Category Archives: Book Review

Spring Gardening (Well Weeding Actually…)

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With our good weather lately, lots of us are outside and many are gardening. At my house you could just call it weeding because I think we have more weeds than plants. For all the gardeners who are also busy weeding, and maybe planting vegetables, here are two books that look at gardening in different ways.

paradiselotIn Paradise Lot by Eric Toensmeier, two plant geeks have a lifelong dream of designing and growing permaculture gardens with plants that provide food. Permaculture promotes sustainable, long-term agricultural systems. These gardens substitute perennials for annuals so you don’t need to replant each year, or ever, if you’ve planned it right. Ideally, the garden forms its own ecosystem.

Unfortunately, most people have permaculture gardens in the tropics, so the plants that are known to grow well and reseed themselves year after year are only suited for warmer climates. The author and his friend live in Massachusetts, where it gets below freezing over the winter, so tropical plants won’t work. They have always lived in rented places, so these become their first experimental gardens. Finally, they buy a duplex that sits on 1/10 of an acre, which adds another wrinkle to the problem in that 1/10 of an acre isn’t much land to grow a food garden on. The lot is also overgrown with weeds, and the soil underneath is better suited for a parking lot than a garden.

The book details their work over the course of several years of planning and planting their garden. Their garden eventually provides a lot of their food, including bananas, persimmons, grapes, pears, kiwi, pawpaws, and much more. For a place that gets below freezing in the winter, they’re surprised to find that they can grow tropical fruit. Take that, Florida! Their garden becomes a classroom for others interested in making their own permaculture gardens. This book was inspiring both for seeing the amazing variety of plants they could grow and for the dream of not having to weed much because the plants you want crowd out the weeds.

harvestHarvest: An Adventure into the Heart of America’s Family Farms by Richard Horan follows a man who decides to participate in the harvests of a dozen different crops on small, family-run farms (and then write a book about it). He goes coast to coast and lives in the farmers’ homes while working in the fields with them. He finds similarities among the farms and the farmers, even though they differ in many ways.

Some of the farmers have chosen their crops for historical or heirloom value, some chose them because they like growing them, and some seemed to have just happened upon this lifestyle and found that it suited them. Obviously, these are all people who care deeply about the land and its health and ecology, yet most of them are not from generations of farmers.

Surprisingly, when you consider the premium we pay for organic food (those organic bananas better taste organic), most of these farmers have partners or spouses who need to work at other jobs in order to make a living wage. The work is extremely hard and Horan recalls his youth when he was able to do this kind of physical labor that is now so wearing on him. He also gives us some background on the new growth of family farms and compares their practices to commercial agriculture. This sounds clichéd, but Horan re-discovers his soul and purpose and a new optimism by working on these farms.

Not many of us get to do what we love. So, get out there in your garden and put your hands in the dirt. Get dirty. Get downright filthy. Eat healthy food and get enough fruits and vegetables (because they just might keep you from turning into a zombie).

Kathy

Questionable Things

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Due to my exposure to the Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius at a formative age, I’ve always had a weakness for biographies of historical figures with a healthy amount of scandal. There is an admittedly voyeuristic pleasure at poking around the lives of others. Along with that goes a rather questionable, though undeniable, desire to judge the historical figure by your own standards: Are they guilty or innocent? Good or bad? Sympathetic or villainous?

Two biographies I recently read are great at taking this desire on the part of the reader and turning it on its head. Both introduce you to individuals who may have done “questionable things”. Instead of becoming an indictment or whitewash of their character, however, each author sketches a figure that is complex and hard to define. This ultimately frustrates the reader’s desire to judge, but leads to even more meaningful insights.

Vera GranVera Gran: the Accused by Agata Tuszynska.
We are first introduced to the subject of this biography, Vera Gran, as an elderly and paranoid woman who rarely leaves her small Paris apartment. The author must first interview her in the hallway since, according to Vera, spies are everywhere and the apartment is bugged. Eventually she is allowed inside the cramped and document filled space and Vera begins to tell her story.

And what a story it is. Vera Gran, the stage name she went by the most often, was a torch singer from Poland who established a career before the German occupation of her country during World War II.  It is her activities during the war that, for better or worse, defined her life in her own and many others eyes.  Vera and her family, being Jewish, were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto and in order to survive Vera, as well as many other Jewish entertainers, continued to perform.

