Library Column - August 30, 2007

If you are wondering how I manage to read so many books…I dunno…I just keep reading and reading and reading. Even so, I only manage to get through a third of the books I buy for the library. Here is the latest batch of reviews from my mental kitchen–

A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America by Saul Cornell (Regional Library). Everything I thought I knew about the Second Amendment and the history of gun control in America was wrong. A startling examination of the origins and evolution of the right of gun ownership in the United States.

Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs (Audio CD or book). Augusten continues to wend his way through memories of a very odd life. More stories from his childhood, including the time he flooded his grandmother’s bedroom. Read, with considerable angst, by the author.

The Overlook by Michael Connelly.  Murder by terrorists? A terrorist theft of radioactive material? A beautiful woman threatened? A clever police procedural by a master of the genre.

Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in all Fifty States by Pete Jordan. The story of how Pete became a famous dishwasher, wanderer and author. Wacky. May make you reconsider eating out.

Back on Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber. Tales of knitting and sisterhood.

Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier. (Audio CD and Regional Library) A novel about William Blake in 1792 when he was living in Lambeth (London) and working on Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Blake is seen through the eyes of two children, Maggie, a Londoner and Jem, from Dorsetshire. To my surprise, Astley’s Circus wandered into the story, an odd historical intersection between mass culture and great art.

Sewing for the Home: Over50 Stylish Projects to Give Your Home a Fresh Look. Every once in a while I feel the overwhelming need to buy a replacement for an old book. This one is to replace a similar book published in 1977. The new version has clear instructions and photos. It covers windows, pillows, tables, bedrooms and bathrooms (literally), with projects for each area. Most important, the fabrics and designs fit into today’s décor.

Easy Home Organizer: 15-Minute Step-by-step Solutions by Vicki Payne.  There are a few too many assumptions in this book for my taste—the author assumes that you can afford to buy a lot of containers of various types, that you own your space and can hang things on the wall and install sliding drawers in your cabinets—but overall the suggestions are helpful. The best part of the book is her clear instructions for sorting out and organizing various parts of the house—quickly and without driving yourself insane.

Support the Friends of the Warren Public Library by giving generously to their annual fund-raiser. If you didn’t receive the mailer, pick up a brochure at the library. Thanks!

Radio Program - August 31, 2007 - Ghosts

The Dead Fathers Club by Matt Haig

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Promise Not to Tell by Jennifer McMahon

The Coroner’s Lunch by Colin Cotterill

9Tail Fox by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

The Extra Large Medium by Helen Slavin

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The Phantom Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling

Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay

City of Masks by Daniel Hecht

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Second Glance by Jodi Picoult

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman (audio cassettes)

The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (2 different editions from the Regional)

Green Mountain Ghosts, Ghouls & Unsolved Mysteries by Joseph A. Citro 

 http://www.webrary.org/rs/flbklists/ghostly.html

Radio Program - August 24, 2007 - Home Management with Fran Plewak

Home Enlightenment: Practical, earth-friendly advice for creating a nurturing, healthy, and toxin-free home and lifestyle by Annie B. Bond (615.9)

How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and In the Workplace by Paul D. Blanc, M.D. (Regional Library)

The Nontoxic Home: Protecting Yourself and Your Family from Everyday Toxics and Health Hazards by Debra Lynn Dadd (615.9)

The Good Housekeeping Household Encyclopedia (640)

Reader’s Digest Back to Basics: How to Learn and Enjoy Traditional American Skills (p. 342-43) (640)

Homing Instinct: Using Your Lifestyle to Design and Build Your Home by John Connell (690)

Better Homes and Gardens Home Offices: Your Guide to Planning and Furnishing (747.7)

Scaling Down: Living Large in a Smaller Space by Judi Gulbertson and Marj Decker (640.22)

Not So Big Solutions for Your Home by Sarah Susanka (Joslin Memorial Library)

Interior Design with Feng Shui by Sara Rossbach (747)

Dare to Repair (DVD) and Dare to Repair: A Do-It-Herself Guide to Fixing (Almost) Anything in the Home by Julie Sussman & Stephanie Glakas-Tenet (643.7)

Lots of books on home repair,  all in 643.7

Easy Home Organizer: 15-Minute Step-by-Step Solutions by Vicki Payne (640)

Original Designs for Living Rooms and Work Spaces by Terence Conran (643)

Sunset Ideas for Bedroom & Bath Storage (64

Sunset Complete Home Storage (64

Web Resources:

Vermont Online Library

My 30 days of consumer celibacy: for a whole month, one writer practiced a kind of abstinence so she could better understand her own complicity in our throwaway culture. It wasn’t easy.(Living Green).

