Library Mama

At Home by Bill Bryson Bill Bryson is known for rambling but fascinating non-fiction books, spanning a subjects from travel to astronomy. In this book, he set out to explore a topic closer at hand – his own house, and the history of its rooms. Not just the history of his particular house, though that’s covered, too, but a history of the evolution of the hall from basically the whole building to a minor passageway and the introduction of the dining room. I’d been putting off reading Bill Bryson, though I’d heard good reviews from multiple friends. This was fascinating. People, landscapes and ideas weave in and out of the book, as well as the development of ideas like privacy, comfort, and the beauty of nature. Who knew that centuries of the English language went by before the word “comfort” as regards to physical comfort even came up? We also learn about an ancient Mesopotamian (I think) city which, truly amazingly, featured no streets, but only houses built layers deep on top of each other. Neat, I say, and while I’m not rushing out to read everything Bryson has written this very second, I’ll definitely keep him in mind for the future, both for myself and for people looking for a good book. Especially a good book for listening to on a car trip kind of thing, because this seems like the kind of listening that could interest nearly everyone.

A note on ebooks:
It used to be that when someone did a catalog search and came up with an ebook as a result, they would come to the desk to ask what an ebook was and go away in some frustration when I told them. I got this book initially because I was determined, now that patrons ask nearly every day about using our downloadable ebooks, to try some myself. I tried both text and audio ebooks. I’d initially thought that I would prefer the audio books. I listen to audiobooks all the time on my commute, and switch between books for myself and my son, hoping for the books that have tracks every three minutes rather than once a chapter or every minute (leading to 90-track discs), and also hoping that I can remember which track we’re both on. The audio books had some problems, mostly related to my situation. My car doesn’t have a way to plug the iPod player in directly, and the radio transmitter has lower sound quality than the regular radio. The books from the service show up as music. I think for that reason, if I stop in the middle of a track to, say, switch to music until the baby goes to sleep, I haven’t found a way to mark where I was in the track. With podcasts, I can switch back and forth to music without losing my place in the podcast. Also, I wasn’t able to figure out how to get the wma-encoded audio books on my iPod through my Mac, though the instructions said this was possible, and the selection of mp3 books is quite limited. I know, I could always go to Audible.com, but I really like borrowing rather than buying books if I’m only going to read them once.

I was quite pleasantly surprised, though, by the text ebook experience. Once I’d figured out the process, it was quite easy to use. I can set it up to read while I eat (my usual reading time), and even a 600 page book is light enough to hold while nursing the baby. Sure, the library’s collection hasn’t yet caught up to the sudden surge in demand – and ebook publishers haven’t yet figured out a model that would let multiple people check out the same digital book at the same time, because that would make things too easy. But the book was easy enough to find and quite nice to use. Even if I still love the feel of a physical book.

Lightening Bolt asked for books to help with being sad about his uncle. Here are two that I picked off the helpful bibliography one of our fabulous children’s librarians put together, and which LB asked to be read more than once. I was looking specifically for books that weren’t about a grandparent, as that’s a quite different situation than what we had. Also, my favorite book which a friend recommended to me.

And What Comes After a Thousand? by Annette Bley This book opens by setting up young Lisa’s friendship with the elderly Otto. They have special ways of counting together, deep conversations, a victory dance to do if Lisa manages to hit the copper buffalo in the garden with her slingshot. Then, Otto gets sick and dies. Lisa is confused by the strangers at his funeral who don’t understand the victory dance and who all talk quietly, which Otto hated. Where has Otto gone? She finds the answer in their discussion on numbers – where do they live and how high do they go? This is translated from German, which I mention because the art looked German to me the first time I picked it up. It is a gentle and moving approach to a thorny subject.

Always and Forever by Alan Durant. Illustrated by Debi Gliori A family of woodland animals lives happily together, until Fox gets sick and dies. Then for a long time, no one in the family can laugh or enjoy life anymore. It takes help from a friend and considerable effort on their part to go on with life and find happy ways to remember Fox. Here, the gentle animal pictures help to remove the story enough to make the raw and real pain bearable. The story feels honest both about the pain and the possibility of recovery.

