Sibling Revelry!

This week is all about siblings in recent literary fiction. Why? Because I've read a lot of these lately and they've been really good. These books will all make you laugh and cry, just like how it is hanging out with your siblings. I myself was an only child until 17, and now I'm the proud eldest of 8. Sure, it's complicated, but what family isn't? I also come from a long line of large families and often find myself drawn to stories in which sibling relationships feature prominently. So, if you also liked Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, check these out:

The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer

Ann Packer totally nails the siblings' voices and respective roles in their family dynamic, the multiple perspective narrative well employed to this effect. She introduces us to four distinct, authentic siblings: Robert, Rachel, Ryan, and James.  The siblings each tell the story of the tumultuous return of the youngest, James, one by one, from oldest to youngest. They explore their shared past and individually fraught relationships with their distant mother Penny. If this family isn't your family, you at least knew them growing up. They lived on your block, you rode bikes with them. You remember serious Robert, destined to follow in his father's footsteps, protective and concerned Rachel, sensitive Ryan, and "perpetual motion machine" James. It's uncanny.

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

Elfrieda and Yolandi are closely knit sisters raised in a conservative Mennonite community in Canada. Elf has achieved fame and success as a concert pianist but suffers from the suicidal tendencies that eventually claimed the life of their father and several other family members. Yoli's life a "mess" by contrast, the darkly comic (yes, comic) novel follows her struggle to keep her sister alive through multiple suicide attempts, and to process her own grief, coming to terms with life without her big sister and hero. I know what you're thinking. "But Natalie, this is a book about suicide. Is it really super funny?" It is, you guys. It is super funny, and super, super sad. The bond between the sisters is unbreakable and their love for each other profound. The looming specter of death is met with a sort of fatalist humor that one with a genetic claim to any condition might feel.

The Girl Who Was Saturday Night by Heather O'Neill

There are shades of Hal Hartley's Henry Fool, one of my all time favorite movies, in this quirky and dark (yes, Quirkyanddark is my middle name--it's a family name) story about co-dependent and dysfunctional brother-sister twins  growing up stunted and making dubious decisions as they stumble boldly and awkwardly into adulthood, their lives becoming tabloid fodder. Offbeat and philosophical, Nicholas and Nouschka Tremblay, are the twin offspring of oft-imprisoned Quebec celebrity, the "French-Canadian Serge Gainsbourg", Étienne Tremblay. Nouschka finds herself growing up and faced with the prospect living without her brother as he begins to get into trouble.

Adult Onset by Ann-Marie Macdonald

"Fiction is not the opposite of truth"--Mary-Rose MacKinnon--

This book wasn't so much about the relationship between siblings but I felt I had to include it because the bond between Mary-Rose and her siblings acted as a sort of anchoring mechanism for our narrator, offsetting her paranoia as she grapples with motherhood and the life of an at-home parent bringing up memories and fears of her own childhood trauma. Memory can be an unreliable narrator, but our siblings knew us when and will always remind us of who we really are.

The Fisherman by Chigozie Obioma

This book was really the inspiration for a post about sibling relationships. An outstanding debut, The Fishermen follows four young brothers in this "Cain and Abel-esque" tale set in Akure, Nigeria.

Declaring themselves fishermen, brothers Ikenna, Boja, Benjamin, and Obembe skip school to go fishing in a dangerous nearby river but after an encounter with the town's madman they seemingly succumb one by one to his violent prophecy. Gripping and brutal, balanced with humor and warmth, the brothers are pitch perfect and the fracturing family will break your heart.

A Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Clare Mitchell

Overheard at the library:
"Natalie said it really picks up after the first suicide." --Kerry P--

(It's funny 'cuz it's true.) This book takes a bit to really get rolling but given a chance this darkly comic tale of a suicide pact between sisters is certainly worth your attention. Written as a sort of joint suicide note/memoir/confessional penned by the three childless Alter sisters, this is a  marvelously witty multi-generational family saga about the "Alter curse,"from late 19th century Germany to New York's Upper West Side today, loosely inspired by the life of the German-Jewish scientist who invented Chlorine gas.

