A question of labels

I was thinking the other day about a book I had read that was set in the Victorian era.  I started to wonder if "Vic Lit" was a catch-phrase that had been developed to describe novels in that time.  Turns out (thank you, Google), it has.  In addition to other sites that use the phrase, author Jenna Dawlish specifically identifies her work as "Vic Lit."  It seems like there is now a "lit-label" for just about everything. Books, like Nick Hornby's, about men in their 20s and 30s searching for happiness, have been labeled "lad-lit."  Most of us have heard about "chick" lit but what about "hen" lit (chick lit for the older set)?  And, of course, the so-vague-it-tells-you-nothing "women's fiction." 

As I was looking at the myriad labels we've come up with for books (really? "yummy mummy lit"?), I came across a recent article on Salon.com  (you can find the article, "Women's Fiction: All misery and martinis?" here.)  The basic message of the article is that women's fiction has been unfairly pegged into two categories: misery lit and chick lit.  Yes, there are those that are in the more frivolous vein (chick lit) and those in the more angst-ridden (misery lit, the idea that it focuses on women dealing with grief, abuse, aldultery, and lost or horribly troubled children), and even, I would argue some that are misery chick lit (Anna Maxted's Getting Over It comes to mind).  But, as the article points out, there are countless examples of "women's fiction" that can't be nicely fit into either of these two categories.  How do you classify women authors such as Marilynn Robinson, Geraldine Brooks, Barbara Kingsolver, or Louise Erdrich? 

The article was definitely thought-provoking, particularly because, as it pointed out, women read far more fiction than men, and yet it's women's fiction that has been set apart as different.  Maybe we should focus on the labels "good" or, well...less good. 

By the way, for those who aren't ashamed of the label, check out This is Chick Lit, a collection of short stories by authors who are happy to be pegged in that genre.  I wouldn't claim that the stories in it are all that great, but the essays about what it means to be a part of chick lit, and to write with women in mind, are.

Ohioana Book Award Finalists

The 2010 Ohioana Book Award finalists were recently announced by the Ohioana Library, located in Columbus with the State Library of Ohio.  These awards began in 1942 and celebrate authors born in Ohio or who have lived in the state for at least five years.  Awards are given in five categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, About Ohio, Juvenile, and Poetry.  Here are the nominees in the Fiction category:


The Weight of Heaven by Thrity Umrigar
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
All the Living by C.E. Morgan
Far Bright Star by Robert Olmstead
The Spire by Richard North Patterson

Ohioana will announce the winners in late-August.  For more information on the Ohioana Library and the awards, visit their website.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is the exciting conclusion to the Millennium Trilogy. It will be released in the United States on May 25th, but I was lucky and got a sneak peak at this book in February. The only problem was I hadn't read the first two books in the series....so I checked them out and began a wonderful reading adventure.

The first in the series, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo , introduced me to a brilliant computer hacker named Lisbeth Sanders. She is a woman prepared to defend herself against all odds. She meets up with a disgraced investigative journalist/publisher named Mikhail Blomkvist. Blomkvist lost a libel case against a heavy hitting competitor and is offered a way to save his company. He just has to leave his current work for a year and solve a 40 year old murder mystery. He accepts the assignment, but gets stuck and cannot find any leads to for the case. Enter our heroine, Lisbeth Salander, a small slip of a girl with no faith in the authorities, who will stop at nothing to find the truth. She has been a victim of a huge miscarriage of justice and knows the legal system is not always fair.  She will do what it takes to find the truth, right wrongs and save the day, even if it means breaking the law. The state deems her legally incompetent and has appointed a legal guardian for her.  She is bright, but most people see only a slow dim-witted girl, who cannot function on her own. Can she and Blomkvist solve the 40 year old crime? Read it and find out. This is an excellent story but it drags at times.

However, I had the third book to read, so I trudged along. I say trudged, because the first book moved slowly for me.  I found the second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire, much more lively. This is a gripping novel that delves deeper into a system that allows abuse of legal power, a restitution for debts incurred by the innocent and shows a vindication of women, who were harmed by ruthless men. Salander offers a rough approach to those who harm others and stops at nothing to see "real" justice done. This is an exquisite thriller. It kept me hooked wondering what will happen next and culminated with an old fashioned shoot out which ends in Salander being buried alive. At the end of this story I couldn't wait to read the next book.