The Other Side of Sadness by George A. Bonanno So it turns out that both Freud and Kuebler-Ross were wrong about grief. People don’t need to sever their emotional connection to the deceased as Freud thought, nor do they need to express and work through grief in defined stages as Kuebler-Ross thought. Really studying bereavement is quite recent - within the past 20 years – and Bonanno shares what he’s learned in a career focused on it. He talks about the evolutionary uses for sadness (making you slow down enough to figure out how your life is going to worked without your loved one); when grief counseling hurts more than it helps (if you were already recovering on your own); the ranges of normal recovery, experiences with talking to or feeling the presence of the deceased after death (common for some, but nearly always kept secret in our science-loving society); how to tell and what to do if grieving is going to far (if you’re still not able to function after six months). He talks about the experience of grieving in other cultures, particularly those which are more community than individual focused. This means that the society pays more attention to whether people follow the proscribed rituals than to what they are feeling – which turns out, as often as it’s been studied, to make recovery much easier for people. I especially liked the story of the African tribe which traditionally tells lascivious tales about the deceased at the funeral, saying that applying the morals of the living to the dead is extremely inappropriate. Most of all, he says that bereavement is part of the natural order of things. Humans are made to be resilient and recover. I found this very helpful, and recommend it highly to anyone dealing with grief or helping the bereaved.

Only three more days to Talk Like a Pirate Day!

The Republic of Pirates by Colin WoodardThe pirates of legend live free from the laws of kingdoms of the world. Theirs is a life of adventure as they travel where they will, taking what they need and making their victims walk the plank.

The legend is complete fiction, of course. But the fascinating part is that the Golden Age of Piracy followed the legend, brought about by frustrated pirates who thought it already reality. They created an early democracy where people of all colors and nationalities were equal members, though it was stamped out quickly. This is the story of the creation of the Republic of Pirates, the pirates who founded it and the former privateer who brought them down. The good news is that there is a lot in this book. Unfortunately, the facts are packed a little thick for all but the most die-hard of pirate fans. Happily, for those in between, there’s a lot to be had just in the intro.

This book is probably of limited interest to my readership (assuming I know my readership.) But – just so you know what took so very much of my reading time the past several weeks, here you go:

Homeschooling: a Patchwork of Days by Nancy Lande This book contains essays from 30 different homeschooling families, detailing one day in their lives. Usually, it’s also accompanied by some of their homeschooling and education theories, and a follow-up a year later. ( Read more... )

While interesting, the homeschool book took a very long time to go through, and I felt in need of some extra light reading to follow. This one, passed on by a friend, has already been promised to two others wanting to read it. Maybe I should print out a Book Crossing tag for it.

The Very Virile Viking by Sandra Hill The year is 1000. Magnus Ericsson is a simple Viking man who likes plowing both fields and, um, women. He’s not ashamed of either of those, but with 11 living children, he’s become a laughingstock. He decides to take his nine youngest children and head for the New World, where his two older brothers had gotten lost years earlier. Going to a land without women and taking a vow of chastity should keep him from fathering any more children. But while sailing through a fog, he sees a vision of an old woman with prayer beads, and ends up in a very strange place called Holly Wood. The first woman he meets is, alas, beautiful and wearing clothing a lot skimpier than Vikings are used to. The last thing Angela needs in her life is another creep like her ex-husband, but Magnus might just have a good heart buried under all that macho bluster. And the Blue Dragon, her family’s struggling vineyard is certainly in need of help – in fact, her grandmother had been praying for a man for Angela and lots of children. There might be a bit too much praise for Wal-Mart and order-in pizza, but the romance is sizzling and the story highly amusing.

The Truth, with Jokes by Al Franken Hooray for politics done funny! From how W. used Smears, Fears, and Queers to win the election to the social security reform debacle, Franken covers what's been going in politics since the '04 election. OK, if you’re not a liberal, you probably still won’t enjoy this book. But if you are, and want to have some factual ammunition for conversations with conservatives, or just want to know what’s been going on without feeling utterly depressed, then read this book. Or better yet, listen to it. Al Franken is a comedian, so unlike some author-read books, he does a really good job. Plus, whenever he quotes speeches, he plays the clip from the actual speech rather than reading it aloud. You’ll laugh a lot. And then you’ll be really mad.