Cold enough for you? You've got plenty milk and bread, make sure you have enough books to read!

I was briefly without electricity this week so naturally I began contemplating the end of everything, up to and including me. Fortunately it was sunny enough to read so I made it through but I came up with a list of dire winter reads for those stuck indoors with a snow day who might like to compound a wintry situation.

In the Kingdom of Ice: the grand and terrible polar voyage of the USS Jeannette by Hampton Sides

This was my hottest (hah!) no-fail nonfiction to recommend last year. So far everyone has raved about it. Forget "cabin fever"!  Try getting "Arctic fever" and join a team of late 19th-century Arctic explorers marooned a thousand miles north of Siberia without taking off your slipper socks.  If "grand and terrible polar voyage" doesn't grab you, well, then you might not be that into it.

The Indifferent Stars Above: the harrowing saga of a Donner Party bride by Daniel James Brown

Did you raid your neighborhood market last weekend in preparation for the snow? Hoarding bread, milk and eggs? Lock your doors and look out for hungry neighbors--you're probably tender and delicious by now! Sorry, cabin fever breeds corny cannibalism jokes. Most people are familiar with the near mythical saga of the Donner Party and their ill-fated journey over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. But how much do you really know?

Pilgrim's Wilderness: a true story of faith and madness on the Alaska frontier by Tom Kizzia

This is one of those crazy stories that stick with you. A charming, musical family with 15 children, modern homesteaders in a way, settle in tiny McCarthy, Alaska. Papa Pilgrim, as the the family's patriarch is known, begins a battle with the National Park Service, revealing his dark past and the troubled and terrifying home life of his family.

Into Thin Air: a personal account of the Mt. Everest disaster by Jon Krakauer

Adventure journalist Jon Krakauer's personal account of the ill-fated Everest climb that left eight people dead. This is one of my go-to nonfiction recommendations when asked for "something really good?", right next to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Alive: the story of the Andes survivors by Piers Paul Read

A straightforward, unsentimental account of what happened when an amateur rugby team and family and friends crash landed in the Andes mountains. Some were killed in the crash, others survived in the harsh cold and snow for 70 days, resorting to cannibalism to stay alive.

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

Ever ponder what your street would look like if everybody stopped shoveling their walks or raking the leaves, every pothole was left to reach its full potential, the weeds went unplucked, houses unpainted, roofs untended, and so on? This thoughtful puzzler explores the inexorable breaking down of the man-made world if man were to suddenly cease.

I wonder what Richmond will look like once we thaw out.

How Do You Do, Newbie?: What's new in debuts!

Having just reached my goal of reading 100 books this year I can safely say that I've read a whole lot of books this year. When one (one being me) is maintaining an endlessly growing list of things, it makes sense to break that long list down into meaningful categories--categories such as "WOW!!!", "Really Great!", "Meh", "books by women", or "Debut Novels". I'm SO not sharing my Best of 2014 list yet, sorry. You're going to have to wait for the RPL Blog Best of the Best of 2014 post (TBA). Until then you can whet your appetite with the big best of lists over at Slate, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Millions Year in Reading, NPR, etc. (I will slip in how happy I am to see Dept. of Speculation on so many "best" lists). Feel free to ask for book recommendations in the comments! Go ahead and try to stump us. We will blind you with library science.

I will, however, share with you the highlights of my list of debuts. If you happen to be a compulsive fiction junkie like me you know that a first book by a young new author is super thrilling uncharted reading territory, and you feel a little like Lewis and Clark, but without having to pack a bag. Jacket reviews use phrases like "searing debut" or "shattering debut" or "darkly riveting debut novel", always somehow working "debut" into the first line of the description, evidently as a selling point, but perhaps also as a subtle disclaimer. So, hopefully without repeating past or future reviews on this blog, the following are the Really Good!, the Pretty OK!, and the Better Luck Next Time! of 2014 debuts in fiction (that I read).

