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I'm not really known for my gardening abilities. Every time I have tried to cultivate a green thumb, it has not gone well. Somewhere along the way, my green thumb turns to a shade of black that would probably best be described as "harbinger of death." In recent years, I've focused my gardening efforts on books. I enjoy reading about others' successes in the garden rather than continuing to slaughter innocent plants with my own good intentions. Enter Margaret Dilloway's new book, The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns.
High school biology teacher Gal Garner is not known for her social grace or diplomacy. She's spent her life battling kidney disease and, at the age of 36, is in the eighth year of getting dialysis every other day. It's made her less-than-tolerant of others. Gal's real love, and obsession, is breeding roses. Gal's vocation of breeding roses requires precision, determination, and regimented routine, which fit well with her personality. However, these traits aren't as admired by her students. A misunderstanding, most likely a deliberate one, by Gal's sister leads to Gal's 15-year-old niece arriving without notice in the middle of school one day waiting for Gal to assume temporary guardianship. It turns out that regimen, precision, and determination aren't all Gal needs to help her niece, either.
I read and thoroughly Dilloway's first novel, How to Be an American Housewife, a lovely book about a woman trying to understand her mother, a Japanese war bride. In her newest book, Dilloway has written about a completely different situation, with very different characters, but has captivated my imagination no less than she did with her first book. It's a great read...and by me reading it rather than attempting to garden myself, it probably saved five or six plants.
Describe yourself.
Go on...take a minute and think about what words you'd use to describe yourself to someone you've never met. Did a physical attribute make the list of words? Or did you talk about your role in other people's lives? What if there was nothing physical to describe? Or if you couldn't describe yourself in relation to the people around? What if every morning, you woke up in a different person's life and body: sometimes it's a boy, sometimes it's a girl; sometimes it's someone beautiful, sometimes it's someone ugly. This is the life faced by A, the 16-year-old narrator in David Levithan's newest novel, Every Day.
A has lived 16 years without a life, family, or friends to call his (or her, since the narrator is genderless) own. A has a strong code of rules for living: do nothing that will interfere with the hosts' body and leave no trace behind of having been there. This all changes the day A jumps into a boy's body and meets the boy's girlfriend, Rhiannon, with whom A feels an instant and strong connection. Desperate to see Rhiannon again, and willing to orchestrate "chance" meetings, A becomes willing to take host bodies out of their normal routine. When a boy named Nathan remembers being powerless in his own body and speaks publicly, trouble begins.
David Levithan is a writer with a great skill for words (for a wonderful example in adult fiction, check out his book The Lover's Dictionary). He uses this skill deftly to pose questions of what it really means to love someone and the relative weight of self-interest and maintaining ethical boundaries. Levithan has added yet another book to the list of reasons you should occasionally browse the teen section to find a great read.
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.
In the suburbs of Baghdad in 2005, it was hot, it was boring, and it wasn't the safest area for sight-seeing. What was a Public Affairs Officer to do while deployed there? If the PAO in question has a BA in English and an MFA in creative writing, he might just be tempted to write a diary about his experiences and turn that diary into an ironic, darkly comedic satire that he considers "one part dark horror show of the Iraq War and one part zany antics of public affairs soldiers." Enter Fobbit, the first novel by David Abrams, who retired from the Army in 2008 after 20 years of active duty.
"Fobbit," as the cover of the book clarifies, is a pejorative term for those who work in the Forward Operating Base and who avoid combat by virtue of their hobbit-like reluctance to leave their "shire." In other words, they're the people with the (relatively) cushy office jobs. Abrams was, himself, a fobbit and sticks with what he knew -- and skewers it effortlessly. The book focuses on several of the Fobbits, but the central voice belongs to Staff Sergeant Chance Gooding, Jr., a public affairs officer who spends his time at work writing and re-writing (and re-writing) press releases trying to put a positive spin on the latest round of casualties and his free time reading Catch-22 and writing a journal about his experiences in Iraq, (sound familiar?). Other characters include Lieutenant Colonel Eustace Harkleroad, an indecisive, overweight, spontaneous nose-bleeder who frequently writes to his mother imagined tales of his heroism and valor; Lt. Col Vic Duret, who is a good officer and a good man who just wants to escape images of his brother-in-law's death on 9/11 and return home to his wife; and Abe Shrinkle, a platoon Captain whose incompetence and greed do not go unpunished by karma or the US Army.
