Title: 11/22/63
by Stephen King
Year: 2012
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Abbey Warner
Date reviewed: 4/2012

Stephen King puts out a good product, and he has a definite thumbs-up from me on this latest novel. Even though his writing is young-adult level when he requires his character to be tutored on historical events that I think should be common knowledge, the pacing is excellent (except for his time in a tiny Texas town) and the plot has enough what-if twists to be engaging for 700 pages.

I enjoyed seeing the character deal with life as a time traveler, and trying to make smart choices, for example: is he smart to make large bets on sure things if it means coming to the attention of ill-tempered bookies? Maybe yes, maybe no. Best of all, if it's a huge mistake, he would always go back and reset.

A few, tiny clunkers: (1) There were a few too many coincidences and "harmonies" for my taste. (2) Some of the characters were a little quick to be convinced that George/Jake was a time traveler. (3) George's alias was the name of the main character in a wildly popular movie a few years before the book's setting, yet no character commented on it. That would be like someone using "Harry Potter" as an alias and no one commenting on it. These criticisms are balanced against the best plot idea, though: the past is obdurate, resistant to change, and will throw barriers in the way of a person who wants to change it.

Stephen King credits the book Case Closed by Gerald Posner for convincing him beyond reasonable doubt that Lee Oswald was a lone gunman. I wholeheartedly agree. I've read half a shelf worth of books about JFK's assassination and Posner's book is the one that sticks with me.

I recommend this medium-long book for fans of time travel novels because of the tremendous amount of social and cultural details King weaves into the plot, everything from how a big Chevy handles on the road to women's fashion. I also recommend it for any fan of alternate histories, although the "alternate" part of the book is a minor theme toward the end of the book.

***Spoiler***

King missed a great chance to explain why parallel timelines/universes would create physical disruptions like earthquakes. Here's an idea: every time George/Jake or Al went from world to world, they would import matter/energy. Just that infintesimal amount of matter/energy would act as a huge disruption since every atom in every reality is "accounted for" and not being created or destroyed. Subatomic particles may pop in and out of existence, but something as large as Al and his daily shopping trip of hamburger would cause ripples in the universe because it would be an ex nihilo creation of new matter/energy that had not come from that particular universe's original source of matter/energy, it's own unique big bang. I'm no physicist, but that's fun to contemplate.

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Title: The $12 million stuffed shark : the curious economics of contemporary art
by Donald Thompson
Year: 2008
Format: Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Abbey Warner
Date reviewed: 11/2010

Why would anyone pay $12 million for the decaying carcass of a shark suspended in a small, fake aquarium? Is it the lure of acquiring anything by Damien Hirst, the most shameless self-promoter since Salvador Dali? The quasi-philosophical title of the shark is "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living." Does the title alone qualify it as art because it gives the viewers a hint that it is a memento mori? Maybe, but the real question of this book is "How does the art world assign value to art, and why do people pay it?"

The financial sector drives the high-end art market to great heights of absurdity because high-end art can be tax dodges and a show of conspicuous consumption for the obscenely wealthy. This is a crying shame for many reasons: outsider artists without a circus-barker promoter cannot get a buyer; the prices drive most collectors out of the market; art critics and auction houses collude to create buzz and drive prices up; art museum directors are pressured by their boards who have gotten caught up in the buzz; museums buy overpriced art that chew up their limited budgets and sometimes their floorspace (think Chihuly in a museum near by); and then worst of all, kids on field trips glaze over with boredom while teachers try to convince them that they should be impressed, and kids grow up to be adults who don't support the arts.

Many people confuse the worth of aesthetic objects with their financial worth - anyone who has ever watched "Antiques Roadshow" knows that the punchline is the price tag, not the knowledge that the Keno brothers are trying to convey. Good art should surprise, enthrall, disgust, enrage, inspire. High-end, high-priced art may or may not elicit such feelings, but after reading this book, you can learn to distinguish between valuing art for its monetary worth and valuing it because it expresses a new idea, a different viewpoint on the familiar, or stops you dead in your tracks, regardless of its pedigree.

Also recommended on this topic: Sotheby's: bidding for class, a look inside an auction house.

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Title: 300 Frogs: A Visual Reference Guide to Frogs and Toads from around the World
by Chris Mattison
Year: 2007
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 11/2009

Chris Mattison's 300 Frogs: A Visual Reference Guide to Frogs and Toads from Around the World is a wonderful pictorial reference full of interesting facts. At just about six inches square, this little hardcover is packed with page after page (over five hundred pages, in fact) of helpful information for anyone interested in these marvelous (and often cute) little creatures.

The introduction succinctly explains the differences (or lack thereof) between frogs and toads, their diversity, habitats, feeding habits, life cycles, and their anatomical relationships to other animals, most of which exist only in the fossil record. Organized by family, each entry has a large, close-up photograph or very detailed color drawing of the species and five or six brief paragraphs describing the animal and its general nature. There is also a key listing its different names, classification, size, features, habits, breeding, diet, habitat, distribution, frequency, and similar species.

This neat little book is beautifully illustrated and very informative. It could be an invaluable resource for someone interested in studying frogs and toads or an interesting coffee table-style book for anyone to browse.

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Title: 500 Butterflies from around the World
by Ken Preston-Mafham
Year: 2007
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 11/2009

Ken Preston-Mafham's 500 Butterflies from around the World is a very attractive pictorial reference full of beautiful photographs and descriptions. At just about six inches square, this hardcover book is packed with page after page (over five hundred pages) of helpful information for anyone interested in these delicate little creatures.

The introduction briefly distinguishes butterflies from moths and describes and illustrates their life-cycles, habitats, and anatomy. Organized by family, each entry has a large, close-up photograph of the species and a short paragraph describing its appearance and distinctive characteristics. There is also a data key listing its scientific name, classification, size, larval food plants, flight period, and range.

This lovely little book is beautifully illustrated and informative. Unlike Chris Mattison's 300 Frogs, Ken Preston-Mafham's 500 Butterflies is more of a watcher's guide than a true study companion. It makes for hours of visual stimulation, though; the variety and intricacy of shape and color of these gossamer insects is truly amazing.

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Title: A pictorial history of science fiction
by David Kyle
Year: 1976
Format: Book Book   (Science fiction)
Review by: Pactrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 8/2012

Science fiction, to some, is an escapist form of storytelling, created by fanciful dreamers. True science fiction, however, is not intended to be an escape from reality, but rather a confrontation with the realities of days yet to come. From the seventeenth-century visions of what might lie on the moon to Captain Kirk’s five-year mission, mankind has been fascinated by the potential applications and advances of their own generations’ discoveries.

This title is more than twenty-five years old, so the very recent advances in the genre won’t appear. This is irrelevant, since that is not the main focus of the book. A Pictorial History of Science Fiction uses book and magazine covers, comic book and graphic novel illustrations, television and motion picture stills, movie posters, and even 250-year-old woodblock carvings to illustrate the evolution of science fiction as a whole.

Chronologically organized, the chapters include “The Wood and Feather Milleniums [sic],” “The Iron Age,” “The Steel Generation,” “The Silver Years,” “The Golden Years,” “The Uranium Decade,” “The Plastic Zenith,” “Isotopic Moments,” “The Alloy Now,” and “The Future Future.” The illustrations range from woodblock illustrations for Gulliver’s Travels and Baron Munchausen to the pen-and-ink drawings for classic novels by H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, from the 1950s pulps to production stills of Flash Gordon, The Planet of the Apes, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The accompanying text points out the importance and influence of lesser known authors, such as Hugo Gernsback, John W. Campbell, Jr., and Stanley G. Weinbaum.

There are plenty of rocketships, flying cities, aliens, and robots for any science fiction fan. The author, while compiling art of all kinds in order to illustrate a complex history, focuses on the best artwork of each age. A Pictorial History of Science Fiction is a wonderful glimpse of the past’s vision of the future.

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Title: After virtue : a study in moral theory
by Alasdair Maclntyre
Year: 1984
Format: Book   ()
Review by: Travis Biddick
Date reviewed: 11/2012

At the suggestion of my wife, whose powers of intellection exceed mine by a far sight, I recently read After Virtue, a work of moral philosophy by the ex-Marxist, Scottish philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre. Philosophy is a genre which I approach the way a narcoleptic might an automobile—infrequently, and with an anxious mix of trepidation and haste. She kindly warned me that the book was challenging. But MacIntyre’s conceptual illustrations, his sense of humor, and his keen social and historical insights—which frequently coincide—engaged my interest the entire time. How, for instance, is it possible not to read further in a book whose first chapter opens in this way:

Imagine that the natural sciences were to suffer the effects of a catastrophe. A series of environmental disasters are blamed by the general public on the scientists. Widespread riots occur, laboratories are burnt down, physicists are lynched, books and instruments are destroyed.

MacIntyre goes on to speak of a hypothetical post-scientific society in which expressions “such as ‘neutrino’, ‘mass’, ‘specific gravity’, ‘atomic weight’” would be used with an “element of arbitrariness and even of choice,” confounding any attempt to give a rational account of their meaning. Arguing that such theoretical incoherence arises when the context in which such terms were once at home has passed away, MacIntyre advances the thesis that the modern world holds only the “fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived.” This development, which has played out its course through modern history, culminates in the utter vitiation of theoretical and practical morality. Not to be discouraged from his inquiry by the grimness of modernity’s moral situation, (pessimism, MacIntyre says, is just “one more cultural luxury that we shall have to dispense with”), MacIntyre begins to outline its development, which was at once philosophical, cultural, and political.

Thus After Virtue begins with a history of emotivism, whose progenitor was the British philosopher G.E. Moore, and which today is the prevailing philosophy of morality. MacIntyre’s view of it is resoundingly critical, but nonetheless portrays the cultural milieu, running from the nineteenth century up to the present, in which the central tenets of emotivism offered a novel—if thin or ultimately unsatisfactory—understanding of what was morally “good.”

Nineteenth century culture was desperate for a theory of morality—even one that effectively abolished the factual basis of morality—due to the Enlightenment’s previous failure to give it a rational explanation. These thinkers’ efforts, traced in After Virtue from Descartes to Nietzsche, foundered because they rejected, in their several ways, the Aristotelian notion that man’s life had a final end or purpose. The rest of the book reconstructs this rejected moral tradition, beginning with Homer and ending with Jane Austen.

The diversity of MacIntyre’s talents—as literary critic, sociologist, and story-teller—astounds me. His understandings of Sophocles, Jane Austen, Homer, Nietzsche, and Henry II are ingenious. In all of these cases, as well as many more, three sentences from After Virtue give deeper insight and understanding than other longer texts I have read.

For example, I knew that Henry II did “penance” for the murder of Thomas a Becket. I did not know that “immediately on hearing of Becket’s death, he took to his own room, in sackcloth and ashes and fasting; and two year later he did public penance at Canterbury and was scourged by the monks.” Henry’s sense of the moral good is coidentical with his awareness of the interconnectedness of his story with Becket’s story, as well as both their stories’ embedded situation within the larger story of English history; his sense of the moral good did not depend, as it does in emotivist schemes, on his own will to power, which circumstantially benefited from Becket’s death.

One of the central theses in After Virtue is that the concept of “goodness” only holds within an intelligible narrative of a unified life that has a purpose or an end. In the course of this argument, it was my acute pleasure to read the following sentence, which appeared in a discussion of intelligible actions:

“If in the middle of my lecture on Kant’s ethics I suddenly broke six eggs into a bowl and added flour and sugar, proceeding all the while with my Kantian exegesis, I have not, simply in virtue of the fact that I was following a sequence prescribed by Fanny Farmer, performed an intelligible action.”

Of course, the pages of After Virtue contain, besides thought experiments involving spheres of human life as diverse as husbandry and chess, what is in my non-specialist’s estimation thoroughly researched and well-considered philosophical arguments. They also tell a story, and it is good.

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Title: The Andromeda Strain
by Michael Crichton
Year: 1969
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 4/2009

Originally published in 1969, Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain is an excellent example of the hard-science sub-genre of science fiction. The danger posed by man's advancing technology - or his quest for knowledge - outweighing his wisdom is at the heart of the earliest and many of the greatest sci-fi stories. So begins Crichton's novel.

When a satellite sent to explore the Earth's atmosphere to collect dust and organisms falls from the sky, it lands in the desolate town of Piedmont, Arizona. The soldiers sent to recover the lost satellite barely have time to radio in the horrifying discovery in Piedmont - that the entire population is dead - before they die themselves, positioned almost as though they had been frozen in place.

The threat level is such that the United States government executes the "Wildfire Protocol," immediately drafting scientists from a pre-determined list to stop the spread of an assumed pathogen. The team is taken with the downed satellite to a top-secret, one-of-a-kind, high-tech laboratory built several floors below ground in the Nevada desert, complete with a nuclear bomb as a last-resort containment method.

Exploring Piedmont remotely, the scientists discover something they thought impossible - a survivor! While investigating in person (in hazmat suits, of course) they find a second survivor, a colicky baby. Mostly through trial and error, the team attempts to discern the origin of, and find a way to stop this unique organism. They are racing against the clock, as the disease spreads beyond Piedmont via wind, wildlife, and even a passing plane, causing unusual and deadly effects to intruders and to the military presence keeping the quarantine.

Because this book was written thirty years ago, some of the scientific advances, particularly those of the secret laboratory, may seem a bit unrealistic, but this in no way takes away from the story. Crichton also give us some very sound scientific principles, explained at level that most readers will understand, and even some well-rationalized speculative concepts. Ultimately, the tale is one of unheeded warnings, unrestrained exploration, and the nature of success and failure in the investigative and scientific processes.

The Andromeda Strain is the story of analysis and discovery much more than action and adventure. The characters spend more time with conversation, conjecture, and theory-testing than any kind of conflict, making it more a combination sci-fi and mystery novel. Michael Crichton rarely misses, and here he has created a work worthy not only of his audience's time, but also a major motion picture and a recent mini-series, as well. For the reader who is impressed more with awe and wonder and theoretical science more than mile-a-minute action this is a very entertaining book.