Almost the entirety of the residents of the Warsaw Ghetto were murdered but Vera was one of the few to survive. The very act of survival, however, brought up questions after the war concerning complicity, culpability and possible collaboration. It is this struggle to defend her actions that becomes the focus of Vera’s life. Her relationship with Wladyslaw Szpilman, a pianist who also survived the Ghetto and whose life became an Oscar-winning film, eventually becomes the focus of this all-consuming need to clear her name.

Vera Gran: The Accused is a character study that delves into the ideas of guilt, survival and what it actually means to be an “honorable” person during horrific times. As a reader you start to question your own actions and begin to see society’s intense need to judge the past as inherently flawed.

Faithful ExecutionerThe Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century by Joel Harrington
Based on a personal journal from Renaissance Germany, this book is the story of Meister Franz Schmidt who was the executioner of Nuremberg from 1573 to 1618. As you can imagine, there are some pretty gruesome details involved in the telling of this story, execution by “the wheel” is not a pretty sight, but the author endeavors to fill out a full sketch of the man and his times and reserve judgment.

Franz Schmidt was actually born into a family of executioners, the odious profession was forced upon his father by an unscrupulous aristocrat, and he had few options to pursue other careers since the profession was considered unclean and inherited. In fact, his whole life’s goal was to ensure that his own family could somehow get out from under the social stigma and transition into a more respectable profession.

In addition to the personal drama of Schmidt’s life, the author paints a vivid portrait of his times describing how the executioner and the citizens of Nuremberg lived day-to-day. While death was all around, in the form of a high infant mortality rate and periodic deadly disease outbreaks, crime and punishment were considered issues of the utmost importance. In the end, the author finds more similarities than are comfortable to admit between our ideas and the attitudes of those who walked the streets of Meister Schmidt’s Nuremberg.

His final conclusion rings true as an assessment of the figures in both books:

Perhaps, in a cruel and capricious world, there is hope to be found in one man defying his fate, overcoming universal hostility, and simply persevering amid a series of personal tragedies.

Richard

Sin-Eater’s Confession

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I don’t have all the answers to what happened back home, or why people did what they did, or, more to the point, why I didn’t do what I should’ve.

sineatersconfessionThe Sin-Eater’s Confession by Ilsa J. Bick is a novel about truth and rumors and the murky area between the two. The book opens with a young man named Ben who writes down his story while he’s stationed in Afghanistan as a medic. In folklore, a sin-eater is “a man who (according to a former practice in England) for a small gratuity ate a piece of bread laid on the chest of a dead person, whereby he was supposed to have taken the sins of the dead person upon himself.” Now to me, that makes it sound like you could be a dark soul who while living enjoyed torturing small children and setting houses on fire, but as long as you died and some poor schmoe was around to absolve you of all sins your slate was wiped clean. 

Ben starts his story as a high school senior who has more than enough on his plate. His mother is constantly on his case to apply to dozens of colleges and he volunteers at the local emergency room just because his mom thinks it’ll look great on his college application. During the summer, another senior, Del, is killed by a drunk driver. Ben volunteers to help Del’s family on their farm, befriending his younger brother Jimmy. 

Del was a high school jock but his brother Jimmy is a timid kid who is verbally abused by his father. Jimmy’s father can’t seem to stand the sight of him since Del died. Ben feels sorry for Jimmy but doesn’t really know what to do. Jimmy confides to Ben that he wants to be a photographer. Ben tells him that he doesn’t want to be a doctor but wants to be a writer. They’re just two dudes talking, imagining the lives they’ll one day lead.

One day while taking a break under an unforgiving sun, Jimmy begins to tell Ben something. He can’t quite get the secret out of his mouth and Ben becomes uneasy because he thinks he already knows what that secret might be:

It’s terrible and huge and awesome all at the same time that I am dying to let out-and only to you. Because only you will understand. Only you matter. If I tell, maybe everything changes-and not for the good. And I don’t know if I can bear that.

When school starts there’s no time for Ben to help Jimmy on his family’s farm. He hates to admit it but he kind of forgets about Jimmy, forgets that he told him he’d be there for him if he ever needed a friend.

