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By Amanda, February 6, 2010

The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder
by Rebecca Wells

I have to start by saying that I hate tear jerkers.  I don’t want to read something that is going to make me sad.  And yet in the middle of this book, I found myself bawling but still thinking “this is a great book.”  I’m sure I’m more shocked by this than you are.  Not to mention, this is one of the best books I’ve read in quite a while.

The story starts out in the 1960’s in La Luna, LA where we meet the Ponder family.  Calla Lily’s mother, or M’Dear as she called her, runs a beauty salon on the side porch of their house, where she dispenses love, wisdom, and healing.  Calla decides at a very young age that she wants to follow in her mother’s footsteps. 

Calla is no stranger to heartache, but somehow she always manages to get through it, with the help of her family, friends, and the always present Moon Lady.  As she grows, she moves to New Orleans to go to beauty school (because who didn’t want to be a hairdresser in the Big Easy in the 70’s?), always planning to return home to her beloved La Luna.

I’m not really sure what I expected when I started this book.  I read The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood when it came out, and while I liked it, I didn’t think it was all that great.  I see reflections of the ya-yas in this one, but the story ends up being so much more complete. Without getting too spoilery on you, I thought the ending was going to take a more predictable path, and I was relieved when it veered away right at the end. 

Wells weaves a lush web full of relatable and lovable characters into an almost mythical setting, complete with fairy godmother in the Moon Lady who watches over Calla from above.  Life’s not always easy, but as Calla’s M’Dear used to say, “You can get through anything as long as you keep breathing.”  Just make sure you bring along some Kleenex.

- Amanda

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By Amanda, January 23, 2010

It’s that time of year again – award show season, and I didn’t want to be left out.  With the popularity of a certain teenage vampire series (which will remain nameless due to the fact that I’m not totally in love with it, unlike the rest of the female universe), the Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy genres have exploded with new reads.  It can be a daunting task to figure out where to start, so I thought I’d offer a little advice on books I’ve found to be eminently more readable than The Book That Will Not Be Named (see also this PNR bibliography).  So here now, the absolutely meaningless, but hopefully still enjoyable, PNRUFies (pronounced pa-NER-fies).

Longest Series – local author, Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark-Hunters at 30 books/stories. Honorable mention to Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake books at 22 and Christine Feehan’s Dark series at 20.  For those REALLY long car trips, I’d suggest starting one of these.

Best Sidekick – Bob from Harry Dresden – he’s a talking skull who knows everything about everything.  Seriously, what else do you need and where can I get one?

Most Cliffhangery (This category is so frustrating that I had to invent a word for it) – Fever series from Karen Marie Moning.  You’ll scream. You’ll cry.  You’ll throw your book across the room (unless it’s a library book, then you’ll gently set it on the nearest table, lovingly brushing off any crumbs or lint, before you turn and punch the wall). Be warned – this one’s got at least one more book to go, and it’s not supposed to come out until December ’10.  Oh the humanity!

Wizard with the Biggest Hero Complex – Tie: Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden and John Pritkin from Cassie Palmer by Karen Chance. Harry’s never met a spell he wouldn’t try in the name of saving the world.  Pritkin would have had something quippy to say, but he’s already saved the world four times since we asked him for a quote.

Best Living Arrangements – The church in which Rachel and Ivy reside in Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan series.  A witch and a vampire living in a decommissioned church – you’d think it would be more peaceful.  Honorable Mention to Jean-Claude’s underground lair in Anita Blake and the Black Dagger Brotherhood compound care of the Warden.

Craziest Relatives – Tie: “Grandpa” Eddie from Julie Kenner’s Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom series and Niall, Sookie’s fairy great-grandfather, from Charlaine Harris’s True Blood-inspiring series.  One’s not related, one’s not human, but there’s still so much to love.

The Dr. Evil Award for Excellence in Villainy (I haven’t talked to Dr. Evil about this personally, but I’m sure he’d agree that these bad guys are worthy of being compared to someone who went to evil medical school) – Lilith from LA Banks’s Vampire Huntress series.  I mean, come on, she’s married to the devil – that’s evil. Honorable mention to Lash and the creepy baby-powder scented Lessers from J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood.

And there you have it.  The PNRUFy Class of 2010.  I was really hoping to see some Weather Wardens or Werecats in the lineup, but I guess there’s always next year. Agree or disagree with the winners – but either way, these books are all pretty good reading.  Happy PNRUFy-ing!

- Amanda

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By Amanda, January 16, 2010

Divine Misdemeanors
By Laurell K. Hamilton

Ok, I need a hand count.  How many of you love Laurell K. Hamilton?  Alrighty, now how many of you hate her? Yep, that’s what I thought.  You’re either one or the other.  I happen to fall on the love her side of things.  LKH doesn’t write Great American Novels, but that’s partially why I like both her Anita Blake and Merry Gentry series so much.  They are pure entertainment.