This book isn't about the total war experience, nor is it meant to be. The soldiers who are in combat roles are drawn only in comparison to those in the FOB, not as strong characters in and of themselves. But, in offering the voices of Gooding, Harkleroad, Duret, and Shrinkle, Abrams has provided a clever voice to the drudgery of war.
It's the end of the year. The days have grown shorter, the shopping lines have grown longer, and the time has come to reflect on the literary contributions that have been made in the past year. Last week, the 62nd National Book Awards were announced, marking the best contributions to American literature in the past year and raising awareness and appreciation of great writing. Each of the winners is available to check out. Let us know what you think of these great American books!
Fiction Winner - The Round House by Louise Erdrich
- In the spring of 1988, 13-year-old Joe's mother was brutally attacked, irrevocably transforming Joe's life. Despite his attempts to heal his mother, she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Frustrated with the official investigation and his own father's inability to resolve the situation, Joe and his friends attempt to find answers, beginning at the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe.
Non-Fiction Winner - Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
- A poignant examination at the personal level of the schism between the upscale resorts and the slums of India. Boo combined three years of investigative journalism and personal interviews to provide insights that have been widely applauded as the most honest portrayal of India as a culture in transition.
Poetry Winner - Bewilderment : New Poems and Translations by David Ferry
- Praised for his passion and the scope of his poems, Ferry has published a collection of original poetry, translations of classics, and poems responding to poems.
Young People's Literature Winner - Goblin Secrets by William Alexander
- Rownie is the youngest of the stray children living with a witch named Graba. Desperate to find his older brother, an actor who has disappeared after the prohibition of acting, Rownie joins a troupe of traveling goblin actors who are also eager to find his brother in the hope that he might be able to save their town.
For more information on the National Book Award, including a complete list of nominees in 2012 and previous years' winners, check out http://nationalbook.org/
For centuries, April 23 has been an important day, literarily speaking. It is the date of Shakespeare's birth...and his death. It's also the day on which Miguel Cervantes died. Since 1923, Cervantes' death has been recognized in the Catalan region of Spain by giving a flower and a book to a loved one. Inspired by the Catalonian festival, in 1995 the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared April 23 the International Day of the Book. This led to the creation of World Book Night in 2011 in the UK, and the introduction of World Book Night to the US in 2012.
Very interesting history lesson, you might be thinking about now, but what does this have to do with anything? Specifically, what's this got to do with me? I'm so glad you asked! World Book Night relies on the kindness of volunteers who love reading. Last year, almost 80,000 people signed up to pass out books in the four different participating countries. Givers agree to hand out 20 free copies of a book provided by the author and publisher. The books are handed out to people who might typically not read. The toughest requirement is to choose the book to give people. World Book Night sends a box of books to a distribution point for the giver to pick up. Last April, Woodbourne Library was proud to be one of the distribution points in the first US World Book Night -- and we're excited to announce that we'll be doing it again in 2013! Will you help us by signing up to be a book giver?
The books being provided include 30 titles ranging from classics like Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and Willa Cather's My Antonia to contemporary favorites like Tina Fey's Bossy Pants and Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones. A complete list of the books is available here.
You can sign up to be a book giver at The World Book Night website. If you do, choose Woodbourne Library as your distribution point. And, let us know what book you choose!
Sometimes, I stumble upon a book that inspires to make me want to immediately go pick up any other books the author has written. Such was the case when I recently received a copy of Matthew Dicks' newest book, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend. It's because of this book that I discovered his debut novel Something Missing, which I found to be even more delightful than Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend*. I'm not sure what prompted me to pick up Memoirs, other than the memories it brought back of a (real) friend's college band called Imaginary Friend. Once I did pick it up, though, I was delighted by what I read. The title is not representational or symbolic of anything. This book is exactly what it says it is: the memoirs of Budo, the imaginary friend of Max, an 8-year-old boy who has been labeled a "late bloomer" but is probably somewhere along the autism spectrum. Max's parents and teachers try in their own ways to help Max adjust to school, but it is Budo who helps him through each day.
