and her husband becomes her caregiver but a good balance between their young romance, raising a family, losing a parent, a brief affair, and ultimately her physical decline.
It’s heartbreaking, not depressing.
Book
Happy Marriage
9781439102305
For those of us who can’t seem to get enough Swedish mysteries, this novel by Camilla Lackberg is a promising new writer for an American audience.
Successful writer Erica Falck returns from Stockholm to her small hometown on the Swedish coast, to discover that one of her best friends from childhood is dead, an apparent suicide. The more Erica investigates her friend’s death, however, long buried secrets are uncovered which seem to implicate a number of the town’s residents.
Setting plays an important part in this story, and though there are a number of characters, they aren’t overwhelming. A great summertime, or anytime, read for mystery fans.
Book
The Ice Princess
9781605980928
I’ve just finished reading Bryan Gruley’s newest mystery and I’m still shivering with cold! All the folks from Starvation Lake are back in this new book, still playing hockey, still making ends meet in small-town Michigan, still getting out the news whether it’s in the weekly paper or around Audrey’s diner tables.
The Hanging Tree hits bookstore shelves August 3, but if you wait a few days you can meet the author and buy your book in person. Bryan Gruley will be in Kalamazoo on Saturday, August 7, 2:00 p.m. at the Central Library to give us the backstory behind these two terrific mysteries.
When he’s not writing about Starvation Lake, Bryan Gruley is the Chicago bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal; he’s also a former reporter for the Kalamazoo Gazette. Don’t miss this chance to meet Brian, buy a book from our good friends at Michigan News Agency, and hear all about our new friends in Starvation.
Book
The Hanging Tree
9781416563648
http://www.bryangruley.com/