Rumors begin to fly when a picture of Ben shows up in a magazine. The picture is fairly innocent: Ben lying in the sun after hours of hard work, unaware of the camera. Jimmy had taken his photograph and entered it into a contest and won. Everybody’s talking about the picture. Jimmy must be gay. He took a picture of a shirtless Ben resting against a bale of hay. Ben must be gay too. It’s obvious.

But is it really? 

Ben begins to question himself. He’s never had a girlfriend but is that because he’s so busy volunteering, getting a 4.0 in school, applying to the most prestigious colleges that there’s no time for a girlfriend? Or does he keep himself busy because he doesn’t want to question himself too closely? 

Somehow Ben gets painted as the bad guy. Jimmy’s father doesn’t want him around because he thinks he’s a bad influence on his son. The photograph must have been Ben’s idea. The Christian coffee shop where Jimmy buses tables treats Ben like he’s something rotten they stepped in. 

Ben’s small and orderly world begins to spin-off its axis as the rumors grow teeth. All his life Ben has been pushed to be the best by his mother. She can’t have a simple conversation with him without asking if he’s written an essay for his Yale admission.  Little by little he’s admitting to himself that his life isn’t his own.

He decides to talk to Jimmy, this time without the evil eye from the coffee shop owners and the creepy pastor that seems to have a fierce hold on Jimmy’s family. He sees Jimmy behind the coffee shop, hears low murmuring voices and then a loud “No!” He watches as Jimmy gets into a car with someone he can’t quite make out and follows them for what seems like forever. The car finally pulls into a state park. What happens next shapes Ben’s and Jimmy’s lives forever.

There is no moral lesson in this book. There are no answers. But that’s how life is. Would I really be there for someone if they needed me or is that something I just say to make someone feel better? Do I keep myself busy because I can’t figure out who or what I want in my life? 

Can I count on myself to know what’s best for me? Barely. Will I sometimes get swept up in gossip and rumors? Most certainly. Will I be a strong enough person to find out the truth behind rumors and gossip? I hope so.

The Sin-Eater’s Confession did what it intended to do: it promised there’d be no answers to any questions. But it told a familiar story, one that we all face day-to-day. Who am I, really? Am I what I want to be or do I play a different role to make others happy?

There are no answers here.

Jennifer

What Not to Read

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Recently, the blog team was presented with an article by Maria Popova that contains an interesting quote:

“Non-reading is not just the absence of reading. It is a genuine activity, one that consists of adopting a stance in relation to the immense tide of books that protects you from drowning. On that basis, it deserves to be defended and even taught.”

 ~ from How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard

How to talk about

This led to a lively discussion of what we read, what we don’t read, why we choose or don’t choose certain titles. It’s an interesting topic and something I think about frequently. But I’d never considered not reading to be a choice.

 The idea that by choosing not to read certain books one will be protected from drowning (presumably beneath a menacing flood of literature) intrigues me. As a person who spends most days besieged by the bursting bounty of books in the library, I am keenly aware of the perils embodied by this tumultuous torrent of tomes. So too am I aware of the debilitating reading disorder that plagues me and many others, causing us to throw common sense out the metaphorical window and to check out far too many books in a single go. This pestilence on our land, most commonly known as bibliorrhea, is a disease recognizable by the sufferer’s reading eyes being decidedly larger than his or her ample reading stomach, leaving plates and plates of unread or unfinished materials.

 Hence the need for a method of whittling down the teetering stacks of books in my office to a manageable pile. So I undertake the largely unconscious task of choosing what not to read.

There are unwritten rules my subconscious follows, which I will now write down, so strike this sentence. Here are the written rules I tend to follow in selecting books.

I seldom read non-fiction. In my formative years non-fiction tended to be as dry as a desiccant pack in the Mojave Desert.
Follows the rule:
Hedy LamarHedy’s Folly: The Life And Breakthrough Inventions Of Hedy Lamarr, The Most Beautiful Woman In The World by Richard Rhodes sounds absolutely fascinating, telling how actress and beauty icon Hedy Lamarr invented technology which was later used in cell phones and other devices. Who knew? However, the writing style of this book did not engage me (this tends to be my issue with non-fiction) and I quickly put it down.

ConfederatesIs an exception:
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz is a wonderful non-fiction book that looks at the effects of the Civil War which still permeate American thought and behavior, especially in the south. This non-fiction book is an exception to my rule.

