What is the Library Staff Reading Now?

Although there is much more to being a librarian than reading books, many of the library staff do enjoy reading and spend some of their spare time devoted to this very pleasant pastime. In case you were curious, here is a brief description of what some of the library staff is reading now.

Deborah J., our secretary, says, “I’m currently listening to a playaway – Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm by John Katz, a public radio talk show host who decided to buy and work a farm in upstate New York. Great story for animal lovers and those who want to embrace their inner farm girl/boy.”


Mary B., Bookmobile Librarian, is reading House of Cards by William Cohan, a minute-by-minute look at the last hours of Bear Stearns. “We just ‘celebrated’ the one year anniversary of the Wall Street meltdown, and you don’t have to be an investor to read and cringe at what is described in Cohan’s book.” Mary is also reading Renegade by Richard Wolfe – a description of Wolfe’s 2-year journey with Barack Obama on the campaign trail.

The Children’s Department staff is busy reading, too. Cathy A. just finished Lost by Jacqueline Davies. This young adult novel set in New York in 1911 is a fictional account of the tragic Triangle Factory fire that killed hundreds of factory workers. What makes this book interesting is its inclusion of another real-life event, the disappearance of New York heiress Dorothy Arnold.

Because Diane G. (also of the Children’s Department) enjoyed reading The Last Dickens, she decided to give Matthew Perl’s other novel, The Poe Shadow, a try. Both books are inspired by real-life authors and have a “sense of the literary.” She is also juggling Golfing with God by Roland Merullo (author of Breakfast with Buddha) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Ruth D. just finished Tracy Kidder’s Strength in What Remains about the life of Burudian refugee, Deo, and his struggle as a non-English speaking immigrant in New York City. “The horror of the Rwandan and Burudian genocides are painstakingly illustrated, but this one lucky and gifted man managed to survive and ultimately return to Burundi to help his homeland.”

One of our Young Adult librarians, Becky F. is seriously into the Stephanie Meyer’s vampire series. Becky just finished Breaking Dawn (book #4) and feels that the books are more romantic than they are scary. Which is a good thing, because as a child, the thought of vampires terrified her! She is also in the middle of reading Deadline by Chris Crutcher. This is the story of Ben, given one year to live, who decides to live out his remaining time to the fullest – and not tell anyone he is sick.

Gail S. from the Reference Dept. is reading Walking People by Mary Beth Keane. She says this is a well written novel about a very poor Irish family in 1940’s Ballyroan, Ireland. Other books on her book shelf include The Art of Civilized Conversation by Margaret Shepherd and Time and Tide by Frank Conroy.

As for me, I am busily reading the short of list titles for next year’s Reading Across Rhode Island program, and I succumbed to all the hype and am also reading Dan Brown’s latest, The Lost Symbol. I’ll let you know what I think once I finish. Meg

Join a Book Discussion Group at NPL

Do you belong to a book group? What was the best book your group ever read? The worst? Tell us a little bit about what you think makes a good book group. Would you like to be part of a Book Discussion group? The library has two really active Book Discussion Groups and they are both starting up again this fall.

The Thursday Evening Book Discussion Group begins this Thursday, September 17th, at 7pm in the Stride Room (lower floor of the library). The book they are going to discuss is The Girls by Lori Lansens. This is a novel about conjoined twins, and their lives together as they strive to be both sisters and individuals. Anyone who has read the book is welcome to attend.

After Thursday’s meeting, the list of book titles for the rest of the year will be decided. Stay tuned! If you have questions or want more details, email or call (847-8720, Ext. 103) Pat LaRose.

The Tuesday Afternoon Book Discussion Group alternates between reading classics and more modern works, often based loosely on a classic counterpart. Their first meeting was last week, September 8th, but they meet monthly and anyone is welcome to join. Their next meeting will be Tuesday, October 13th, from 1-3pm in the Stride Room. The book to be discussed in October is Foe by J. M. Coetzee. Foe is a reinvention of the story of Robinson Crusoe  If you have questions or want more details, email or call (847-8720, Ext. 208) Luke Owens.  Meg

Tennis, anyone?