Fortunately for me I had the book so I could read it right away. In my opinion, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is the best of the three books. Salander's story continues moments from the end of where the last book left our wounded heroine. She is in intensive care fighting for her life after her run in with her psychopathic father. He lays a few doors down the hospital corridor and she is again at the state's mercy. Throughout the novel, the covert workings of the Swedish Secret Service are laid bare, as are the cut-throat realities of the world of newspapers and the immorality of some people in power. Larsson shows that words are a powerful weapon and can be used to bring about justice. He has produced a novel that is complex, satisfying, clever and moral. At its heart is whether the forces trying to destroy Lisbeth Salander, in order to protect themselves, will win. This is a story of justice long overdue but can the evil forces truly be silenced and stopped. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest asks us to examine how society chooses to treat people it does not understand; how we define sanity and how easy it is for most people to look the other way. This is an excellent thriller that will enthrall readers and leave them thinking.

Historical figures, reimagined

This month's focus in the Great Books Great Libraries challenge is Life Lines: Great Books about Extrordianary People.  There are some great biographies on that list, but if you need to ease back into fiction, you might want to consider some historical fiction about the lives of real, extraordinary people. 

There has been a lot of buzz lately about the book Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin.  It's an imagining of the relationship between Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and Alice Pleasance Liddell, better known as Lewis Carroll and (depending on whom you believe) Alice in Wonderland.  The book begins with Alice as an old woman writing to her son about being tired of being Alice.  It then turns to the time when Alice, the daughter of the Dean of Oxford University, was 7 years old and her family had a friendship with Dr. Dodgson, a math professor.  It's interesting to consider the real lives that went into the creation of such a well-loved children's story (think of the 2005 movie Finding Neverland, about the creation of Peter Pan).  To be frank, I'm not sure I'll finish this one.  It's well-written and an interesting story, but there are some aspects of Carroll's life that are speculated to be questionable at best, and much of the controversy involves Alice.  I want to keep my view of Alice in Wonderland untarnished, fun, and slightly frivolous, and so, I turned to another book on my shelf.

The next book I turned to, coincidentally enough (I really didn't plan it), was another historical fiction about a major figure in literature.  This one was The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson by Jerome Charyn.  Charyn, a life-long devotee of Emily Dickinson, challenges the popular idea that Dickinson was a reclusive old maid and suggests, rather, that she was a bit of a wild child.  He writes in the voice of Dickinson which he developed by focusing on her private letters and papers.  It's an interesting, engrossing view into the life of an independent, intelligent woman in a time and a family that didn't quite know what to do with her. 

The Opposite of Me

Upon learning, four years ago, that my second child would be a girl, a sister to my older daughter, one of my first thoughts was, "How do I prevent them from being labeled 'the pretty one and the smart one?'"  Every pair of sisters I know has been labeled as such, and every women I know who has lived with this label has been shaped by it.  It gives me some comfort to know that even if such labels are applied to my girls, it might at least give them fodder for writing a book someday.   

In The Opposite of Me, the debut novel by Sarah Pekkanen, young, ambitious Lindsay (the smart one) is forced to reconsider her life and her view of herself when a series of unfortunate events sends her back to her parents' home while trying to hide that she no longer has a job.  Meanwhile, her sister Alex (the pretty one) has a life that, by all appearances, is perfect and only getting better.   Before long, Lindsay must confront the extent to which she has played a role in perpetuating and living her life by the labels.  Cue personal growth, a new relationship with her sister, and a fresh start on life. 

Other books have addressed this dynamic between sisters, such as Claire Scovell LaZebnick's The Smart One and the Pretty One, The Opposite of Me is the best I've read at the way it shapes not only the relationship between the sisters, but also on the way each views herself as an individual.  While the book is predictable and, at times, feels overly contrived, there is a poignancy to the story that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt burdened by the labels given by others. 