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Title: An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England : a novel
by Brock Clarke
Year: 2007
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Dana Jackson
Date reviewed: 12/2008

In this somewhat oddball fictional tale, we meet Sam Pulsfer after he has served time in jail for burning down the home of Emily Dickenson, unwittingly killing two people in the fire, and setting the town of Amherst, MA in an uproar. After serving time in prison, Sam gets his life on track and for a while it’s good. He goes to college, gets married, has children, and buys a house in a quite suburb near Amherst, but never tells his family of his combustible past.

One fateful day though, his world is shattered by a distraught visitor to his quiet home. In the coming weeks after this visit, the homes of other famous New England writers, Robert Frost, Edith Wharton, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne go up in flames with Sam as the primary suspect. Sam now has to find the culprits and clear his name.

Sam is a character eternally in a cloud of accidental circumstance and the book is a humorous mystery that is good for a quick read.

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Title: The Atlas of American Architecture : 2000 years of architecture, city planning, landscape architecture and civil engineering
by Tom Martinson
Year: 2009
Format: Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Denise Lozeau
Date reviewed: 10/2011

While The Atlas of American Architecture may more accurately be described as a history of architecture in America, it also provides a travelogue to points of interest to someone who loves to travel. The illustrations are so well captioned that the reader knows exactly where the structures are located, right down to the street address. As I perused the book, my reactions ranged from "been there -- seen that" to "been there – HOW did I miss THAT?!" to "I need to add this to my list of destinations for future trips." I routinely choose books that are primarily picture books when my schedule doesn’t permit a lot of time for reading and find it to be an equally pleasurable experience.

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Title: The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America's Pastime
by Jason Turbow (with Michael Duca)
Year: 2010
Format: Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 10/2011

The Baseball Codes is a very interesting insider's take on the world of the national pastime. Baseball may be a game with more rules than any other sport, but there are many more unwritten rules which govern the game, some of which aren't even known by a majority of the players themselves. Jason Turbow and Michael Duca have compiled those dicta of decorum with plenty of anecdotal examples of their observance and violation and the punishment that resulted, from baseball's golden era to the present.

You shouldn't attempt a stolen base when you're ahead by more than four runs after the seventh inning. The catcher shouldn't block the plate without the ball. You don't bunt to end a pitcher's bid for a no-hitter. You don't talk about your pitcher's current no-hitter in the dugout. These are rules that most players and fans know. There are others that are not so well-known, like you don't walk between the pitcher and catcher when stepping into the batter's box, and you don't lift your front leg when swinging the bat.

"Part One: On the Field" deals with intimidation, dangerous plays, and sportsmanship. "Part Two: Retaliation" is concerned with brawls, in-game retaliation, and vendettas. "Part Three: Cheating" involves sign stealing, peeking at the catcher, pitchers' use of foreign substances, and the consequences of getting caught. "Part Four: Teammates" deals with team superstition, joining fights, media etiquette, and harmony in the clubhouse.

The anecdotes in The Baseball Codes are priceless examples of why players should and should not obey the unwritten rules. This is not only a fun and informative book worth reading, it is a book worth owning to any fan of the game of baseball.

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Title: Before the Heroes Came
by T.H. Baughman
Year: 1994
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Dana Jackson
Date reviewed: 11/2009

Today, we worry that Antarctica will melt away; however, in the 1890s, it was the last continent unconquered by the powers of the nineteenth century. While the history of human involvement with Earth's southernmost land mass can be traced back to 1770s, most people focus on the Heroic Era of exploration and the race to discover the North Pole. However, the real story begins in Before the Heroes Came.

In a concise and focused work, Baughman tells the story of the personalities that shaped the course of exploration of the "frozen unknown." The two most prominent are Karsten E. Borchgrevink and Sir Clements Markham. Borchgrevink was the first human to set foot on Antarctica at Cape Adare in January 1895. He later returned to the Cape with the first land party to winter on the Continent. While reading, you learn that these two feats occurred even though Borchgrevink was a weak leader with poor judgment, but he was a planner and could spin the public interest in adventure. Additionally, every story needs an interesting and slightly shady character, and that is where the reader meets Sir Clements Markham. Markham was the president of the Royal Geographical Society and would do anything to see that England would persevere in Antarctic Exploration.

Baughman also provides a notable summary of the history of southern exploration in the introduction, and the extensive endnotes will fill in some questions you may have. Before the Heroes Came puts the history of polar exploration into perspective within the broader context of science, nationalistic interests, and the human element. Furthermore, the author is one of UCO's esteemed History professors. How often can you read a book and then go ask the author a couple of questions?

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Title: Between Heaven and Hell: the story of a thousand years of artistic life in Russia
by W. Bruce Lincoln
Year: 1999
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Denise Lozeau
Date reviewed: 4/2009

Between Heaven and Hell is an interesting compilation of every area of the arts in Russia from medieval times to the 20th century - painting, literature, music, sculpture, ballet - told in a narrative style and weaving one format into another artistically and historically throughout the book. It also includes brief biographies of the artists providing background to their inspirations, sometimes hellish events, sometimes heavenly, demonstrating that throughout history, Russia has been a land of extremes. I found this book to be a masterful guide to further readings and study of the Russian arts.

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Title: Big Chief Elizabeth : The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America
by Giles Milton
Year: 2000
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Abbey Warner
Date reviewed: 3/2010

Any fan of popularized history knows that for every 20 dull, plodding stories, there's one well-written, funny and/or horrific book that's worth more than a checkout; if it's truly outstanding, it's worth buying. After reading the library's copy of this book, I bought my very own (used) copy.

From the hapless bumbling of Sir Humfry Gilbert and his faulty map-reading - it's no surprise if you've never heard of him - to the flamboyant, self-marketing Sir Walter Raleigh, the large cast of characters seems like an experiment in juxtaposition: put this person in the vicinity of that person, and surprising things happen.

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Title: Birds of Oklahoma: Field Guide
by Stan Tekiela
Year: 2002
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Mary Huffman
Date reviewed: 12/2008

Did you ever wonder what bird you saw on the campus, or by a lake or pond, or flying overhead anywhere in Oklahoma? Then this field guide is a "must see" for anyone interested in birds and their identification. It’s unique because it’s color coded. Did you see a red bird in a tree and wonder what it was? Look in the "Birds that are mostly red" section where there are several birds listed.

Each entry is accompanied by a color photograph of the bird, with occasional accompanying photos of males and females, juveniles, and birds in flight. On the opposite page, the entries include a range map of Oklahoma and the location of the birds throughout the year, the size of the bird, a brief description of the male and female, information on the nest, the eggs and the incubation period, fledging, migration, food, and comparisons to birds that look similar.

The author has also included his own notes. For instance, did you know that the Indigo bunting is a secretive bird, and that the Blue jay will scream at other birds to make them leave the feeder? Or, did you know that crows can live up to 20 years, and collect and store bright and shiny objects in their nests? These are just a few of the fun facts you can discover.

There's a checklist/index in the back of the book which is a handy list of the described birds. There is also a list of helpful resources, and some recommended web pages. Make your weekend an exciting one and check out this book, then go "birding" and see what you can discover!

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Title: Body Work
by Sara Paretsky
Year: 2010
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Jana Atkins
Date reviewed: 4/2011

V.I. Warshawski makes her appearance in her 14th novel, Body Work. This time, she gets drawn into a murder by being in the wrong place at the wrong time (wait, maybe that's her usual M.O.). But by the time she solves the case, she's been drawn into the worlds of the Marines, the Iraq War, and the Avant-garde art scene. With the help of her elderly neighbor, her happy-go-lucky young cousin, and two ex-Marines back from their tours in Iraq, V.I. manages to fend off attackers and conspirators, solve the case, and save the day.

In typical V.I. Warshawski fashion, she lands knee deep in the middle of a situation and plunges in with all cylinders running. She can't extract herself until she solves the case. And as usual, she does it with flair. Perhaps the most interesting part of this book, aside from how the clues tie together into one neat package, is the political commentary on the current war in the Middle East and some of the corruption that has accompanied it. That may be one of the things Sara Paretsky does best. But Warshawski's smart mouth doesn't hurt.

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Title: The Book of the Courtesans : A catalogue of their virtues
by Susan Griffin
Year: 2001
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Denise Lozeau
Date reviewed: 4/2011

Notes : In The Book of Courtesans, Griffin is downright scintillating. Courtesans, she writes, were not prostitutes nor even kept women, though certainly they used their sexuality to financial gain. Rather, they were personages and celebrities, friends to royalty and the most famous writers and artists of their time, the subjects of gossip, the charismatic epicenter of the Second Empire, the Gay Nineties, the Belle Epoche, "Gay Paree." Their faces were immortalized in paintings by the Renaissance masters, by Degas, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec, their lives by Proust, Balzac, Zola, Flaubert. They lived in splendor, set fashion standards, owned fabulous jewelry collections. And they were talented authors, poets, actresses, and singers. In a time of prescribed roles for women, they turned the tables, creating lives of remarkable intellectual and financial freedom. Amazon Review

Review: Looking back into history from the so called sexual revolution of the late 20th century, the reader realizes that when it comes to women using and reveling in their sexuality, it is as old as time and there is nothing new under the sun. If anything, the sexual revolutions of the late have probably created an environment where women cannot truly use their sexuality to the same advantage that they did in centuries past, and now great courtesans and mistresses can only be admired as a thing of the past. Nonetheless, the book is fascinating reading and maybe something can still be learned to be used in the readers own little world.

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Title: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
by Steve Martin
Year: 2007
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Jana Atkins
Date reviewed: 11/2009

When comedians write their autobiographies, the results are either fantastic or catastrophic, I think. Steve Martin has already successfully branched out of comedy (Shop Girl), so I had high hopes for his autobiography. I was not disappointed.

It turns out Steve Martin is nearly as nerdy and clean-cut as he looks. His first job was working at Disneyland, which he parlayed into a dream job of sorts working in their magic shop. He used that job to learn the tricks and tools of that trade and moved into performing in his own magic show. Except that he wasn't as good at magic as the really successful magicians ought to be, so he substituted comedy to make his act more popular. If you've ever heard of Steve Martin, you pretty much know how that worked out. Somewhere in between he learned how to play the banjo, wrote for "The Smothers Brothers Show," and regularly appeared on Saturday Night Live without actually being a member of the cast.

To borrow a line from another review, reading this is much like getting a daily dose of new comedy rather than watching the same hour or two over and over. I found myself trying to read it in small doses in an effort to savor the words as long as possible.

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Title: Breakdown
by Sara Paretsky
Year: 2012
Format: Book Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Jana Atkins
Date reviewed: 10/2012

Just finished the latest V.I. Warshawski book. Wow! There was actually a moment where I was afraid it would be the last one of the series. This book was unpredictable and exciting – a really great read! And I’m not just saying that because of the character in the book who shares my first name. (She’s not very likeable anyway, so there’s that.)

During an attempt to keep some kids out of trouble by rooting them out of their midnight cemetery antics, Warshawski gets pulled into a complicated murder conspiracy with political ramifications, ties to the occupation of Poland, and secrets locked in with the prisoners at a mental hospital. Fair warning, though: she skewers the Republican party, although in an exaggerated fashion meant to forward the plot. Her long-standing relationship with reporter friend Murray comes to the forefront, and it was nice to see them working together again. Based on the events in this book, I hope he’ll play a heavier role in the next book as well. This is the best V.I. Warshawski tale since Fire Sale back in 2005 or maybe 1999's Hard Time.

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Title: Can't Wait to Get to Heaven
by Fannie Flagg
Year: 2006
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Abbey Warner
Date reviewed: 12/2011

Elner Shimfissle touched a lot of lives during her 80-something years, and when the whole town of Elmwood Springs hears that she's dead, they're stunned and begin to reflect on what she meant to them. Then there's a big surprise (no spoilers here). It's a sweet, funny story, and it was perfect as a palate-cleanser after my steady reading of serious books like Boomerang, Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. I recommend all these books - they are all in process as Ruby Canton books and will be in the 1st floor reading area - but I recommend Can't Wait to Get to Heaven for a good read on a road trip during the holidays. There's even a recipe section in the back of the book, including a truly heavenly caramel cake.

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Title: Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas
by Chuck Klosterman
Year: 2007
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Dana Jackson
Date reviewed: 4/2009

Pop culture genius Chuck Klosterman presents an anthology of his writings including celebrity interviews, columns, and a novella. The first section, "Things That Are True," holds celebrity interviews and profile pieces written for various publications including Spin and Esquire. These range from an odd interview with Val Kilmer, an even odder interview with Britney Spears ("Britney Spears is the most famous person I've ever interviewed. She is also the weirdest. I assume this is not a coincidence."), and his seven day trial of eating only McDonald's Chicken Nuggets and "Goth Day" at Disney Land.

The next section, "Things That Might Be True," includes insightful and thought-provoking journalistic pieces, mostly personal opinion, but Klosterman wants you to think, not push an agenda. Some of the topics he addresses are how to identify your personal arch enemy, the Olympics, and the general view of pop culture. In this last essay, I think is the best line of the book, "In a democracy, don't get pissed off over the fact that the way you feel about culture isn't some kind of universal consensus. Because if you do, you will end up feeling betrayed. And it will be your own fault. You will feel bad, and you will deserve it." The last section, "Something That Isn’t True at All," is a short story written in 1999.

Klosterman takes on pop culture with humor, intelligence, natural snarkyness, and compassion. This book is highly recommended.

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Title: Classical Painting Atelier: A Contemporary Guide to Traditional Studio Practice
by Juliette Aristides
Year: 2008
Format: Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Denise Lozeau
Date reviewed: 10/2011

Sometimes my schedule is just too full to allow a lot of reading time, in which case I enjoy taking home an adult version of a 'picture book' just to look at the pictures. To me, 'picture reading' still provides hours of pleasure and relaxation. In the case of Classical Painting Atelier, there are enough informational illustrations to browse, along with the art selections, so that interesting details and lessons can still be gleaned without investing a lot of reading time.