Budo has existed for five years, which is a life span considerably greater than any other imaginary friend he has ever met and which has given him the ability to learn things about the real world. He's not exactly a kid and not exactly an adult. Budo exists only as long as Max imagines him as real and exists only as Max has imagined him to exist. That is, Budo cannot do the things that Max didn't imagine him having the ability to do. This becomes critical when Max needs Budo's help to save him. From what he needs saved, I'm not going to say because I think it's a spoiler (and, incidentally, if you don't like spoilers, don't read the Publisher's Weekly review). Suffice it say, there is charm and warmth and a good dose of quirkiness as Budo tries to help Max while trying to balance Max's best interests with his own precarious existence.
If you liked The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime or Room, this book captures some of the same use of a child-like voice to great effect. If you like a little whimsy and light fantasy, the inner world of an imaginary friend is charming. And, if you wonder why most imaginary friends don't have ears, your answer lies within.
*Something Missing will be discussed at Uncorked, the book discussion group held at Rumbleseat Wine on the first Monday of each month.
I've been in the midst of some fairly heavy books lately...good books, but nothing that has made me laugh. Whether from Geronimo T. Johnson's Hold it 'til it Hurts, a stunning debut about war, family, race, and love, or Andrew Porter's widely-acclaimed debut In Between Days about the disintegration of a family, I needed a break. What better respite than a book about an impending smiting in the city center, doppelgangers with a 24-hour life span sneaking in and stealing the protagonist's consciousness, dealing with a daughter who's never existed, and a 64% chance that the world will be annihilated in 37 years because time travel has been un-invented? Oh, and did I mention the dodo bird who spends a lot of time thinking about The Dukes of Hazzard reruns?
Jasper Fforde has lifted my literary spirits yet again with his seventh book in the Thursday Next series The Woman Who Died a Lot: Now With 50% Added Subplot. Fforde has created a world in which science fiction and literary classics are smooshed together with a level of absurdity that flirts with annoying, but is just smart and funny enough to keep it from crossing that line. In the latest addition to the series, the famous literary detective Thursday Next is still suffering from her injuries sustained in Book World and is trying to adjust to her new position as the Chief Librarian at the "All-You-Can-Eat-at-Fatso's-Drink-Not-Included Library." At the same time, she continues to battle Goliath Corporation and her nemesis Jack (I don't think I can publish his last name here because even though it's spelled differently, it still sounds and reads the same). Her children play an important role in this book, with Tuesday attempting to create an anti-smote field by week's end and give a keynote speech at the MadScientists' Convention all while trying to be a normal sixteen year old girl, and Friday adjusting to the fact that he's gone from a promising future as the head of the Chrono-Guard to a certainty that he will murder someone by Friday. As for Jenny? Well, she still never existed. Confused? It's to Fforde's credit that this all manages to tie together and add to the story, rather than detract from the plot with its silliness.
The Woman Who Died A Lot is a refreshing return to what Fforde does best, after a rather weak turn in the sixth book of the series, One of Our Thursdays is Missing. If you've never read any of Jasper Fforde's books, I highly recommend starting with The Eyre Affair, in which Thursday Next is introduced and saves all of literature in well fell swoop.
In 1995, the Dayton Peace Accords were agreed to and initialed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, ending a three-and-a-half year long war in Bosnia and beginning a strong commitment in the Miami Valley to promoting peace. In 1999, community leaders created the Dayton Peace Prizes to "recognize individuals who contributed to the peaceful reconstruction of a society torn apart by war." That tradition led to the creation of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in 2006. It is the first and only US award awarded to recognize the power of the written word in promoting peace.
This past weekend, winners of the 2012 awards were announced. Andrew Krivak won the fiction prize for his debut novel The Sojourn. Judges Alan Cheuse and April Smith wrote that it was chosen, in part, because, "Though this compact and powerful novel never so much celebrates war as it does the power of the mind to recall it and the power of language that can describe it, which is the beginning of the making of peace." Ha Jin was the runner-up in fiction with his book Nanjing Requiem.