First, the Really Good! news:

The Transcriptionist
Amy Rowland

OK, I know I'm already repeating myself here since I briefly declared this book a totally awesome debut somewhere else on this blog. Goodreads proclaims it a "powerful debut", and it IS powerful! Rowland brings up a lot in a compact space: ethics in journalism and the decline of newspapers, language and technology, existential stuff, alienation, and a gruesome death under bizarre circumstances. The protagonist, Lena, is a loyal lone transcriptionist, a woman in a nearly extinct occupation within a struggling industry. She is shocked to find out that a blind woman she talked to on the bus just a few days earlier has met a terrible end after climbing into a lion's cage at the zoo. As Lena begins a search for the truth she uncovers much more, threatening the reputation of the paper and her own future. I am anxiously awaiting Amy Rowland's next book.

Cutting Teeth
Julia Fierro

I liked this so much more than the other folks on Goodreads. What can I say? I like a good mean girl and this book is full of 'em. A cast of privileged young parents and their children embark on a weekend playdate at the shore that starts messy and gets messier. If you like Meg Wolitzer, Tom Perotta, Megan Abbott, and Susan Coll you'll be on the lookout for what's next from Julia Fierro.

In brief but also firmly in the Really Good! sub-category are Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob, Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson, and Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey (more on these coming soon). For now I will just say "total swoon". Also The Bees (Laline Paull), The Girl in the Road (Monica Byrne), Wolf in White Van (John Darnielle), were already mentioned at their respective links, and are all outstanding debuts worth your while.

Now for the Pretty OK!:

Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky
David Connerly Nahm

Told in non-linear, stream of consciousness prose, this exhausting petite debut clocks in at around 225 pages and I gotta say it took me a while to finish it. The author really gets Central Kentucky (he's from there), and crafts a compelling, though somewhat obfuscating, narrative using small town Kentucky as an effective backdrop for a story about a troubled woman operating a non-profit while dealing with resurfacing memories of her brother's disappearance when they were children. The giant Sense of Place sledgehammer employed so often in Appalachian and Appalachian-adjacent literature can get a little tiresome (see Silas House) and Nahm does his best not to abuse it. It really is quite haunting, and you might find yourself re-reading some of the particularly stunning passages to mull them over and let them really sink in. So, no, it's not a page-turner. I think that in another book or two he will have worked out his need to prose the reader to fatigue and create some pretty powerful fiction. I'll be keeping an eye out for his next book.

I am Having So Much Fun Here Without You
Courtney Maum

I liked this book. I did! But I did not LOVE it like I thought I would--like I wanted to. It was funny and entertaining and light and cute and France meets England by way of New York. In Paris there is a whiny English artist, Richard Haddon, married to a French woman and he's having an affair with an American woman who ends up leaving him for a cutlery designer (forgot his nationality). Richard's grief over losing his lover drives his wife away...and you know what? I really hated that Hugh Grant Christmas movie, Love Actually (2003) and typing this plot synopsis is starting to remind me of that. "Whiny philanderer loses everything due to own selfishness, wants to be forgiven, is sad." Maybe that's why I couldn't love it love it? All the same, it had me laughing out loud and I'll happily consider Maum's next book.

And finally, the Better Luck Next Time!, in which I disagree with the critics:

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
David Shafer

WTF. W. T. F. (Get it?) This book's heart is in the right place but it needed an editor. You were too darn long, book! Too much time is spent being ambiguous about phony, ambivalent, hipstery non-people in this "ooh look at me I'm so cool I can drop in all these winks to David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon and William Gibson and Chuck Palahniuk but not be all geeky fanboy about it " way. Trimmed down to its good parts it would be a solid paranoid techno-thriller-comedy and the reviewers would probably have hated it. As it is the reviewers LOVED it and it is on all kinds of the aforementioned "best of 2014" lists--but not mine. Better luck next time, Shafer!