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Title: Cruise confidential : a hit below the waterline
by Brian Bruns
Year: 2008
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Jana Atkins
Date reviewed: 5/2012

Ever go on a vacation and wonder how the other half lives? Of course not. It would ruin your vacation. But after you get home, pick up this book and find out what goes on behind the scenes. Mr. Bruns is the first American to make it through a whole contract working in the dining rooms in the Carnival fleet. He tells story after story about his adventures and misadventures in his quest to spend time with his girlfriend – and perhaps get a promotion. Some of the stories are cautionary tales of American rudeness, some are heartwarming stories about community and international relations, and others are just R-rated – so beware. This book will change your view of the whole travel industry, even if you never want to take a cruise.

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Title: DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes
by Les Daniels
Year: 1995
Format: Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 10/2011

Characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are now iconic images of American pop culture. The once ridiculed comic book has grown not only to be respected but also to make billions of dollars annually in a variety of media. Les Daniels' DC Comics: 60 Years traces the history of the first great and best recognized comic book publisher from its early days in pulp to the modern era.

Chronologically organized chapters bring DC Comics from the birth of the super hero, through World War II and the comics explosion that followed, past the comics slump of the late sixties, to a rebirth two decades later, and into today's culture. The pop icons of DC Comics changed costume, character, and mission (and sometimes gained new super powers) through the ages as they became less and less the stuff of children and gained an adult audience, as well. Some have made the leap from the written page to radio, movie serials, television, and ultimately the feature film.

DC Comics: 60 Years discusses the merging of heroes in a single storyline, how the DC universe wound up with several storylines that used the same characters, and how the creative minds at DC dealt with the confusing continuity. Scattered through several chapters is the rise of the super groups, such as the All-Star Squadron, the Justice Society, the Teen Titans, and the Justice League. There are also some failed and just odd heroes and villains that didn't make the cut.

Although the book is primarily concerned with the super hero genre, it also contains some information on the non-hero comics published by DC Comics and the company's imprints All-American Comics and Vertigo, such as animal cartoons, westerns, science fiction, horror, romance, mystery, and war stories. DC is a wonderfully illustrated tome, half history book and half pictorial. It is certainly worth a gander.

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Title: Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives
by Michael Specter
Year:
Format: Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 10/2010

Every scientific discovery has its detractors, some whose opinions stem from actual concern and some who simply desire profit or attention. Until very recently science has been perceived as the method through which we gain information, a supplier of knowledge. Today, however, there are entire communities that denounce one proven benefit or another, their voices louder and more influential than ever, due mostly to new media, such as the internet.

Michael Specter's Denialism takes a look at the reasons people have lost faith in the scientific community. In some instances, there are profound, justified - even if incorrect - reasons for not trusting science. But many of the causes of this mass exodus from the everyday belief in medicine and technology are rooted in superstition and misinformation. Either way, these groups spread their belief systems to eager audiences who are ill-prepared to discover the facts for themselves, turning small protests into full-scale movements.

Denialism includes discussions on why people fear science, the anti-vaccine panic, organic foods, natural cures, genetics and the fear of racial discrimination, and synthetic biology (biotechnology). While the topics get very detailed as each chapter progresses, the basic information on each is meted out early on. Readers may choose to move on to the next chapter halfway through the current one without missing the crux of an argument. This is an interesting compilation of related subject matter - backed by scientific evidence and illustrated by detailed descriptions of actual events - that promises to enlighten the public and perhaps help individuals think more objectively and steer clear of irrational group thinking.

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Title: The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
by Erik Larson
Year: 2003
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Dana Jackson
Date reviewed: 11/2008

The Devil in the White City is an intriguing, true account of nineteenth-century America and is written so that each chapter takes the reader into the lives of two, very different men. Within the historical context of the Gilded Age, Larson provides a glimpse into good and evil, why some men try to create the impossible while others strive to generate misery.

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Title: Diving bell and the butterfly : a memoir of life in death
by Jean-Dominique Bauby
Year: 1998
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Amanda Lemon
Date reviewed: 11/2008

Jean Dominique Bauby used to be the "man" of French fashion, but when the 43 year old editor-in-chief of Elle France suffered a stroke in 1995, he found himself instead a man with only one working eye and brain. Bauby's stroke led him to suffer from a condition known as "locked in" syndrome. While his whole body remained motionless through paralysis, his brain and eye worked.

One of his nurses developed a system in which Bauby could communicate with others. Bauby would blink when the alphabet (reorganized with the most frequently used letters being read first) was read to him, letting him dictate his memoirs of life in death in this 144 page book - with the blink of his eye.

A thin book full of inspirational words, self-pity and humor, Bauby traces his readers through his life, his regrets, and his loves.

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Title: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by Philip Dick
Year: 1996
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Paul Stenis
Date reviewed: 11/2009

If you've heard of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? you probably know it inspired Ridley Scott's 1982 cult movie Blade Runner. As with many film adaptations of books, the film doesn't quite get it right. Despite the movie's bleak atmospherics and disappointing performance at the box office, filmmakers changed the plot significantly and toned down the darkness before bringing it to the big screen. Harrison Ford famously claims to have read the voice over narrations badly with the hope that they'd be excluded from the film - they weren't excluded until the release of the director's cut on VHS.

Dick didn't write happy stories, and it's almost impossible to read him without cozying up to his paranoia or his fascination with false realities. Like his other books, this one is dark, complicated, and metaphysical, but it also satisfies a science fiction junkie's craving for plot device and sci-fi tropes. The basic premise of the book is the same as the movie's: Rick Deckard is cop and bounty hunter. His job: "retire" escaped Nexus-6 androids. His method: test empathic responses via Voight-Kampff. But the similarities end there. More characters, twists, and fake religions inhabit the world of the novel. Androids are called "andys" instead of "replicants," and Deckard is married. Like Rick, his wife Iran is obsessed with possessing a real animal, the ultimate status symbol here. But what seems most admirable about Dick's writing is his ability to blur the line between man and machine. Our journey through the story, like Deckard's, is fraught with complex illusions, each of which causes us to question our humanity. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was originally published in 1968.

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Title: Doomsday Book
by Connie Willis
Year: 1992
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Jana Atkins
Date reviewed: 4/2011

I read this book on a recommendation because I am fascinated with the Middle Ages and with the Black Death in particular. Several historians in the latter half of the 21st century have discovered how to time travel using the laws of Physics. They have already traveled to the 19th and 20th centuries and studied parts of these such as the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. But no one has traveled further back than the 17th century. Kivrin Engle, heading Oxford in the year 1320, is to be the first. Her mentor, Mr. Dunworthy, worries nonstop about every possibility.

Something goes terribly wrong and Kivin unknowingly arrives in the Middle Ages just before Christmas 1348, only a few weeks before the Black Death arrives. Mr. Dunworthy, back in 2054, knows something has gone wrong, but he doesn't know exactly what. His technician collapses from an illness just as he is trying to tell Mr. Dunworthy what went wrong. Back in 1348, Kivrin has developed the same illness, a flu strain, and is forced to recover without the help of modern medicine. She spends a short time getting to know the family who takes care of her and making notes about everyday life before the Black Death arrives to prevent her from doing anything more than average chores and helping the local priest take care of the townspeople who are sick. She sees firsthand the effect a major epidemic has on a small hamlet in rural England while back in the modern version of the same city, history seems to repeat itself.

As someone who is not generally a fan of the science fiction genre, this book feels like an odd combination of history and science fiction. But I found this book amusing in the sense that in trying to anticipate 65 years into the future, the author couldn't fathom something we recognize as very basic part of life - wireless connectivity. The characters have video telephone systems, but they are still tethered to the wires at home and office in order to use the phones. Also, initially I didn't particularly care for the cold manner in which the characters related to each other, which I attributed as a science fiction style of writing. But as the book progressed and the epidemic took its toll in both time periods, the relationships changed - they became warmer and it was easier to get interested in the characters. I was glad I decided to plod through the difficult part of the book because by the time I was partway in, I was hooked. I simply couldn't put it down without knowing if Mr. Dunworthy was able to bring Kivrin home or what became of the characters Kivrin met in her trip to the past.

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Title: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Cutting a Dash – The Radio Series that Inspired the Hit Book
Year: 2004
Format: Book Audio CD   (Non-Fiction)
Review by: Jeanette Norris
Date reviewed: 11/2010

Though this CD has taken on the name of the best-selling book (which we reviewed last fall and is available at the library), it is the British radio series, Cutting a Dash, and not a recording of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Though the book may believe in zero-tolerance, the radio show takes a slightly different approach; some punctuation rules may be open to interpretation. While all this may bring back memories of sixth grade language arts, the series is a humorous, well-executed examination of language and culture.

These light-hearted discussions are part grammar, linguistic history, culture, and comedy. It is an enjoyable hour that leaves the listener amused, and ever-conscious of his/her punctuation. Each episode addresses a different type of punctuation as well as broader linguistic questions, such as the role of punctuation in language and why it is so difficult for people to write correctly, and whether it is important. The author argues that punctuation rules are vital because they clarify the meaning of written language; after all, grammar mistakes are funny because they produce alternate and unintended interpretations, which are usually inappropriate for the context. I would recommend this CD to anyone who is interested in language and is looking to listen to something a little different.

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Title: Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
by Lynne Truss
Year: 2004
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Abbey Warner
Date reviewed: 11/2009

Grammar, spelling, usage, and punctuation errors can be funny. I saw a sign in a department store that said "Childrenswear." Yes, they do, but isn't that only an indication of the coarsening of our society? However, most errors of English are only painful and plentiful.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation comforts me that I'm not the only stickler for whom the sight of plurals as plural's and quotation marks for "emphasis" causes pain; there are others who rally 'round standard English. This is not to be confused with the English standard, the flag of England that was used before James VI also became James I. Oh, dear. It's so difficult to be perfectly clear when one is a stickler.

The author, Lynne Truss, can pinpoint the moment when she went quietly berserk and swore to set us all straight, once and for all. A grocer's signs pushed her over the edge in autumn of 2002 and unleashed her Inner Stickler (in this case, capitalization is used as a device of irony, elevating a term to the status of a proper noun). She vowed to write a book about this, and this; and this - and this!

The author combines instruction with humor for a quick read and a sense that a well-constructed sentence could quite conceivably right every wrong and elucidate the masses. In a society that seems to revel in ignorance and equate precise language with elitism, her fearless advocacy of standards is refreshing.

I have only one stickleresque suggestion: the subtitle "Zero Tolerance Approach" should be "Zero-Tolerance Approach."

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Title: Eden's Outcasts
by John Matteson
Year: 2008
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Amy Merill
Date reviewed: 11/2009

In Eden's Outcasts, John Matteson poignantly captures the unique and often strained bond between Louisa May Alcott and her father. Amos Bronson Alcott had a significant influence on the writings of his daughter. Not only was he an innovative writer and philosopher in his own right, but he associated with other artists, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. Alcott absorbed the creativity of these artists and the artists included in the family library. As one of the proprietors of the transcendentalist movement, Bronson's ideology can be seen in works like Little Women. Alcott shared her father's socio-political passions, yet as alike as their personalities were, they often came into conflict. Her writings were considerably better known than her father's and she took on the role for providing for the family when Bronson was unable. Throughout her life, Alcott strived to balance the role of patriarchy while exerting her own feminist point of view.

John Matteson seamlessly executes the daunting task of a double biography, constructing the work with care and insight. He examines the tenants of transcendental thinking and the climate of the nineteenth century that shaped this dynamic family and their imaginations.

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Title: Falling Angels
by Tracy Chevalier
Year: 2002
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Denise Lozeau
Date reviewed: 4/2011

Notes: The changing social climate in England, spurred by the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, is reflected in the lives of Maude Coleman and Lavinia Waterhouse, two young girls of different classes who meet and become fast friends while their families are visiting adjoining funeral plots.

Review: Author Tracy Chevalier has a talent for writing historical novels that transport you to another time and place. Her characters are captivating and easy to accept, and the reader quickly becomes immersed in their daily lives. As a reader in the 21st century, it's interesting to see how historical events even at the level of individual lives have influenced the world we live in today.

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Title: False Memory
by Dean Koontz
Year: 1999
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Jana Atkins
Date reviewed: 12/2011

Marty and Dusty are just two average people who get by in the world by hard work and lending a helping hand when needed. Dusty has a brother, Skeet, with a troubled past that sometimes gets in the way of his present. Marty's friend Susan has agoraphobia, which keeps her from being able to function outside her own home. Marty and Dusty are doing just fine until suddenly, Marty becomes afraid she will use anything available to attack others. It becomes apparent, soon enough, that something far more sinister is going on.

This was my first experience with a Dean Koontz novel, and I have to say it won't be the last one. I was led to read False Memory through my interest in detective fiction. After a slow start, I was soon sucked into the suspense of a modern interpretation of The Manchurian Candidate, complete with hypnotism, brainwashing, and being controlled by other people. The events of the book are disturbing, sometimes violent, but I felt like the author combined the details used to build the story incredibly well. In addition, he left plenty of clues for a reader paying close attention to discover the resolution before it is revealed near the end.

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Title: Farmer Giles of Ham
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Year: 1950
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Luci Seem
Date reviewed: 11/2009

Some 40 miles, as the dragon flies, from Stonehenge is the village of Ham. This is the setting for one of Tolkien’s lighter stories. The time was "after the days of King Coel maybe, but before Arthur or the Seven Kingdoms of the English." (p. 8)

This story contains things familiar to Tolkien readers like talking animals, dragons, heroes, knights, and the linguistics roots Tolkien loved to play with. Farmer Giles moves up in society using many mythical aspects and fairy tale twists. Another main character is Chrysophylax Dives, the dragon. He is more lighthearted than Smaug of The Hobbit fame, but more serious than The Reluctant Dragon of Kenneth Grahame's tale.

Giles' use of a blunderbuss to ward off a giant will remind Grimm fans of the Seven At One Blow story, later made famous by Mickey Mouse. Although this selection is found in the Children's collection, it is an enjoyable read for a short holiday. With Farmer Giles of Ham you have something to share with family during the break. Or you can set yourself the challenge of counting the references made to other myths, fairy tales, and legends, as well as the linguistic puns and jokes.