In nonfiction, Adam Hochschild won with his World War I history To End All Wars : A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion 1914-1918. Hochschild has been credited for his narrative style that makes clear the impact of World War I on the development of "Stalinism, World War II, and the Holocaust. And it was also the beginning, sadly, of new-fangled machines of destruction, of a time when, as Hochschild writes, 'the magnetic attraction of combat, or at least the belief that it was patriotic and necessary, proved so much stronger than revulsion at mass death,'” according to nonfiction judge Ken McClane. The runner up in nonfiction was Annia Ciezadlo for Day of Honey : A Memoir of Food, Love, and War.
Finally, each year the Dayton Literary Peace Prize awards the Richard C. Holbrook Distinguished Achievement Award. Previous recipiencts of the lifetime achievement award include Barbara Kingsolver, Geraldine Brooks, Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, Taylor Branch, Elie Wiesel, and Studs Terkel. Sharon Rab, founder and co-chair of the awards has said that O'Brien is being recognized for his works, which, "capture the horrors and hallucinations of the twentieth century's most divisive war while carrying a powerful message for peace." At a time when most Americans are insulated from the impact of our ongoing wars, O'Brien's work helps us understand what it means to send soldiers into combat and reminds us that their war continues long after they return home."
For more information about the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the gala to recognize this year's recipients, please visit http://daytonliterarypeaceprize.org/
Please forgive me if my writing is a little stilted today. It's just that I'm trying to recover from a broken heart, you see. A little girl was lost at sea with a father who died on the boat. She was then found on a desolate lighthouse island by a couple haunted by miscarriages and stillbirths who desperately wanted a child. The girl's mother lived in grief, not knowing the fate of her husband and daughter. There was, it seems, too much love to go around.
Yes, this is all fiction, but debut novelist M.L.Stedman never for a moment let me believe this people weren't real, so give me a moment with my heartbreak. I truly lost a few hours of my life to the heartbreak of loss and disappointment of unfulfilled expectations that she deftly wove in the pages of The Light Between Oceans. I give great credit to Stedman for not writing caricatures, as it would have been so easy to do in this situation. She presented so many shades of gray (as in complex, nuanced situations, not as in the book), that it seems absurd to think that knowingly taking another person's child could ever have seemed black and white.
If you're okay with a little post-reading melancholia, I cannot recommend The Light Between Oceans enough. I've wondered before at whether it was possible to like a book without liking any of the characters. Now, I'm questioning if it's possible to feel more of a loss because I like all of the characters too much. They're all flawed, but the motivation driving each of them is clear. It's just unfortunate that the path they're driving leads them into a wreck directly at the spot where a four-year-old child stands.
In the beginning, there was Nick Hornby. That is, the very first time I posted here at Fine Print, I wrote about Nick Hornby's collections of "Stuff I've Been Reading" columns from The Believer magazine. In the subsequent years, I've occasionally bored you inundated you shared with you my belief that Nick Hornby is a great author. And now, 138 posts and nearly 4 years later, Hornby's back.
Hornby ended his column in 2008, resulting in the presumptive last collection, Shakespeare Wrote For Money after the success of The Polysyllabic Spree and Housekeeping vs The Dirt. And then in 2010, Hornby returned, likening himself to the boomerang child who, after leaving with middle finger raised, comes back, tail between his legs, to reclaim his old bedroom. Given that my children are too young to have ever left their bedrooms behind, let alone understand what a raised middle finger means (oh, just let me pretend) I can't predict how I would feel if they returned to the nest after a few years away. As a reader, though, I gave a sigh of relief at Hornby's return to the pages of The Believer to share, once again, his reading diary. The columns from January 2010 through December 2011 have been published in his newest collection, More Baths, Less Talking.
After years of devotion to Nick Hornby's books, I've discovered that I really like most of his fiction a lot. In fact, some of it I've loved. His nonfiction, though, is what makes me quasi-obsessive about his writing. In his collections about what he reads, he articulates and illustrates the things I love best about reading. He explains how the books he's reading interact with his life, and how they become a part of it. He writes with a forthright lack of pretension makes me laugh about topics like the post-WWII austerity in Britain, the global economic crisis, and John Updike. Is my devotion to all things Hornby excessive? Perhaps, but when someone recently saw me reading it, she asked what was making me smile and look so happy in the midst of what had otherwise been a rather crummy day. The quick and easy answer: More Baths, Less Talking.