An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith

I tend to read some pretty dark stuff, so every once in awhile I have to balance the        darkness with a little bit of daylight. One author who never fails to open my blinds and let the sunshine in is Barbara Brown Taylor. An Episcopal priest who left the parish ministry in 1997 yet still preaches at churches across the country, Taylor aims her message squarely at the "spiritual but not religious" crowd. I first discovered her several years ago when I read The Preaching Life and was staggered by the connections she drew between imagination, story, and faith. This, I thought, is someone that I need to keep reading. And so I did, which brings me to her latest, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. What a beautiful book this is! In it, Taylor attempts to open our eyes to the sacredness of everyday life and the things, ordinary and otherwise, that fill it. And, upon seeing this sacredness, marking it: "...I can set a little altar, in the world or in my heart. I can stop what I am doing long enough to see where I am, who I am there with, and how awesome the place is. I can flag one more gate to heaven--one more patch of ordinary earth with ladder marks on it--where divine traffic is heavy when I notice it and even when I do not. I can see it for once, instead of walking right past it, maybe even setting a stone or saying a blessing before I move on to wherever I am due next." Taylor fills An Altar in the World with a variety of ways in which we can achieve a glimpse of the divine. There are chapters on reverence ("The Practice of Paying Attention"), groundedness ("The Practice of Walking on the Earth"), incarnation ("The Practice of Wearing Skin"), sabbath ("The Practice of Saying No"), and others, twelve in all. Trust me, if you're feeling scattered and disconnected, reading this book will fill you with an incredible sense of wholeness. It will ground you. It may even save your life. As Taylor writes in the introduction, "My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world."

The Best Novels of 2009 Part 2--Fantasy

The February issue of Locus Magazine features their 2009 Recommended Reading Lists. These lists include best science fiction novels, best fantasy novels, best young adult books, and best first time novels. I read a little science fiction, a lot of fantasy, and some young adult novels. So during the next few weeks I will highlight some of the Locus picks and some of my picks in each category. Here are some great books in the fantasy category:

Locus Magazine Picks
Finch by Jeff VanderMeer--A hardboiled detective novel set in the fungus-laden city of Ambergris.  This is the 3rd book in the series.

In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield--In Venice, the humans make a pact to interbreed with the sea-dwelling merfolk to produce a royal blood line.

Dragon in Chains by Daniel Fox--Pirates, dragons, magical stones, and an emperor on the run in feudal China.  Full of nuances of Chinese culture and mythology.

KO's Picks: Urban Fantasy Free-For-All
Deadtown by Nancy Holzner--Shape-shifter Victory Vaughn fights demons in Deadtown, Boston's section for inhuman and undead residents.

The Better Part of Darkness by Kelly Gay--Charlie Madigan, divorced mother of one and kick-butt cop, takes down the toughest humans and off-world criminals in Atlanta, Georgia.

Confessions of a Demon by S. L. Wright--Allay, the only human-demon hybrid in existence, opens a bar in New York to feed off and ease the patron's emotional pain.  Add in handsome mortal Theo, a demon uprising, and a clan power struggle and Allay is in for the fight of her life.

The rest of the Locus list.


For more great science fiction books go to the Good Reads section on our website.

In the Queue

The Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller
The Lake Shore Limited, a train bound for Union Station in Chicago, is bombed by terrorists and a worried husband waits to learn if his estranged wife is one of the lucky survivors.

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli
With the North Vietnamese army poised to roll into Saigon in 1975, Helen, an American photojournalist, and her Vietnamese lover, race to leave, both conflicted by loyalties of the heart and homeland.

Staying True by Jenny Sanford
No woman will ever forget the "please forgive me speech" delivered by the clueless governor of South Carolina.  Now his wife writes candidly about her husband's infidelity, the question of forgiveness, and the universal issue of maintaining integrity during life's difficult moments.

Man Walks into a Room

If amnesia were as common in real life as it is in fiction, nobody would get anything done because we'd all be too busy trying to remember our own names. I checked our catalog; there are 103 works of fiction where "amnesia" is a major subject of the book (if you're into amnesia, take a look). Why am I going on about amnesia, you wonder? I forget. (ba dum bum! Sorry...I couldn't resist.)

I recently read Man Walks into a Room by Nicole Krauss. (Note: this is not Nicola Kraus, who co-wrote The Nanny Diaries -- similar name, very different books.) It starts much like I imagine most books about people with amnesia do: a man is found walking in the desert, but can't remember who he is. His wife is summoned, he has surgery to remove a tumor, and they try to return to their regularly scheduled lives. The only problem is that the man, in this case English professor Samson Greene, never regains his memories past the age of 12.

Where this book veers off the beaten path is where Krauss takes Samson from that point. Samson does not have a moment where everything clicks into place. He admires his wife's beauty, but does not feel connected to her. And, really, this book is not about his wife, nor is it about their relationship. Rather, it's an examination of whether we are who we are because of something innate, or whether we are just a collection of habits built over time because of our experiences. Would you be the same person if you had no memory of who you had been?