An Untamed State
Roxanne Gay

A beautiful, young, upper-class woman is kidnapped and held hostage in Haiti. The story jumps back and forth between a childish, cringe-worthy description of her fairy tale romance and privileged life (perfect, perfect, perfect), and the brutal, almost prurient description of her torture and degradation at the hands of her captors over 13 days. The narrator's voice is completely baffling. Based on the reviews I was expecting something literary but the whole narrative is very melodramatic Lifetime TV movie of the week. Remember those? I couldn't even handle it but I still kinda want to read Gay's book of essays also out this year: Bad Feminist.

Hey! Wait! One more to look for!
Miranda July's debut novel, The First Bad Man, will be out sometime in January and I can't wait. I mean, I really can't wait. Yes, she has books out, but this is her first novel and I'm so excited I just can't even. January is so far away! So, if you love her films or her stories you'll surely be in for a treat now that the inimitable and odd Miranda July has finally made her way into novels. Me and You and Everyone We Know is one of my all-time favorite movies so I have high hopes for the literary version of that experience.

Dear Reader: epistolary novels to write home about

From "Letters of Note", a most worthwhile time waster of a site (and also now a book, too)

As I embark upon what must be the fourth or fifth epistolary novel I’ve read this year it occurred to me to devote a little blog ink to the genre. Not gonna lie to you guys, I LOVE the form in all of its many, er, forms. I am completely enchanted by a narrative unfolding through (fictional) documentary evidence. I just picked up The Supernatural Enhancements by Spanish novelist Edgar Cantero. Though it may sound like the literary equivalent of those low budget "found footage" horror films so common these days, this haunted house story set in Virginia, told through journal entries, hand-written notes, transcribed security footage and audio recordings, letters, complicated ciphers, and advertisements, promises to be far less sick-making than that erratic, handheld film style. 

So just what is an epistolary novel? It’s a story told using documents such as diary entries, letters, emails, text messages, newspaper articles, web pages, scribbled notes, marginalia, pretty much any other kind of evidence you might imagine that could be strung into a narrative. One might suppose that with kids these days and the death of handwriting so goes the epistolary as well. Not so! There are a TON of these out there, some better than others, many capitalizing on zeitgeist to propel the narrative. Take for instance the Lauren Myracle series of YA books so popular a few years ago, ttyl, which was written in the form of online instant messenger conversations. And who was it that mused that the great American novel would be written on a cellphone? I personally would LOVE to see a novel written entirely in the form of incendiary YouTube comments or in a drama unfolding on Facebook. How about a novel about minor celebrity and major egos told entirely through Wikipedia article edits and the ensuing flame war on the talk pages?! Could somebody please hurry up and write that? Maybe I should...hmm.

Well, moving on:

Gorgeous, powerful, moving, best book of the year, The Blazing World has a permanent home on the "Staff Picks" shelf at Ginter Park (unless it's checked out of course). Assembled from diary entries, articles, interviews, and correspondence, the book appears to be the research project of an art historian investigating the life and career of artist Harriet Burden. It's poignant, humane, deeply insightful, and absolutely wonderful.

Dear Committee Members is a petite novel composed entirely of academic letters of reference from a brutally honest professor of creative writing who is overburdened with having to write so many letters. This slyly sensitive book is almost unbearably funny. I nearly choked to death reading this on my lunch break. If you are an academic, or love an academic, or are someone frustrated with the realities of today's academic landscape, job market, or some combination of all of the above, this will hit especially close to home. 

Told through transcribed interviews conducted by the author, Jesse Ball, Silence Once Begun is a journalist's investigation into the "Narito Disappearances", a baffling crime with an equally baffling confessor at its center. While at times the epistolary device bordered on gimmicky, the story was so compelling one can easily forgive a little awkward construction.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? is less recent (2012 was SO two years ago) but I couldn't write this post without including it. Maria Semple's epistolary charmed my socks off. Bee's mother disappears on a family trip to Antarctica. To find her, Bee compiles email, letters and other documents supporting her belief that her mother is out there, somewhere, needing to be rescued.