Divine Misdemeanors is the latest Merry release.  **Spoiler Alert** With all the pseudo-climatic events of the previous book, Swallowing Darkness, I was surprised (pleasantly so) to find out that this one was even coming out. I was afraid that the series was ending.  DM’s dedication indicated that LKH had a hard time with the book, and it kind of showed. I’m sure it was difficult to find a new story path after tying up some of the previous threads so neatly.

Merry and the guys exiled themselves back to LA.  The Princess, Rhys, and Galen have gone to work for Merry’s old detective agency.  Doyle, Frost, Kitto, and several others, including former guards of Prince Cel,  set up house in Maeve Reed’s estate while she is in Europe.  In working with the police, Merry learns that someone is killing demi-fey, and she has to figure out how to stop it.

If you are fans of Darkness and Frost, this is not going to be your favorite installment.  The guys are there, but they are all work and no play.  Rhys and Sholto stepped up, though, and **Seriously, if you want to be surprised, stop reading!** it was nice to see Rhys get his own sithen (although, it’s an old apartment building? Gee, thanks Faery. You shouldn’t have…no really…). That should give LKH some material to work with to build some new story lines. Overall, though, DM kind of felt like a filler book. I hope LKH can find her way forward from here, because I really want to see what happens when the babies are born. Keeping my fingers crossed…

- Amanda

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By Bryan, January 4, 2010

Home
By Marilynne Robinson

Home was only the third novel by Marilyn Robinson in thirty years. It was definitely worth the wait. Home chronicles the return of prodigal son Jack Boughton to the family farm in Gilead, Iowa. His aged father Robert, and Glory, Jack’s baby sister, now middle aged, anxiously await Jack’s return after twenty years of non-communication. Glory, a former school teacher, who by chance or unconscious design has slowly crashed back to Gilead to care for her fading father. That father, the Reverend Robert Boughton, spiritual lighthouse to the town of Gilead for much of his life, is now a wisp of his former self. He clings to life in the small hope he will once again meet  his estranged son. The Lord giveth; Jack returns.

Polite but unrepentant of his past transgressions, Jack torments his father by simply being himself, the black sheep of the family, also a drunk, and maybe a coward. Glory accepts Jack wholeheartedly, hardened liver and all, while the Reverend Boughton becomes tortured by his life’s one failure: his anti-social communist sympathizing son.

In case you are thinking you’ve heard this one before, you’ve never heard it by a writer as talented as Marilynne Robinson. In her hands the sleepy Boughton household becomes a boiler engine of psycho-spiritual pressure. The tension between father and son permeates the house like sunlight. Fate, sin, free will, and the capital “eff” Fall, are all weapons in the psychic warfare. Robinson illuminates both the positive and the negative nature of piety with clear effortless prose. If you are afraid this is just a book about a bunch of churchies in need of a little grease, all the characters have secrets and there is a surprise ending. The reader, and author, always know that rural Iowa in the late 50s is a serious bubble, outside of which are horrors that don’t permit the luxury of theological angst.

Literati may recognize the Boughtons and the town the Gilead as it gave the title to Robinson’s previous novel which earned her a Pulitzer Prize. Gilead and Home are companion pieces that take place in the same town at the same time but inside different households. I can’t recommend both novels strongly enough. On a personal note, Home is the last book I will get to read with the 2nd Wednesday Book Club, a reading group I’ve led here at the library for the past two years. To all my book club members, I thank you, and apologize for all the pretentious literary crap I’ve convinced  you to read. Though it is sad to have to move on, I am happy the last book we read together was one as powerful and meaningful to me as Home.

- Bryan

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By Pam, December 4, 2009

The Lost Symbol
By Dan Brown

I openly admit loving all of the Dan Brown books. There, I said it. Well, maybe Deception Point was a little weak; being saved after skidding at high speed across an iceberg is soooo much more unlikely than falling from an exploding helicopter and landing unscathed on a roof, right? But I digress. The Lost Symbol has the baddest baddie of all time. He is creepy; he is relentless; he is tattooed over every inch of his body except a little blank circle on the top of his head. The Lost Symbol has, of course, the Masons. They fare very well in this novel, and it’s a lot of fun learning about their symbols and how prominently they (the symbols) figure in the architecture of Washington, D.C. And The Lost Symbol has noetic science (using scientific methods to explore consciousness/soul and its effects on the physical world), adding just the right amount of spooky-dooky to the mix. Formulaic? You bet. (The folks at Slate have created a very amusing Dan Brown sequel plot generator. Check it out.) Page-turner? Yesiree. Worth reading? Absolutely. Go on and read it–you know you want to!
- Pam

