Little Bee - there's nothing "little" about this powerful novel

This is one of the most moving books I've read this year. It reaches in and grabs hold of you and won't let go. I found myself examining my own life choices, could I have made different decisions that would have impacted the people around me more, or less? The harsh and sometimes difficult material is bathed in straightforward prose, so much so that it sneaks up on the reader. Often one finds oneself with an unconscious hand over mouth in stunned review as you keep on reading, unable to turn away. You'll emerge with a greater awareness of our world, and maybe even a bit of change to your own world view, on the themes of violence, immigration, friendship, and the power of one person to impact them all.

From the Washington Post Review: "Little Bee" deserves a warning label: "Do not judge this book by its cover. Contents under pressure." Despite the cutesy title (the book was more sensibly published in Britain as "The Other Hand") and the coy book-flap description ("It is a truly special storyand we don't want to spoil it"), "Little Bee" will blow you away.

Like Ian McEwan's propulsive novel "Enduring Love," in which a fatal hot-air balloon accident binds together two strangers who witness it, "Little Bee," by Guardian columnist Chris Cleave, hinges on a single horrific encounter. On a beach in Nigeria, the lives of Little Bee, a teenager from a small village, and Sarah O'Rourke, editor of a posh British women's magazine, are brought into brutal conjunction. Little Bee and her older sister have the misfortune to live on valuable Nigerian oil deposits, for which their family pays a deadly price. Sarah and her husband, heedless tourists out for a walk in the sand, are confronted in an instant with a choice: Save the girls at great personal cost or ignore them.

'The Shallows': This Is Your Brain Online

Just the latest lament on how the internet is making us all incapable of deep thought:
(from the npr article)

June 2, 2010

Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle, and that, says author Nicholas Carr, is what you're doing every time you use the Internet.

Carr is the author of the Atlantic article Is Google Making Us Stupid? which he has expanded into a book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.

Carr believes that the Internet is a medium based on interruption — and it's changing the way people read and process information. We've come to associate the acquisition of wisdom with deep reading and solitary concentration, and he says there's not much of that to be found online.

Chronic Distraction

Carr started research for The Shallows after he noticed a change in his own ability to concentrate.

"I'd sit down with a book, or a long article," he tells NPR's Robert Siegel, "and after a couple of pages my brain wanted to do what it does when I'm online: check e-mail, click on links, do some Googling, hop from page to page."

Carr admits he's something of a fatalist when it comes to technology. He views the advent of the Internet as "not just technological progress but a form of human regress."

Human ancestors had to stay alert and shift their attention all the time; cavemen who got too wrapped up in their cave paintings just didn't survive. Carr acknowledges that prolonged, solitary thought is not the natural human state, but rather "an aberration in the great sweep of intellectual history that really just emerged with [the] technology of the printed page."

Read the whole article

The Internet, Carr laments, simply returns us to our "natural state of distractedness."

Pulitzer Prize 2010 fiction to "Tinkers" by Paul Harding

For distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

Awarded to "Tinkers," by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press), a powerful celebration of life in which a New England father and son, through suffering and joy, transcend their imprisoning lives and offer new ways of perceiving the world and mortality.

Finalists

Also nominated as finalists in this category were "Love in Infant Monkeys," by Lydia Millet (Soft Skull Press), an imaginative collection of linked stories, often describing a memorable encounter between a famous person and an animal, underscoring the human folly of longing for significance while chasing trifles; and “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders,” by Daniyal Mueenuddin (W.W. Norton & Company), a collection of beautifully crafted stories that exposes the Western reader to the hopes, dreams and dramas of an array of characters in feudal Pakistan, resulting in both an aesthetic and cultural achievement.

From the Booklist review of "Tinkers":

A tinker is a mender, and in Harding’s spellbinding debut, he imagines the old, mendable horse-and-carriage world. The objects of the past were more readily repaired than our electronics, but the living world was a mystery, as it still is, as it always will be. And so in this rhapsodic novel of impending death, Harding considers humankind’s contrary desires to conquer the “imps of disorder” and to be one with life, fully meshed within the great glimmering web. In the present, George lies on his death bed in the Massachusetts house he built himself, surrounded by family and the antique clocks he restores. George loves the precision of fine timepieces, but now he is at the mercy of chaotic forces and seems to be channeling his late father, Howard, a tinker and a mystic whose epileptic seizures strike like lightning. Howard, in turn, remembers his “strange and gentle” minister father. Each man is extraordinarily porous to nature and prone to becoming “unhitched” from everyday human existence and entering a state of ecstasy, even transcendence. Writing with breathtaking lyricism and tenderness, Harding has created a rare and beautiful novel of spiritual inheritance and acute psychological and metaphysical suspense. --Donna Seaman

Librarians now cool - and also, endangered. Read about it In the new book release "This Book is Overdue", Bryan Hissong's humorous love letter to those who toil in the stacks.

