grown up books...
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by Dave King
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Dave King has written a first novel that might make John Irving jealous. The character Howard, damaged by a war, unable to speak or write, narrates this story in his thoughts. Howard is the glue that binds the varied characters together. The main relationship is between Howard and Ryan, the nine-year-old son of Howards high-school sweetheart and only love. I fell in love with these characters from first meeting (and I'm not usually that kind of girl!) This book is art. Recommended by my mom. |
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by Dan Brown
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From the author of The Da Vinci Code, this is virtually unreadable. I borrowed it from a friend to read on the plane, and man did it suck. A spy, military, government conspiracy thriller that babbled on with putrid narritive, and dull characters, this book bored me out of my skin. Where I found The Da Vinci Code to be a pleasant, somewhat interesting read, The Deception Point was lame and dull. Well, ok, if you're stuck on a plane with nothing to read, go ahead, it may be more amusing than the in-flight magazine, but, then again, it's probably a toss-up. |
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by Aaron Lansky
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A wonderful book about how Aaron Lansky, of the National Yiddish Book Center fame, saved Yiddish literature. It's a wonderful engaging read, a love letter to books, and Yiddish. My tie with this book is that the Yiddish Book Center is in the Valley, Lansky is as crazy a bibliophile as I am, maybe crazier, and being Jewish doesn't hurt either. But the book is so well written, engaging and heroic, I think that non-Jews, living in other places would enjoy this book too. The bibliophile part is non-negotiable. |
by Sarah Vowell
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Essays about the creepiness of Tom Cruise, the 137th reading of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the heralded antiquarian map dealer, Graham Arader, a letter to Bill Clinton about comparing his future Presidential Library to the libraries of Kennedy, Eisenhower, Nixon and LBJ, and another letter to a dead senator who helped to impart to Vowell her religious love of patriotism. She says this of an exchange on a political email group: "We were a sort of homegrown talk show where one person would state an opinion, and then everyone else would go McLaughlin Group on his ass." Sarah Vowell is currently my favorite author. She's the type of writer who makes me wish I hadn't yet stumbled upon any of her books, just so I could discover them again. I discovered Vowell while listenting to my favorite radio program, This American Life. I saw her perform her piece on John Brown's Body, and it's been love ever since. Read her books, no wait, buy her books, because she deserves it.
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by Sarah Vowell
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In her most recent book, Sarah Vowell bestows upon us the wonderfully interesting premise that vacations started out as side trips while undertaking religious pilgrimages. "A pilgrimage,"she writes, "needs a destination. For medieval Christians, that was usually the cathedral of Saint James in Northern Spain. This tour of assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley ends up at the Lincoln Memorial because that's where I'm always ending up. It's the closest thing I have to a church". Through Vowells' elegant, silly, hip, passionate, funny and profound prose we are treated to in-depth studies of the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. We are also treated to wonderful tidbits about Vowells' personal life. Her fear of driving, her interactions with her sister and nephew, and the Seward plaque-ing of her friends. If you want to know what it means to be Seward-plaqued, I suggest you read this book. Chances are it's happened to you. |
books for the younger set...
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by Mary Pope Osborne
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We have started to read chapter books. This is a very cool new endeavor in our household. So, we've read a few of the Magic Treehouse books. Some things about these books are great. The mentor to the two main characters is Morgan Le Faye, a librarian from the Court of King Arthur. The main characters, Jack and Annie, brother and sister, are doing research to become master librarians who travel through time to see historic places and people. On their adventures they bring reference books and read interesting facts to help them. I like this because occasionally there is information that I learn from too. For example the the apatasaurus mothers all kept their nests together and one would watch over the children while the others hunted. The problem with these books is that the writing is pretty lame, and they get formulaic and boring. |
by Judy Sierra
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This is a totally hilarious book about a librarians' librarian. In this tribute to Dr. Seuss, Springfield Librarian, Molly McGrew, accidentally drives her bookmobile into the zoo. From there Ms. Mcgrew does what any librarian would, she provides wonderful Reader's advisory to all of the animals, and does her best to, in the spirit of Ranganathan, provide every reader her book. "The crickets craved small books, Giraffes wanted tall books, and geckos could only read stick to the wall books. The pandas demanded more books in Chinese..." Then the animals realize that they can write books themselves, our favorite part was the insects writing Haiku, and the scorpion gives each a stinging review. The only problem I have with this book is that the animals end up building a library and realizing they can do it themselves. I always tell my son that there is no substitution for an actual librarian with an MLIS. |