Author(s):Wendee Holtcamp. 

Source:OnEarth 29.2 (Summer 2007): p.12(2). (1699 words) From General OneFile. 

Title:Organize your life! 20 tips to help you turn chaos into calm. (household chores).

Author(s):Dianne Witter. 

Source:Arthritis Today 5.n1 (Jan-Feb 1991): p.p18(2). (1350 words) From General OneFile. 

The architecture of work and family: to have a job and a life, we need to redesign the national household.(WORK & FAMILY).

Author(s):Ellen Bravo. 

Source:The American Prospect 18.3 (March 2007): p.A5(3). (2503 words) From General OneFile. 

The opt-out revolution revisited: women aren’t foresaking careers for domestic life. The ground rules just make it impossible to have both.(WORK & FAMILY).

Author(s):Joan C. Williams. 

Source:The American Prospect 18.3 (March 2007): p.A12(4). (2800 words) From General OneFile. 

Use “clutter” as a search term on both of the web-sites below and find some great solutions to the mess!

http://www.marthastewart.com/

http://www.realsimple.com/realsimple/homepage/flash/0,23022,,00.shtml

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WashingtonCountyVermont/

http://burlington.craigslist.org/

Library Column - August 16, 2007

Busy days at the Warren Public Library with a constant stream of patrons looking for computer time, books, toys, information and, best of all, air conditioning.  I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately, trying to get to the bottom of my book stack. Can’t come up with one word which will stretch to cover the range of books…varied?

The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber. Excellent suspense novel about a possible lost play by Shakespeare—which would be nifty—except that there are all these Russian gangsters following the people who are following the clues which may lead to the play, if it isn’t a fraud and on and on it goes. Funny and scary and clever.

The Sleeping Beauty Proposal by Sarah Strohmeyer. For any woman who put her life on hold while she waited for a proposal…an outrageous, amusing, somewhat dishonest and fairly practical alternative approach. Fiction, of course.

Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker: Recipes for Two for Your Small Slow Cooker by Beth Hensperger. Thorough, clear and moving from basic to advanced techniques and recipes, this cookbook has convinced me to buy a small slow cooker and try it out.

The Sea Lady by Margaret Drabble (Regional Library). A famous scientist and a successful TV personality/feminist reconnect in old age after a long estrangement. Eccentric and beautifully written.

Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now by George McGovern and William R. Polk. A slim paperback with a plan for removing the U.S. from Iraq. Includes a brief but exhaustive history of how we entered into this war, the problems facing the soldiers on the ground, and reasons why it may be a very good idea to withdraw.

My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme. The story of how Julia Child became a great cook and a television personality, told with vim, vigor and great good humor. Immense fun, even if you are not interested in cooking.  Highly recommended.

Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland. The story of a great painting by Auguste Renoir, painted the summer of 1880, on a veranda overlooking the Seine. The first half of the book is a bit slow, but the second half was absolutely wonderful. Interesting characters, great food, and a lovely setting make for an exceptionally entertaining book.

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War by Nathaniel Philbrick (audio CD or hardcover). The strange story of America’s beginnings in New England, with love, despair, idealism, religious faith, theft, kindness, cruelty, greed,  and a massive amount of confusion. The audio version is fun to listen to, but you might want to check out both so you have the maps and illustrations available. The most interesting piece, among many, was that the Mayflower Compact established a civil government, not a theocracy. Separation between church and state was there at the first flickering of the American story.

See you at the library!

