The Girl Who Stopped Swimming (2008) by Joshilyn Jackson
Laurel’s happy suburban life is torn apart when a ghost appears and leads her to the dead body of a girl floating in the backyard swimming pool. This book will appeal to the reader who enjoys southern gothic storytelling, rich ghost stories, and family drama. 

The Girl Who Chased the Moon (2010) by Sarah Addison Allen
Teenager Emily wants to learn more about her elusive mother, Dulcie, and is disappointed that her grandfather won’t help her. But Dulcie’s high school rival, Julia—on her own unlikely quest to find a daughter given up for adoption—takes an interest in Emily. This book is recommended for readers who love family secrets, romantic intrigue, and magical realism.

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (2010) by Heidi Durrow
Rachel is the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I. As the sole survivor of a family tragedy, she moves with her grandmother to a black community where her light skin and blue eyes attract unwanted attention. This autobiographical novel of racial identity, grief, and coming of age is recommended for those who enjoyed  The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2010) by Stieg Larsson
These are the second and third books in the late Stieg Larsson’s wildly popular Swedish thriller series. (The first book is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.) Fans of this series can’t get enough of Lisbeth Salander, the 24-year-old tattooed genius hacker at the heart of these mysteries. (Be sure to listen to The Lone Reader’s review of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo if you haven’t already!)

It’s not just the girls who are featured in new book titles. There are also a handful of interesting new books featuring “boys who” too: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2009) by William Kamkwamba,  The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To (2010) by D.C. Pierson, and  The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes (2010) by Randi Davenport. 

There are so many girls who and boys who, I bet you’ll want to read about one or two.

Mindy

Shields also holds the controversial belief that literary artists should be free to appropriate other writing without concern for intellectual property rights – following the lead established by modernist collage technique in the visual arts and the now commonplace music sampling that grew out of the hip-hop era. 

Despite some misgivings, I found Reality Hunger to be provocative, creative, and addictively readable. It is arranged in 618 numbered paragraphs, further divided into 26 themes in A-to-Z fashion. The book is a fine example of the kind of writing Shields is eager to promote: an allusive tapestry of aphorisms and extended quotations interwoven with Shields’s own musings – all done in an intriguing and invisible fashion. He has borrowed liberally from a great variety of writers, including: Emerson, John D’Agata, Jonathan Lethem, Thomas Pynchon, Joan Didion, Goethe, Vivian Gornick, and Walter Benjamin. In keeping with his artistic vision, Shields was not going to acknowledge any of these appropriations, but lawyers at his publishing house insisted that he credit the authors (see the section of notes at the back of the book).

Jaron Lanier’s recent manifesto on technology and culture, You Are Not a Gadget, has also generated quite a buzz, and it presents some strongly contrasting views to those Shields proclaims. Where Shields sees the mashed-up sampling by hip-hop artists as a model for writers, Lanier believes that heavily sampled music is too often uninspired, mechanical, and derivative. Where Shields sees artistic freedom in unattributed appropriation, Lanier laments that his many musician friends can no longer make a living in music due to seismic shifts in cultural production and consumption.

Lanier is no Luddite. He was a pioneer in virtual reality development in the 1980s, and he was an active proponent of online social networks before most of us knew what they were. But he now believes that unintended consequences of recent digital designs, with its hive mind aspects, ethos of “free culture,” and the prevalence of anonymous comments in web discourse have all worked to damage social interactions and individual creativity.

Lanier’s greatest concern is that recent technological developments are degrading what it means to be human, and he shines a light on significant privacy intrusions by search engines and social software companies. Lanier’s manifesto is not as artistically crafted as that of Shields, but his informed and thoughtful critique of web 2.0 technologies deserves both a wide readership and our careful consideration.

(Part 2 on Reality Hunger is here.)

Scott

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.  –Groucho Marx *

A popular stereotype about librarians is that we’re all cat people. Books like Dewey: the Small Town Library Cat that Touched the World do little to disabuse people of this notion.

I’ve got nothing against cats, but I’m a dog person. I even like reading about dogs. Luckily, there are many wonderful dog-centric books, both fiction and non-fiction at the library. Here are a few of my recent favorites:

The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst is an odd and oddly captivating story. When Paul’s wife falls from a tree and dies, the only witness is their Rhodesian Ridgeback Lorelei. In his grief, Paul tries to teach Lorelei to speak so he can learn whether her death was an accident or suicide.    

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewsi follows the plot of Hamlet, but in Wisconsin and with a mute protagonist and his family’s special (fictional) breed of Sawtelle dogs. You don’t have to be a dog lover or a Shakespeare lover to be drawn into this thrilling family saga.

In Travels with Charley: in Search of America novelist John Steinbeck chronicles his 1960 cross country road trip with his beloved French poodle, Charley, and his truck, Rocinante. I fell in love with old Charley and with Steinbeck’s eloquent account of his journey across the changing American landscape.

In Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment, an elderly couple puts their Manhattan apartment on the market the same weekend that their beloved daschund Dorothy undergoes emergency surgery all while living in a city that is paralyzed by fear of a possible terrorist attack. There are many lovely, quiet moments amidst the drama.

I picked up Temple Grandin’s Animals Make Us Human for the dogs. But Grandin’s unique perspective as an autistic researcher and her insights into the emotional and psychological lives of animals were so fascinating, I stayed for the cats, horses, and other animals she explores in this book.

Have you read any doggone good books lately?

Mindy

* This quote, and many more, can be found here.

Fiction: Tinkers by Paul Harding

History: The Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed

Biography: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles

Drama: Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey

Poetry: Versed by Rae Armantrout

General Nonfiction: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman

Music: Violin Concerto by Jennifer Higdon

There was also a special citation given posthumously to country music icon Hank Williams.