Reprinted from: USA TODAY
by Craig Wilson
WESTMINSTER, Md. — Bryan Hissong is 31, happily married, and the father of a 2-year-old named Olivia. He seems quite content with his life.
But Marilyn Johnson, who is not his wife, loves him and has said so very publicly. It doesn't matter that she has never met him. Hissong is a librarian.

He doesn't look like the clichéd librarian of old. He favors plaid shirts and is sporting a beard on his babyface — but that doesn't matter to Johnson, either. She's well aware that librarians wear many disguises these days. Often they're pierced, tattooed, punk with bright blue hair. She loves them all.

Who knew librarians had become so ... cool?

Johnson is the author of the new This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All (Harper, 272 pp., $24.99), a humorous, unabashed love letter to the men and women who used to toil quietly in stacks but now circulate in cyberspace.

"They're smart and they're funny and they totally get it," says Johnson, whose respect for librarians grew tenfold when she was researching The Dead Beat, her acclaimed 2006 book on obituaries and obit writers. "They're not saints, but ethically and morally and every other good way, they're professionals. They're good people."

And possibly endangered.

"It turns out this is a good time to point out that we're shooting ourselves in the foot if we let these people go from our lives," says Johnson, 55, who lives in New York's Hudson Valley. "We need them more than ever."

The reasons are simple and multiple: "The middle class is squeezed and needs libraries more, information is multiplying at an alarming rate so we need librarians more, and the jobless are streaming to libraries in droves," she says.

Overall, the use of public libraries is up by 6% over last year, according to the Library Journal, while states and municipalities are drastically cutting back on aid to libraries, causing many to close. New York has just proposed its fifth cut to state library spending in two years. Ohio libraries were threatened with up to 50% cuts in aid last summer before thousands of patrons protested to legislators, who then cut state funding by 18%.

Hissong's boss, Lynn Wheeler, 61, director of the Carroll County (Md.) Public Library system and a 37-year veteran in the library world, has seen all this firsthand but remains upbeat about her rapidly changing profession.

"Librarians are life-long learners," Wheeler says. "We're flexible. We're up to speed."

And despite losses in the ranks — mainly from budget cuts nationwide — librarians march on into new territory. According to Johnson, thousands of librarians even frequent virtual reality sites such as Second Life where they share resources and socialize. Wheeler acknowledges that this brave new tech world can be overwhelming but says libraries are keeping up, with 24/7 website operations, self-checkouts and improved cooperation between branches. Some patrons now even text-message their questions.

"The demand for technology access and the teaching role for librarians will only continue to grow," she says.

Hissong agrees. "We have had this huge burst of information, yes, but how do you know what you want or need?" he asks of his patrons. "That's where a librarian comes in: to usher people through, to filter things out."

Johnson, who visited libraries big and small researching her book, will be the keynote speaker for the Virtual Worlds and Libraries Online Conference on March 6. The theme: "The Future is Now."

That "future" includes Kindle and other e-readers. What will their arrival do to traditional libraries?

"Nothing," Johnson says. "It's just more neat delivery systems for books. There will be some shifting shelf space, as there has been to accommodate DVDs and audiobooks, but we will always need books. And good public libraries, if they're funded, will figure out ways to get them to us."

On a recent afternoon at the Westminster library here in northern Maryland, the main reading room is packed, and all 20 computers are occupied.

Hissong is wandering the floor with a Samsung Q1 tablet computer in his hands, helping patrons find everything from a Jane Austen classic to an Austin Powers DVD.

"A library is as popular as ever. It's not just a book depository anymore," he says. "We're a resource for everyone. If they check out a book, great. If not, that's OK, too."

The Unnamed from Joshua Ferris takes on the fear of sickness that can't be labeled in this fantastic novel

Reprinted from NPR: Tim Farnsworth, the main character in The Unnamed, the new novel from Joshua Ferris, is a partner in a high-powered law firm in Manhattan. He is married with a young daughter. And he cannot stop walking. According to Ferris, Tim's condition "is more of a disease than a compulsion."

"It's not really a feeling he has to walk, but really his body overtaking him and forcing him to walk," Ferris tells Melissa Block. Ferris' book delves into the question of whether Tim's condition is psychological or physical. But ultimately, the author says, "it concludes more or less that this is something he's simply not in control of."