Writing style is important. I generally do not like the prose employed in best-selling fiction.
Follows the rule:
TwilightTwilight by Stephenie Meyer, one of the most wildly-popular books in recent memory, is definitely not aimed at my age-group and gender, but still I found the text to be quite repetitive and unreadable, taking tens of pages to unfold a plot that could have been revealed in a single page or sentence. I was not able to complete this book due to annoyance with the writing style.

Valhalla
Is an exception:
Valhalla Rising by Clive Cussler is a thrilling thriller involving Viking runes, Nemo’s Nautilus, the Red Baron and countless other twists and turns. I consider Cussler’s best-sellers to be guilty pleasures that I do not want to admit to reading but secretly enjoy.


Dense or archaic language is difficult for me to enjoy. I prefer an easy read.
Follows the rule:
CopperfieldDavid Copperfield by Charles Dickens is a certified classic that I couldn’t read if my life depended on it. The language of Dickens’ England requires tremendous mental prowess to untangle, leaving me exhausted and searching for a Harlequin romance.

 Dickens may be a god among authors, but I remain an atheist.

Is an exception:
TetherballsThe Tetherballs of Bougainville by Mark Leyner is a book that defies description, filled with surreal run-on sentences that continue for pages, plot turns that don’t particularly make sense, and language that a diamond couldn’t penetrate. Yet somehow the result is freakishly enjoyable.

So there you have a little peek into the process I undertake when deciding which books to read and what not to read.

Next month the blog team will discuss, for your enjoyment, some titles that we will not read, cannot finish, or wish to destroy in excruciating fashions, along with justifications for our feelings and actions. It’s all in good fun, but at the same time this discussion might help us better understand our reading motivations, to venture into uncharted reading territories, and to discover an unexpected gem here and there along the way.

Ron                  

It’s Time to Garden! (Or at Least Read About it Until the Rain Stops)

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My gardening life is cyclical…non-existent in the winter, heavy-duty in Spring and Summer and occasional in the Fall.

I am spending all of my free time these days out in the yard, but let’s face it- it’s been pretty damp lately. The reasonable alternative is to check out all of the gorgeous new gardening books from the library. Here’s a quick review of some of the more popular and enticing new ones, along with some really beautiful and excellent older titles. Hope you enjoy them!

All the Garden’s a Stage: Choosing the Best Performing Plants for a Sustainable Garden by Jane C. Gates.

In this book allthegarden'syou’ll learn how to choose the right plants for growing your best garden. The author encourages you to think of gardening as staging a theatrical production, with tips for lighting, temperature, drainage, and developing a sustainable landscape. The text is entertaining, with easy-to-remember facts and suggestions for putting on the best garden show ever.

Beautiful Edible Garden by Steffani Bittnerbeautiful

I am in line with a hold for this title so all I can report is what our catalog summarizes:  “A stylish, beautifully photographed guide to artfully incorporate organic vegetables, fruits, and herbs into an attractive modern garden design.”   Sounds perfect as I’m always up for edibles.

The Drunken Botanist: Plants that Create the World’s Great Drinks by Amy Stewart

indexThis book was all the rage at the 2013 Seattle Flower and Garden Show. The author gave a hilarious talk, so I’m sure that her book is just as funny. Why not grow what you drink in addition to what you eat?

Grow Vegetables in Pots edited by Emma Callery.index

Every rabid gardener is always looking for new soil to till and it’s so much easier to buy a new pot, fill it with soil, and plant away, than to take up sod, isn’t it? This is from DK publishing so it has many gorgeous photos in addition to fantastic container ideas.

indexThe Layered Garden by David L. Culp

Loads of beautiful photographs of the Brandywine Cottage garden illustrate design lessons for you to create a succession of plant combinations which will bloom from earliest spring until latest winter. A dreamy book!

Powerhouse Plants: 510 Top Performers for Multi-Season Beauty by Graham Rice

indexI love the layout of this book: Clear and simple information on one side with a nice photo on the other side. This book profiles annuals, perennials, trees, shrubs, vines and grasses that would all be hard-working additions to your garden. Be sure to have pen and paper in hand as you read so you can create a plant shopping list.

Western Garden Book: The Twenty Minute Gardener:  Projects, Plants and Designs for Quick and Easy Gardening edited by Kathleen Norris

indexThis book is as easy to use as it is inspiring, whether you grow plants on a balcony, patio, or huge estate. This is a compilation of articles from Sunset Magazine. I’m a twenty-minute gardener every morning before work as I take our dog out into the yard for slug hunts and other business. With the help of this book, you too can be a twenty-minute gardener.