And closer to home, among the many journalism awards, The Seattle Times received the “Breaking News Reporting” award.

For a full list of award winners and finalists, and to learn more about the history of the award, visit the Pulitzer Prizes website.

I tell anyone who hasn’t seen The Big Lebowski (and who will still listen to me) that it is the best movie of the last couple decades. For those not initiated into the world of Jeffrey Lebowski (aka The Dude), this is a Coen Brothers film starring Academy Award Winner Jeff Bridges as The Dude, an unemployed stoner bowler who inadvertently falls into a missing person case. Not very well-received upon its initial release, the movie has since amassed a large cult following and even has its own Lebowski Fest.

And now, The Big Lebowski has its very own volume of academic essays with titles like “The Really Big Sleep: Jeffrey Lebowski as the Second Coming of Rip Van Winkle” and “Lebowski and the Ends of Postmodern American Comedy.”

If you’re interested in reading more about the Coen Brothers, the masterminds behind The Big Lebowski, the library has other books about them as well.  If all this Lebowski talk inspires you to take up bowling, the library has  books and videos that can help with that, too.

Brad

Welcome to Everett! You drove here from Topeka. That’s a long drive. Did you listen to any cool music or audiobooks?
It is a long drive indeed, but I’m a fan of road trips. I listened to two great audiobooks: I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb and T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain. I also listened to some of my favorite music including Pavement, Wilco, Radiohead, R.E.M., Neil Young, Warren Zevon, and The xx.

Kansas makes me think of The Wizard of Oz. Can you recommend any favorite Kansas authors or books or movies about Kansas?
I’ve yet to travel from Kansas and not heard, “You’re not in Kansas anymore.” It’s an irresistible response to learning someone is from Kansas. Two great authors more or less from Kansas are Gordon Parks and Langston Hughes. A great book is James Carlos Blake’s Wildwood Boys, a historical novel about the pre-Civil War Kansas-Missouri Border Wars told from the perspective of Bloody Bill Anderson. I love John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing, set in both Kansas and Colorado. John Williams’ wonderful book Stoner is one of my absolute favorites, but it’s set in Missouri.

Do you have any favorite books or shows with a Washington setting or author?
Two of my favorite television shows are closely associated with Washington: Twin Peaks and Northern Exposure. As for books, I’ve recently become a fan of Spokane author Jess Walter and Olympia author Jim Lynch. The Financial Lives of the Poets and Border Songs are two of the best books I’ve read in the past year.

What’s your favorite book?
My all time favorite is Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. Yates is an incredibly underrated writer. My previous favorite book was David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. The aforementioned Stoner is a recent favorite.

What was your favorite book growing up?
The book that blew my mind as a youngster was Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Its meditation on the great expanses of time and the universe changed the way I thought about the world. The other seminal book of my childhood was To Kill a Mockingbird. I read it the summer after sixth grade and it hooked me on a life of reading.

What’s your favorite movie?
The Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski is the greatest movie of the last 25 years. Other favorites are Mulholland Drive, Nurse Betty, Ghostbusters, and No Country For Old Men.

If you were stranded on Jetty Island and could only take three books, what would you take?
Infinite Jest—I’ve been meaning to reread it and it’s really long. Charles Willeford’s Sideswipe. And Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow — it might be quiet enough to actually concentrate to read it.

My tried-and-true cookbook favorite, How to Cook Everything: 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Food by Mark Bittman is helping me meet this goal.  I credit his earlier book, How to Cook Everything: the Basics: Simple Recipes Anyone Can Cook, with teaching me to cook competently in the first place. His books feature basic cooking techniques and skills along with great recipes. Instructions are straightforward, adaptable, and never too fussy. 

I’ve recently found some fun new cookbooks that have inspired my weeknight cooking. Most of the recipes I’ve tried in Almost Meatless: Recipes that are Better for your Health and the Planet can be adapted for either vegetarians or meat-eaters. The idea is that cooking with less meat helps your pocketbook, your waistline, and the planet, without sacrificing any flavor or texture. I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in eating less meat without going entirely vegetarian.  

As an unabashed Francophile,  I absolutely adore Clotilde Dusoulier’s Chocolate & Zucchini: Daily Adventures in a Parisian Kitchen. Even if you don’t make a single recipe, this is a charming read. Don’t let the “adventures in a Parisian kitchen” subtitle mislead you. Dusoulier lived in San Francisco for many years, and her recipes are designed for American cooks and kitchens. Recipes are accessible, straightforward and—in my experience—always delicious. The yogurt cake recipe is so easy and such a crowd pleaser, it almost feels like cheating.

Because I’m always finding interesting new cookbooks and cooking magazines to try at the library, I think I may actually be able to stick with this tasty resolution.

Bon Appetit!

Mindy

If you’re looking for last minute gift ideas, or holiday reading suggestions for yourself, look no further than the Everett Public Library. Our Gift Guide points you to book and music buying ideas for all ages and interests. Our Best Books list includes our favorites from 2009.

Here are a few other year-end lists that I will use to stack my shelves:

The New York Times Top Ten is my personal favorite. At just five fiction and five non-fiction books, this is a slim list of outstanding titles.

Library Journal produces a solid list, including genre and how-to books.

Nancy Pearl’s 2009 Under-the-Radar Books is unbeatable. I don’t know about you, but I always benefit from the action figure librarian’s serious crush on books.

Oh, and there’s so many more, such as The New Yorker, Salon.com, and Publisher’s Weekly. How lucky we are to have such rich stories to fill our lives.

From my pages to yours, happy reading and very happy holidays!

Kara