Radio Program - August 17, 2007 - Vermont Fiction

Guest today: Mary Alice Bisbee, Warren Public Library Program Director

A Guide to Fiction Set in Vermont by Ann McKinstry Micou

Begin Again Collected Poems by Grace Paley

The Buffalo Soldier (also audio cassettes); Midwives (also audio cassettes, abridged); and Water Witches all by Chris Bohjalian

Where the Rivers Flow North  (also audio cassettes, also DVD); On Kingdom Mountain (new) both by Howard Frank Mosher

Mysteries 

St. Albans Fire by Archer Mayor (one in a series)

Mad Season by Nancy Means Wright

The Body in the Snowdrift by Katherine Hall Page

The Fifth Season by Don Bredes

New Books

Promise Not to Tell by Jennifer McMahon

Year of the Dog by Shelby Hearon

Recent, but no longer new

The Jungle Law by Victoria Vinton [Note: we also have The Jungle Book by Kipling--ask]

I’ll Never be Long Gone by Thomas Christopher Greene

More Fiction

Learning to Drive by Mary Hays

Seek my Face by John Updike (Joslin Memorial Library)

From this Day by Nora Roberts (Northeast Regional Library)

Dubin’s Lives by Bernard Malamud (Regional)

Radio Program - August 10, 2007 - Classic Literature with John Barkhausen

Regular Fiction Collection: 

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (1848 England)

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1879 Russia)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847 England)

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877 Russia)

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861 England) plus audio cassettes

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818 England) plus audio cassettes

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1856 France) (plus paperback collection, plus audio cassettes)

Paperback Collection-Classics Section

1984 by George Orwell (1949 England) plus audio cassettes

The Odyssey by Homer (B.C.E. 800? Greece)

Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence (1913 England)

Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1882 America and England) plus abridged edition in audio cassettes)

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1615 Spain)

Vermont Humanities Council Summer Book Discussion Series:

Birds by Aristophanes

Library Column - August 2, 2007

Summer in the Mad River Valley is delightful and I’m so happy I made the move. I’ve been hiking a bit of the Mad River Path and enjoying the Farmers’ Market. The best thing of all is the short drive to and from the library! The move set me back a bit on my reading schedule, but I’m beginning to catch up. This time I’ve got a memoir from Kenya, a mystery from Australia, a sad doctor from 1930s NYC, a very silly mystery from Atlanta, a DVD about slavery, a bio of Isaac Newton, and an audio book (fiction) exploring one man’s obsession with the life and the death of Edgar Allen Poe.

Unbowed by Wangari Maathai. Some people live amazing lives. Maathai was born in Kenya in 1940, was the first Kenyan woman to earn a PhD, founded the African Green Belt environmental movement and won the Nobel Peace Prize. She has also been jailed several times for troubling the government of Kenya and is now the assistant minister for the environment under the new democratically elected regime. A great read and very enlightening in relation to the challenges facing Africa.

Earthly Delights by Kerry Greenwood. An Australian accountant turned baker runs into threatening graffiti, poison pen letters and dead junkies, but she also encounters a very sweet hunk and gets to solve two mysteries. Warning: includes a truly bizarre and moderately graphic sex scene.

North River by Peter Hamill. NYC in 1934. A hardworking, unhappy doctor. An abandoned toddler, a lonesome Sicilian widow, a clutch of gangsters and a couple of funerals. The Depression.

Body Movers by Stephanie Bond. Come to Atlanta, complete with spoiled Southern Belles (the modern version), pretentious athletes, an oppressed heroine (with a gambling brother) and murder. Fun and not to be taken seriously.

Africans in America: America’s Journey Through Slavery (DVD), Disk One. An excellent TV documentary which begins with the first blacks to be sold in the English colonies of North America continues through the gradual process of laying a legal basis for lifelong enslavement, portrays the tragedy (from the Black point of view) of the Revolutionary War and ends with Founding Fathers’ decision to allow slavery to continue in the new nation. We also own the second disk in the series.

Isaac Newton by James Gleick (Regional Library). Isaac Newton was a pre-Newtonian thinker, which explains his obsessions with alchemy and theology. A brief and very interesting biography of the great scientist, focusing on his scientific and mathematical work.

The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl (audio CD). A young man, living in Baltimore in 1849 follows his obsession with the life and death of Edgar Allen Poe…towards prison, despair, disgrace and disaster…dark, creepy and…amusing.

See you at the library!

Radio Program - August 3, 2007 - wacky books

The Memoir

Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs (and many more).

Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy and Other Misadventures by Lindsay Moran. Lindsay provides an intensely personal account of joining the CIA, describing her training and her brief career as an agent in Macedonia. Entertaining on one level and very depressing on another, it does provide a view behind the curtain. Spying is definitely not a glamorous or thrilling career: slimy is the word that turned up in my mind after reading this book. Good for fans of unusual careers and also of interest for current events aficionados.

Foreign Babes in Beijing by Rachel Dewoskin. First person story of living in Beijing for several years as a twenty-something expatriate. Rachel stars in a TV soap-opera, hangs out with other foreigners and with Chinese and provides some interesting observations on culture, change, sex, language and misunderstandings.

Mysteries

Bubbles (series) by Sarah Strohmeyer.

Three to Get Deadly (Stephanie Plum series) by Janet Evanovich.

The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Sansom. A fun little mystery set in a small town in Northern Ireland where a Jewish librarian has just been employed to run the library, but the Council closed it, and now they want him to run a mobile library (bookmobile in our version of English), only the 15,000 books that are supposed to be in the bookmobile have disappeared. Whacky and entertaining.

Male Angle

Which Brings Me to You by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott. A rather old-fashioned book, as it is written almost entirely in letters, but also a new-fangled book, as it is written in alternation by two authors, a man and a woman. Frank talk about sex and love and relationships and honesty and family and fear of connection and fear of being alone. 

Everything Changes by Jonathan Tropper

Married Ladies/Used to be Married Ladies

Year of the Dog by Shelby Hearon. A most entertaining novel about a southern girl who comes to spend a year in Burlington. She will be raising a companion dog for the blind and she will be getting away from the small town in South Carolina where her ex-husband left her for another woman. The cultural puzzlements between SC and VT are fun: why are all the women wearing shades of eggplant and oatmeal; are the grungy guys who live upstairs really dangerous; so is the little mystery about the real identity of her great aunt’s friend, the mystery author; but the book is also excellent as a novel.

Anybody Out There? by Marian Keyes (audio CD). So you are young, good looking, crazy in love with your husband, working a glamorous job in NYC, have a great circle of friends…and then something irrevocably awful happens. How do you cope?

The Devil in the Junior League by Linda Francis Lee. Frede Ware had a perfect life…until her husband left her, stole her money AND threatened her social position in the Junior League. The ups and downs of rich women in Texas. Funny and silly (and made me very glad I live in Vermont and not that other place).

Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA by Ellen Meister. First novel by a former Long Island suburbanite, the writing is a bit clumsy in spots but it is still a fun read. The PTA moms engage in power-struggles and love affairs, but the important relationships are the friendships that develop between the women as they work their way through various life crises. Bidding for Love by Katie Fforde. Fun and romance at a struggling auction house in rural England. (and several more)Bitsy’s Bait & BBQ by Pamela Morsi. A sweet little book about a single mother who buys what she thinks is a Bed and Breakfast in the Missouri Ozarks, but it turns out to be a Bait store and BBQ Restaurant. Whoops! Of course, it all works out okay in the end. I lived in the Missouri Ozarks for six years and found some aspects of the book right on. But the author left out the ticks. They have billions of ticks down there, in every size from giant to invisible. Me vs. Me by Sarah Mlynowski. Love or career? Arizona or New York City? Does a girl have to choose? Why not have it all…

20 Times a Lady by Karyn Bosnak. A fun, but silly novel about a young woman who suddenly realizes how many men she has gone to bed with. Time for a drastic change of direction, right? Un-Bridaled by Eileen Rendahl. A funny/sad/wacky book about a young woman who flees her own wedding at the very last moment. Themes include family, hidden truths, finding your path through life and pets. 

The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella. The story of an overworked lawyer in
London who accidentally switches careers and becomes a housekeeper/cook. Amusing, friendly, light, but it does raise a few good questions about our workaholic culture. Does the path to success have to be quite this horrible?

Match Me if You Can by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. A fun book by a very popular author, this time she takes you inside the contemporary business of matchmaking, with, of course, the main characters ending up happily ever after.

Borderline

Radical Prunings: A Novel of Officious Advice from the Contessa of Compost by Bonnie Thomas Abbott. Actually a novel written entirely in the form of gardening advice columns, including answers to questions from readers and a lot of odd information about the main character’s life, household and ex-husband. Funny. Probably even funnier for readers who know something about gardening which I, alas, do not.