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Title: The First Billion Is the Hardest
by T. Boone Pickens
Year: 2008
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Allan Goode
Date reviewed: 4/2009

"Don't rush the monkey, and you'll see a better show." That’s the first of many "Booneisms" in this sanitized version of Pickens' rise from humble Holdenville, OK to Mesa Ranch, his 68,000 acre spread in the Texas panhandle. I'm not quite sure how to interpret the quote above, but it does sound like something a good ole boy billionaire would say, which is close to my reaction after finishing this book.

Pickens covers most of his business dealings, including the establishment of Mesa Petroleum, his sometimes hostile takeovers and rise to fame and fortune in the 80's, his downfall with Mesa in the 90's, followed by his comeback this decade as a spectacularly successful commodity trader, hedge fund manager and philanthropist.

In the back of this book, he touts his "Pickens Plan" as the best way to get our country weaned from foreign oil. I salute his conversion to using cleaner fuels and alternative energy sources, but it seems awfully late in coming given his lifelong involvement in the oil business. This is the man who contributed heavily to both Bush's and thinks Ronald Reagan was our greatest president. It's hard to take his conversion at face value. He has done many admirable things, however, and as he would say, "When you're hunting elephants, don’t get distracted chasing rabbits."

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Title: Garden Spells
by Sarah Addison Allen
Year: 2008
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Mary Huffman
Date reviewed: 12/2008

This enchanting tale combines magic, herbs, a garden, an apple tree that throws apples, and the members of the Waverly family in a small town in North Carolina. It is rumored that if anyone eats an apple off the tree, the biggest event of their lives will be revealed to them. There is no guarantee, however, that the event will be a pleasant one. So, Chloe Waverly buries the apples, tends the garden, and runs a successful catering business using herbs she prepares.

Her estranged sister returns to town unexpectedly with her young daughter, and the quiet life Chloe has chosen for herself suddenly starts changing. Mix in an aunt who has a special knack for giving people something they will need (in the future), add a new neighbor, some old acquaintances, romance and family secrets and you will find a great recipe for enjoyment. Join the fun and this family in this delightful story.

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Title: Girl With the Pearl Earring
by Tracy Chevalier
Year: 1999
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Denise Lozeau
Date reviewed: 4/2011

This is a wonderfully entertaining historical fictional novel that tells the story of how Vermeer came to paint his masterpiece, "The Girl with a Pearl Earring" in the 17th century. The book presents an interesting perspective on the private lives of the Vermeer family and the community at large.

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Title: The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman
Year: 2009
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Abbey Warner
Date reviewed: 3/2010

This is considered a children's book (5th - 8th grade), but I like Neil Gaiman so much that I thought I'd give it a whirl, even in large print. I recommend it for kids; I don't think this book would be any more scary than any of R.L. Stine's "Goosebumps" series. It has good tidbits of wisdom for kids, like these: cemeteries can be nature preserves and have a beauty of their own; people in them were just people like you and it is simply impolite and disrespectful to be frightened of them; and although vocabulary and etiquette may change over centuries, you could communicate with someone from long ago and find that you have much in common.

I wanted the author to fill in the sketchy details of some of the subplots. He definitely could have provided a better logic for how the villian locates the hero again, and how his version of the underworld is organized. It could have been at least 50 pages longer without being too much for a youngster to read. On the other hand, maybe he's saving details for a series - maybe this is the first in a series of books about the adventures of Bod (Nobody Owens). I hope so.

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Title: The Great Typo Hunt : Two friends changing the world, one correction at a time
by Jeff Deck
Year: 2010
Format: Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Denise Lozeau
Date reviewed: 4/2011

Notes: The Great Typo Hunt is a humorous, insightful tale of adventure, misplaced apostrophes, and the open road. It describes how we took a two-and-a-half month drive around the United States to fix typos in public signage, toting an arsenal of typo correction that included markers, Wite-Out, and chalk—and how we were later summoned to federal court for defacing a historic sign at the Grand Canyon.

Besides detailing the comical adventures of typo correcting, the book shows how the pursuit of typos led us to broader social issues, such as cultural homogenization, race relations, workplace repression, and education. There have been books about spelling and grammatical errors, and there have been books about quixotic road trips, but ours is the first to combine the two - not to mention the first book about fixing typos rather than complaining about them.

Anyone who's ever been annoyed or frustrated by a typo will enjoy this book. Editors, teachers, educational administrators, librarians, and writers will especially relate to the tale; the many amateur grammarians from other walks of life will also gravitate to The Great Typo Hunt (we heard from plenty during the trip!). If you enjoy adventurous exploits with plenty of grammatical swashbuckling, our book is for you! http://greattypohunt.com/?page_id=19

Review: The title of The Great Typo Hunt really grabbed my attention because I’m one of those people that cringe at the sight of a typo on any public sign or published materials. My reaction is always, "That is so obvious! How did that get by them???" and makes me fear for the future of grammar and spelling. I took the book home and started reading it, but somehow the story didn't suck me in the way the title had. I’ve decided I really LIKE the concept of the book and I will give it another try sometime in the near future.

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Title: The Help
by Kathryn Stockett
Year: 2009
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Luci Seem
Date reviewed: 12/2011

Stockett uses her character Skeeter to walk you through a dark time in our country's history in the 60's. She does it with an attention to detail and dialect, and pulls you in with a beautiful portrait of the characters. Skeeter wants to hone her skills as a writer and is told to write “about what disturbs you”. She finds her subject in her home, Jackson Mississippi where, in order for the white country club women in town to be free for their committees and teas, the maids are also nannies.

One maid, Aibileen, helps Skeeter by convincing the other maids of the town to let her write about their lives, raising white children, cooking, but not being trusted to polish the silver. They could clean the bathrooms, but had to go outside to the outhouse or a special toilet for blacks.

Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minny, one of the first to talk, are all taking a risk in putting together their book of the secrets behind the doors and lives of the small town elite. Although the specific time has passed the issues of the "others", who are allowed into our lives only so far, are still with us. The story is warm, poignant, heartbreaking, startling, and at times comical.

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Title: Her Fearful Symmetry: a Novel
by Audrey Niffenegger
Year: 2009
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Denise Lozeau
Date reviewed: 3/2010

When Elspeth Noblin dies, she leaves everything to the 20-year-old American twin daughters of her own long-estranged twin, Edie. Valentina and Julia, as enmeshed as Elspeth and Edie once were, move into Elspeth's London flat and through a series of developing relationships a crisis develops that could pull the twins apart.

While this novel has unexpected twists and turns, they are subtle enough for even the faint of heart who can't handle intense suspense, like this reader. The book is a pleasant weekend diversion.

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Title: The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
by JRR Tolkien
Year: 1938
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 3/2010

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, Tolkien's first major work, is often referred to as the prequel to his masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings. Originally intended as a solitary work of fiction, The Hobbit has been re-edited several times for new printings, usually to make the events of the story better coincide with The Lord of the Rings, or the true prequel, The Silmarilion.

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit - one of a race of half-sized, happy-go-lucky creatures very similar to men but with little sense of adventure - who lives in a well-furnished hole in the side of a hill in the Shire, the homeland of most hobbits. When the wandering wizard Gandalf and thirteen dwarves show up on his doorstep one day, he leaves his hillside home and is led across the world of Middle Earth, through many dangers, to the Lonely Mountain to liberate the dwarves' treasure hoard from the evil dragon, Smaug. In Gandalf's absence, Bilbo repeatedly finds a way to escape trouble and save the dwarves from certain death, only to discover that they have no plan to defeat the seemingly indestructible Smaug once they get there.

As the adventure progresses, Bilbo's timidity wanes, and he becomes more and more helpful - even necessary - as Gandalf said he would be. It is through his eyes we see the group's misery, fear, and indecision. It is Bilbo, the party's smallest member, that saves them from physical harm - more or less - and it is Bilbo, the meekest and least assuming of their number, who tempers their greed and averts a battle with elves and men. And, of course, it is Bilbo Baggins who finds the magic ring that sets the stage for the greatest fantasy epic of all time.

While at least one copy of this title is listed as a children's book, this tale is certainly not reserved for them. At over 300 pages, The Hobbit is a lengthy story for a faerie tale, full of action and violence (though never graphic), a legend in its own right, and a wonderful beginning to Tolkien's magnificent epic.

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Title: A Homemade Life
by Molly Wizenberg
Year: 2010
Format: Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Mendi Sumter
Date reviewed: 11/2010

This book appears at first glance to be a collection of recipes and anecdotes by popular blogger Molly Wizenberg (Orangette). But there is more to this book than meets the eye. Each recipe is accompanied by a short glimpse of the life of the author and tells a story about a young woman by examining the recipes that were special to her family. We follow her life from childhood stories about watching her mother make Christmas cookies and candies, to her young adulthood in college and abroad in Paris where she fell in love and learned to make puff pastry.

Anyone who loves reading about food and discovering new recipes will find something to love about this book. But underneath the love of food and cooking is a special story about a daughter's relationship with her family. This is a fun read any time of year, but the recipes and stories about food and family make it especially touching read during the holidays.

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Title: Hoodoo
by Susan Cummins Miller
Year: 2008
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Allan Goode
Date reviewed: 3/2010

Set in the Chiricahua Mountains of southeast Arizona (highlighted in a recent Discovery Channel feature as one of America's most beautiful areas), this mystery has elements of the recently departed Tony Hillerman's work, but with the main character looking in on the Native American tribe (Apache) instead of looking out from it.

Geologist Frankie MacFarlane becomes a suspect in a series of murders and enlists her field trip students and her Apache friends to help find the real culprits. Both the recent and distant past play a part in solving the puzzle, and the plot has some informative aspects to it, especially regarding mining and mineral rights.

The characters are well developed except for Frankie, but since this is the fourth in the series, I'm sure there was more in the previous stories. Some of the geological details were a little too obscure for me, but I'm sure some readers would enjoy them.

The writing is not up to Hillerman's standard, but it's fine, and at least the subject matter and setting are appealing.

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Title: The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
Year: 2010
Format: Book   (fiction)
Review by: Abbey Warner
Date reviewed: 10/2010

Imagine the Roman Empire set in the near-future Americas and you have "The Hunger Games" series. I was a bit hesitant to get into the story because they're considered Young Adult and I wasn't interested in teen angst, but after people insisted, "You MUST read The Hunger Games!" I relented, and now I insist to others, "You MUST read The Hunger Games!" The other two books in the trilogy are "Catching Fire" and "Mockingjay."

The trilogy is packed full of interesting ideas, vivid descriptions, and a vision of the near future that isn't too outlandish to believe. The upside of Young Adult lit is that everything is explained clearly without digressions or subplots, and there's very little to ponder over or absorb slowly, which makes the reading very quick.

The main character, Katniss, is from a distant, destitute district that has been conquered by the Capitol. The Hunger Games are an annual, televised fight-to-the-death game demanded by the Capitol. Each year, a boy and a girl are chosen at random from 12 districts and prepared to fight in the arena, an artificial landscape with various types of terrain. The contestants may choose to fight with stealth or strength, but the last one standing wins special goods for his or her district for the year. The main plot of the trilogy slowly becomes clear: this is a story of an insurgency, about how Katniss becomes the symbol and catalyst for the rebellion against overlords who live in luxury while remaining happily ignorant of the suffering of those they compel to serve them, supply them with goods, and die for their entertainment.

Despite some unbelievability of the technology, I give it 5 stars out of 5.

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Title: I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
by Tucker Max
Year: 2006
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Amanda Lemon
Date reviewed: 4/2009

Tucker Max is not a gentleman. In fact, he's the antithesis of a gentleman.

I first heard of Tucker Max back in college when his website and online adventures were the talk du jour. I also remember being torn as whether to spit at my screen or fall out of my chair laughing at his dalliances with the opposite sex. He's crude, he's rude and appears to have no sympathy or regret to the victims/places he encounters.

However, with all that. . .I couldn’t put this down; just as I couldn't stop checking his website all those years ago as an undergrad. There’s something about the sheer audacity of this man that makes you turn page after page.

Recommended if you're looking for the insights of a cad. Not recommended if you've recently broken up with one.

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Title: I Lick My Cheese: the roommate frontlines
by Oonagh O'Hagan
Year: 2009
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 10/2009

Most of us have had to share a place with someone else, whether friend or stranger. Sometimes it works out. At others, well... And sometimes the issues are too maddening, too annoying, or too embarrassing to discuss face to face.

I Lick my Cheese is a fast, fun look into confrontation avoidance among roommates through a wide variety of situations. From stolen food and borrowed clothing to irritating personal habits, from fighting over the remote to taking "personal time" in the common area, this book has it all. While many of the notes are aimed at irresponsible living partners, some are written by the thoughtless jerks themselves. Of course some are quite complimentary, while others are just petty.

O'Hagan's book is divided into four chapters based on rooms of the household and thus different types of problems. Each note has a brief commentary, discussing the background or points of interest, adding a bit of humor here and there. Although it is closer to digest-size, this is a great coffee table style book, a bit raunchy in places and very British, but good for some belly laughs.

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Title: In a Sunburned Country
by Bill Bryson
Year: 2001
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Allan Goode
Date reviewed: 4/2009

If you have seen Baz Luhmann's "Australia", the most cliche-ridden film since just about any of the "Friday the 13th" releases, then you might be less inclined to read anything about one of the most unique countries in the world. I urge you to reconsider and give Bill Bryson a chance to entice you with his tales of its geographic extremes; "Australia is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile, and climatically aggressive of the inhabited continents." Its friendly people; "I have never before felt like thanking an entire nation for helping me write a book." And its hostile animal life; "It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian."

It gets better. After his story of the discovery of the insect called Nothomyrmesia macrops, he remarks, "This is a country that is at once staggeringly empty and yet packed with stuff. Interesting stuff, ancient stuff, stuff not readily explained, stuff yet to be found. Trust me, this is an interesting place."

Trust me, this is an interesting and entertaining read.