Imagine a world thirty years from now where things have devolved. The recession has only gotten worse, the education system has fractured, and class differences have become entrenched. Entire communities have grown from stacking mobile homes on top of each other to the height of skyscrapers, held together only by weak scaffolding. Imagine being a teenaged orphan living at the top of the stacks, having to hide your valuables so that your aunt and uncle don't pawn them for drug money. Clearly, the only way to escape this bleak reality is an obsessive knowledge of 1980s pop culture trivia.
Not following? I probably should've mentioned that James Halliday, a legendary billionaire video game creator from Middletown, OH, died with a will that bequeaths his entire estate to the person who is able to find the "Easter egg" inside the virtual reality he created, and in which many people spend most of their time and money. The video game creator was a child of the 80s whose affinity for video games and movies of that time were well-documented. The race to beat the system and find the hidden clues is serious business in 2045.
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is pure homage to 1980s geekdom. Wade, the 18-year-old protagonist and narrator is likable and sympathetic, and his virtual friends are entertaining. Cline is a clever writer, and it's easy to imagine that Halliday's obsessions and interests are his own. I'm not sure how people who didn't grown up in the 80s would relate to it, but the references to John Hughes movies were gold for me. I've never played Dungeons and Dragons, rarely played video games, and my knowledge of movies like Blade Runner has come entirely from conversations with my husband, so I'm certain there are references I missed, but I was still able to appreciate the story. If you've got an appreciation for 80s pop culture and dystopian future all wrapped in one tidy package, this is definitely the book for you.
It started as a normal enough Monday evening. There I was, chatting happily away on AfterWords, when someone announced that she was mourning Maeve Binchy. This caused me some initial confusion. After all, mourning is something that is traditionally done after a person dies and Maeve Binchy surely hadn't. And yet, impossibly, she had.
Maeve Binchy has delighted many of us for years with her world within Ireland. Her most recent book, Minding Frankie, was published two years ago and continued in the same way as her other stories. She wrote stand-alone books about specific people, families, and situations, but familiar characters and places from other books regularly appeared as side characters. I have often marveled at the completeness and fullness of the fictional world she created and how fully realized it was through her words.
Her first novel was Light a Penny Candle, written in 1983. Her popularity soared after her book Circle of Friends was released as a movie by the same name in 1995. My favorite of her books was probably Quentins, although others such as The Scarlet Feather and Evening Class also both stand out in my mind. Maeve Binchy is an author I regularly recommend to people looking for well-developed characters and heart-warming stories. Her voice, and the world she created, will be missed by many.
If you've never read her books, give one a try. If you have, what is your favorite?
For a while now, there's been a question about whether Chick Lit is dying. Could it be? I've tried to ignore the trend for a while, but it's hard to ignore the oxygen mask and IVs that are wrapped around the genre as devotees try our best to keep it going. It started with the heroines growing up, spawning a trend of "Mommy Lit" and "hen lit" (i.e., chick lit for the woman past her twenties). But, as chick lit started to wind down, another category made up the strides: "women's fiction."
As a librarian who spends a good part of my time writing about books and reading about the book industry (if I was tweeting, this is where I would add #dreamjob), I have probably I spent a bit more time thinking about how we label books than is necessary. I have definitely spent more time talking about it to those around me than is entertaining. I've argued that the term "women's fiction" is too generic to mean anything. And, because we know that I'm not particularly good at admitting I was wrong, rather than conceding that twice in a season, I'd like to say instead that we're catching up with the publishing trends.
As of this month, our Chick Lit newsletter is going to show the same growth and maturity as have the heroines of its titles. It will now be called "Women's Fiction and Chick Lit." It's a more inclusive title to reflect the true content of the newsletter. Fans of Kristin Hannah, Elizabeth Berg, and Emily Giffin, rejoice! Your favorite titles will be included in this monthly update of new and forthcoming titles. Fans of Sophie Kinsella, Marian Keyes, and Kate Rockland, have no fear! There will still be plenty of chick lit included to keep us in our happy shoes!
If you don't get the eNewsletter yet, now's your chance! Check it out and sign up at http://www.wclibrary.info/goodreads/readinglists.asp
Last week, the American Library Association named the winners of the inaugural Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Non-Fiction. The award was established this year to recognize the best fiction and non-fiction books for adults published in the US in the previous year.