The US Open Tennis Championship began last week and I, for one, am hooked watching. I love the fact that they are televising some really good matches during prime time and I try to check in during the afternoons every chance I get.

There have been some outstanding books published recently about tennis and great tennis players and I wanted to recommend a few.

On the Line by Serena Williams is just out. Serena is one of the world’s best women players and quite an interesting character. She and her sister (Venus) burst on the tennis scene in the 1990’s and have been vying for a first and second place ranking ever since. Novelist Plus says “The Grand Slam and Olympic champion traces her rise from a disadvantaged childhood to one of the world’s top tennis players, discussing her battles with racism, the injuries that threatened her career, and her current roles as a philanthropist and media personality.”

Strokes of Genius by L. Jon Wertheim is subtitled Federer, Nadal and the Greatest Match Ever Played and is about the 2008 men’s final at Wimbledon (England).The author calls this match” essentially a four-hour, forty-eight-minute infomercial for everything that is right about tennis.”

Monica Seles has written Getting a Grip. Seles was attacked and stabbed by a crazed spectator in the middle of a quarterfinal match in Germany in 1993. This memoir details her struggle to find her way back to professional tennis.

And finally, A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played by Marshall Jon Fisher is about the 1937 Davis Cup competition held as the world was on the brink of war.  Meg

Reading Across Rhode Island and The Lost City of Z

The Lost City of Z by David Grann

It is hard to imagine a time when explorers – people who went on long, dangerous journeys to as yet undiscovered places, were really famous, looked on as celebrities and whose exploits were reported in all the news media of the day.

“No Olympic games contender was ever trained down to a finer edge than these three reserved, matter-of-fact Englishmen, whose pathway to a forgotten world is beset by arrows, pestilence and wild beasts.”
[Los Angeles Times, 1925]

That’s the kind of notoriety that Percy Harrison Fawcett, explorer extraordinary, and other adventurers of the early 1900’s received. These were the days of T. E. Lawrence, Teddy Roosevelt, Shackleton, etc. Exploration was also of vital concern because there were really still places to explore - places that no one had ever gone before – where no one had mapped accurately.

The main story is of Fawcett, his mania for exploring the Amazon and his last expedition in search of the lost city of Z, aka El Dorado. Collected around the tale of Fawcett’s 1924 doomed expedition is the story of David Grann, a writer for the New Yorker magazine - a city-dweller who had never even gone camping before - and his attempt to follow in Fawcett’s footsteps, find the bones (literally) of the explorer – and maybe even the lost city itself.

This is not a tale for the faint-hearted. The living creatures, both big and small, that populate the Amazon jungle (or at least did in the 1920s) are directly out of your worst science fiction nightmare. That anyone would freely choose to enter into this arena of crawling beasts, starvation, disease and dangerous populations is beyond me. But it is still fascinating to read about what these men (and there were many Amazon expeditions, several to find Fawcett) attempted.

I will not reveal whether Grann actually found Fawcett or the lost city. Pick the book up and become an explorer yourself! Meg

Always Look Over Your Shoulder - Conspiracy Thrillers

When I think conspiracy thriller I think of two things almost immediately: 1) the television show X-Files, wherein FBI agents Mulder and Scully did their best to investigate and prove the existance of one of the largest conspiracies imaginable (i.e., aliens had landed and were even now engaged in a gigantic effort to take over earth) and 2) Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code – wherein conspiracies perpetrated through the ages by certain societies within the Catholic Church kept secret the true nature (and number?) of Jesus’ apostles.

Our friendly neighborhood Wiki article defines the conspiracy thriller as a book “in which the hero/heroine confronts a large, powerful group of enemies whose true extent only he/she recognizes.” They give as prime examples the works of Robert Ludlum, and I would especially recommend the titles about Jason Bourne, recently made into movies – The Bourne Identity; The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. These are excellent books and full of double crosses, covert agencies and everything you could want from a conspiracy thriller.

David Baldacci has written a series of books that could be considered conspiracy thrillers. This series begins with The Camel Club, and follows (in reading order) with The Collectors, Stone Cold and Divine Justice.

