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February 5, 2010
Reviewed by Reggie Wilson
Ernest Gaines’s remarkable novel stresses to its readers the importance of oral history. He uses as his narrator a schoolteacher who learns that a local woman, Jane Pittman, was a slave. For years the teacher asked Jane to let him interview her, to tell his students and the world her incredible story. Finally, in the summer of 1962, she consents to the interview. As the tape recorder rolls, Jane states that she was named Ticey when she was born into slavery. She lived on a plantation located in Louisiana (Jane calls it Luzana)! Ticey is an orphan whose main role is to care for the white children who live in the plantation’s Big House. By using a ragged Southern army unit in full retreat shortly before the end of the Civil War as a metaphor, the author skillfully constructs the novel’s beginning chapter to show that the morally bankrupt, murderous institution of slavery is running out of time. The dirty, thirsty company of Confederate soldiers visits the plantation, and Ticey is ordered by her mistress to serve them water. The Southern soldiers are running from an advancing Yankee army that is hot on their trail and hell-bent on defeating them. The soldiers don’t even acknowledge Ticey’s presence as she provides them with water. Soon, the Yankee army arrives and a soldier, Corporal Brown, is kind to young Ticey and tells her that “Ticey” is a slave name. He promises that soon the slaves will all be free and she can pick her own name. He suggests that she should consider changing her name to Jane, which is one of his daughters’ names. After the Northern soldiers leave, Jane receives a severe beating by her domineering mistress when she refuses to respond to “Ticey.” Following President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Jane’s degenerate master is forced to free his slaves. For the first time in their lives the slaves are offered a choice: they can stay and work for a meager wage (as the old saying goes, “their minimum wage was their maximum wage”) or they can leave for an uncertain life as free people. After much debate, Jane and a small group of ex-slaves leave the plantation. Jane becomes single-minded about going to see Corporal Brown in Ohio. One character tries to warn Jane about this new thing called “freedom.” He says that, “freedom won’t meet them half-way during their journey, and it might not be there when they arrive in Ohio.” They will soon meet a variety of characters in their travels. Some good people feel sorry for them and try to help or offer advice. Many southerners hate that their former chattel are set free, and soon the South goes through a long period of rigid Jim Crow laws designed to keep newly freed blacks at the bottom of society. Jane gets lost numerous times in her quest to get to Ohio as she wanders around in circles in Louisiana because she has no understanding of a geographic compass. Jane does have total command of her more important moral compass, and her character provides some of the greatest insights into human nature, courage, slavery, and human rights.
January 26, 2010
For the tenth year, the Massachusetts Center for the Book is sponsoring its annual Massachusetts Book Awards, which highlight and celebrate books written by authors living in Massachusetts, or books in which Massachusetts is key to the themes of the book. Last year’s fiction winner, for instance, was the exceptional People of the Book, written by Massachusetts resident Geraldine Brooks.
This year, I am very excited to be one of the three judges in the adult fiction category. We’ll be reading all or part of about 40 worthy titles that meet the eligibility guidelines. In addition to coming up with a winner, we’ll be coming to consensus on a list of 12 “recommended reads.” It’s early in the process, and already I can tell that the problem I’ll have (well, besides reading all those book by deadline) is limiting myself to just 12. Massachusetts is certainly blessed with an abundance of top-notch authors!
November 24, 2009
We have recently added annotations to the monthly fiction orders. Our “Librarian’s Picks” (which more accurately should be “Librarians’ Picks, since more than one librarian is doing the annotating) feature titles that sound intriguing, but are written by authors who might not be immediately recognizable. We’ve chosen some from reviews, but have actually read advance reading copies of others. Either way, we make an effort to select books from a variety of genres. If you’d like to explore fiction beyond the latest Patterson/Roberts/Steel, etc., try our Picks. November is currently the most current month, but the December annoated list will be up shortly.
November 13, 2009
After a bit of a hiatus, this blog is back. If you’re getting some reading ideas from it, please comment to let us know!
I’m not a huge reader of nonfiction, but I was captivated by William Kamkwamba’s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope. British journalist Bryan Mealer worked with Kankwanba to tell the world the story of the boy from Malawi who, through hard work and belief in himself, built a working windmill which brought reliable electricity to his impoverished village. The only son of subsistence farmers, Kamkwamba was forced to drop out of high school when the family could no longer afford the schools fees during a crop-ruining drought. Through reading cast-off American science books in his primary school library, Kamkwamba taught himself the essentials of electricity and wind power, and managed to scrounge, build, and occasionally buy pieces of the windmill which would change the lives of his family and everyone in his village. After an engineer discovered Kamkwamba and blogged about him, he became an international sensation. His story of perseverance and hope overcoming overwhelming odds is a great read for both adults and teens.
