No turkey sandwiches, no turkey soup…

I am an admitted A Christmas Story junkie. When I was a child I had a VHS of the movie that was recorded directly from TV. I watched it so many times that I memorized the dialogue of the film and the commercial breaks that were caught in time on the tape. I’ve since graduated to a DVD (maybe even a Blu-Ray soon!), but my love of Jean Shepherd’s classic tale has never faded.

For those of you who have watched the movie but not cracked In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash, the book of short stories that birthed the epic tale of Ralphie and Randy, I urge you to do so this Christmas Season. Gather the family together on Christmas Eve or Day and indulge in Shepherd’s short stories that capture his hometown of Holden, Indiana and the antics that he participated in upon his return. Walk down memory lane and let the stories unfold as Flick tends bar and the real Ralphie reminisces about life in Holden.

You can bet that I will be snuggled in at least once (probably more) over the next week listening to Jean Shepherd narrate the best Christmas movie of all time. Just in case any of you are already fans, I will not mention the fact that I met Jean Shepherd once many years ago. At the time I couldn’t answer his questions out of sheer awe (or childish fear), but I will answer now. No, Mr. Shepherd, I did not shoot my eye out, but thanks for noticing my patch.

Happy Holidays!

Best Fiction Books of 2012: Free Samples

This time of year the web is full of Best Book lists from everyplace imaginable.  Best mysteries, best non-fiction, best teen books, and best historical fiction to name a few. 
I've taken a sampling of the best fiction books of 2012 from lists by Publisher's Weekly, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, Esquire, The New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly.  Each of the following titles were all chosen by two, three, or four of the previous publications.  So, the experts have spoken and you can check out all of their great choices here at the library.

This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz (2)

A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers (2)

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2)

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain (3)

Broken Harbor by Tana French (2)

Arcadia by Lauren Groff (2)

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (4)

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers (4)

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (2)

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (3)

Breaking the reading blahs

For the past month or so, I have been unable to get interested in any book I've tried to read. Have I gotten to the point where I don't enjoy reading? I can't imagine a life without a book in my hand...and yet, there I've been: uninterested and uninspired by any book I picked up. It's been, quite frankly, a bit unnerving. But then I picked up The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets by first-time novelist Kathleen Alcott and it was as if I could hear the literary apathy I've experienced being tossed aside.  With this impressive debut, I feel as if my love of reading has been shored up.

Ida and Jackson are neighbors who grow up together. Their connection is so strong that they aren't always clear where one ends and the other begins. They experience life as a unit and nothing can come between them: not Jackson's younger brother James, not their parents, not other kids at school. As they reach adulthood, Jackson and Ida continue the romantic relationship that reached its inevitable commencement in their teen years. However, Jackson feels threatened and used by Ida's desire to market the artwork he creates in his sleep.

Alcott has created a compelling story with a truly accomplished writing style. On more than one occasion, I was reminded of Marilynne Robinson's style, particularly in Housekeeping. It is to Alcott's credit that despite this, her voice remained clearly her own. I am eager to turn to the other books I have waiting for me now that I've broken through my reading apathy with this intelligent, well-written book. 

Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power

When Paul Drey, a German employee of the U. S. Consulate, was asked in 1922 by acting consul Robert Murphy whether agitators such as Adolf Hitler would get very far, he replied, “Of course not! The German people are too intelligent to be taken in by such scamps.” While Murphy remained skeptical (but was told by his superiors to focus his attention on other things, like promoting American commerce), Drey, like so many of his German and American contemporaries, vastly underestimated the staying power of Hitler and the hypnotic thrall under which he would come to hold Germany. And like so many others, Drey would pay for that mistake with his life: he died in Dachau. But this is only one recollection cited in Andrew Nagorski’s Hitlerland, an utterly fascinating survey of Americans, many of whom were reporters, living in Germany before, during, and after Hitler’s rise to power, and their perceptions of and reactions to the Nazi leader and his followers. It was Germany’s openness to “Americanization” during the 1920s that made Americans feel quite at home there, yet while some were sensitive to the growing hatred being aimed at the Jewish population, others were either completely ignorant of it or turned a blind eye to it. As an example, Chicago Daily News reporter Ben Hecht wrote, “The strange bit of history I have to report is that in my two years in Germany [1918-1920], I, a Jew, saw and heard no hint of anti-Semitism.” But to S. Miles Bouton, who wrote for the Baltimore Sun, it was hard to overlook: “There was still no indication in 1928 of the coming pogroms that were to sully Germany’s reputation five years later, but songs about spilling Jewish blood were being sung by uniformed marchers, and the swastika, emblem in Germany for hatred of the race, was ever more in evidence.” And what of Hitler himself? Dorothy Thompson, journalist and wife of writer Sinclair Lewis, was not impressed. She interviewed Hitler in 1931 and came away with the following impression: “I was convinced that I was meeting the future dictator of Germany. In something less than fifty seconds I was quite sure I was not.”  Famous last words, as they say. But Thompson wasn’t far off the mark when she added, “take the Jews out of Hitler’s program, and the whole thing . . . collapses.” As the book goes on, it is these observations and others, given from men and women who witnessed firsthand the frightening spectacle of Germany's bestial transformation and whose perspective on the matter was--for the most part--a decidedly democratic one, that make Hitlerland such a captivating read. Indeed, for those interested in viewing this fateful period in history through a different lens, this is not a book to be missed.

Watch the Movie and Read the Book

The other day while I was watching the movie Brave (which is excellent by the way), I noticed a bunch of the upcoming movies are adaptations of books.  So I did a little research and this is what I came up with.

The following movies were released in the past couple of months:

Argo--based on the book The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA by Antonio Mendez
Lincoln--based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.
Anna Karenina--based on Leo Tolstoy's classic novel of the same name.
Alex Cross--was adapted from James Patterson's novel Cross.
Life of Pi--based on the novel by Yann Martel.
The Cloud Atlas--adapted from David Mitchell's historical-science fiction novel.

This next batch will be coming to theaters this month and January 2013:

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey--part 1 of a trilogy based on J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit or There and Back Again.
Jack Reacher--an adaptation of Lee Child's novel One Shot.
Les Miserables--a musical adaptation of the 1862 French novel by Victor Hugo.
Cosmopolis--adapted from Don DeLillo's novel of the same name.
Gangster Squad--this crime drama is based on Gangster Squad: Covert Cops, the Mob, and the Battle for Los Angeles by Paul Lieberman.

All of these films are based on books that the library owns.  So make sure you see a good flick for the holidays but don't forget to read the books because we librarians know: the book is always better than the movie.  At least most of the time.