Wednesday, December 31, 2008

You've seen the best...

... and now it's time for the worst books of 2008, as chosen by Entertainment Weekly and Seattle Books Examiner.




Care to disagree? Leave a comment!

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Best Books of 2008, Part Two

And the lists keep rolling in!

Time's Best Fiction and Nonfiction

Stephen King's Top Ten Books

New York Magazine's The Top Ten Books

School Library Journal's Best Books 2008-- Great gift ideas for the little ones in your life!

NPR's Best Books of 2008-- I think that this is a must-see!

The New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books of 2008


Share your favorite book of 2008 in the comments!

Friday, November 14, 2008

Best Books of 2008

The best books lists are starting to roll in!

Publisher Weekly's list
Amazon's list

I like to have a look at all of the lists and choose a few titles to read as a satisfying conclusion to the year.

Do you have a favorite title of 2008? Leave it in the comments!

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Oprah's Newest Pick


The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a compelling thriller, a heartwarming dog story, and a retelling of Hamlet, rolled into one critically acclaimed novel.
It's also now an Oprah's Book Club choice-- put a copy on hold now!

Nobody here but us tumbleweeds...



Well..... that was quite a hiatus. Sorry about the radio silence there. We should be back to our regularly scheduled book-related programming shortly!

--Bookedupster

Monday, April 14, 2008

Arthurian Fiction


I set out recently to read every novel I could find on King Arthur. I read through several classic texts on the subject (such as Le Morte De Arthur and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). These books gave me an interesting foundation on the story of King Arthur, but I found myself enchanted with some of the modern interpretations of the legend. There are three fantastic modern novels that I would recommend to anyone that is interested in Arthurian legend.


The Once and Future King by T.H. White is a compilation of four (or sometimes five) novels about Merlyn's tutelage of the young Arthur. The most recognizable of these three is the winsome The Sword in the Stone, on which the Disney movie of the same name was based. One remarkable thing about these novels is that Merlyn lives backward, seeing culture and technology devolve, switching age and youth, and making first meetings sad and final. T.H. White writes predominately with a light hand, infusing humor and intentional historical inaccuracy into his engaging retelling of the Arthur story.

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley is written from the perspective of Morgaine, a pagan priestess trying to save her magical world from the influx of patriarchy and the new religion, Christianity. The story focuses almost entirely on the female characters from King Arthur's world; King Arthur and his knights only appear in relation to the women's stories. This novel is satisfying in its rampant unpredictability - relationships begin and crumble, worlds collide, and the ways of worship shift and meld together, but not how you would expect.

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart is just the first installment of her Arthurian quartet of novels. The protagonist is Myrddin Emrys (Merlin), a young boy who lives as an afterthought with his unmarried mother in the court of his grandfather. Merlin meets a hermit who sees his latent psychic powers and teaches him how to use them. Merlin is forced to leave his grandfather's court shortly thereafter, and the novel follows his journey through kidnapping, adoption, and his eventual hand in the conception of Arthur, the great King.

-- Jessica H, MCMLS reference assistant

April BAM Challenge: Beauty


For book suggestions, check out the BAM blog.

BAM Challenge-- The Missing Month


I missed the BAM Challenge in March! The theme was "craft", which is a theme near and dear to my heart. I love to sew and embroider, and dabble in some other crafty pursuits. Since I didn't get a book read, I will share some of my favorite craft blogs.

Posie Gets Cozy

All Buttoned Up

Wise Craft

The picture above is of the yo-yo quilt that I am making.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Heart-Shaped Box O' Horrors

I don't normally read scary books. I've read just enough to be able to feel I've done my official Readers' Advisory duty-- lots of Anne Rice, a smattering of Steven King, a few zombie books, a little Poppy Z. Brite....hold on. I have apparently read quite a few scary books, but my mind has enacted some selective amnesia to shield me from my choices. Scary books give me nightmares, and keep me up at night, imagining every bump and thump to be a bloody-toothed madman come to murder me in my sleep. Somehow I don't think my cats are going to come to my rescue, either.

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill scared the ever-lovin' be-jeebers out of me. I picked it up one evening, and actually put it down again because it seemed just too disturbing. But then I goaded myself on, with a whole "You can't read multiple books every month for the BAM Challenge, you indecisive weenie" line of logic. I started Heart-Shaped Box during the late afternoon on a Monday (because daylight keeps you safe, you know)and finished at 2 AM the same night. It seemed to make sense-- once you break the seal, you have to read the whole book straight through and then you will magically be protected from all spooky recriminations and nightmares that might ensue. No? I also have a signed pact with the monsters under my bed that if I keep my toes under the blanket, they will leave me be. No? Nobody else does this? Ah, well.