He certainly can't control when he is struck by a need to start walking. One of the early episodes comes in the evening, when Tim is taking out the garbage, dressed for bed:

He walked past neighbors' houses, he walked barefoot down Route 22. He walked past the supermarket: empty parking lot and an eerie glow. He walked past the Korean Baptist church and the Saks-anchored mall into the dreams of late-night drivers who took home the image of some addled derelict in a cotton robe menacing the soft shoulder. He looked down at his legs. It was like watching footage of legs walking from the point of view of the walker. That was the helplessness, this was the terror: the brakes are gone, the steering wheel has locked. I am at the mercy of this wayward machine.

The Unnamed
By Joshua Ferris
Hardcover, 320 pages
Reagan Arthur Books
List price: $24.99

Read An Excerpt

Tim seeks out all sorts of medical remedies for his condition, from submitting to tests at the Mayo Clinic to taking bat-wing extract. But nothing can be determined.

"It's unnamed, it's undiagnosable, it's essentially uncurable," Ferris says. "It's recurring and remitting, so he has long stretches of time in which he's not afflicted, and over the course of the book, you see one of these sections and understand one of the ways Tim and, I think, sick people in general, re-embrace life and recognize that which has been taken away from them when their sickness hits."

But the effects of the sickness are brutal. Often, Tim's episodes hit during cold weather, and to keep him from wandering off, never to be found, his wife prepares a survival backpack, complete with a GPS device and energy bars.

Fantastic book with gorgeous writing: Colum McCann's 'Let the Whole World Spin'. Not to be missed.

Recently stayed up half the night delving into this work, "Let the Great World Spin", just named National Book Award Winner of 2009. I was hooked by the writer's talent by page two. If, like me, you love a writer that knows how to turn a phrase, intrigue the reader, and describes people and places with what seem at first simple, yet are so dead on and actually magical, words you should definitely pick up a copy of this book soon. Run, don't walk. Now in trade paperback at all the usual places.


from Amazon's review: Colum McCann has worked some exquisite magic with Let the Great World Spin, conjuring a novel of electromagnetic force that defies gravity. It's August of 1974, a summer "hot and serious and full of death and betrayal," and Watergate and the Vietnam War make the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses the cacophonous universe of New York City as a man on a cable walks (repeatedly) between World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary, real-life feat by French funambulist Philippe Petit becomes the touchstone for stories that briefly submerge you in ten varied and intense lives--a street priest, heroin-addicted hookers, mothers mourning sons lost in war, young artists, a Park Avenue judge. All their lives are ordinary and unforgettable, overlapping at the edges, occasionally converging. And when they coalesce in the final pages, the moment hums with such grace that its memory might tighten your throat weeks later.


I wholeheartedly agree.



See Colum McCann's acceptance speech here>>> 


Colum McCann at the 2009 National Book Awards, Fiction Winner from National Book Foundation on Vimeo.

'New York: The Novel': History has never been so fun to read

Looks good - can't wait to tackle this one after just finishing Tale of Two Cities. 

REPRINTED FROM USA TODAY

By Craig Wilson, USA TODAY

New York is a big city. New York: The Novelis an even bigger book.

Edward Rutherfurd has tackled big subjects in his fiction before. London, Russia, Ireland, to name but three. Now he turns his keen academic eye toward the city that never sleeps.

It appears Rutherfurd didn't sleep much either while putting together this massive "history" of one of the world's greatest cities. (Some have called him an heir to James Michener, who also wrote epics set in various locales around the world.)

Rutherfurd's research is exhaustive, taking the reader from the city's beginnings as an Indian village at the tip of Manhattan all the way to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

And while this book could be one big bore, it is not. As he has done in his other novels, Rutherfurd once again uses a variety of fictional families to weave this tale of one of the world's most fascinating cities.

You want George Washington? He's here. You want Babe Ruth? He's here, too, right along with so many Dutchmen you'd think no one stayed back home in the original Amsterdam.

But Rutherfurd's habit of also making up many of his characters makes this sweeping tale a much more fun read than anyone would suspect. This is history, but with a very readable story line.

It's even, well, a little naughty.

"Margaretha de Groot took a slow draw on the clay pipe in her sensual mouth, looked at the man with the wooden leg in a considering kind of way, and wondered what it would be like to sleep with him," Rutherfurd writes.

Once again, thinking big.

Ready for the "Nook"? Uh, not quite sure it's ready for us.