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By Jenny, November 26, 2009

Skeletons At The Feast
By Chris Bohjalian

Set in the final chaotic days of WW II, the Emmerich family flees their prosperous farm, hoping to avoid the approaching Soviets. With them is Callum, a Scottish POW who worked on their farm and never went back to prison after the growing season and secretly in love with the Emmerich daughter. They journey through bitter cold and witness death and brutality along the way. They are joined by a young Jewish man who has managed to escape capture for 2 years by disguising himself as a German soldier. Paralleling their journey is that of a group of concentration camp prisoners marched west to an aircraft plant where they are fed only enough to stay alive. At the beginning of the book Frau Emmerich and her family are proud Nazis, enamored of Hitler and comfortable on their elegant estate. As they suffer and see with their own eyes the evil inflicted by the Nazis they realize what fools they have been. While the plot of this book centers around the horror of war, its strength lies in its hope for the future and a message that life goes on and that life is good.

- Phyllis

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By Jenny, November 25, 2009

The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie
By Alan Bradley

Canadian author Bradley brings us the first installment of this mystery series featuring precocious 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of the motherless de Luce girls. They live at Buckshaw, the family’s crumbling manor house, along with their widowed father, his shell shocked valet Dogger, and Mrs. Mullet, their cook. Flavia silently observes those around her and stealthily plays tricks on her sisters. When a stranger is found dead in their garden, Flavia sets to work identifying him. She utilizes the Victorian era chemistry lab on the top floor of Buckshaw, the domain of a long dead relative. On her trusty bicycle, Gladys, Flavia wanders far and wide to solve the mystery which also involves a valuable Penny Black stamp belonging to her father. She exasperates local Police Inspector Hewitt but he is patient and wise in dealing with her and they make a great detective team. Set in the bleak period just after WW II, the story also offers a history lesson on the dramatic social changes that resulted from the war. A second story in the series, The Weed That Strings The Hangman’s Bag, is due in March 2010.

- Phyllis

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By Jenny, November 24, 2009

The Heretics Daughter
By Kathleen Kent

Set during the Salem witch trials of the late 17th century, Sarah Carrier is the eldest daughter of Martha Carrier, a victim of those trials. Smart, independent and strong willed like her mother, 10-year-old Sarah is forced to betray her family to save her own life when neighborhood resentment, jealousy and misunderstandings lead to careless accusations of witchcraft. Leading to misery and death, this ugly episode in American history is illuminated by this story of family love and hate, loyalty and truth. The author is a 10th generation descendant of Martha Carrier. The audio edition is read by actress Mare Winningham.

- Phyllis

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By Kyle, October 23, 2009

Anagrams
By Lorrie Moore

Moore explores thirtysomething angst while cleverly playing with language and conventions of plot, narrative, and character. This book will make you both laugh out loud and think deeply about the various paths a life can take.

- Jessica

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By Pam, October 21, 2009

Homer and Langley

By E.L. Doctorow

So shoot me, I’ve never read E.L. Doctorow before now. Guess I was in my feminist science fiction phase when Ragtime came out. No matter. Homer and Langley is a lovely novel. Considering the fact that the main characters are reclusive, hoarding brothers who live in shocking squalor, achieving lovely is no mean feat for the author. The novel is based on the true story of Homer and Langley Collyer, who repelled and fascinated New Yorkers until their deaths in 1947. This is the story of how the brothers, children of privilege, came to be thus. Told from Homer’s viewpoint, the story of Langley’s increasing eccentricity and Homer’s dependent complicity is told with kindness, humor, heartbreak, and love. Doctorow’s departure from actual history (he extends their lifespans by a good 30 years, and invents characters who float in and out of their lives) serves the story so well that you don’t mind at all once you’ve squared your confusion. And the author’s ability to humanize what must have been quite a freak show forces you to look a little differently at what you see on the nightly news.

–Pam

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By Kyle, October 16, 2009

Little Bee
by Chris Cleave

“And then the men came…” This is the recurrent opening to the story told by every traumatized refugee that Little Bee talks to while waiting in an immigration detention facility outside of London. The charming narrator of this original novel is sixteen-year-old Little Bee, who barely escaped from her Nigerian village with her life, after losing her family and home in a vicious attack. When released from detention after two years, she finds the one person in London she knows of — Sarah, a new widow who once met Little Bee during an ill-fated Nigerian vacation with her husband, two years earlier. The relationship forged by these two women (and one delightful little boy), the way they change each other, and their precariously intertwined fates, form a touching and compelling personal story set against a backdrop of an ocean of refugees moving around the globe in search of safe homes. Check this one out.