Why Grow That When You Can Grow This: 255 Extraordinary Alternatives to Everyday Problem Plants by Andrew Keys

index

Do your Hybrid Tea roses have black spot? Try ‘Knock Out’ or ‘The Fairy’ roses. Are your peonies fussy? Try hellebores.  This book offers specific substitutes for troublesome plants.  Try it. You’ll like it!

And now for a few awesome, albeit older, book titles which still grace our library shelves:

index1000 Garden Ideas by Stafford Cliff is quite the visual sourcebook. It’s like Pinterest in print. If you like pictures, this is the gardening book for you as that’s all it is: Photos. There’s no text (oh, okay, there’s a little if you search for it). This book is definitely for the visual gardener.

index

Better Homes and Gardens Beds and Borders includes plans for more than ninety plant-by-number gardens you can grow yourself. This book is packed with loads of great ideas.

indexContainer Gardening: 250 Design Ideas & Step-by-Step Techniques from the editors of Fine Gardening is a fantastic book. There are lots of great color photographs along with ideas and step-by-step instructions for creating beautiful container gardens. Love it!

indexCAEPO15NGarden Gallery: The Plants, Art, and Hardscape of Little and Lewis by George Little & David Lewis is a photographic tour of the private Puget Sound garden of internationally famous artists and plants men Little and Lewis. They share their personal wisdom for what informs and inspires their wild fantasia of plants, hardscape, and art.

Shocking Beauty and The Jewel Box Garden by Thomas Hobbs

indexindexCAED1KAU

These books from Vancouver B C’s most extravagant gardener are simply gorgeous. They are good for creative ideas, in particular if you like to make the odd ‘shocking garden statement’ yourself. Just leafing through the artful photography will inspire you to try something a little different. Be forewarned, this book will have you ripping out all yellow & red tulips combinations as clichés just won’t cut it for you anymore.

Hey! I think that the sun’s out. See you in the garden!

Leslie

Then You Were Gone

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thenyouweregoneI knew I was going to like this book when I read the author’s dedication:  For my best girls and my ex-BFFs

I think most grown women and young girls understand the power of an intense friendship. These relationships can be beautiful and decades long or they can be short-lived and downright destructive to the point where a person loses their own identity. It’s not any comfort to know that friendships can be as baffling at the age of 40 as they are the age of 16. It is a comfort, however, to find friends you once thought lost.

At the start of Lauren Strasnick’s Then You Were Gone, Adrienne and Dakota have had an intense friendship that ended two years ago. Dakota was more than a wild child; she’s the kind of girl mothers want to keep both their sons and daughters away from. Dakota is the poster girl for damaged teenagers. She’s the girl who ingests a speedball and thrash dances barefoot on top of a thin glass table top. 

Now a high school senior, Adrienne has put her life back together. There are times she gets heart-sick thinking about Dakota, but she knows she’s better off without her. But one day Adrienne gets a phone call from Dakota and doesn’t answer. Adrienne is plagued by guilt when she finds out Dakota has gone missing. She should have called her back. Did Dakota commit suicide or has she just disappeared like she does now and again, both worrying and angering her loved ones? Dakota fronted an up and coming band that was picking up an underground following. There were even rumors of getting a record deal. So why did she disappear? 

The world Adrienne had put back together for herself begins crumbling after Dakota’s disappearance. She doesn’t know if she loves her boyfriend Lee or if being with him is comfortable and safe. Her best friend Kate doesn’t understand why Adrienne is obsessed with finding Dakota. Adrienne doesn’t understand it herself. Their friendship ended two years ago. Why should she care? But she does. She becomes blind to anything but finding Dakota. 

Adrienne begins to turn into Dakota, donning dark-colored clothing and lining her eyes with kohl. She begins to hang out with Julian, Dakota’s on again off again boyfriend. The two of them even break into the house Dakota lived in with her step-father thinking that maybe he killed her and did away with her body. Adrienne begins skipping classes, not turning in her assignments, and not participating in lectures like she once did. 