Some well-known epistolary novels to consider:

Carrie by Stephen King

• letters, excerpts, clippings, articles 

Go Ask Alice by Anonymous*

• diary 

Griffin and Sabine by Nick Bantock

• beautifully illustrated correspondence 

Dracula by Bram Stoker

• correspondence 

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

• letters to an anonymous stranger 

Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

• duh, diary 

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

• laboratory progress reports written by the declining subject (Oh! The tears!) 

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

• letters to God 

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

• diary entries and email 

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

• letters 

ttyl, ttfn, and l8r, g8r, by Lauren Myracle

• chat room style dialogue 

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

• correspondence 

Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles

• One long letter 

Got a favorite? Add it in the comments!

Yours truly,

Natalie

*P.S.
Go Ask Alice is perhaps the one that hooked me. It is the over-the-top melodramatic "found" diary of a teenage girl spiraling out of control in a miasma of sex and drugs. It's a pretty wild trip and I totally bought that it was a real diary. 

13 Books I loved as a teenager

We hear a lot about YA, or young adult, literature these days, and it is constantly on my mind as of late with the frenzy of Summer Reading upon us. I have been asked for a lot of recommendations for teen readers over the past couple of weeks which has caused me to reflect on what books I immersed myself in as a teenager, way back before the recent  explosion in literature published with teenagers in mind. It is probably not too surprising to find out that your librarian was a library-loving teenager, always tucked into a corner somewhere with their nose shoved in a book.  It didn't take much to get me to sit still and read, in fact it probably required force to get me to do much of anything else.  I usually sought out stories with a rebellious spirit and a dark side.  If asked my favorite genre, I probably would have answered "horror" or just glared (teenagers!) but if asked for a list of my favorite books, this would have been it.

Yep, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.  I remember reading this moody American classic for the first time immediately after I bought it at Goodwill for a quarter and feeling like I had discovered some great secret.  The Bell Jar follows the unraveling of the brilliant and talented Esther Greenwood into insanity.  This haunting novel is especially perfect for teen girls and budding artists.

I had to read The Great Gatsby in a high school English class.  I didn't love everything we had to read in school--I'm not that kind of book lover.  In fact, I still hate The Scarlet Letter.  There, I said it.  Sorry, Hawthorne.  The Great Gatsby is a fantastic read for teens, especially for anyone fascinated by the roaring 20s.

With my up-all-night reading of The Joy Luck Club began my lifelong love of multi-generational family sagas.  I remember having many discussions with my mom over this novel we shared at an age when that didn't always come easy.  This book could be great for a teen who is having trouble seeing eye to eye with their parents, not that there are very many of those around...*ahem*.

I still list The Women's Room as one of my all time favorites.  Checked out from my high school's library, this is another novel that made me feel like I had discovered a secret world of really cool, super adult literature, and it probably influenced my adult taste in literary fiction more than anything else I've read. Young feminists will find a lot to love about this story of a woman's journey of self-discovery through marriage and children, divorce, and later-in-life college study and academia set in tumultuous mid-20th century America.

My mom gave me her much loved paperback copy of The Good Earth when I was about 12 or 13 and I read it twice.  I remember many tears.  Good for a teen who likes to have a good cry over a book now and then, The Good Earth is the story of a Chinese farmer, Wang Lung, and his family in agrarian China. 

20 years after this book's publication, ebola is back in the news in a really horrible way so it may or may not be a good time to recommend The Hot Zone but I'm all about honesty and this book was one of my most favorite favorite reads as a teenager.  I bought it at a drugstore on a family summer vacation to the mountains in 1994 because I was "really interested in viruses" at the time. The Hot Zone is the terrifying true story of a virus which is currently wreaking havoc in west Africa. 

