Middlesex

It's been a long time since I've been able to read an entire book, but having a long plane ride across the Atlantic helps. When I first checked out Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides a list had just come out, The Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far), that included this book (and many others in our Popular Reading Collection).

I was excited to dive into this hefty book and I was indeed carried away by this Greek Epic. I thought of the stories and trials of my own ancestors who passed through Ellis Island hoping for a better life in America. I was blessed to be born into middle class America in the late 1960s. The narrator Cal was blessed and cursed by his/her bloodlines. Growing up in the same era I recognized the aftermath of race riots that convinced our parents to flee to the suburbs, yet I was also easily transported to Asia Minor and Prohibition era Detroit through Eugenides' skillfull writing. His candid and unemotional treatment of hermaphroditism bordered on clinical but also made the story seem true. I half-wanted to use the library resources to see if Cal's case is indeed documented in medical accounts. The human story of Cal's family is what truly engaged me though and made the book an engrossing read.

Kristen

Well, look at this! It's November!

This semester has been flying by. I'm amazed it's November already!

November is a month full of interesting things. Veterans Day gives us a chance to recognize and remember those who have served the U.S. in the armed services. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, not only for the food and the Macy's parade, but for the chance to pause and reflect on how good life really is.

But November is also National Novel Writing Month, and all over the world people are bent over their keyboards, cranking out words upon words. The deal with NaNoWriMo, as it's fondly called, is that the participants each try to get 50,000 onto paper in a fairly coherent fashion in one month--November.

Are you signed up for NaNoWriMo? Let me know and we'll try to get a gathering together. A write-in!

Have a good November and always have a book to read!

--Janet

Dan Brown's new book is here!

Finally, after all the hype and hoopla, Dan Brown's new book is out! It's called THE LOST SYMBOL, and it's the next book in the Robert Langdon series. We bought two copies and they were checked out promptly. I haven't read it but it's supposedly 528 pages of intense reading, a riveting novel indeed.

If you want to read it, ask to have it held when it's returned. If we see requests for it, we'll get more copies.

We're heading into a new ordering season of books for Popular Reading, so as always, if there's something you want to read, just comment here. We look at the comments before publishing them (not that we think you're going to get, well, you know, but this way you can make a request and it won't appear on the blog--we respect your privacy).

We hope your semester is going well. Enjoy the weather, use hand sanitizer, and always have a book to read!

Janet

Life After Death: New Leipzig Paintings from the Rubell Family Collection

Author: Mark Coetzee and Laura Steward Heon

Genre: Contemporary Art History/Exhibitions

Painting is dead. So is hip-hop. There are a lot of people and things that are dead, some other things that should die (like Crocs, although they may be comfortable those definitely are not bio-degradable). Of those many things neither painting or hip hop are dead because I have experienced both and find them to be thriving in the most unlikely of places quite well.

In Life After Death, a group of essays commemorates the revival of painting that occurred by a group of young German painters during the decade after 1989—immediately following the fall of the Berlin wall. These men were the “Renaissance men” of our time and Steward and Coetzee take a look through the Rubell collection to examine the remarkable feat that these artists have created in times that are often looked at as less than alive. So the next time you see a clever ironic t-shirt that unknowingly claims “Hip Hop is Dead” politely tell them, “So is painting”.

Steph

Blankets

Blankets by Craig Thompson

Genre: “An illustrated novel” taken from the front cover

Craig Thompson is a very young artist to reach the achievement that he has. While inking for DC comics, Dark Horse, Marvel, and National Geographic, he penned his own way through his second graphic novel, “Blankets”. An autobiography at a mere 592 pages, this graphic novel is a coming of age story about a Wisconsin native. Thompson moves from high school to college, experiences first love, and escapes his stifling evangelical upbringing, while these beautiful memories haunt the pages via swirling sketches within this book. More of an under-current within the novel is Craig’s relationship with his brother—the most sincere of all the relationships— I find that this is the most pivotal narrative of the novel—and one that sticks with me even as I write this.

Steph

Kristen's note: we don't own this book

What It Is

Thanks to "our favorite reviewer" Steph who has been doing some summer reading and provided us with a bunch of reviews. We need them! Kristen

Author: Lynda Barry
Genre: Comic Books/Graphic Novels/Writer’s Block Help

Lynda Barry makes beautiful, nostalgic, almost child-like collages and comics about youth. They are at once heartbreaking and insightful while making you laugh not at Lynda Barry, but yourself. At once a self-help book for artists with writer’s block and writers with artist’s block, this graphic novel becomes a way to remember the ways of creating that many of us have forgotten along the way to be adults. There is a great quote that comes to mind for me when reading this book, and that is from artist Damien Hirst, “All children draw it is a shame they ever stop.”

This graphic novel looks like one we should buy -- almost a thousand libraries worldwide have it! Lynda Barry's work is featured in a book we own, The best American comics 2007

Dakota Cipher review

We like guest posts! This is from Patty, who works here. Thanks, Patty, for the review! Make sure you read to the end for the surprise!

I have just come completed the latest adventure of Ethan Gage, an Indiana Jones meets Daniel Boone type hero, and again am blown away. This is the third of a series of books by William Deitrich consisting of: Napoleon's Pyramid (CFL has), Rosetta key (GFPL has) and what I just finished, Dakota Cipher (CFL has). Ethan Gage is a very rugged likeable rouge who started his adventures as an apprentice of Benjamin Franklin and electricity. He accidentally gets enlisted into Napoleon's quest for the mysteries of Egypt, fighting on both sides of the engagement between the British and the French. Whomever he happens to be with at the time, opportunist. In the next book, our hero is still on the loose now hunting for the fabled Book of Thoth in Israel. While being hunted still by all sorts of factions, he becomes well traveled for the day and age. In the third book, he ends up back in France with Napoleon, as an emissary of America and Jefferson has just been elected into office. He is enlisted first by Napoleon to check out the Louisiana territory, which Spain has just given back to France, and then teams up in Washington DC with a large Norseman who wants to seek out the proof of Norway discovering America first. Small Spoiler - the Kensington Runestone in Alexandria, MN, is one of the ultimate prizes to be found and proves to be a interesting journey. These books are a very good read, nicely historically accurate and action packed to keep you reading till way past your bedtime.

Patty's afternote: She wrote the author to tell him how much she enjoyed the book,and he emailed her back within an hour, thanking her for that. What a neat idea to thank the author! Have any of you tried it?

--Janet