In the back of her mind she knows she’s trying to turn herself into Dakota. A small part of her is screaming at Dakota, shouting that she’s messing everything up, her perfect relationship with her boyfriend, her grades, even her relationship with her mom. She’s desperate to find Dakota. But she’s also desperate for Julian to see her as Adrienne and not “Dakota’s former best friend.” She starts to wonder if she and Dakota had actually been friends or if Dakota had just used her. After breaking into Dakota’s house and searching her room she finds a photograph tucked inside a book.

Slipping the book back on the shelf, I see it.  A photo corner jutting out the top.  I pinch it.  Pull slowly.  My belly bottoms out.  Me.  It’s me.  I’m twelve, maybe?  Thirteen?  I’m licking an ice cream cone.  My eyes are crossed.  Did she take this?  Proof, finally.  Of our friendship.  I mattered once.   Even if I don’t anymore.

Adrienne begins to get phone calls from a blocked number. She almost convinces herself it has to be Dakota. But that ship has sailed. Dakota is nowhere to be found. After someone finds one of Dakota’s boots washed up on the beach Adrienne decides to let go and accept that Dakota is dead. She dumps all of the dark clothing, gets rid of the kohl eye liner and is ready for things to get back to normal with her boyfriend, her English grade and her friend Kate. No more of The Mystery That Is Dakota Webb. 

Except it’s not so easy going back to the way things were. Adrienne’s boyfriend Lee has started seeing someone else after being ignored by Adrienne. She writes the essay she’s been given two extensions on and her English teacher won’t accept it. She’s let him down. She’s let so many people down.

Dakota Webb has done more harm in disappearing than she has by being around. Little pockets of freshmen start to dress like her. A memorial goes up. She gets raised to near deity status. You know you really matter only if you’re dead. Tupac’s been dead for years and he’s still insanely popular. Same with Elvis. I think they’ve both been seen alive and well, traveling somewhere in the North with Bigfoot. 

Dakota is becoming a legend and most people are forgetting how self-serving, how manipulative she was. Adrienne realizes that their friendship was never equal. She followed Dakota’s lead and let her abuse her because she thought that’s what friendship meant. Having a healthy friendship with someone like Kate restores Adrienne’s self-esteem. Life’s not perfect and life’s not always flowers and fairy tales but her life has become more stable having gone through her friendship with Dakota.

Read Then You Were Gone for the mystery inside but also read it to get a picture of surviving a tumultuous friendship and coming out of it a stronger person. Some of us have been like Adrienne, used and constantly tested. But with time we begin to return to who we were before, all the better for having gone through a rough friendship.

Jennifer

Warm Bodies

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warmbodiesMy skin is always cold. I don’t like people to touch me, to try to hold my hand or touch the back of my neck because the skin there is always cold. Even in the middle of a scorching August day parts of my body are cold. Passing mirrors or shop windows I’m startled into remembering I’m inside this body. I feel like I just fell into it, that I was somewhere else a few minutes ago and then boom! I’m human again. Being inside this skin is almost ridiculous. I think that’s how zombies would feel if they were real. Or had thoughts beyond “That brain looks tasty.”

Isaac Marion’s Warm Bodies is a beauty of a book. It’s an atypical zombie read with surprisingly beautiful writing. There’s R, a zombie who lives at an abandoned airport along with hundreds of other zombies. There are out-posts of survivors who go on foraging missions for supplies and weapons. Some make it back in one piece. Some are lost to the world of the dead. There’s no explanation for the zombies or how they came to be. We seem to be the cause or the wrong we’ve done to the planet and to each other:

We released it. We poked through the seabed and the oil erupted, painted us black, pulled our inner sickness out for everyone to see. Now here we are in this dry corpse of a world, rotting on our feet ‘til there’s nothing left but bones and the buzz of flies.

From the very beginning R is a different kind of zombie. He loves Sinatra and lives alone in one of the grounded airplanes while all the other zombies group together. He can’t remember his name or who he was before becoming a zombie. He dreams. “Normal” zombies don’t sleep much let alone dream. R gathers bits of memories when he eats people. He sees their lives spread out before him. He savors their lives the way a zombie savors….well, human meat.

One day R and a few other zombies go out on a hunting mission and run up against human survivors. There’s a battle (the humans lose, of course) and R meets Julie. He’s chomping away at her boyfriend’s brain and quickly falls in love with her. He feels an overwhelming need to protect her and this freaks him out. He’s a zombie. He’s not supposed to feel protective of anyone or anything except maybe what bit of flesh belongs to him.