Joe Hill is determined to scare you stiff from the beginning. No slow build here-- Hill leaps right into the terrifying action within the first few chapters. Jude Coyne, a middle-aged rock star with a taste for macabre objects, buys a dead man's suit online. This suit is supposed to come with its own ghost-- the seller's step-father. Jude soon finds out that the item description was absolutely correct, but the ghost is only the tip of the horrifying iceberg. I won't say anymore about the plot, but I was pleased to discover that the first part of the book was scarier than the second half. My frayed nerves sang hallelujah, and I was actually able to go to sleep with the light off.

If you're a horror fan, or a devotee of films like The Ring and The Grudge, you should give Heart-Shaped Box a try. Hill's collection of short-stories, Twentieth-Century Ghosts, is also a good choice. I made it less than half-way through that one before I chickened out, so it's plenty scary. Now I am off to confront my obviously conflicted feelings about horror fiction-- I am sure that there will be therapy and possibly medication involved.

From Russia, With Love

Mind-stretching. Depressing, enlightening, and somehow uplifting. That is how I would describe Russian literature.

My all time absolute favorite author-- no question, no competition-- is Dostoevsky. He gave us a crime story (Crime and Punishment) where we witness the murder, we know the who, what, when, where, why, and how, yet there is still suspense. The Devils (or The Possessed, depending on the translation) is a great work that left me completely confused until I was over halfway through the novel. Then things started coming together in a way that exhibited Dostoevsky’s mastery of storytelling. I’ve read the great five of his (Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, The Devils, The Raw Youth aka The Adolescent) and loved four of them. I thought The Idiot was average. Most of Dostoevsky’s works have a deeply philosophical element, the “big idea” that Nabokov dismissed in literature. The Idiot lacked the big idea, or memorable characters. Because Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy, and the main character of this novel did as well, it may have been his most personal work, but it was his weakest, I thought.

Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is one of the funniest and most clever books I’ve ever read. Using the character of the Devil performing in Moscow as an artist of black magic to depict life in Soviet Russia was genius. The devil is presented as Professor Woland, and in his entourage are Behemoth, a human-sized black cat that talks, and Azazello, who has fangs and wears a bowler hat. There’s a great revenge scene where Margarita makes a deal with the devil and becomes a witch, and she terrorizes all those who have been oppressing her lover. There’s really too much to say about this book for me to do it any justice here. It was in this novel that Bulgakov wrote the phrase “manuscripts don’t burn”. The novel is said to have influenced The Rolling Stones to write “Sympathy for the Devil”. It’s just a great book, one of my all time favorites, and can be read at the narrative story level enjoyably, and also at the metaphorical level.

Gogol is very strange. He’s probably most famous for Dead Souls which I have not read. I read a collection of his short works, which included “The Overcoat” and “The Nose” and this introduced me to Russian absurdist literature. I don’t have the skill to adequately describe this, but it’s very strange (some might say absurd).

Even though it has nothing to do with Mother Russia, Nabokov’s Lolita must be mentioned, as he is certainly one of the Russian greats. Lyrical and unforgettable.

Tolstoy has a fine reputation and he deserves to be mentioned, although after reading War and Peace and Anna Karenina I think he is vastly overrated. In War and Peace, Tolstoy places a character in danger, everyone thinks the character is dead, but then the character is miraculously found to have survived. Not once, but twice – to the same character. This seems a cheap ploy, and not something a great master should use, let alone repeat. Also, he wrote a passage from the perspective of a dog. I understand the dog is supposed to be the voice of the Russian people… but really. A dog? It is interesting to note that he is the author of The Kingdom of God is Within You which argues for pacifism in the face of violence, which led Gandhi to pursue nonviolent resistance in India against the British Empire. In fact, Gandhi consulted Tolstoy about this, and they became friends, or at least pen pals.

It seems the tragic nature of Russian history and life comes through in every Russian author’s works. Somehow, in spite of being attacked from all sides throughout history (from the Mongols to the Swedes to Napoleon to the Germans) and suffering horrible disasters and brutal leadership, the spirit and loyalty of the people cannot be crushed. It’s also worth noting that many Russians consider Moscow to be the third Rome (which explains some of the ostentatious architecture).

If you want tragedy with a hint of hope, nobody does it better than the Russians!