Ending up in Richmond was extra cool for me as a hardcore teenage E. A. Poe fanatic.  I had memorized a good deal of "The Raven" and would quote it often, and I carried around the complete works in my backpack.  Poe is excellent for lovers of horror and tragic romance, and the short story is great for teens who don't take easily to hefty novels.

What began as an act of rebellion (because my mom wouldn't let me see the movie so I checked out the book at the library and made a point to read it in front of her) ended up as another book that will remain a favorite of mine forever.  A Clockwork Orange works a pretty cool message about redemption that teens will respond to into a story of a violent future taken over by criminals, and the Slavic slang used by the gangs made me want to study Russian, which I later did in college.

Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson's novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was another rebellious read from the Davenport (Iowa) Public Library.  At least, it felt like rebellion.  Depictions of alcohol and drug use abound in this raucous classic about a reporter on a long weekend road trip. 

It really doesn't get better than this dark short story by Franz Kafka about a man who awakens to find himself transformed into a giant beetle. Considering all the changes one goes through at that age, it isn't surprising that The Metamorphosis strikes a chord with many a teen.

Siddhartha, first published in 1922, tells the spiritual journey of a boy from the Indian subcontinent during the time of the Buddha. This novel is peaceful, elegant, and spiritual--great for contemplative teens. I read it between shifts at the restaurant where I worked for some much needed respite from the diners.

Written in 1962 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a powerful story of one day in life of a man imprisoned in a gulag (prison labor camp) in Soviet Russia. It's hard to be a teenager, which I suppose is why stories of terrible struggle are so popular with them.

The novel that defined the beat generation, On the Road was written by Jack Kerouac in 1957 and has been carried around by teenagers as a badge of cool ever since.  It usually needs little introduction and has inspired many a road trip across America. 

We would like to know, what sort of books did you discover as a teenager? Why did they speak to you?  

Happy Summer Reading!

It's almost Mother's Day! (Did you make a present for your mom yet?)

It's almost Mother's Day!  Mom loves handmade gifts that come from the heart, right?  You could bake her some fantastic cookies, invent some ridiculous new mimosa to serve at your Mother's Day brunch, sew her a darling new apron from a vintage Hawaiian shirt...yeah, I'm on this.  You know where you can find scads of books, resources, and even classes on everything from container gardening to crafting to crochet to cooking?

I think you know where.

Anyway, there are some scrumptious looking new finds for would-be and committed crafters on the shelves this Spring.  Allow me to introduce you to a few.

Upcycling

by Danny Seo

Mom hates waste.  There are starving children somewhere and finishing your peas matters.  Danny Seo also hates wasting things, including things you may still be using for their intended purpose.  He wants you to make pretty, functional wares and decorations out of "stuff you already have".  For some of the projects, "stuff you already have" only applies if you happen to live in an Ace Hardware, but in a craft book of 200 pages with nearly a craft per page, one can forgive a little stretching of the made-up term "upcycle".  I mean, there has to be some filler, like the crafts that are less "trash to treasure" and more "trip to Lowe's to trash".  I personally LOVE the faux bear skin rug made from another, non bear-shaped, rug (is this just "cycling"?) and the *darling* bird cage chandelier made out of fake birds, a cannibalized IKEA paper lantern and chicken wire. Namely, stuff I definitely do not already have (except a bunch of fake birds--of those I have plenty).  The Starry-Sky Artwork project is a really cool way to make your collection of ugly hotel landscape paintings really *pop* (yes, I'm serious). He even has a 10 second project to use that tangled wad of Christmas lights you swore you'd store neatly this time but didn't. Hoarding mason jars and river rocks?  Mom, I'm looking at you.  Danny Seo has a project for that and you only need strong glue.

Upcycling has a bunch of really cool projects, and a few head-scratchers, but everything is well styled and photographed, and there are some cute crafts for kids to do too.  Definitely worth checking out if you love projects and hate throwing things away.