David Pogue, tech-guy extraordinaire gives the thumbs down to Barnes & Noble's entry into the e-book reader market, The Nook. Never mind that these devices sold out early in the holiday season. I recently gave one a whirl with decidedly poor results. Try before you buy at a local store. You'll find the screen refresh as the pages change leaves much to be desired.
Pogue says. "And in the electronics business, Greed-Borne Insanity is contagious.
That’s when electronics executives, blinded by dollar signs on their corneas, rush a product to market before it’s ready."
I agree!
Read the entire review in the NY Times article here>>>

Hear more author interviews: Sara Paretsky

Listen to audio of author interviews from Donna Seaman, an associate editor at Booklist for the American Library Assn. She's also a frequest reviewer for the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, and others.

She says, "Books compete with the machine media -- television, movies, video games, the Internet -- for our time and attention, yet they hold their own because books are intimate, nourishing, and resonant. Reading books stimulates the imagination, renews our love for the subtleties of language, forges bonds between past and present, links us to diverse peoples and all of living creation, and illuminates with singular clarity one of the universe’s greatest mysteries, how other people’s minds work. Off-the-grid objects of great sensuous, emotional, and intellectual pleasure, books mesh story and ideas. To read is to lose and find one’s self and the world. Reading is a form of listening, and literature is a grand and transcendent conversation. Our hope is that by opening books, hearts, and minds, you will help keep this rich and essential tradition alive and thriving."


I agree!
Listen to some interviews with authors now>>>

Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story - by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor

Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann were both at a crossroads in 1998--Sue was near menopause with a case of writer's block and Ann was a recent college grad with a case of depression. The two visited Greece, France, and Turkey, and in this dual-memoir, Kidd (who wrote The Secret Life of Bees after the trip) and her daughter each describe their introspective journeys and their relationships with each other. This fascinating book will provide food for thought for anyone who's at their own life intersection, especially mothers and daughters--and Bees fans will enjoy reading about that novel's early beginnings.

Think you love books "too much" ? Here's one for you.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much
by Allison Hoover Barlett
If you're interested in book collecting, detective stories, or just a good read, check out this non-fiction - but decidedly, not dry - tome delving into the book collection world. Here's a few reviews:

"John Gilkey wanted to own a rich-man's library in the worst way, and was soon acquiring expensive first editions in the very worst way of all: theft. Allison Hoover Bartlett's "The Man Who Loved Books Too Much" is the enthralling account of a gently mad con artist and his fraudulent credit-card scams, but it's also a meditation on the urge to collect and a terrific introduction to the close-knit, swashbuckling world of antiquarian book dealers."
-Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author of Classics for Pleasure and the memoir An Open Book

"Allison Hoover Bartlett has written a meticulous and fascinating book about a serial bookthief and the persistent sleuth who dogged him for years and finally caught him. It will be especially gripping for those of us who trade in antiquarian books, who owe much to Ken Sanders's persistence. A fine read."
-Larry McMurtry, bestselling author of Books: A Memoir and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove

"With its brilliantly observed details, wry humor, and thrilling plot twists, Bartlett's narrative drew me deep into the obsessive world of a book thief and the dealer determined to stop him. It's a captivating cat-and-mouse game and a fascinating exploration of why people are so passionate about books. If you liked The Orchid Thief, you're going to love The Man Who Loved Books Too Much."
-Julia Flynn Siler, author of The House of Mondavi

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon - a book lover's gem

Tops the "Favorites" list of almost everyone who has ever plunged into the depths of this intriguing, mysterious, lyrical tome set in 1945's Barcelona. Here's how the Reading Group Guides describes it:

The Shadow of the Wind is a coming-of-age tale of a young boy who, through the magic of a single book, finds a purpose greater than himself and a hero in a man he's never met. With the passion of García Márquez, the irony of Dickens, and the necromancy of Poe, Carlos Ruiz Zafón spins a web of intrigue so thick that it ensnares the reader from the very first line. The Shadow of the Wind is an ode to the art of reading, but it is also the perfect example of the all-encompassing power of a well-told story.

Highly recommend!
The new bestseller by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Angel's Game, offers up some of the same themes and locations albeit in a different era, still the love and power of books prevails on every page.

"The Thoreau You Don't Know" - but would probably like to...

The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant" by Robert Sullivan endeavors to free Henry David Thoreau from his calcified reputation as a cantankerous hermit and nature worshipper. Sounding like your favorite teacher who manages to make history fun and relevant, Sullivan vibrantly portrays the sage of Walden as a geeky, curious, compassionate fellow of high intelligence and deep feelings who loved company, music, and long walks. An exceptional writer mad for puns, Thoreau was also a bold social critic and—the crux of Sullivan’s stimulating argument—a brilliant, tongue-in-cheek humorist. Sullivan, himself plenty saucy, also elucidates Thoreau’s radical focus on “man’s interaction with nature.” In command of a great diversity of fascinating material, Sullivan succinctly illuminates the striking parallels between Thoreau’s time and ours—foreclosures, lost jobs, and rapid technological change. Thoreau remains vital and valuable because of his acute observations, wit, and lyricism and his recognition that the “force of life is everywhere,” a perception even more essential now that the consequences of the societal choices Thoreau prophetically critiqued have reached staggering proportions.