The Forgotten Waltz, by Anne Enright beat out Swamplandia by Karen Russell and Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks to win the prize for fiction. In choosing The Forgotten Waltz, the judges noted Enright's "sharp yet supple prose" in her tale of infidelity and secrecy.
Robert Massie's "compulsively readable" style of writing was instrumental in securing his win in the non-fiction category for his biography, Catherine the Great : Portrait of a Woman. Massie beat out other short-listed authors James Gleick for his study of the interplay between science and literature, The Information : A History, A Theory, A Flood, and Dayton's own Manning Marable for his biography, Malcolm X : A Life of Reinvention.
Which book from 2011 would you have chosen as the best of the year?
Over the past few years, I've found that I tend to read heavy, thought-provoking and deep books in the summertime. So far, this summer I've completely bucked that trend and have been delighting in the fun, light, and predictable happy endings. Fortunately, I had just the book by my side when I was looking for something to read earlier this week. Attachments is a nice piece of lad-lit (chick lit from the male perspective) that perfectly met my interests.
Lincoln is a good guy. Sure, he lives with his mom and keeps racking up graduate degrees because he's not sure what else to do with his life and is still a little heartbroken over the breakup with his highschool girlfriend, but he's a good guy. He's underemployed as what was supposed to be an IT security position, but ended up being a job in which he's tasked with reading the emails caught in a newspaper's web filter. Typically, as he reads those messages that aren't work-related or otherwise unprofessional, he sends a note to the sender and moves on. Except, the messages that Beth and Jennifer send to each other are so interesting to him that he can't help but read them.
In the course of reading their messages, Lincoln realizes he's falling for Beth, which is understandable. We only meet Beth and Jennifer through the messages he's reading, and they come across as the fun friends whose conversations remind me of the Gilmore Girls. It's fun to watch the one-sided (in two directions, odd as it might sound) relationship unfold. The writing is light, fun, and clever and the characters are relatable. All in all, a perfect summer read!
I'd like to think it doesn't happen often but, when appropriate, I have no problem admitting that I was wrong. I'm growing convinced that if I write anything proclaiming a sweeping rule such as, "I don't like short stories" or "I have no interest in reading those acclaimed books" then I'm bound to find the exception to the rule within a matter of weeks. And so here goes: a few weeks ago, I shared my thought about the predictably and sameness of books that took place in prep schools and ivy leagues. And, of course, I have now found the exception that has forced me to admit, once again: I was wrong.
The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller is difficult to categorize but it definitely takes place in a prestigious prep school and involves lessons learned about friendship and life, so I suppose you could call it a prep school coming of age novel. Unlike so many other books that might be considered its contemporaries, though, this book is not about ennui and disaffection. It is about a passion for getting to truth. It is about the resilience of humans (often illustrated by entomological comparisons). It is about the struggle to be true to yourself and the daunting odds that can be set against you in that struggle. And yet, it's also a page-turning tale of intrigue.
The book alternates between the viewpoints of three characters: Iris Dupont, a 14-year-old whose parents have recently located to Nye out of growing concern for Iris's metal health in the aftermath of her best friend's suicide and her subsequent friendship with an imaginary Edward R. Murrow; Jonah Kaplan, her science teacher who is himself an alumnus of the school and whose efforts to distance himself from the past have brought him squarely back to its epicenter; and Lily Morgan, the socially adrift daughter of the former headmaster, and whose narrative is kept in 1999. This book is cleverly constructed, well-written, and highly engaging. I enjoyed Iris's frequent, and vocal, disdain for cliches. On that ground alone, I think that Iris would approve of this book that breaks the stereotypes I had about prep school coming-of-age novels.
Several years ago, a friend handed me a book by Mary Kay Andrews and said, "Try this, I think you'll like it." The book was Hissy Fit, a funny tale about a young woman who'd be done wrong by her fiancee. At their rehearsal dinner. With her maid of honor. Understandably, she pitched an epic, and title-worthy, hissy fit. I enjoyed it and have ever since counted on Mary Kay Andrews for fun reads in the summer. Her latest, Spring Fever, uses her well-established formula to bring exactly what I was looking for in a summer read.