Surprisingly, the feelings are mutual for Julie. The only problem standing in their way, besides the whole he’s a corpse and she’s alive thing, is Julie’s father who’s a big muckety-muck in the service. He runs the small city Julie and other survivors live in. There’s always a psychotic father/general/sheriff in the zombie world, huh?

R tries to get across the message that the zombies are changing, evolving into something different. Julie sees this and tries to explain it to her father but Crazy General Dad can’t and won’t see the changes. All he sees is death and destruction and his own place eradicating the zombies from this world.

The one thing both zombies and humans have in common is their fear of the Boneys. These are zombies so ancient that they have only the slightest of skin stretched tight over their bones. They’re walking skeletons. They do not evolve. In fact, they seem mighty ticked off at R for becoming something and someone new and try to put a halt to it.

Part love story, part survival story, Warm Bodies is a novel about change and acceptance and loving someone even if they eat your boyfriend’s brain. I was once told that there’s a lid for every jar when it comes to being loved, that there’s someone for everyone. If you can love the zombie who ate most of your boyfriend then you, my friend, have found the best kind of love.

Just make sure your zombie boyfriend brushes his teeth before he leans in for that kiss.

Jennifer

Wrong Question, Right Book

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Who Could That Be at This Hour

What happened to his parents?
Where is that screaming coming from?
Is it too late?
This book contains these and other wrong questions.

Thus begins the dust jacket for “Who Could That Be at This Hour?” by Lemony Snicket. I, however, didn’t see this description initially. When I experienced book one in the All the Wrong Questions series, I was listening to the story on CD. Liam Aiken, who played Klaus in the movie adaptation of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, performed the audio version. Between his cadence and Snicket’s prose I was hooked.

Our story begins at the Hemlock Tearoom and Stationery Shop where twelve-year-old Lemony Snicket is about to have tea with his parents. Having just graduated, he is soon to board a train for a new life, a new adventure. But then he receives this note, and all his carefully laid plans go up in smoke:

Climb out the window in the bathroom and meet me in the alley behind the shop. I will be waiting in the green roadster. You have five minutes.          –S

The adventure begins! Soon Snicket is off with a stranger, a one S. Theodora Markson. He is now her apprentice and she is now his chaperon. They set off for a small coastal town called Stain’d-by-the Sea, where his training is to commence. It’s not an ordinary town, however. The ocean has been somewhat drained. There are large machines extracting octopus ink from those living in the remaining waters. Octopus ink is very dark and the reason the town got its odd name. There’s also the Clusterous Forest, which was once under the sea but is now home to seaweed that learned to grow on dry land. Never, ever, under any circumstances should you enter the Clusterous Forest.

Lemony and S. Theodora’s first client is Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s elderly matriarch, Mrs. Murphy Sallis. A priceless item, a frightening statue of something called the Bombinating Beast, has been stolen from Mrs. Sallis. It’s up to our fearless heroes to solve the case and return the beast to its rightful owner.

But, as in real life, not everything is just as it seems. The town, once thriving on the ink exports, has died off. The newspaper has closed and many of the shops are closed as well. In fact, the only places that still appear to be open are the inn, the coffee shop, and the library. Those who would appear to be knowledgeable, or even trustworthy, may in fact be deceitful or, quite frankly, stupid.

As the plot unravels and secrets are exposed, things get very dangerous for young Mr. Snicket. Will he be able to recover the Bombinating Beast? Will he even survive his apprenticeship?

Fans of Lemony Snicket will adore this tome. This is my first foray into his work and I am happy to say I am hooked. While the story of the Bombinating Beast is resolved at the end of the book, the overarching storyline that is Lemony Snicket’s apprenticeship continues on.

Book two in the All the Wrong Questions series won’t be out until October. While this distresses me, as someone who really wants to ask more wrong questions right along with Mr. Snicket, I am appeased by knowing that I can make this series last and savor it like a chewy caramel with my cup of tea. But definitely not tea from the Hemlock.

Carol

Heartwood 3:2 – Weldon Kees and Robinson Alone

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Robinson AloneRobinson Alone
by Kathleen Rooney

Weldon Kees was a mid-twentieth-century American poet, writer, painter, filmmaker and musician who disappeared one day in 1955, his car abandoned on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge. People who know of Kees at all today probably do so for his poetry (though his talent as a painter was real, and his pieces were once exhibited alongside those of Hans Hofmann and Willem de Kooning). But even among contemporary poets, many are unfamiliar with Kees’s stylish and often bleakly noir-ish work.