(review reprinted in part from BookList)

Shanghai Moon - Missing Jewels plot re-deux

"Moon' With an Irresistible Pull

by Maureen Corrigan

(Republished from The Washington Post)

Shanghai Moon

by S.J. Rozan

Many years ago, I realized a girlhood dream: I joined the ranks of those anonymous contract writers known collectively as "Carolyn Keene" and wrote a Nancy Drew mystery. With visions of blue roadsters and unsavory hooligans dancing in my head, I sent the manuscript off to the publisher.
It was rejected. The reason? My plot, an editor told me, was "too sexually suggestive." I was mortified. I thought I'd crafted a thrilling but at the same time decorous and educational tale in which Nancy, Bess and George chased after a stolen antique infant feeding instrument (a "pap boat") that had once belonged to Thomas Jefferson. It turned out, however, that according to the keepers of the Nancy Drew flame, the mention of infant feeding instruments brought up -- I kid you not -- the "uncomfortable suggestion that Nancy herself has breasts." As Bess Marvin, Nancy's ultra-femme friend, might say, "Eeek!"
The plots of the classic Nancy Drew mysteries focus resolutely on the safe topic of stolen jewels, especially jewels with interesting histories. I never got around to substituting pearls for pap boats, but no matter. Whether intentionally or not, in "The Shanghai Moon" S.J. Rozan has written a far more ambitious and absorbing riff on the classic Nancy Drew mystery than I ever could have.
Ethnicity aside, Rozan's Lydia Chin is a private investigator very much in the Nancy mold (that is, if Nancy were grown up and Chinese American), carrying forward -- in this, her 11th outing -- the young female detective's brisk approaches to crime-solving and complications of the heart. Let's begin with the latter. Lydia's occasional partner in crime-fighting, Bill Smith, has been AWOL for months, trying to get his sense of perspective back after a particularly devastating case. When someone else very close to Lydia is murdered, Bill abruptly reappears to help solve the mystery. As ever, the sparks between the two could ignite a Chinese New Year firecracker, and Lydia's old-school mom's disapproval of Mr. White Bread just stokes their relationship. Despite her longings, however, ladylike Lydia keeps Bill at a chaste distance, allowing only the kind of hugs that Nancy Drew would permit from Ned Nickerson.
If Lydia and Bill's dance of attraction/distraction is a staple of this series, so are Rozan's exquisitely crafted plots. (She's won the Edgar Award twice, the Shamus, the Anthony and on and on.) "The Shanghai Moon" is a standout in this series in terms of narrative sweep and the lush aura of romance. Here's the gist: Lydia is hired to help trace a cache of jewels (girl sleuth alert!) that's recently been unearthed in a garden in Shanghai and swiped by a corrupt Chinese official who's now believed to be hiding in Lydia's home turf: New York's Chinatown. Lydia's client tells her that the box containing the jewelry had been buried since World War II. It may or may not include a brooch called the Shanghai Moon, which has become the stuff that dreams are made of. Even Bill claims to have heard of it while serving in the Navy in Asia. Learning of her latest case, he scoffs to Lydia: "It was the Pacific seaman's equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge. If you were particularly clueless, some guy would always offer to sell you the Shanghai Moon."
Lydia's race to find the stolen gems -- and possibly even the legendary brooch -- before various plug uglies can lay their paws on the treasure constitutes one plotline here. There's also an even more tumultuous background narrative that comprises a series of letters taking readers back to wartime Shanghai. Reading the letters as her investigation grows more desperate, Lydia clearly feels a connection to a spunky World War II counterpart. Such is the power of Rozan's engrossing storytelling that readers, even the most hard-boiled among us, will feel that connection, too.
Turns out that the Nancy Drew purists know what they're talking about, after all. As "The Shanghai Moon" demonstrates, there's plenty of possibility lurking in the old missing-gems plot. It just takes a master like S.J. Rozan to restore the luster of a classic.
Corrigan is the book critic for the NPR program "Fresh Air." She teaches a course in detective fiction at Georgetown University.

Read "First Chapters" of recent book releases

Did you know The New York Times Book Section online offers readers the opportunity to read many, many new releases' "first chapters"? Check out the offerings:

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/chapters/index.html