While the book gets a little more sci-fi than I usually go in my reading (memory transfer from one person to another comes into play), it poses some interesting questions and is written in a beautiful voice. Even if Krauss's bio didn't share that she is a poet, it is apparent in her writing that she has a love of language and put great care into not only the story, but the way it is told.  If you're looking for something different, give this one a try.

2010 Hugo Award Nominees Announced

Over the weeked, Aussiecon 4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention, announced the ballot for the 2010 Hugo Awards. The nominees for Best Novel, Novella and Novelette are:

Best Novel

• Boneshaker, Cherie Priest
• The City & The City, China Miéville
• Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles Wilson
• Palimpsest, Catherynne M. Valente
• Wake, Robert J. Sawyer
• The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi

Best Novella

• “Act One”, Nancy Kress (Asimov’s 3/09)
• The God Engines, John Scalzi
• “Palimpsest”, Charles Stross (Wireless)
• Shambling Towards Hiroshima, James Morrow
• “Vishnu at the Cat Circus”, Ian McDonald (Cyberabad Days)
• The Women of Nell Gwynne’s, Kage Baker

Best Novelette

• “Eros, Philia, Agape”, Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com 3/09)
• The Island”, Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2)
• “It Takes Two”, Nicola Griffith (Eclipse Three)
• “One of Our Bastards is Missing”, Paul Cornell (Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three)
• “Overtime”, Charles Stross (Tor.com 12/09)
• “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast”, Eugie Foster (Interzone 2/09)

For the complete list of all the nominees in all categories, go to http://www.thehugoawards.org/.

Great Books About Extraordinary People

If you're the type of reader who loves a good memoir, boy do we have a treat for you! April's Great Books, Great Libraries Featured Booklist is Life Lines: Great Books about Extraordinary People. Everyone has a story to tell, and sometimes that story makes a great page-turner. Take, for example, Carolyn Jourdan's Heart in the Right Place. After her mother suffers a heart attack, Jourdan ultimately leaves behind a high-powered career as a U.S. Senate counsel to help her father run his medical practice in rural Tennessee. Laugh-out-loud funny and heartwarming, this book is a definitely a keeper. Think your family is eccentric? Perhaps you should read The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. Actually, eccentric is putting it mildly. Walls's father, a brilliant dreamer, is an alcoholic and a gambler, and her mother a scattered artist who often couldn't be bothered to feed her own children. Walls and her siblings learn to fend for themselves and use their tenacity and wits to survive--and eventually escape--their hard-scrabble upbringing. Now if you have a soft spot for musicians, try The Soloist by Steve Lopez and The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman, both soul-stirring examples of lives turned upside down by unfathomable tragedy. Rounding out our selections is the modern classic Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, and the harrowing A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. 

Still want more? You'll find additional selections--including books for teens and kids--right here. Enjoy!

The Best Novels of 2009 Part 1--Science Fiction

The February issue of Locus Magazine features their 2009 Recommended Reading Lists.  These lists include best science fiction novels, best fantasy novels, best young adult books, and best first time novels. I read a little science fiction, a lot of fantasy, and some young adult novels. So during the next few weeks I will highlight some of the Locus picks and some of my picks in each category. Sound like fun? Let's start this week out with some great books in the sci-fi category:

Locus Magazine Picks
The Empress of Mars by Kage Baker--A widow and her daughters relocate and open the first bar on Mars.

Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts--In 1946 Stalin has the best Soviet sci-fi writers create an alien invasion story to hold the country together.  Years later these same authors gather together when their "story" starts to come true.

The Devil's Alphabet by Daryl Gregory--Pax Martin returns home where 15 years earlier a virus killed one third of the residents and mutated most of the rest.  What he finds may threaten the future of the human race.

KO's Picks
Boneshaker by Cherie Priest--Alternate 1880s steampunk tale featuring a mad inventor, air ships, zombies, and a mother who will do anything to rescue her son.

Dust by Elizabeth Bear--Dying space ships, fallen angels, and a perilous journey.  Bear's exquisite detail and fantastic characters make her one of my favorite authors.

Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey--Dragonriders are trained to fight against the burning thread from the Red Planet. This contains the first three books in the series.

The rest of the Locus list.

For more great science fiction books go to the Good Reads section on our website.