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Title: John Adams
by David McCullough
Year: 2001
Format: Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Abbey Warner
Date reviewed: 4/2011

Have you ever wondered why John Adams was the front center of the famous painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence by John Trumball? I think it's because he was short, and you always put the shorties in the front row of group shots. On such tiny hinges does the narrative of history swing. That's a trivial example of a profound idea behind this book: it mattered who was there at the writing of the Declaration of Independence, and without all of them being there, the founding principles of the colonies would not have coelesced into the United States of America.

John Adams' life was devoted to his country, even if it meant being separated from his beloved Abigail for long periods of time, crossing the Atlantic 4 times in ambassadorial roles, and facing ridicule in England as the first ambassador of the US. He stuck with his assignment in England, even as he longed to be at home when the Constitution was being written. If he and Abigail had been back in the U.S., could he have persuaded the Constitution to include freedom for slaves? We'll never know. He was where duty called.

He could be dour, sour, vain, disapproving, pinched-faced, and narrow, and as chief executive he made more than one astounding blunder, but his rhetoric soared and inspired and his devotion was deep and real. David McCullough does an outstanding job of showing all the complicated facets of John Adams. I'm a fan.

Related:
The HBO adaptation of John Adams is fantastically good, even if it does skimp on some of the pivotal scenes - Bunker/Breed's Hill, for example - because they would have been expensive to film. There are unnecessary little inaccuracies that the film makers introduced for dramatic effect, like the details of how and when Abigail and the children were innoculated, but they're inconsequential. I saw this 7-part series in Blu-ray, which the library doesn't own, but the Blu-ray provides so much more detail that in my opinion it added approximately 20% more enjoyment to the experience. Approximately. The casting is brilliant, the dialog crackles, the scene sets are pause-worthy. It's fantastic all the way around.

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Title: Just a Guy: Notes from a Blue-Collar Life
by Bill Engvall
Year: 2007
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Jana Atkins
Date reviewed: 11/2009

I've had a mild obsession with Bill Engvall's career for at least 15 years or so. I was very excited to find his book Just a Guy: Notes from a Blue Collar Life. Rather than compile a book of shtick, he wrote an autobiography. Some of it's funny, some of it is completely unfunny but emotional.

You can see where he got some of his stand-up bits (or perhaps he used his stand-up bits to embellish the book?). Most likely, it’s a little of both, heavy on the life side. He talks about growing up in various places, his love of baseball, his parents' divorce and his father's subsequent remarriage, how he met his wife, and the story of their 2 children.

Reading this book was like getting a day-long dosing of Engvall stand up. Instead of watching the same hour of two of the same stuff over and over again, it was new every time I picked it up. And even though I had heard some of the stories before, there was a lot of new material in there.

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Title: Lincoln Shot: A President's Life Remembered
by Barry Denenberg
Year: 2008
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Mary Huffman
Date reviewed: 11/2009

Step into the world of President Abraham Lincoln as you never have before in this newspaper formatted biography. This book is large enough to prop easily on a desk top and each page looks like (and reads like) an old newspaper. It includes printed headlines from actual newspapers during the time period, advertisements, photographs, facsimiles' of documents, drawings, and much more. It's easy to read and once you pick it up and start reading you won't want to put it down until you're finished it.

The book begins with the headline of Lincoln Shot dated April 14, 1866, and as you turn each page you will be drawn deeper and deeper into the President's personal life from his boyhood until his death. You will learn about his personality, his home life, his family, and his political life from the stories in this biography. Read about his mischievous son, Tad, and some of the trouble he got into. See a perspective of the Civil War you've never seen before in the pages, meet the generals of the armies and learn about their personalities, and the problems Lincoln had with some of them. Not only will the book itself grab your eye, but the contents will certainly grab your attention! Happy reading!

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Title: Lopsided: How Having Breast Cancer Can Be Really Distracting
by Meredith Norton
Year: 2009
Format: Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Jana Atkins
Date reviewed: 10/2010

After reading the book Sick Girl by Amy Silverstein, I was intrigued about what else might be out there of the same sort. Basically, I was interested in the real story behind living with chronic illness. I found Lopsided. I was not disappointed. Ms. Norton was living in France with her husband and toddler, trying to improve her less than stellar command of the French language, when she discovered what she thought was an infection. Several doctors sent her home with different remedies and admonitions not to worry about it. But during a visit to her family in California, a quick visit to an American doctor yielded a much different diagnosis: Inflammatory Breast Cancer.

Rather than let the low survival rate stop her, she decided to be one of the other percentage - the ones who don't die from this disease. Similar to Sick Girl, I discovered that breast cancer, or at least this form of it, doesn't involve finding a lump, having a breast removed, getting chemotherapy through an IV, losing your hair, and getting all better in the end. It's just not that simple, and on second thought, I realized it's probably never that simple for any cancer patient, even when it goes exactly like that. In Ms. Norton's case, there was no lump - just something resembling an infection. She sassed her way past family members, various doctors, friends, and strangers, and managed to get through more courses of treatment than she was originally led to expect. She managed it all not completely without her moments of self-pity (who wouldn't), but all with humor, grace, dignity, self-deprecation, stumbles, and a mixed bag of life's trials. Lance Armstrong, she is not. Meredith Norton, she is. A "must read," this is. (Yoda, I am not.)

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Title: Lost in the Museum: Buried Treasures and the Stories They Tell
by Nancy Moses
Year: 2008
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Abbey Warner
Date reviewed: 4/2009

Nancy Moses shares stories that emerge from asking museum curators, "What one artifact comes to mind when you think of an object with a memorable story?" The artifacts range from a silver bowl given in congratulations to a bloody union-busting tycoon; the delicate gown of a Tibetan princess; and rather gruesome medical artifacts.

Even more interesting, though are Dr. Moses' insider views of the challenges facing museum directors, from collections management (she admits wanting to haul away piles of junk in the middle of the night) to no-win financial decisions. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the preservation of material culture.

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Title: Lyrics by Sting
by Sting
Year: 2007
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 10/2009

Gordon Matthew Sumner, a.k.a. Sting, the front man for the Police was also the band's chief songwriter. Some of his music defined the 1980s. From the well-known to the obscure, Lyrics by Sting collects his one hundred ten songs from twelve albums (five with the Police, seven solo).

The collection of "poems" is organized chronologically by album. Each section has an introduction describing the circumstances around the writing and recording of each album. Most of the songs are introduced with some insight into the inspiration behind the lyrics. Sienna-toned photographs chronicle the many looks of the artist himself through the decades.

If you've ever wondered what line in a Police song truly meant or never quite understood the words to begin with, here's a chance to find out. While far from biographical, Lyrics by Sting is an interesting look into the mind of a modern poet. And you may find yourself singing the songs in your head as you read.

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Title: Maisie Dobbs
by Jacqueline Winspear
Year: 2004
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Abigail Bibee
Date reviewed: 12/2009

If you want a good mystery that isn't drenched in suspense, but delivers a thoughtful and tender story, this book is for you. This novel is set in post-World War I London. Maisie Dobbs, the novel's heroine, has recently set up a private detective agency. Maisie's intelligence, intuition and charm assist her in solving a bizarre case involving the mysterious deaths of seriously disfigured veterans who have been living away from society on an estate in the country.

The story does not solely revolve around this mysterious estate, but also traces Maisie's own journey, as a youth maneuvering through various social classes, to attending Cambridge, and eventually to her training as a nurse in France during World War I.

This novel thoughtfully explores the aftermath of war and the wounds it inflicts on veterans, their loved ones and society in general. Indeed, Maisie herself is healing from invisible war wounds, including dealing with the terrible things she witnessed as a nurse on the battlefield and the loved-ones she lost.

Overall, this is a very well written, satisfying mystery. Thankfully, this is the first in a series of novels starring Maisie Dobbs. So, for fans of this book, there are several more mysteries to look forward to Maisie Dobbs solving.

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Title: Makers
by Cory Doctorow
Year: 2009
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Abbey Warner
Date reviewed: 4/2011

The world may not be flat, like Thomas Friedman says. The way Cory Doctorow describes it, the world is more like a motorcycle stunt sphere, with new ideas spinning around. The only way these guys can survive is to accelerate and ignore the dizziness.

Like a cage-rider show, the book starts out interesting but not crazy. "New Work" is a micro-manufacturing movement that repurposes e-waste into helpful and entertaining new gadgets, and whole communities spring up to support the work and workers. Then the movement goes global and changes the whole structure of the economy. Unintended mayhem emerges, but new creativity corrects the problems. And then another thing, and another thing, like one motorcycle in the sphere defying gravity isn't enough, so let's have two! Now let's have two, and a ring of fire!

I was immersed and intrigued, then just as I was beginning to get a little bored, there was a new twist and I was interested again. The popularity of some of the inventions puzzled me, but fads often puzzle me. Then of course there were the familiar Doctorow themes like his fixation with Disneyworld, rage against bureaucracy, and adoration of hacker culture and squatter lifestyle. I was offended by Doctorow's bigoted attitude toward overweight people, but even with these caveats, I think you'll enjoy the show.

Related books by Cory Doctorow:
For the Win - 5 stars! This one's about efforts to unionize online game workers around the world; full of fascinating Big Ideas. My favorite: a contract worker monitors an online game looking for players who do unexpected things or cause errors. The worker contracts for 90 seconds to fix the blip. He doesn't get paid for the time he spends waiting for an anomaly, only for the time he's actively working. The implications are immense.

Little Brother - I haven't read this one, but it has a vocal and loyal fan base.

P.S. You can download Doctorow's books for free at craphound.com His opinion about e-books may be the most subversive and cool idea among all his ideas.

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Title: The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film: Based on the Lost Interviews from the Official Lucasfilm Archives
by J.W. Rinzler
Year: 2007
Format: Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 10/2011

Even though Star Wars was one of the highest grossing motion pictures ever, most people don't understand how much of a seat-of-the-pants production it really was. The grand vision that was stuck in the back of George Lucas' mind since grad school at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema began as little more than two pages of scribbled notes of a story entitled "Journal of the Whills."

The Making of Star Wars is an in-depth chronicle of the creative process from concept to end product. Each chapter includes a text box with an update of the story line called "Star Wars Progression." Script samples show the changes Lucas made both in the characters and the overall plot. Photographs of casting, model-making, filming, and personal moments illustrate the human side of the venture, while hand-written notes and crudely sketched character designs demonstrate the creative vision. Many of the concept sculptures by Colin Cantwell, concept paintings and drawings by Ralph McQuarrie, and storyboards by Alex Tavoularis are included, as well.

J.W. Rinzler's The Making of Star Wars is a wonderful book, both in its text and its illustrations. It is a must-read for the Star Wars fanatic or anyone interested in filmmaking and recommended to anyone who is simply curious about the creative process.

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Title: The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage
by Anthony Brandt
Year: 2010
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Emily Brown
Date reviewed: 12/2011

We currently live in an age plagued by melting polar ice and rising sea levels - but in the Man Who Ate His Boots we are taken to a pre-global warming arctic packed with ice and men with the tenacity to survive a freezing and often violent frozen wasteland.

In Man Who Ate His Boots, author Anthony Brandt illustrates the search for the Northwest Passage from beginning to harrowing end. The British felt it was their destiny to discover a shorter trade route to Asia, and after the Napoleonic Wars they set out to do just that.

Brandt takes the reader through true-life tales of ultimate survival- men faced starvation, freezing temperatures and scurvy in the name of the Northwest Passage. Several voyages did much to discover and map the Canadian archipelago, but the search for the Northwest Passage ended a mystery that has remained unsolved to this day.

Man Who Ate His Boots has many heroes, but tragedy for these brave sailors is never too far away. This book will introduce you to an era of adventure, hubris, and tragedy that is often overshadowed by the passage of time.

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Title: Microcosmos: discovering the world through microscopic images
by Brandon Broll
Year: 2007
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Mary Huffman
Date reviewed: 11/2008

Whether you’re a biologist, an artist, an engineer, a nurse, or just a person fascinated with the world around us, this book has 203 color images taken with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) of things too small to see with the naked eye. Step into the world of microorganisms, plants, animals, minerals, the human body, and technology and see the world from an entirely different perspective.

Each picture has a short title, a longer descriptive one, and shows how many times the image has been magnified. Have you ever seen an ant holding a microchip magnified 32 times? Or, have you ever looked at caterpillar feet magnified 60 times? Most people have heard about chromosomes, but you have you ever seen a picture of one magnified 21,000 times? This book is amazing, and the color enhanced photos are an artwork in themselves.

Step into the micro world when you turn each page, and let your imagination roam.

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Title: Millennium Trilogy
by Stieg Larsson
Year: 2008-2010
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Jeanette Norris
Date reviewed: 4/2011

When I'm travelling, I love to relax with a book that will hold my interest but doesn't require undivided attention. Stieg Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy" is a perfect example of this balance, and was enjoyable no matter what was going on around me. The three novels, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, follow the adventures of two well-developed and intriguing characters; Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist.

The first, and my favorite of the trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, introduces us to journalist Mikael Blomkvist, who has just been convicted of libel and hacker/investigator, Lisbeth Salander, who has been investigating him. Blomkvist is hired by a wealthy industrialist to look into the presumed murder of his niece; a case that has long since been abandoned by the police. The narrative winds between the actions of the two characters as their lives become more intertwined and as their investigations progress.

The following two novels, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, pick up one of the minor plot lines from the first book, and develop it into a full-fledged action story. They are written as two parts of a single arc, and move at faster pace than the first novel. Lisbeth finds herself being chased by the police and the novels' villains, while Mikael is desperately trying to protect her from both, even as she resists his intrusion into her affairs. Mikael's investigative magazine, Millennium, is working on a story and finds itself in the midst of a government conspiracy, to which Lisbeth is tangentially connected, but soon becomes the primary target of the people Millenium is investigating.

These three novels are perfect vacation fare as they envelope the reader in a mysterious and dangerous world of conspiracy, journalism, and spectacular hacking. In addition to the expertly-constructed characters and plots, these novels' intense descriptions of Sweden will make you want to take another trip this summer!

If you haven't read them yet, pick up these three novels from the library!

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Title: Mother Night
by Kurt Vonnegut
Year: 1966
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 4/2009

Vonnegut is a master of contemporary literature. His dark sense of humor and creativity combine to create a unique and thought-provoking situation. What would happen to a high profile, deep-cover spy when the war ended, and no one believed he wasn’t the enemy?

