February is Black History Month

Dr. Carter Woodson, son of former slaves and a pioneer in the study of African American history is often given the credit for establishing a time dedicated to the study of Black Americans and their role in the history and development of the United States.

In honor of Black History Month the library has set up an exhibit that contains some of the outstanding materials we offer about the history and contributions of Black Americans. The following titles are part of the display and highly recommended.

Shout, Sister, Shout: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, by Gayle F. Wald is the first biography ever of a performer who influenced singers from Elvis Presley to Eric Clapton and Etta James. Tharpe sang it all: gospel, blues, jazz, folk, and rock and roll.

Freedom in My Heart: Voices from the United States National Slavery Museum is an extraordinary look at many “never-before-seen artifacts, images and documents that trace the history of slavery in North America.” [From the fly-leaf.] As Chapter One says, “The story begins in Africa,” and this book goes on from there, with pictures, documents, essays and interviews tracing a history and culture that is dynamic and enduring, despite slavery and its brutalities.

If you are trying to look into your roots – because your planning a family reunion or you are just plain interested – try Finding A Place Called Home: A Guide to African-American Genealogy and Historical Identity. Written by Dee Parmer Woodtor this book is a good starting place for constructing a family tree or just finding out what factors you need to look into when searching for your kin.

"No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you."

Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston is a black writer of incredible talent. Hurston’s most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is about Janie Crawford, a young, Black woman in the 1930’s, determined to be her own person. In addition to reading her fiction, I highly recommend Zora’s Roots, a PBS DVD based on the life of Zora Neale Hurston. I also recommend you come in and check out the display, which will be up all through the month of February. Meg

J. D. Salinger - 1919 -2010

J. D. Salinger began his writing career with short stories, contributing mainly to The New Yorker Magazine. Two of his most famous short stories that appeared in that magazine were A Perfect Day for Banafish (1948), the story of a suicidal war veteran, and For Esme With Love and Squalor (1950).

But it was with the publication of A Catcher in the Rye (1951)that Salinger received major critical and popular attention. A Catcher in the Rye has been said to be reminiscent of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in a setting of modern angst and rebellion. Holden Caulfield, our “hero,” is an adolescent boarding school student attempting to run away from what he considers a phony adult world. For many who read this book, it became the quintessential story of teenage confusion and unrest. From the very first sentence we know we are in a world of loneliness and brutal honesty.

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

Franny and Zooey, two longer short stories about the Glass Family, was published in 1955.

After a relatively small literary output, Salinger retired to New Hampshire where he lived in virtual seclusion, never being photographed or interviewed for over 50 years. Salinger died of natural causes, at the age of 91. Meg

[For more details read Salinger’s New York Times’ obituary and also some more extensive New York Times and Wikipedia articles. The story of a fascinating impromptu encounter with J. D. Salinger by a fan is related on NPR. ]

Robert B. Parker - 1932 - 2010

Robert B. Parker was one of my favorites. His detective series about Spenser (with an "s") was a true classic of the genre and he went on to write two other series, one starring Sunny Randall (another Boston P.I.) and one starring Jesse Stone (a police chief in a small Massachusetts town). Parker even wrote westerns!

But the star of his writing pantheon was Spenser. The first Spenser novel, The Godwulf Manuscript (1973) was written when he was still teaching at a university in Boston, and is about Spenser's efforts to retrieve a manuscript that was stolen from a unversity library. He went on to write 37 more titles in the Spenser series. My favorites, and ones that I highly recommend, are: Mortal Stakes (about the Boston Red Sox), Looking for Rachel Wallace (about a Lesbian author that Spenser is hired to protect) and A Catskill Eagle (Susan is in trouble and Spenser and Hawk spring to the rescue).

Parker did not always craft the most enduring of plots, but a visit with Spenser, Hawk and Susan was like a visit with old and dear friends - always enjoyable and remarkably entertaining.

Parker died of a heart attack, sitting at his writing desk working on his next novel - literally with his "writing boots on." He gave me hours of pleasant and thoughtful entertainment. He will be sorely missed. Meg

[For more details, read Parker's obituaruies in the New York Times and the Boston Globe. For a really interesting blog post AND an incredibly comprehensive list of tributes and information about Mr. Parker see Sarah Weinman's blog, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind.]

Tuesday Book Group Kicks off the Big Read

The Tuesday Book Group unofficially kicked off the Big Read this week when we discussed Newport’s Big Read title, The Great Gatsby. Thanks to the increased exposure, we had several newcomers and were happy to hear new voices. We had wide-ranging questions and comments about the book. Most of us praised the Fitzgerald’s writing style and structure while remaining rather critical of the characters. One person described the novel as “seductive,” while another commented, “there is not a character in this book I would want to have over for a drink.”

We found many reasons to call the novel a masterpiece: its themes are timeless, its symbolism rich, its plot compelling (at least in the second half), and its characters, if unlikeable, are true to life. We talked a lot about social classes and groups, the cultural disconnect that still exists between the USA’s East Coast and Midwest, and the changes Fitzgerald was observing in ‘20s America.

We debated Gatsby as a tragic hero: is he a great person with a tragic flaw? Is he sympathetic at all? Are any of the characters sympathetic, for that matter? Was Daisy even worth all the fuss? Like most readers of the novel, we also talked a bit about T.J. Eckleburg’s eyes, the symbolism of the valley of ashes and the meaning of that green light.

Join us next month (1pm February 9^th in the Stride Room) when we pair The Great Gatsby with Chris Bohjalian’s The Double Bind. Instead of rewriting the story of Fitzgerald’s classic, Bohjalian does something quite different: he sets his own story in the same fictional universe as The Great Gatsby. The heroine of The Double Bind, for example, spent her childhood swimming at a country club in West Egg that was once Gatsby’s mansion!