Eat & Make

by Paul Lowe

Sweet Paul is sweet. And I mean sweet. My mom would love him. This book is just charming! Cover, styling, author, and all.  What is it about those Northern Europeans that they have such photogenic homes?  I am admittedly a sucker for vintage clothing, vintage linens, vintage dishes, etc, but for some reason when I put it together it looks more like Wes Anderson got drunk and went blindfolded to a flea market and then got into a fist fight with Rachel Ashwell (of Shabby Chic--the original upcycler) over the perfect ashtray. *Ahem*  Eat & Make is primarily a cookbook but with complimentary crafts, mostly for table settings, thrown in.  The book is divided by time of day with a slant toward brunch-y foods and lighting, the recipes being a sort of "quick Swedish fusion" that goes well with vintage speckled enamel crocks and quirky "upcycled" aprons. I literally can't get enough of the creamy, yummy photography, the clean and bright white interiors, and just the general, Scandinavian-wooden-wheel barrow-natural-farmer's market-ness of it.   And I can't wait to make his Morning Biscuits, Snug Eggs, and Merry Marys.  I don't even care if his idea of "upcycled" candlesticks are just tapers crammed haphazardly (fire hazardly!) into big metal nuts.  They look so off-beat romantic when photographed in extreme close-up on his rough-hewn barn door table!  Check this book out for the menus and the pictures.  Don't make any of his candles unless you want to burn down your kitchen.  Mom would NOT approve.  She will however approve of the gorgeous grapefruit, red cabbage, and goat cheese salad on the cover.  She thinks you should eat more fruits and veggies.

Freakin' Fabulous on a Budget
Clinton Kelly

This book is a kick.  It provides simple instructions about how to quickly and cheaply transform your boring life into an instant cocktail party. Picture this: Anne Hathaway starring in a romantic comedy about a girl who has to pretend to be the sort of ad executive who throws effortlessly fabulous cocktail parties all the time when in fact she is a temp who can barely afford her communal studio apartment, ramen noodle dinners, and 4 cats. "Sally", played by Ms. Hathaway, frantically dashes around her 200 square foot apartment wearing curlers in a montage of dip-dyeing her grubby white bathmat into a designer ombre masterpiece and whipping up some goat cheese and red pepper mousse (on a budget), wrapping her drab, white lampshades with burlap, and altering her ill-fitting thrift store rags into hot off the runway looks tailored to her perfect body. Hilarity and romance ensues. Roll credits. That's the upcoming film adaptation of Clinton Kelly's Freakin' Fabulous on a Budget.  Don't believe me?  Check it out.  You'll see.  And mom loves to be fabulous.  You know what else mom loves?  Thrift.


What we take away from most craft books now is "NEVER. THROW. ANYTHING. AWAY." What they don't tell you is what to do with the stuff you mustn't ever throw away until you have enough (fill in the blanks) to fashion into a new thing.  To answer this question I propose a pre-craft interior decorating book.  I'll call it "decor-cycle" and it will be nothing but well-styled, super close-up photographs of vintage-modern interiors decorated *tastefully* with old tires painted white and filled with wine corks--wine corks just hanging out *tastefully* until I have enough for a bulletin board, trivet, dog bed, bathmat, and miniature refrigerator magnet succulent gardens.  And if I never happen to get around to the bulletin board, trivet, dog bed, bathmat, and miniature refrigerator magnet succulent gardens, I still have a *totally chic and tasteful* arrangement of wine corks in my living room.  I am *not*, however, sitting on my charming vintage sofa (old futon) sipping wine and chucking the corks into an old tire. I will *not* end up on Hoarders. To all the moms out there, including my own mom who taught me to love making stuff out of other stuff and took me to the library every week to check out craft books, Happy Mother's Day!

Greetings and good readings from the Ginter Park branch!