Howard W. Campbell, Jr., an American-born, German-raised citizen of the Third Reich and admitted apolitical artist, agrees to use his Berlin radio show to pass secrets to the Allies. As the voice of the Reich and the husband of Helga Noth, a famous German actress whose father is the chief of police of Berlin, he is above suspicion. After the war, he should be free to do as he pleases with the rest of his life, perhaps even move back to the United States. Unfortunately, the American government has classified the operation, and his collusion with the West cannot be shared with the world.

Moved to New York by the American government and given a new identity, Campbell spends most of his time mourning his beloved Helga, who he learned had been killed in the war. Now, a decade and a half after the end of the war, he befriends a Jewish doctor and his mother - both survivors of Auschwitz, as well as a widower portrait artist from Indiana, in his apartment building.

Campbell, now using his real name, believing everyone has forgotten about his part in the war, is discovered by a group of white supremacists who reunite him with his lost love, Helga, who tells him a story about being captured by the Russians and escaping to West Berlin. However, his re-discovered bliss doesn’t last long; the Israeli government has located him and wants him extradited to stand trial for war crimes.

By creating a highly flawed central character with mixed allegiances and setting him up against his own people, Vonnegut keeps his audience guessing whether or not Campbell will become what he pretended to be so well during the war or be completely vindicated in the end. Like most Vonnegut novels, an unusual cast of characters surrounds the protagonist, contrasting his own dreary existence. Mother Night might be Kurt Vonnegut’s greatest work. Quirky yet sad, bizarre yet soulful, this is a very good and fairly quick read.

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Title: The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri
Year: 2003
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Lauren Donaldson
Date reviewed: 12/2008

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged marriage, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along a first-generation path strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. (Review excerpt from Syndetic Solutions)

Why I chose this book:

The Namesake helped me gain a better understanding of the immigrant experience and the issues that many are faced with. The characters were very believable and by the end of the story I found myself wanting to read more on this topic. I don’t usually like to read fiction but would heartily recommend this book.

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Title: Nothing To Be Frightened Of
by Julian Barnes
Year: 2008
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Abbey Warner
Date reviewed: 10/2009

Julian Barnes has much of the depth of W. Somerset Maugham's The Summing Up combined with occasional flashes of Oscar Wilde's wicked sense of humor. His memoir, Nothing To Be Frightened Of, is an unhurried observation on the whole arc of life, the process of creation and fame and the inevitable fading into obscurity. He examines his life with unsentimental clarity and memorable quotes, like this one on why his brother seemed always optimistic and he, pessimistic: "He was breast-fed and I, bottle-fed; wherein I discern the bifurcation of our character." And another, speaking of the kinder, gentler post-Vatican II Catholicism: "even hell has been downgraded over the years in both probability and infernality."

It's not an easy book to read, and the quotable nuggets are sometimes hard-mined, but I recommend the experience of living with Julian for a few days. He brings company with him when he visits: Flaubert, Stendahl, Zola, Montaigne, Ravel, and others, examining how each faced the same dilemmas of their declining years - what he calls "pit-gazing." He steadfastly resists the urge to resolve their stories to a major chord before dying. As he says, "Doctors, priests, and novelists conspire to present human life as a story progressing towards a meaningful conclusion." He will not give false hope, but does affirm that life is worth living for itself alone ("I have never wanted the taste of a shotgun in my mouth") and for the sheer curiosity of what-comes-next.

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Title: The Outlaw Sea: a World of Freedom, Chaos and Crime
by William Langewiesche
Year: 2004
Format: Book Audio CD   (Non-Fiction)
Review by: Emily Brown
Date reviewed: 11/2010

For most of us our day starts with an alarm clock, morning coffee and a mundane drive to the office. On the "Outlaw Sea," no such normalcy is a sure thing. A completely different world, governed by completely different rules, starts just miles offshore on boats of dubious ancestry.

The author, William Langewiesche, is currently a correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine, but the story for Outlaw Sea originated during his time at The Atlantic Monthly magazine. The audio-book being reviewed here is narrated entirely by the author. His knack for symbolic pauses and well placed sarcasm makes listening to the book exciting and moving.

The Outlaw Sea starts its narrative aboard the Kristal, an ancient and abused cargo ship making its way from India to Europe with a haul of molasses. In a Titanic-like journey the captain and crew ignore all warning signs, traveling full speed into an oncoming and worsening storm. The resulting loss-of-life and unimaginable struggles to survive are a result of hubris, yes, but are also a result of lax laws and poor oversight of ship maintenance in international harbors.

The sad tale of the Kristal sets the stage for the saga of the Alondro Rainbow, a boat hijacked by Indonesian pirates in 1999. The pirates were eventually captured with the Alondra Rainbow's $10 million cargo, but their prosecution in Indian courts did little to curb crime on the high seas.

The Outlaw Sea ends its narrative on Alang, a place where ships go to die. After a market collapse in Asia, ship-breaking found its way to the beaches of India. The toxic atmosphere of Alang became an international target for Green Peace, and remains a filthy reminder of our oceans aging fleets and the problems of their eventual disposal.

The Outlaw Sea is an incredible story survival, disaster and crime on the open and mostly lawless ocean. William Langewiesche's masterpiece is more of a documentary than a solution - and it seems fitting in a world where so many of us don't think about those that live their lives on the sea. We need to be aware of the issues being raised here, and I promise you that The Outlaw Sea will open your eyes.

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Title: Peter the Great, his life and world
by Robert K. Massie
Year: 1980
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by:
Date reviewed: 4/2009

Don't let the mention of 909 pages intimidate you. This book is a comprehensive biography of Peter the Great of Russia, with some side stories of general European history masterly told by Massie in the style of a biographical novel. Massie describes the life style and culture of the times, especially of Russia, but also throughout Europe, in minute detail and brings the characters to life, from the imperial royals to the peasantry. A sure pleasure for any history buff.

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Title: Point Omega
by Don DeLillo
Year: 2010
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Abbey Warner
Date reviewed: 12/2011

Long ago, I spent some time in a desert with a small group as we readied an abandoned resort for new business. We had an occasional radio station, no TV, no phones, and mail once a week (this was pre-Internet). It took awhile for the desert to sink into our brains and retrain us in the daily rhythms of an earlier era, but eventually we didn't miss those distractions. DeLillo captures that feeling of "desertness" perfectly. The conversation is intentionally vague, sparse and often overcooked to the point of philosophical brain-mush but the experience is pure Delillo mindfreakery.

Delillo was inspired by an art installation that ran the movie "Psycho" over the course of 24 hours. Slowing down makes us see new meanings in things that we wouldn't appreciate in real time. In essence, this is a story about a man with the ethical depth of a lizard reflecting abstractly on his cold-bloodedness until pain is personalized for him. Slow down and commit to this book as if it were much longer than 117 pages, and you'll be rewarded with the sort of entertainingly bizarre thoughts that come tumbling out of a desert wind.

Related: This book reminded me of the ethical dilemmas presented in a movie I recommend, The Fog of War.

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Title: The Poisonwood Bible
by Kingsolver Barbara
Year: 1998
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Amy Merrill
Date reviewed: 3/2010

The Poisonwood Bible, written by Barbara Kingsolver, is a book of memories, a chronicle of the delicate balance between life and death. The novel tells the story of the Price family's missionary experience over a thirty year period. Nathan Price, a dogmatic Baptist preacher, uproots his Georgian family and moves to the Congo. The family finds the exotic landscape of Africa to be both challenging and liberating. Orleanna, Nathan's wife, and their four daughters, Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May, struggle to adapt to the new climate, but soon discover the beauty of Congolese culture. Set during the 1960s amidst the political turmoil happening in the Congo, the social strife in the area mirrors the discontent brewing in the familial realm. Barbara Kingsolver weaves Biblical allusion into political history, focusing on the journey of the five female narrators. Her writing style is vivid and poetic as she examines the American presence in post-colonial Africa.

Nathan Price is passionate about spreading the gospel to the pagan Congolese. However, Nathan's fervor and lack of compassion becomes problematic as they transition into their new role as missionaries. Orleanna's estrangement from Nathan further emphasizes the crumbling bond that is their marriage. In this new environment, Orleanna is able to assert herself, in spite of Nathan's tyranny. She learns to take care of her household without American-style conveniences and administers her children's education. As Orleanna reshapes her role in the house, the four young girls develop their own identities and pursue unconventional dreams.

The five women confront war, bloodshed, heart-ache, and death, narrating a slightly different perspective on each of those events. The Price family cannot forget the tragedies that occurred during their time in the Congo. Rather, their collective history motivates a quest for justice. Memory propels action, giving hope for the future.

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Title: Post-It Note Diaries
by Arthur Jones
Year: 2011
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Dana Jackson
Date reviewed: 5/2012

We all have those friends that have the craziest stories, like the time they got lost at Sooner Fashion Mall or that one time when they fell in the middle of the street doing the Chinese Fire Drill. What if these friends included John Hodgman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, or Chuck Klosterman? Post-It Note Diaries is that book of crazy stories all entertainingly illustrated on Post-It notes.

Arthur Jones, editor, created the idea of Post-It Note stories when he was bored at an office job. Jones wrote witty stories and the illustrated them with Post-Its. He eventually took the show on the road outside the office where the stories became a regular reading series with both famous authors and regular people all telling a variety of works. This book is an extension of the series.

If you are interested in a quick, yet very entertaining read, this is the book for you. It is made up of humorous fiction and non-fiction tales and reads like you are sitting around a campfire while each author is trying to one up the other's previous story. Enjoy John Hodgman's subway ride, or David Ree’s friendship testing trip to China. Hopefully, these yarns will inspire you to illustrate your crazy tales.

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Title: Posters American Style
by Therese Thau Heyman
Year: 1998
Format: Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 10/2011

As one might guess, Posters American Style is full of illustrations of posters that relate to "the strategies of commerce, propaganda, and patriotism" in the United States. Author Therese Thau Heyman covers subjects that range from Mickey Mouse and Peter Pan to environmentalism and wartime advertisements. Heyman uses 120 posters - in several narrow yet diverse subjects - to get her message across.

The aim of this book is to contrast and compare style, subject matter, purpose, image, and text with regard to message and conformity (or nonconformity) to convention. Posters American Style covers such notable aspects in poster design as the psychedelic rock revolution, using and overcoming ethnic stereotypes, the evolution of the war poster, techniques, and the uniqueness of the American poster.

The first portion Posters American Style is mostly short essay with an occasional close-up detail illustration. There is a one-page Guide to Postermaking Terms (such as lithography and serigraphy), followed by more than 120 pages of plates with descriptions for each and occasional short narratives with relevant information. The illustrations are divided into the following chapters: American Events (movies, zoos, museums, and concerts); Designed to Sell (medicines, newspapers, books, bicycles, and food); Patriots and Protestors (military recruiting and propaganda, environmental issues, anti-war protests, and civil rights); Advice for Americans (anti-consumerism, rural development, ecology, and AIDS awareness); and Sports (the Olympics and individual sports). Also included are two-to-three-paragraph biographies on the artists.

Posters American Style is a glimpse into one part of the American past through the eyes of artists whose intention it was to educate, inform, or persuade their peers. It is an informative, thought-provoking, and well-illustrated examination of our society though its original advertising medium.

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Title: Power of Art
by Simon Schama
Year: 2006
Format: Book Book   (Art - History)
Review by: Jean Longo
Date reviewed: 11/2012

Historian Schama certainly has a powerful method of telling a story. He tells the tales of eight different artists Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso and Rothko. The book was written to accompany the television series published by the BBC but it is not necessary to have seen the series to enjoy the book. I read the book several years before watching the series and after watching the series picked up the book again. Reading through it again I could imagine the visual sets that the series provides.

Schama writes about these eight artists and their work focusing on a pivotal piece for each individual. The sections on each artist are engaging and the accompanying illustrations are wonderful. His writing style reads like an action movie with killings, excessive self-mutilation, speech impediments, imprisonment, suicide, and insanity. In his perceptive style, Schama reveals the lives of these artists and the difficult situations they overcame while developing their artistic talents. He simultaneously explores the social, political, and cultural factors which facilitate a greater understanding of what the artists were facing at the time he was creating. He explains what we are looking at and helps us understand the passions at play when the artist undertook his works, putting the person up front rather than the genre.

Most of the artists are individuals I have admired, yet he manages to remove them from the hero status that I assigned to them and turn them into struggling artist with their own demons. This is an engaging book that can be read as a whole or in parts and will be enjoyed by anyone interested in the arts.

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Title: Restroom: Contemporary Design
by Jennifer Hudson
Year: 2008
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 10/2009

You may have seen The Travel Channel's Most Extreme Restrooms or Top 10 Greatest Restrooms in the World on television recently. Jennifer Hudson brings some of the extreme and a lot more of the unusual together in Restroom: Contemporary Design.

While some restrooms are ornate or conversely minimalist, others are humorous or quite bizarre. A few are innovative, perhaps even ingenious. This beautifully illustrated book collects and contrasts the designs, designers, forms, and functions of the world's most interesting public facilities.

Starting with a brief lesson over the history of the restroom (and the toilet itself), Restroom is then divided into chapters by setting: public conveniences, public venues, hotels, restaurants, and bars and clubs. Each highlighted restroom has several photographs, a few descriptive paragraphs about its style, innovation, or inspiration, and most have either an architectural schematic or a three-dimensional CAD drawing.

If you're interested in interior design, looking for a chuckle or two, or just plain curious about how the rest of the world does its business, check out Jennifer Hudson's Restroom: Contemporary Design. You may not look at public bathrooms the same way afterward.

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Title: Room
by Emma Donoghue
Year: 2011
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Jana Atkins
Date reviewed: 12/2011

Room is the story of Jack. Jack is a 5-year-old boy who lives with his mother in a small room. Through his vivid imagination, you learn about what life is like when you have no knowledge of the outside world, other than through Old Nick, who comes to visit at night. Life is mostly pretty good. Jack and his mom play games and build toys together. Jack has an education superior in many ways to other boys his age. But Jack and his mother are being held captive by Old Nick and together, they find a way back into the world.