Modern Mystery Masters - Sara Paretsky

Author: Sara Paretsky

Detective: V. I. (Victoria Iphigenia) Warshawski

Locale: primarily Chicago

First book: Indemnity Only (1982)
Latest book: Hardball (2009)

Other writings: Windy City Blues (short stories), Bleeding Kansas and Ghost Country (single novels) and Writing in an Age of Silence (non-fiction).

Sometimes it is hard to like V. I. Warshawski. She can be stubborn, self-righteous, swift to anger, with a knack of alienating even her closest friends. And for a time I stopped reading Paretsky’s books because all I wanted to do was give V. I. a swift kick.

But her latest effort, Hardball (2009), is really, really good and I can heartily recommend it. The case starts out as a missing persons investigation - V. I. is hired to find the missing son and nephew of two elderly sisters currently living out their days in an Assisted Living/Nursing Home.

The case gets quickly more and more complicated, however, and we are eventually drawn into the history of the Chicago race riots of the 1960s. Murder, police brutality, false confessions and civil rights violations (both then AND now) take center stage and Vic’s investigation comes a bit too close to home for anyone's comfort.

About the author: Sara Paretsky was born in Iowa and raised in Kansas, so naturally Paretsky’s detective fiction takes place in Chicago (primary the South Side) and stars V. I. Warshawski, a sharp-tongued, uncomfortably honest and incredibly stubborn private investigator whose family ties and work ethic complicate an already complicated career.

Paretsky is a member of Sisters in Crime and is devoted to improving the image of women in detective fiction as well as in real life. In a recent interview Paretsky admitted that ,”I’ve not been able to change the world. I’ve not been able to liberate myself, let alone 3 billion other women. Add that to the state of publishing and the fact that books may not actually exist in another five years, and I just want to lie down and pull leaves over my head.” [Interview in Mystery Scene, Holiday 2009] Meg

Looking Back on the Decade

Doesn’t that sound incredible, but we are coming to the end of the first decade of the 21st century. There are all kinds of sites online that are lining up to list what they consider the best or most worthy book titles written during the past ten years.

The Times Online lists their 100 choices, with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road taking first place.

Good Reads took a reader’s poll and came up with their own list. The first five places went to The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling, Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Twilight by Stephanie Meyer, and A Thousand Splendid Suns, also by Khaled Hosseini.

Salon.com chose a few different titles than most lists. Their top fiction and non-fiction titles were The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.

Amazon.com makes a stab at the best books and includes The Life of Pi (“a boy stuck on a raft with a large Bengal tiger) by Yann Martel, John Adams by David McCullough, and the Harry Potter series.

I can think of several titles that were personal favorites of mine. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire Harry Potter series and the Deathly Hallows was a fitting finale for a series that may have changed the world of children’s book publishing forever.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion said much to me personally about grief and loss and living the life you have been given to the fullest. I am not a Joan Didion afficianado, but this title was truly a work of magic. I also really loved The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman, The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood and Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi.

As you probably realized, I love a good mystery and recently I discovered two series that were excellent: the Julia Spencer-Fleming series with the Reverend Clare Ferguson and Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne and Steig Larssen's soon-to-be trilogy about Lisbeth Salander.

So, looking back on what you have read over the past ten years, what are your favorites? What do you think influenced you the most, or was the most meaningful? Meg

An Old Fashioned Christmas Mystery – The Finishing Stroke by Ellery Queen

I started reading mysteries when I was a very young child. Having gone through all of the library’s Nancy Drew’s and Trixie Belden’s, I would sneak over to the adult side and revel in the wonderful detective writers they had over there, including Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner and my favorite, Ellery Queen. I know he’s old fashioned, but I learned much of my adult vocabulary from his writing (“There was not a scintilla of evidence…”) and his mysteries almost always included a formal “Challenge to the Reader” to solve the mystery that I was eager to accept.

Among my favorite titles from the pen of Ellery Queen is The Finishing Stroke, a brilliant and complicated mystery set during the 12 days of Christmas in an old mansion in upstate New York in the middle of a raging blizzard. Ellery has been invited to spend the holidays, along with 12 other guests, at the home of Arthur B. Craig, a wealthy publisher. Other guests include Ellery’s friend John Sebastian, his cousin, Ellen Craig, his fiancé, Rusty Brown and her somewhat eccentric mother, Mrs. Brown, who is deeply into astrology, John’s friends Marius Carlo and Valentina Warren, Dr. Sam Dark, the family physician, Roland Payne, the family attorney, Dan Z. Freeman, publisher and the Reverend Mr. Gardiner, an Episcopal priest.

And thus the scene is set for a happy holiday gathering – or not. On the first evening a present is found under the Christmas tree. The small, wrapped box contains a carved ox, an unfinished doll’s house, and a tiny camel. The accompanying card reads “On the first night of Christmas your true love sends to you, a sandalwood ox in a holiday box, An unfinished house for the soon-to-be-spouse, A grey and white camel with skin of enamel.” Not exactly threatening, but anonymous and mysterious nonetheless.

Ellery, who has a reputation for being somewhat of a sleuth, is asked to look into the matter and the game’s afoot. Because the card is based on the song The Twelve Days of Christmas, no one is surprised when the puzzling gifts keep on appearing. And then Santa and a dead body turn up. The solution is a bit esoteric, but really clever and the atmosphere of the holidays and the snow and the isolation make for a perfect winter holiday mystery.

Note about the author(s): Ellery Queen is the pseudonym (and the main character) of two American writers, Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee. Together they wrote over 30 detective novels starring Ellery as well as mystery anthologies and true crime essays. They co-founded and edited The Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, which is still publishing today. Meg