I’ve been captivated by Kees brooding, embittered poetry for a long time now, so it is a genuine pleasure to find Kathleen Rooney’s new novel in poems exploring all aspects of Kees and his alter-ego, Robinson – the anxious, shadowy, cipher featured in several of his poems.

Rooney adroitly follows the rough trajectory of Kees’s life as he goes from his Nebraska home to New York City, where he participates in but is never quite comfortable with its artistic milieu. He and his wife, Ann, decide to leave the city, driving cross-country on their way to eventually settling down in San Francisco. We learn of Kees/Robinson’s nightmares and insomnia, his anxiety regarding success, his fastidious nature and natty style. We also learn of Ann’s drinking and paranoia, and her ultimate institutionalization. Rooney has drawn heavily from Kees’s correspondence in fifteen fascinating entries all titled “Robinson Sends a Letter to Someone.”  And finally, we come to know that in his later life Kees had an interest in taking off to Mexico, which leaves the lingering possibility that he didn’t commit suicide but instead went there to start a new life.

The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees in the Everett Public Library catalogI don’t think I’ve spoiled anything by revealing this general chronology: it is Rooney’s nimble, imaginative and attentive language that forms the heart of this book. Her dedication and skill in capturing the spirit of Kees as man and artist even frees the reader from needing to know his actual work – though her book will certainly spur some readers to explore his brief Collected Poems, his letters, or his striking paintings. Robinson Alone will introduce you to both a lively contemporary poet and to a terrific, neglected, and long-missing one.

A Catty Response to Everett Reads!

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Here at the library we strive to have a balanced collection that expresses many different viewpoints. We have gotten a few complaints this year that our selection for Everett Reads!, The Art of Racing in the Rain, might be a tad pro dog. It is a charge that we take seriously.

In the interest of balance we have invited a guest blogger, Cora the Cat, to give us her views on our Everett Reads! selection and in particular the psychological state of the narrator Enzo. Be warned. Cora’s observations are intelligent, witty and a little scathing. But, really, what else would you expect from a feline?

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Dear A Reading Life,

I submit that due to multiple unresolved traumas, the unfortunate canine in The Art of Racing in the Rain suffered increasingly profound mental illness, culminating in a psychotic rupture.

Yaaawwwwwrrr.

I understand there can be valid reasons for using a canine as literary narrator. Serious works by Cervantes, Gogol, Bulgakov and Kafka have used this literary device “to provide commentary on issues such as moral behavior, musical aesthetics, the writer’s art, the limits of science, and the approach of modernity” (1). In The Art of Racing in the Rain, however, using this canine for this purpose is rendered futile by the animal’s deteriorating mental state.

In addition to limited intelligence, canines have extremely weak ego structures, indeed functioning nearly as parasitic appendages of their human hosts. In this case Enzo, the canine subject, was also subject to a series of early ego-disrupting traumas.

Enzo’s youth was spent on a spacious farm, after which he was moved to a house, and finally to the confines of an urban apartment. This shrinkage of his physical space was paralleled by an expansion through his ego space of a delusion of reincarnation in the form of his human hosts.

This colonization of his weakened ego structure was abetted by his painfully arthritic hip, the loss of his principle female host, and his life tutelage via chronic television watching. Given academic studies about the social and psychological distortions wrought by television watching, it is no wonder Enzo attaches to reincarnation, probably derived from a program on the History Channel.

The episode involving the carnage of the stuffed zebra is classic projection, as the repressed rage engendered by his repeated traumas and distorted world view erupt into the physical environment. After this episode, all that remains of Enzo’s ego structure is a flexible membrane, filled with psychotic delusions.

I find it sad that readers are beguiled by this seemingly heartwarming story, which masks a pathetic case of ego dissolution and mental breakdown. Mmrrroowwwrr!

Purrrrrrr.

Cora the Cat

(1) Schneider, Ivan. “Narrative Complexity in the Talking-Dog Stories of Cervantes, Hoffmann, Gogol, Bulgakov, and Kafka.” Master’s Thesis, Harvard University, 2012.