When Elisabeth Fritzl and then Jaycee Duggard made news after their respective escapes, I was fascinated. Ms. Fritzl was held captive for 24 years by her father - forced to live in a small apartment in the family's basement and giving birth to eight children there. While horrified at what she have lived through, I had many questions about how she did it; what her everyday life was like. While Room is not her story, it is certainly based on her experience, and it suggested plausible answers to my questions. Moreover, reading it from the voice of Jack kept it more upbeat and lighthearted than the subject matter suggests. It's a terrible experience, but it makes a great story.

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Title: Sick Girl
by Amy Silverstein
Year: 2007
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Jana Atkins
Date reviewed: 3/2010

The cover on this one grabbed my attention. Okay...I do judge books by their covers. I had a friend in high school who had heart surgery (for a worsening murmur), and the woman in the photo had the same scar poking out above her collar. I thought I'd read a chapter and see what I thought. Before I knew it, I had devoured the entire book.

Amy Silverstein wrote the book to talk about her experiences as a heart transplant recipient. I can't tell you how interesting it all was. I assumed (silly me), they just gave you a new heart and you took the anti-rejection medications and you had a heart that functioned same as always. Not so. The heart doesn't begin to work the same way because it isn't hooked into your system the same way. I am incredibly grateful for my own health because I can't imagine how I'd get through that medication regimen. She definitely doesn't dress it up in Easter colors.

I never heard of a heart biopsy before this book, but I felt every snip and every tug along with the author. Her story in the first chapter about how the whole mess started was incredibly compelling. Ms. Silverstein was inspiring and honest. She doesn't pretend to be perfect, but she tries hard. She's refreshingly sassy - not a "Chicken Soup for Soul" type. I read the entire book in a weekend. If I didn't have other things to do, I probably would have finished it in a day. It was THAT good.

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Title: The Silver Lining: The Benefits of Natural Disasters
by Seth R. Reice
Year: 2001
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 3/2010

We naturally think of earthquakes, forest fires, and floods as disastrous occurrences, deliverers of unnecessary death and destruction that render portions of the world nearly uninhabitable. Seth R. Reice's book The Silver Lining: The Benefits of Natural Disasters contests that popular thought. Rather than "natural disasters," Reice refers to these events as "disturbance ecology," since they are always temporary and are "an important part of the dynamics of an ecosystem."

Ecosystems, claims Reice, are ever-changing environmental niches whose alteration and even destruction are essential to the biological diversity of the planet as a whole. The physical and chemical makeup of the ecosystem determines the range of species that can live within it. Many more species can live in a given ecosystem than actually do, but a species must be able to get there, survive there, and reproduce there in order to be a long-term part of that niche. Ecological disturbances change the environmental conditions of an ecosystem and therefore create the opportunity for new species to occupy it, often bringing different species into close contact that had before been kept apart from one another.

This is a radical departure from the long-held equilibrium model, which states that populations of ecosystems fluctuate for a time but eventually find a permanent balance, and the species that are the most suited to that habitat will be the inhabitants until the next depopulating disaster. Reice contends that equilibrium models "presume a constant environment and exclude disturbances as any other environmental fluctuations." His example is the Yellowstone forest fires, in which years of fire suppression created an undergrowth that choked out some species of vegetation. The thickly wooded forest burned more rapidly and more intensely than it would have, causing much more destruction than it would have had it been left alone. The fires, however, opened up the forest floor, and many tree species germinated for the first time in decades.

The Silver Lining doesn't exactly undo modern ecology, but it presents a much different way to perceive it. Rather than thinking of an ecosystem as a temporary thing that will one day be replaced by another ecosystem, we should view it as a nearly permanent but ever-changing piece of a whole, constantly expanding and contracting, dividing and combining. Reice not only uses well-reasoned arguments to support his line of thinking, but he also defines standard terminology and introduces new vocabulary, as well as give real-life examples, many of them first-hand. The Silver Lining is a well-conceived text that many will find enlightening and is a must-read for anyone considering a career in ecology.

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Title: Sprezzatura: 50 Ways Italian Genius Shaped the World
by Peter and Mary Desmond Pinkowish D'Epiro
Year: 2001
Format: book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Denise Lozeau
Date reviewed: 12/2008

"Sprezzatura" will chronicle fifty great Italian cultural achievements in a series of fifty chronologically-ordered essays. New York Times Review

Why I chose this book:

This book came to my attention as a class assignment, but I found it all pleasure to read. I found it fascinating to learn the smaller details of these larger than life characters and events I had heard about all my life. The book can easily fit into a busy schedule one chapter at time, each chapter opening your eyes to discover new interests in humanities, history or science.

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Title: Star Trek: The art of the film
by Mark Cotta Vaz
Year: 2009
Format: Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 10/2011

Although not the commercial success of previous franchise films, the reboot of the Star Trek universe included the same level of special effects fans have come to expect from Star Trek motion pictures. In fact, CGI (computer graphics imaging) has expanded and improved upon the standard. Now, not only can digital graphics be used for the depiction of outer space, but it can also bring to life creatures (both sentient and bestial) and alien landscapes like never before.

Included in Star Trek: The Art of the Film are essays by cast members describing their experiences, sketches of various alien races, the concept development of spacecraft involved in the story line. Conceptual renderings, detail sketches, and movie stills show the evolution of vehicles (space-faring and earthbound), weapons, and tools (such as the famous communicator) from the drawing board to finished product. There is a section on aliens, which illustrates the creation of many new races for this film, as well as one covering just the Romulans. Even uniform design has its own chapter.

The author, primarily through interviews with director J.J. Abrams, shares the reasoning behind virtually every graphics decision made, from costuming to ship design. While informative, Star Trek: The Art of the Film is mostly pictorial, putting it more into the coffee-table-book category than anything else. It is certainly worth a look, whether or not you actually liked the film itself.

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Title: Tales of the Wide-A-Wake Cafe
by Curt Munson
Year: 2004
Format: Book Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Anita Hill
Date reviewed: 9/2012

Tales of the Wide-A-Wake Café by Curt Munson

Stumbled across this book while shelving and was immediately attracted to the book by the cover art. Everyone who grew up in Edmond prior to 1972 and the closing of the Wide-A-Wake Café knew about the Wide-A-Wake. Located at the corner of 2nd and Broadway or more famously at the corner of Route 66 and Highway 77, the Wide-A-Wake was open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 45 years.

This book is a fictionalized account of the waitresses featured in the cover art. But the places and people depicted in the story are true. Dr. Wynn was the doctor and yes, the hospital was above the Broncho Theatre (now Othello’s). The Conoco station cattycornered from the Wide-A-Wake still stands. The waitresses who were able to attend college went to Central State.

The time frame for this book is 1937 to the end of World War II in 1945 – tough times not only for our nation but also the little town of Edmond, Oklahoma. The author states “At every point in the preparation of this book I sought the highest level of authenticity I could achieve. This extended to the clothing, music, prices, pay, and tips and even what movie was playing on a particular night.” The book is well researched and a very enjoyable read for history buffs and readers of fiction.

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Title: The omnivore's dilemma : a natural history of four meals
by Michael Pollan
Year: 2006
Format: Book Book   (food)
Review by: Emily Brown
Date reviewed: 11/2012

I have loved animals my entire life- I was lucky to grow up with cats and dogs, riding horses, and playing with hamsters. In my adult life I have become involved with the Central OK Humane Society as a volunteer and foster…but I have never considered vegetarianism. I would often say that the only thing that prevented me from becoming a vegetarian were PETA videos I refused to watch- but herein lies the problem. I decided, at some point in my life, not to look at what was happening to my food because I knew it would disturb me. I knew that I would cry at the cruelty; I would cringe at the treatment of these food animals that are as sentient as my dog Ooli.

This is the very attitude that Michael Pollan takes on in his seminal work, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. We live in an unprecedented time in food- we are disconnected from the farmers that grow it; we purchase food in packages that don’t resemble the original organism in any way. Additionally, we actively live in a world of denial. Most of us, like myself, live (or lived) there by choice.

My husband read The Omnivore’s Dilemma years ago and began asking me to read it as well. Because of him reading this book we began patronizing local farmers and joined the Oklahoma Food Cooperative for some of our food- but still, I didn’t read it. Finally, after years avoiding it, I picked it up- and I am so glad that I did. The Omnivore’s Dilemma is far from the gruesome depiction of abused animals I feared; it is a frank discussion of the state of food in our country today.

Pollan first discusses the proliferation of corn- and how corn changed the way we (and our food animals) eat. Cheap corn means cheap feed, and industrialized farms quickly adopted this grain to feed cows, chicken, and pigs. As Pollan explains it, “Its chief advantage is that cows fed corn, a compact source of caloric energy, get fat quickly; their flesh also marbles well, giving it a taste and texture American consumers have come to like. Yet this corn-fed meat is demonstrably less healthy for us, since it contains more saturated fat and less omega-3 fatty acids than the meat of animals fed grass. A growing body of research suggests that many of the health problems associated with eating beef are really problems with corn-fed beef…In the same way ruminants are ill adapted to eating corn, humans in turn may be poorly adapted to eating ruminants that eat corn.”

But the Omnivore’s Dilemma isn’t just a treatise on corn, it’s an examination of where our food comes from. Michael Pollan takes us through a meal provided by animals living on a CAFO, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation. He discusses the abuse animals suffer (chicken beaks cut with hot wire, pigs with docked tails to discourage biting; pigs in confined spaces will often bite at each other’s tails) and the conditions in which they live. While not explicitly graphic, Pollan is able to impart the types of lives these animals lead.

Pollan also explores “Big Organic” operations like Whole Foods, sustainable farms like Polyface Farm run by Joel Salatin, and hunting-and-gathering in order to be 100% responsible for his meal. These explorations dig deeply into how we consume- that even the most conscious of us that choose Whole Foods are still contributing to a global trade in non-local food.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma is, at its core, a call to arms. Michael Pollan wants us to think about where our food comes from, and how the decision to shop where we do directly influences the world around us. Do we really need to fly in asparagus in January from Chile just so we can have it? Is that ethical? Before the industrialization of our food systems getting out-of-season food was just unheard of. The convenience and on-demand eating we’ve become used to has led us to think it’s okay to eat asparagus in January.

I hope that you read this book and enjoy it. I now have a better understanding of food and how to consume it in a manner that I am comfortable with. We have started to get all of our meat from local farmers as well as a majority of our vegetables. This life isn’t easy, it can be very difficult, especially when you’ve become accustomed to having anything you want any time that you want it.

I would like to leave this review with a passage from The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

“The industrialization – and brutalization – of animals in America is a relatively new, evitable, and local phenomenon: No other country raises and slaughters its food animals quite as intensively or as brutally as we do. No other people in history has lived at quite so great a remove from the animals they eat. Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do. Tail docking and sow crates and beak clipping would disappear overnight, and the days of slaughtering four hundred head of cattle an hour would promptly come to an end- for who could stand the sight? Yes, meat would get more expensive. We’d probably eat a lot less of it, too, but maybe when we did eat animals we’d eat them with the consciousness, ceremony, and respect they deserve.”

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Title: The Pillars of the Earth
by Ken Follett
Year: 1990
Format: Book Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Jana Atkins
Date reviewed: 11/2012

The Pillars of the Earth came highly recommended by a group of travelers and travel agents I know. I guess that makes it a good book to carry while traveling. My previous knowledge of Ken Follett was that he writes in the military/action genre, which doesn’t interest me. But I love historical fiction, especially when it concerns the world of ordinary people.

Turns out, this book delves into the world of kings, minor nobility, humble monks, everyday Joes, and outlaws. The plot centers on the building of a cathedral in the English village of Kingsbridge. This cathedral weaves together the book’s subplots and is where the characters cross paths.

The story begins with Tom and Agnes, a migrant couple looking for work, with two children and a baby on the way. Tom’s life’s ambition is to build a great cathedral and when he is fired from his job building a home for a young nobleman, he decides it’s time to find his cathedral project. He didn’t realize when he met outlaw Ellen, that her son Jack would become the central figure that pulls everything and everyone together.

Earl Bartholomew is a benevolent ruler over Shiring, and a good father to Aliena and Richard. Where Aliena is smart and Richard is brave – training to become a knight in his father’s Earldom. The Hamleighs, a rival family led by matriarch Lady Regan, are ruthless and cunning and politically savvy. Through an alliance with King Stephen, they manage to have Earl Bartholomew’s title revoked and given to the Hamleigh family. Son William Hamleigh has a vicious streak that causes havoc for everyone. He has his eye on Aliena, but Aliena is not interested, finding her tastes more in line with a benevolent leader – Jack. The spurned William spends his time trying to make sure Aliena and Jack are separate and unhappy, and his schemes often create significant problems for everyone around them.

After losing his title and being sent to prison, Aliena goes into business as a wool merchant to support her brother Richard’s quest for knighthood, which now has the singular purpose of getting revenge on the Hamleigh family and reclaiming his father’s title as Earl of Shiring. As a businesswoman, Aliena is quite successful, while back at the Cathedral, Jack is busy as Tom’s apprentice, something for which he turns out to have a natural talent.

The Pillars of the Earth takes place over many years; we first meet Jack as a child, and we see how he grows and adapts throughout adulthood. As with all of the characters, we see how the successes and failures, the happy times and the hard times affect each of them, and how they change as a result. We see how the government, the Catholic Church, with good intentions, and rampant corruption filter down and touches every person. If nothing else, you’ll gain an understanding of the medieval Catholic Church – not just the organization, but also its architecture. And in the end…well…there is not so much an ending as an opening, with hope for the future. It makes you want to run out and read the sequel “World Without End,” which picks up two centuries later, at the dawn of the Black Death. I highly recommend that book as well. But definitely start with “The Pillars of the Earth.” I have never met anyone who read Pillars and didn’t love it.