Now, remembering all the books that I read, I proceed onwards:

Last year, I found out that our youngest teen niece read Sunshine, Robin McKinley’s first adult novel, a vampire book, which had been rejected by her twenty-year-old sister because it isn’t a romance. Well! Ignoring the slight irritation that the niece for whom it was intended wouldn’t even try it – this year, the oldest niece got a romance and the youngest got this, a very hot new vampire book for teens.
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer Seventeen-year-old Bella Swann leaves sunny Phoenix to allow her mother to travel with her new husband, and moves in with her father in a tiny town in Oregon. Shy, not too popular back in Phoenix, she’s surprised when she’s suddenly the most popular girl in class. She finds herself falling for Edward, one of the mysterious Cullens, who stick to themselves and are shunned by the rest of the school. Though we know from the back cover what Edward is, it takes Bella a while to figure it out – by which time, she and Edward are trysting over cafeteria lunches. He says he’s dangerous, and though she knows it’s true, the attraction is too strong for her to leave. Though Edward has sworn to eat only animals, attraction and hunger must be kept in careful balance, and his vampire family is slow to believe he’ll leave her alive. The romance is compelling, and gets mixed in with suspense as Bella is stalked by a truly evil vampire near the end. This book will fulfill your gothiest fantasies and make you believe in the romance of the Lonely Ones.

Sucker for romance that I am, I was pulled right into the story and read the whole 400+ page book in about two days. I loved the development of Edward and Bella’s relationship, and the dark vampires mixed in with high school (wait – haven’t we seen that before?) I was highly amused, reading the author’s bio, to note that she is almost certainly Mormon – how many good Mormon girls out there write vampire romances? And it manages to stay squeaky clean, even as it builds up impressive steaminess. I was not quite convinced by the kidnapping, and I wish that Meyers hadn’t played so loose with so many vampire traditions. Her vampires don’t burn in sunlight; they sparkle. Towards the end, our heroine, who willing put her life in danger to save her parents, starts begging her vampire lover to change her, and this irritated the heck out of me. Seventeen is way too young to be making that kind of decision! amnachaidh points out, rightly, that the teen readers for whom this is intended will have no such qualms, and that I really shouldn’t expect differently from a vampire romance. And I would have liked to hear more about the Native American tribe of werewolves that are the vampire’s sworn enemies. Still, I enjoyed the book, and Niece 4 said she was really excited about reading it.

In the middle of my holiday book cramming, what should I find on the hold shelf, but the lovely tupelo’s latest book. It’s good enough for two people to read in less than two weeks.

Nerd Girl Rocks Paradise City by Anne Soffee This memoir takes place before Snake Hips. As Soffee graduates from college with an English major, she decides to put it to work in Los Angeles making a name for herself as a gonzo journalist of hair metal. With neither job prospects nor a place to stay, Soffee heads out from Virginia in search of her destiny. Now, I know next to nothing about hair metal, and the dark bars she frequents in pursuit of bands are far outside of my experience and (to be perfectly honest) interest. (In fact, were it not for the fact that I adore tupelo, and how much I loved Snake Hips, I would probably never have picked up the book.) It turns out that, as Soffee has given up a future of wrapping gift baskets in the mall for her new life, hair metal is on the decline. Though she finds some unpaid jobs at first, they become harder and harder to come by. Depressed and spending most of her time in bars, Soffee falls into alcoholism and prescription drug abuse. It sounds like we have the making of a book that is Not for Me, between the depressing real life issues and the music that I don’t listen to. Except that Soffee is so wonderfully wry with her writing that she made me laugh at all of her mishaps, and sigh with her over the coolness of meeting stars that I had never heard of before.

Mission: Organization by Jody Garlock This book I requested for a display and ended up taking home with me. I don’t think the organizational advice is anything really outstanding, but the step-by-step summaries of episodes of the shows are very nice. It’s nice home decorating porn for a former HGTV junkie like me.

Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz Is marriage as an institution in crisis? The answer seems to be yes almost uniformly, although what the problem is and what to do about it varies from one end of the political spectrum to the other. Author Coontz agrees that marriage is going through a rough time right now – but her analysis of why is unique. Coontz examines marriage around the world and through history, examining who, how and why people married, and their attitudes towards issues like children, fidelity, choice of partners and inheritance. Filled with juicy details of the alliances of kings and queens, as well as excerpts from diaries and letters, she manages to focus both on the personal and overall trends. Her conclusion: while marriage has always been in flux, today’s emphasis on love and mutual satisfaction has made the modern marriage both the most satisfying and the most fragile in history. This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in where we’ve come from and where we might be going.