Here's the thing: if you want a surprise, don't read Andrews' books. They follow a formula. Feisty heroine who doesn't always recognize her own worth? Check. Bad boy who turns out to be better than he seems? Check. Funny foil of a best friend, often with some familial tie to the bad boy? Check. A rich Southern setting, often paired with a failing family business and/or interior design? Check. Misadventures, misunderstandings, and missed opportunities? Check, check, check. But I don't read Mary Kay Andrews for surprises. I read her because she writes fun, amusing books perfect for a sunny day and a tall, cold glass of lemonade.
If you've never read her, start with The Fixer Upper or Hissy Fit. Her Savannah series, starting with Savannah Blues is fun as well. I highly recommend her for fans of Katie Fforde, Marian Keyes, Lorna Landvik, Sarah Strohmeyer, and Janet Evanovich. Happy summer reading!
It occasionally happens that a number of books I've been waiting for are all published at once, so I come to the library and am greeted by seven or eight books on the hold shelf, each crying desperately to be read. This is how I got to the situation I found myself in last night: 19 books waiting for me, each one sounding more appealing than the last (I know, I know: file it under First World Problems). My family laughed as I sat in the midst of a pile of books comparing blurbs, reviews, synopses, and due dates trying to figure out which one to tackle first. Finally, my husband (whose head wasn't quite as clouded by bibliophilia as mine at that moment) picked up the smallest book and asked, "Why don't you read this? You'll finish it sooner and be able to knock one off your list faster." (Ability to solve my reading dilemmas? Never doubt, dear readers, why I married him.)
And so I ended up with the very small, slim collection of short stories by Seth Fried called The Great Frustration. It was a big mistake only in that I had been hoping to read for a few minutes and go to bed. An hour later, I forced myself to close the book. I will warn you: it's weird. There are mythical stories and technical stories and there are stories of middle school plays. There is nothing that ties them together but a sharp writing style and an undercurrent of wit that evidences itself to varying levels. Some, like The Mystery of the Conquistador, are poignant and heart-rending. Others have a humor that feels wrong. Frost Mountain Picnic Massacre begins with "Last week the people in charge of the picnic blew us up. Every year it gets worse. That is, more people die." And yet, I found myself giggling throughout that story even as I admonished myself that I ought not to be laughing.
Every time I pick up a collection of short stories, I have to convince myself that I don't really hate them. And I am so often glad I did. Not only did I just get 11 wonderful stories to consider, but I can now quickly move on to the other 18 books waiting for me.
I know that nosy friends are supposed to be interested in what's in the medicine cabinet. That never had any appeal for me: not only does it seem like a huge invasion of privacy, but it doesn't really tell me anything about my friend other than, perhaps, that he struggles with acid reflux or that she prefers Crest over Colgate. No, for me, the place to nose around is right in the open. The first time I'm in a friend's house, you'll likely see me facing the bookshelf with my head at a 90-degree angle trying to read the titles. Aside from the uncomfortable crick that occasionally develops in my neck, I find scanning others' bookshelves to be a very rewarding experience. I can get a sense of what we have in common and get recommendations for books I wouldn't have thought of reading or hadn't heard of before.
The problem with this method, of course, is that a) you have to be invited to the person's house to see the bookshelf and hope that it's in plain view so you don't have to poke around the house looking for it and 2) it only tells you about the books the person owns. This means that if you read a lot of library books (and don't we all?), you don't get to see most of the books your friend is reading. Plus, there's the added danger of seeing books that have been given to a person as a gift but are really not something that they would ever choose to read of their own volition (not that I have any like that on my shelves...).
The solution? Goodreads.com is a social media site designed to keep you and your friends in the loop on what you're reading and what you think about it. You, in turn, get to see their feedback on what they're reading. It's a great resource to keep up-to-date with a much wider variety of books. We've set up our own account and we'd like to be friends with you. Those of us who write for the Fine Print blog have all got our own shelf and we're adding titles that we've been reading. We'd like to see what you like and what you don't, too. If you're on Goodreads, think of adding us as a friend. Our username is "wclibrary," so look for us and we'll let the book discussions begin. Best of all, you can look at the screen straight-on, so you won't get a crick in your neck!