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Title: The secret knowledge of water : discovering the essence of the American desert
by Craig Childs
Year: 2000
Format: Book Book   (Travel)
Review by: Lori Wylie
Date reviewed: 11/2012

Let me begin by stating I don’t care for the desert. I don’t care to be hot, it makes me grouchy. I also have a real thing for trees, dark green leafy trees and lots of them. Give me a lush forest any day. Add to this the fact that the animals which usually preside in the desert always seem to be the scaly, creepy variety and I’m out.

Perhaps to challenge my own perspective, for this book review I chose a book by my spouse’s favorite author, Craig Childs, entitled The Secret Knowledge of Water.

What I found was insight from a man with a deep, abiding love for the desert; not unlike my husband. Somehow Childs creates a text which is informative, scholarly and poetically thought-provoking. His vast knowledge of the land combined with sources which include archeologists, ecologists, ranchers, geologists, Native American legends, tales of backpackers and a 300-year-old desert map meld perfectly allowing the reader to enter a true adventure the likes of which we are not likely to experience ourselves. Since finishing this title I have journeyed on with Craig Childs to read his Soul of Nowhere , which I must also highly recommend. I have walked away from these books with a new appreciation for the beauty and the mystery of our nation’s desert terrain.

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Title: The steampunk bible : an illustrated guide to the world of imaginary airships, corsets and goggles, mad scientists, and strange literature
by Jeff VanderMeer
Year: 2011
Format: Book Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 10/2012

What is Steampunk? This book spends the introductory chapter attempting to define and explain the term, ending up with a very unrefined, all-inclusive definition. In short, Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction that overlaps historical fiction. More precisely, it is a version of retro-futurism (the view of the future through the eyes of the recent past) that uses technology available to the Victorian and Edwardian eras (1837-1910), particularly with regard to scientific discovery (such as steam engines, electrical current, and magnetism), as well as clockwork mechanical devices, in order to anachronistically re-create the important inventions of the more recent past, the present, or the future. It is based on wild adventures, replete with mad scientists, steam-powered robots, dirigibles, and heroes in leather jackets and goggles saving corset-wearing damsels in distress. Steampunk is a genre of fiction—whose stories are articulated in books, comics, and movies—and also includes the art, fashion, and subculture they inspire.

The Steampunk Bible begins in the beginning, of course, with Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, the so-called paterfamilias of the genre that lived through the latter part of the era. Chapters address the various aspects of Steampunk, such as mechanical men (and beasts), rocketships, rayguns, airships, fashion, music, aesthetics, and the Steampunk subculture. The impact of the movement on Hollywood can be seen in such films as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), 9 (2009), Sherlock Holmes (2000), and The Wild, Wild, West (1999, from the television series, 1965-69).

This title is rich in information, as the author has written several books and edited two fiction anthologies in the genre. On nearly every page there are illustrations – photographic and print reproduction – of Steampunk sculpture and fashion, movie stills, comic books, concept art, fine art prints, and book interior and cover illustrations. The Steampunk Bible also contains many “asides,” two-to-five-page, textbook-like bits of encapsulated information apart from the rest of the text, such as “Edgar Allen Poe: Perpetrator of the First Steampunk Hoax,” “A Young Steampunk’s Guide to Subgenres,” and “Eight Ways to Raise Your Steampunk Fashion Game.”

The Steampunk Bible is a handsomely produced, informative, and wildly creative piece of work, an obvious labor of love and something for any fan of the genre or subculture enthusiast to explore. Whether delving deep into the study of Steampunk or just getting an idea of what it is, anyone can enjoy this wonderful book.

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Title: A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini
Year: 2007
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Tonya Holt
Date reviewed: 12/2008

Khaled Hosseini weaves another tale of Afghanistan with the artistry exhibited in his previously acclaimed novel "The Kite Runner." This story is much darker and more disturbing than his previous novel. Housseini gives insight into the social and political atmosphere of Afghanistan for the last 3 decades through the tragic lives of his characters. Follow the lives of two young women forced by circumstance to marry a brutally abusive older man and prepare for an emotional rollercoaster that may bring you to tears.

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Title: Through the Eye of the Deer: An Anthology of Native American Women Writers
Year: 1999
Format: Book   (Fiction)
Review by: Luci Seem
Date reviewed: 11/2010

"...There were no others then but the Spider who sang. In the center of the universe she sang. In the midst of the waters she sang. In the midst of heaven she sang. In the center she sang. Her singing made all the worlds." These words from Paula Gunn Allen come from The Woman Who Owned the Shadows and are an apt beginning to lead us through readings on creation stories.

Joy Harjo's Wolf Warrior brings completion to the anthology as her hero meets the wolf people and takes what he hears to tell "everyone who would listen." Editors Dunn and Comfort do an excellent job of creating a flow between the compositions. Their compilation pulls poetry and short stories from works across the past century. They cover pieces on birth and creation as well as the power, knowledge, rituals, and the mysteries of being a Native woman in today’s world. The writers are from numerous tribal traditions in North America and their works, which reflect early legends and current traditions are worth taking time to get to know.

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Title: Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold
by C.S. Lewis
Year: 1957
Format: Book Book   (fiction)
Review by: Luci Seem
Date reviewed: 11/2009

Lewis' retelling of the Psyche-Cupid myth was written from the perspective of Orual, Psyche's older sister. She writes of her love of Psyche, as well as her struggles to protect her. It also outlines Orual's complaints against, then reconciliation with the gods. The story deals with the struggle between the rational and the primitive natures in the world and in us.

Psyche and Orual are princesses whose father is a tyrannical king of the kingdom of Glome. Lewis does not give a location for this kingdom, but the settings bring visions of the Mediterranean to mind. Psyche is beautiful, and Orual appears to be the "smart sister." At her father's death, Orual becomes ruler and caretaker of her younger step-sister.

A crisis that involves Psyche sends Orual into her rejection of the gods and her subsequent soul searching journey. This novel takes the reader for a ride of enjoyment or intense discovery, depending on where they want go. No matter what, Till We Have Faces is a good destination for your mind over the holiday.

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Title: Trigger Men: shadow team, spider-man, the magnificent bastards, and the American combat sniper
by Hans Halberstadt
Year: 2008
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Allan Goode
Date reviewed: 12/2008

For many people, the title might conjure up images of trigger happy teens skulking around Baghdad shooting at every real or imagined enemy that they see; especially when reading the subtitle: Shadow Team, Spider-Man, the Magnificent Bastards, and the American Combat Sniper. But that image would be off target, for the real men behind the rifle scopes are mature, well-trained professionals who are following strict rules of engagement. Halberstadt lets the snipers tell their own stories of their war in Iraq, including background information on their training, tools and techniques. These men also address the moral and psychological aspects of sniping and how they deal with those problems.

It's well written, interesting, informative and recommended.

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Title: Two Solitudes
by Hugh MacLennan
Year: 2003
Format: Book   (fiction)
Review by: Denise Lozeau
Date reviewed: 10/2010

Two Solitudes has much of the panoramic quality of John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga (1922), though it is informed by a more partisan attitude. Superficially a chronicle of two generations of Canadians in the Montreal region; it is in fact a penetrating study of the beliefs and behaviors, the myths and animosities, that have caused French-Canadians and English-Canadians to resist amalgamation into a homogeneous nation and to exist as two separate peoples, uncommunicative and isolated. [from enotes.com]

But "Two Solitudes" is not merely a sociopolitical tract. I found the love story quite engaging, with neither of the characters presented as a mere representation of ethnicity and class, and the resolution ennobling in a way one doesn't expect from a novel any more. The term "old-fashioned" comes to mind, but I'm afraid that will be terribly off-putting for many modern readers. Let's call the book solid, sure, and rewarding, then - - and evocative and informative as well. That's a lot to put into a package this tidily crafted, but MacLennan has done it well. [amazon.com review]

As an American with French Canadian heritage, so many of the local traditions and attitudes felt familiar to me. I really enjoyed reading this novel and recommend it as a satisfying weekend read.

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Title: Visual Miscellaneum: A Colorful Guide to the World's Most Consequential Trivia
by David McCandless
Year: 2009
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Denise Lozeau
Date reviewed: 3/2010

The Visual Miscellaneum is a unique, ground breaking look at the modern information age, helping readers make sense of the countless statistics and random facts that constantly bombard us. Using cutting edge graphs, charts, and illustrations, David McCandless creatively visualizes the world's surprising relationships and compelling data, covering everything from the most pleasurable guilty pleasures to how long it takes different condiments to spoil to world maps of Internet search terms. (Description taken from Google books website)

What makes this book different is that it is more than a textual listing of trivia. The graphics used present a very visual look at amazing facts and curiosities from every field of trivia, from Pop -- Web -- Thought -- Food -- Power -- Life -- Nature -- Science -- Health -- Film -- Media -- Music--

A must read for every trivia buff...

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Title: Walden, or Life in the Woods
by Henry David Thoreau
Year: 1854
Format: Book Cassette   (non-fiction)
Review by: Abbey Warner
Date reviewed: 3/2010

Audio books are a great way to distract oneself from the task at hand, especially a cleaning project. When it's a ramble through a forest, like this audio version of selections from Walden, you can abandon the book shamelessly when your project is finished. It's still worth a listen for as much time - or patience - that you want to give it.

Thoreau reminds me of Christopher McCandless of Into the Wild. They both thought of themselves as independent, self-reliant, resourceful adventurers, when in fact they were helped along the way by people who gave them food, shelter, goods, and advice. Thoreau says, "I am monarch of all I survey." No, young man. You may have achieved self-sufficiency for a time, but your land is borrowed, your axe is borrowed, and your time is limited.

Despite his inability to appreciate the sources of his privileged independence, I can appreciate Thoreau's descriptions: water so clear that he could see his dropped axe 25 feet at the bottom; time to think long thoughts; and the careful totting-up of building expenses that made my mortgage seem grotesque. One line makes me sigh with longing for his simplified life: "...by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living." Then I come to my senses and remember that there's a hidden cost for his austerity: I dislike outhouses and cooking in the rain and mosquitos. I adore central heat and air, and Netflix, and health insurance. All our possessions are physical manifestations of our true philosophy (where your treasure is, there is your heart also), but a little jolt of X-treme Survival with philosophical reflection is always a good thing when excavating the layers of philosophy in a crammed closet.

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Title: War Posters: Weapons of Mass Communication
by James Aulich
Year: 2007
Format: Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Patrick Douglas
Date reviewed: 10/2011

While Aulich's War Posters: Weapons of Mass Communication contains posters of many nations in many languages, the book is a British publication and is primarily concerned with Britain's participation in recent wars and social movements. Covering materials from the First World War to the present, this book explores a variety of posters "concerning propaganda, publicity, and advertising, in relation to the media and morality."

Less concerned with beauty than the "broader visual environment of daily experience," Aulich follows the collection of J.R. Bradley and the Imperial War Museum. The posters, chosen from the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind in the world, are selected primarily for their diversity and intended impact on local, regional, and national populations.

War Posters is divided into five chapters: The poster, propaganda, and publicity; The First World War; Interwar Europe; The Second World War; and The Cold War and the New World Order. Each chapter is divided into sections contrasting the styles of different nations, ideologies, movements, historic periods, and artistic visions. With more than three hundred plates, War Posters is more than a coffee-table book; it is a serious look at history through the eyes of those who used posters as a method of influencing the masses. It is text over the poster as an "autonomous medium."

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Title: What Technology Wants
by Kevin Kelly
Year: 2010
Format: Book   (Non-fiction)
Review by: Abbey Warner
Date reviewed: 4/2011

Technology has goals in the sense that a star has goals: a star "wants" to consume fuel, and technology "wants" to develop toward complexity. Technium (the author's personification of technology) is a selfish, grasping blob that seeks energy, input, development; it's the same as any evolutionary force. It's predatory, too: it eats other blobs of technologies along the way to become mashups of whole new inevitabilities. Technology is an inescapable force. Kelly makes technology seem like it is preordained on a teleological trajectory. This sounds cultish to me - messiah in the machine - but I'll go along with the premise to see where it leads.

So do we serve Technium, or does it serve us? Both. Kelly is a bit too chirpy about the advantages of disruptive technologies without considering (very much) the quality-of-life issues that arise with them. He admires the Amish, for instance, for knowing when to say "no," but then he says that in the larger sense, none of us can say "no" because progress is inevitable. Prepare for the singularity with a smile on your face! Technium loves you! That's just creepy.

Kelly says that humans are the reproductive organs of Technium - we help it procreate and if we didn't cooperate (if we pulled the plug out of the wall socket), it would eventually die out. But we do cooperate because, Kelly the hard determinist says, it's inevitable. Double creepy.

Summing up: It's a long book with too many digressions, but even the digressions are interesting, for example, my favorite illustration is "A Thousand Years of Helmet Evolution." Kelly needs more documentation to back up his assertions, but this book has a lot of thinkiness that you will feel compelled to post on your social media. You will post.

Related books:
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto - your online identity is NOT you

Better off : flipping the switch on technology - modern family lives in a non-electronic world for a year

Google: The End of the World As We Know It - how the end of the world is not necessarily a bad thing

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Title: What's Your Poo Telling You?
by Josh Richman
Year: 2007
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Denise Lozeau
Date reviewed: 4/2009

I know. . .I know. . .who would take this topic seriously enough to write a book about it, and more to the point, who reads this stuff?! The answer to that is, people like me, and anyone else who takes their health seriously. This is an entertaining quick little read, humorously illustrated, providing pertinent medical information and health tips. I promise you will be snickering as you read because you will see yourself in this book and say, 'been there done that'. It’s only human. . .

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Title: The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
by A.J. Jacobs
Year: 2008
Format: Book Book   (non-fiction)
Review by: Abbey Warner
Date reviewed: 4/2009

Devout Jews and Christians might wince at the thought of reading a book marketed as "hilarious" and sporting cover art that look as if it ridicules faith, but I found the author's treatment of biblical laws to be respectful and thoughtful. He tries hard to follow the tiniest tenet and puzzling precept, but also to develop a sympathetic understanding of the impulses behind the holiness code, the various schools of interpretation, and the difficulty of living up to a deliberate code of ethics.

Not surprisingly, he finds laws concerning money and sex the most difficult to observe, but he tries - oh, how he tries! The book has observations and stories that are laugh-out-loud funny.

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