- Julie

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By Kyle, September 9, 2009

The Song is You

by Arthur Phillips

In the past, I’ve read quite a few books by musicians, about musicians, or about music in general and none of them have ever quite done what I wanted them to. I can’t really describe what I’m looking for, being a musician myself, but this one has come the closest of any of them. Here’s a brief sample of what I mean:

A piece of music’s conquest of you is not likely to occur the first time you hear it, though it is possible that the aptly named “hook” might barb your ear on it’s first pass. More commonly, the assailant is slightly familiar and has leveraged that familiarity to gain access to the crisscrossed wiring of your interior life. And then there is a possession, a mutual possession, for just as you take the song as part of you and your history, it is claiming dominion for itself, planting fluttering eighth notes in your heart.

So anyway, our main character, Julian, is a music aficionado who always seems to be listening to his iPod. He has 8,146 songs at his disposal – ready for any occasion. One night, he’s out walking in New York and happens upon a new band with an inspiring young Irish singer. The girl is magnetic and Julian is immediately drawn to her and her music. Most of the book tells the story of how their lives intersect – or you know – don’t.

- Amanda

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By Kyle, September 8, 2009

Europe Central
by William T. Vollmann

Some folks enjoy light reading in summer, but I save those extra daylight hours for the heavies. I’d been dying to read William T. Vollmann’s massive cold war epic Europe Central since it won the National Book Award in 2005. Well worth my wait, Europe Central is a work of art as brutal and heavy as the 88mm shells which litter its chapters. Which is not to say the story lacks moral delicacy. Tough times require tough… well you know. Vollmann utilizes prosopography to present a cyclical narrative that spans the German invasion of Russia to height of the Cold War in the 1970s. Equivalent German and Russian historical figures are paired and their psychological responses to fanatical ideology are contrasted in a mesh of recurrent tropes. The cast of characters includes German printmaker Kathe Kollwitz, communist documentarian Roman Karmen, Nazi general Friedrich Paulus, and Soviet general Andrei Vaslov (both of whom defect to enemy’s side when captured). Last but not least is Dimitri Shostakovitch, whose life and work epitomizes the moral ambiguities and ideological confusions at which Vollmann aims his bright spotlight. Even today musicologists debate the thematic intention of Shostakovitch’s body of work. The ambiguity exists only within the personal sphere, within the public sphere the result of hard line ideology is, of course, mass murder. Admist all this death, denial and despair transmuted there is also a love story. Vollmann casts Elena Konstantinovskaya as the love of Shostakovitch’s life. She is Shostakovitch’s mistress, not his wife and their relationship is idealized in is mind, crystallizing into a perfection which may or may not conform to reality to the reality of their relationship. His love for Elena, or the memories thereof, are like the political fantasies of Hitler or Stalin, i.e., unattainable.

The horror of the novel is nearly spoiled by the story of SS officer Kurt Gerstein who clandestinely tried to expose the Holocaust. This is the only section of the book that comes dangerously close to an elementary school morality lesson. Fortunately, at least on an aesthetic level, Gerstein’s end is as tragic as the rest.

You might be thinking, “Bryan, this book sounds terrible!” I recommend this book to anyone interested in the Nazi and Soviet culture, anyone interested in the history of the Eastern Front during World War II, and anyone interested in the life and music of Dmitri Shostakovitch. Though cast of characters is based on historical persons, Europe Central is a work of fiction and the primary reason to experience the book is the artistry of William Vollmann. His prose are precise and evoke a modernist tone. Recurring themes, repeated vocabulary, and chronological interlacing weave a snowy bloodstained tapestry across fifty years of heartbreak and political violence. Think of Europe Central as a photo negative to Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation, or a constructivist War and Peace.

- Bryan

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By Jenny, September 2, 2009

Looking for books that will allow you to stay a little longer in the world of Elizabeth and Darcy? Want to skip the “what happens after they marry and ride off to Pemberley” sequels? These books are for you.

Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Field
by Melissa Nathan

A retelling inside a retelling. This book stays very close to the original storyline. It is a charming, fast read. Fans of Persuasion will also want to check out Persuading Annie, also by Nathan.

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
by Laurie Viera Rigler

This time-travel retelling, lands a modern-day Courtney in Jane Austen’s time. Sure, there’s a first edition of Pride and Prejudice on the bookshelf, but waking up in Regency England is quite a shock to our heroine.

Austenland
by Shannon Hale

Time-travel is problematic enough, much less time-traveling into a work of fiction. But what if you could visit a vacation spot that comes pretty close to the real thing?

Lost in Austen : create your own Jane Austen adventure
by Emma Campbell Webster

Pride and Prejudice meets the Choose Your Own Adventure novels of childhood. Try your hand at being Elizabeth. Will you end up married to the most eligible bachelor in England? Or will you get carried off by gypsies?

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
by Seth Grahame-Smith

What happens to a classic when you introduce Zombies? Maybe you’ve never wished for such a combo, but this book is not to be missed. Look out for Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters next!