And finally, a book I would like to recommend that I just recently read is The Eight by Katherine Neville. The Eight features a exceptionally complex plot focusing on action in two distinct time periods. To quote from a review, “A young novice, during the French Revolution, risks her life to preserve a jeweled chess set that the Moors gave Charlemagne, and in the 20th century, a computer expert and a chess master try to solve its mystery.” There is a sequel – entitled The Fire – that follows one of our protaganists, Alexandra Solarin, as she tries to solve, once again, the mystery of the Charlemagne chess service.

If you have any favorite conspiracy thrillers that you would like to share with us, please do so. Meg

[By the way – one of the best conspiracy thriller movies I have ever watched is Sneakers, starring Robert Redford, Dan Ackroyd and River Phoenix. It has been called the “last great hacking movie” and it is quite the ride – even if it was produced in 1992.]

An Armchair Visit to Cape Cod

Cape Cod – the “bared and bended arm of Massachusetts. The shoulder is at Buzzard’s Bay; the elbow, or crazy bone, at Cape Mallebarre; the wrist at Truro; and the sandy fist at Provincetown.” H. D. Thoreau

Do you like to read travel memoirs? Or books by folks who live in a certain area and want to share a love of their surroundings with you? Here are a group of titles about our near-by Massachusetts neighbor, Cape Cod. If you have never been there, used to go there as a child, or just like to be an “armchair” traveler, these books should give you a sense of the Cape and its culture. Two picture books begin our list.

Cape Cod National Seashore by Andrew Borsari
This is a small book, recently published that presents full color photographs of the national treasure that is Cape Cod accompanied by literary quotations. A little gem.
Thoreau’s Cape Cod (with early photographs of Herbert W. Gleason) is based on Henry David Thoreau’s long essay on Cape Cod and is illustrated with some fascinating, early black and white photographs.

Special Places On Cape Cod and the Islands by Robert Finch has very few photographs, but contains some wonderful essays about some very unique Cape Cod locales.

For those of you who really want to really dig deep, The Enduring Shore: A History of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket by Paul Schneider is a thoroughly researched and complete history of the entire area.

And to conclude, two titles that are more memoir than travel guide -
The Salt House: A Summer on the Dunes of Cape Cod by Cynthia Huntington tells of the special feeling the author has for her small, unique “house,” and
A Walk on the Beach by Joan Anderson is more about the feelings of peace and satisfaction two women found by simply walking on the beach together.

Henry David Thoreau said it best, “a man may stand there and put all America behind him.”

Dick and Felix - the odd couple?

I am not one of those people who are in love with horses. I did not grow up loving them. I did not grow up wanting to read about them. Horses are just not my cup of tea (or bucket of oats) or whatever. But I really must confess I love a Dick Francis mystery.

I was reluctant to even try one at first – for the above mentioned reasons. But Francis’ mysteries – although set firmly in the horse-racing milieu in England (for the most part) are not just about horses and horse racing but about all aspects of this interesting and unusual world. And his books are peopled with characters that I often come to admire and respect and villains that are just plain bad.

One of my favorite titles is In the Frame which is actually about a gentleman, Charles Todd, who paints horses. Some of this book takes place in Australia at one of the biggest races there, the Melbourne Cup. There is one memorable passage wherein Todd is trying to distract some thugs who have arrived at the hotel room of his friends and the only thing he can think to do is send everyone from every service imaginable at the hotel to his friends’ rooms – room service, the maids, the chauffeurs, the hairdressers, the barbers – whatever – and as all these curious hotel workers arrive at the room Todd manages to smuggle his friends out. It is riotous: I laughed till I cried.

Other good titles include: Whip Hand (about Sid Halley, jockey turned detective); Proof (with Tony Beach, a wine merchant who caters racing parties); and Risk (with Roland Britten, an accountant).

As Mr. Dick Francis ages (born in 1920, he is currently 89 years young) he has enlisted the help of his son, Felix, as co-writer. Felix is a former teacher (of physics!) and onetime researcher for his father’s books. Now they are writing in collaboration and the two titles they have produced thus far, Dead Heat and Silks, have been just as popular and just as fascinating as previous titles. Check out their web site for more information on this collaboration and on both of them.

Their new title in collaboration, Even Money, about bookmaker and amateur investigator Ed Talbot, is due out this month.