-- Peter Sheehan, MCMLS Assistant Branch Manager

Titles Mentioned

By Fyodor M Dostoevsky
Crime and Punishment
The Devils or The Possessed
The Brothers Karamazov
The Idiot
The Raw Youth or The Adolescent


By Mikhail Bulgakov
The Master and Margarita

By Nikolai Gogol
Dead Souls
The Overcoat and Other Tales of Good and Evil

By Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita

By Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina
War and Peace
The Kingdom of God is Within You

Monday, February 4, 2008

February BAM Challenge: Heart


For book suggestions, take a look at the BAM blog.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

New Oprah's Book Club Title



Oprah's newest selection is A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle. You can read a synopsis and reviews at Books in Print. Go to the MCMLS online catalog to put a copy on hold.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Time Keeps on Slippin'...

So-- I have to confess that I did not get off to a great start with my Book a Month Challenge choice. January's theme is "Time", and it seemed like a good opportunity to read a nonfiction title (I lean toward the fiction side of things). I chose Calender: Humanity's Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year by David Ewing Duncan. The topic? Very interesting, a great vantage point from which to observe the way we humans interpret the world around us and how that has changed over time. The writing? Not so great. The prose seemed muddy and unclear. I kept rereading passages, expecting that I would get it eventually, but alas, that did not happen. I admit it-- I gave up, about 4 chapters in.

On a recommendation from a fellow librarian, I decided to read Scott Westerfeld's Uglies. It's a young adult novel, set in a future (Future? Future time? TIME? Get it?!! Of course you do! It's painfully obvious!) where everyone is "ugly" until their sixteenth birthday, when they receive surgery that makes them "pretty". The new pretties are the elite of society who party all night and mesmerize with their symmetrical loveliness. Tally Youngblood, the novel's 15-year-old protagonist, can't wait to be pretty, but her new friendship with another ugly named Shay threatens to postpone her pretty-making surgery indefinitely. Tally ends up joining a group of rebels called Smokies, who have discovered a troubling "side effect" of the pretty surgery. The Smokies are determined to live life a different way, and soon Tally finds herself immersed in their cause. I found the story engrossing and fast-paced, and I am in love with the slang Westerfeld uses throughout the novel. If something makes you uncomfortable, it's "nervous-making". If something is particularly cool, it's "bubbly".

The whole "let's make observations about our current culture through the vehicle of science fiction " idea is really one of my favorite things about the genre, and there is a wealth of social critique to be had in Uglies. Appearance--the increasingly radical things we do to look a certain way, as well as the question of who defines the cultural norm of appearance-- is certainly a hot-button topic in these 21st century days. Uglies also looks at what happens to both an individual and a society when that individual fails to fit in or conform. Is Tally a rebel and a hero, or a troublemaker whose nonconformity threatens to destroy the very world she lives in? Also, what do we lose as human beings when we attempt to create a uptopian society where everyone is supposed to be the same and equal? Can we truly create equality or will there always be those who are different?

Read Uglies, and let me know what you think.


Titles Read:
Calender: Humanity's Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year by David Ewing Duncan

Uglies, Pretties, Specials by Scott Westerfeld

Further Reading:
The Giver by Lois Lowry-- This is another YA title, and another look at a uptopian, future society. I obviously love YA books, and I will tell you why. They are often better written than books intended for an adult audience-- a YA author has to try to capture and hold the attention of a twitchy, hormone-addled audience that would rather be doing something, *anything* else than reading. So YA novels tend to be beautifully concise and eloquent, full of heart and truth. The Giver is just such a book, and if you haven't read it, you should.

The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood-- These are adult fiction titles, both dystopian and disturbing in what they unveil about the human psyche. The Handmaid's Tale is set in a theocratic society where women submit to men, and all interactions between the sexes are highly regulated. Oryx and Crake takes the dystopian theme one step further and is set in a future where humanity's obsession with technology and the manipulation of the natural world have ended in global catastrophe.


Are you participating in the Book a Month Challenge? Please post your review in the comments!

Friday, January 11, 2008

Calling all Jane Austen Fans!



Oh, Mr. Darcy!

Starting January 13th, PBS will begin airing their Masterpiece adaptations of all six of Austen's novels. PBS is also providing resources for viewers interested in starting their own Jane Austen book club. Interested? The link is here.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

January BAM Challenge: TIME

The January Book a Month Challenge theme is "Time". Check out the BAM blog to see some suggestions for titles.