National Library Week (April 13th-19th)  is nearly upon us so now seems like a good time to share my "favorite books I've read in 2014 so far" list (before it gets too long).  

Dissident Gardens (2013) is a multi-generational tale of American communists, Greenwich Village counter-culture, and mothers and daughters. Recommended for readers of that sort of thing. See also: William Faulkner, Jonathan Franzen, Michael Chabon, and the movie Inside Llewyn Davis.

On such a full sea (2014) was my "most eagerly anticipated read of 2014" back in January and I am pleased to announce that I didn't self-hype it to death.  Recommended for fans of all things post-apocalyptic, Cormac McCarthy (Think The road), Margaret Atwood (my favorite author--duh.), and Ursula K. LeGuin.

Lowland (2013) I would have called it A heartbreaking work of staggering genius if that name weren't already taken. Just remember: It's healthy to cry.  Just let it all out.  Read it if you loved The magic seeds, Cutting for stone, or just love beauty.  It's worth it.

Dark Places (2009).  Confession: I liked this so much better than Gone Girl.  Am I allowed to say that? It was almost like an alternate version of In cold blood told from the perspective of a survivor if In cold blood had been fiction and anyone had survived (SPOILER ALERT). Readers of Tami Hoag and Joyce Carol Oates will enjoy it too.

Orfeo (2014).  I read this whole book with my mouth hanging open.  (At least one of this year's snow days happened because I wished for it the day I checked this book out: I knew I had to read it all in one sitting. Librarians have super powers. #truestory )  This is a beautifully written novel that weaves Mahler, modern art, technology, and paranoia into a captivating tale of a composer and amateur microbiologist, and his magnum opus. For fans of Godel, Escher, Bach, (non-fiction), Mefisto, and stories inspired by the myth of Orpheus.

The Circle (2013) is the fun and just a little too real story of Meg, a naive young woman working for a powerful Google-meets-Facebook-like mega-corporation.  Recommended for fans of Jennifer Egan and Gary Shteyngart, as well as folks who have a healthy fear of our Google overlords.

The Luminaries (2013) is a gorgeous novel told from multiple viewpoints and set during the New Zealand gold rush in the 1860s. Recommended for lovers of really good books and fans of If on a winter's night a traveler, Cloud atlas, and Life after life (Kate Atkinson's). 

Black Moon (2014) creeped me out!  Imagine a world in which people can't fall asleep anymore except for a fortunate--or unfortunate--few "sleepers".  Imagine insomniacs being scarier than zombies.  Recommended for lovers of  Zone one, The dog stars, The age of miracles, World War Z, and sleeping in.

Kafka on the Shore (2006). Love. This. Book.  Existential and surreal, fans of Saramago and A tale for the time being by Ruth Ozeki will enjoy this.

Why are you so sad? (2014) is a "Laugh your face off or else you'll cry because it's just so true" kind of story about your average clinically depressed guy working as an artist who designs the pictorial instruction manuals for an IKEA-like company, and amateur mental-health surveys in his spare time.  Read if you liked Even cowgirls get the blues or Breakfast of champions, or you just think that something can be so sad it's funny. 

The shining girls (2013) "The girl who wouldn't die hunts the killer who shouldn't exist".  This is your classic serial killer meets girl story with a sci-fi time-traveling twist.  Yeah, it is a lot of fun--and pretty darn gory.  Read if you enjoyed Nowhere by Christopher Shane, and even Dark Places by Gillian Flynn.  

Celebrate National Library Week 2014 (April 13-19, 2014) @ your library!

All week long (April 14-19) you can drop in to Ginter Park to make a bookmark!  All ages welcome!

Do not miss the inaugural Teen Book Club for Girls event!  Author Meg Medina, recently named one of CNN's "Ten Visionary Women", will be joining us to discuss her book Yaqui Delgado wants to kick your ass.  

April 16th @ 3 pm in the Main Library Teen Space.

Check out a whole bunch of great movies playing @ North Avenue all week at 2 pm!

And more!