September 16, 2009
A staff member submitted the following review for The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley. The advance reading copy has circled around the Wednesday Book Group for several months, and everyone has agreed that it’s a debut mystery not to be missed!
“A new detective has entered the field – and she’s adorable! She’s also into chemistry, with an emphasis on poisons, and she’s only eleven years old. She’s Flavia de Luce, youngest daughter of a widowed father who has been arrested for the murder of an old acquaintance from his public school, and the only person who seems willing – and able – to exonerate him and untangle the mystery. Set in England in the 1950s, this is the first in a projected series about the incorrigible Flavia, who interrupts her sleuthing to plan dastardly revenges on her older sisters (the poison ivy in the lipstick is particularly deft) and was the recipient of the Debut Dagger Award from the Canadian Crime Writers’ Association. All hail Flavia – and long may she wave!”
August 20, 2009
This year’s Adult Summer Reading Club ends on August 22, so if you’re finishing up a book (or two), be sure to submit your rating/raffle form by Saturday!
Today’s review is for a fine and often underrated thriller write, Thomas Cook. I haven’t read his latest, The Fate of Katherine Carr, but our club member enjoyed every aspect of it, rated it 5-star, and said:
” Great mystery book! Very different from other mystery books I have read! Very intriguing.”
August 17, 2009
I received the review below - for World War Z: The Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks - via e-mail, and the club member who submitted it called the book “AMAZING.” If you’re feeling adventurous in your reading choices, this novel might be just the thing.
World War Z is like no other piece of Zombie fiction I have ever read. While normally I am not much of a zombie fan (I tend to like my horror a little more “what you don’t see is scarier”) this book may make me re-examine zombie fiction. Written as a series of interviews with survivors of said war, the book reads like a non-fiction account of some terrible disaster. We learn, through these interviews, that an outbreak of a new virus escapes from china through black market organs. Those who receive these transplants go on to spread the infection all over the world. This virus causes a person to die, and then come back as walking undead zombies. If you’re bitten, you will die and rise as well. The only thing that can stop them is destroying the brain. There is no cure, and no vaccine.All common enough stuff for zombie fiction, but it’s the way the book is written, and the themes behind the horror that make it so amazing. Countries go to war with each other over violations of boarders, Nuclear weapons are used, and government officials look the other way while under funding their armies. Big corporations are allowed to sell false placebo anti-virus drugs to the public that only makes the outbreak worse. Civilians are sacrificed to simply stall the advancing zombie hoards. One particular scene that sticks with me is in the former Soviet Union, where fleeing refugees are gasses with a deadly nerve gas. Thousands die in agony. Why would their government do such a thing? Because 1 in 50 rises as a zombie, having been infected and hiding it, and it makes it easier to kill the zombies than trying to pick out the infected from the innocent.This book, like most good horror fiction, is really social and political commentary dressed up in a Halloween mask. Parts will make you think of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Parts remind us of what lengths some countries will go to keep order and loyalty. And parts will remind you, that while we are one of the greatest countries on the planet, we here in the USA are far from perfect ourselves.
August 14, 2009
Read all of Robin Cook and looking for a gripping medical thriller by another writer? You might want to try Michael Palmer’s latest, Second Opinion. Our club member rated it a 5-star, and said about this story of a physician who uncovers a deadly conspiracy:
”If you like medical thrillers you will enjoy this one. The ending will surprise you!”
August 10, 2009
Reviewed by Reggie Wilson
Former New York Times science writer Dava Sobel continues to add to her impressive string of thought-provoking books. The Planets joins the list of beautifully written, award-winning books by Sobel such as Galileo’s Daughter and Longitude that make difficult scientific and geographic concepts easier to understand. The Planets explores the many ways people explain the puzzling things that happen above them in the night sky. The book also helps foster in readers a greater appreciation of ancient cultures that sought to explain the heavens the best they knew how. Sobel weaves a fascinating story that mixes current cutting-edge science, literature, mythology, religion, astrology, art, and music to explain people’s fascination and understanding of the planets. For example, her book illustrates how the planets had a profound effect on literature. The eerie landscape of Mars fueled the literary imaginations of early science fiction writers H. G. Wells and Ray Bradbury. Sobel writes, “Venus is the darling of poets, whose words still best express her effect on the night’s blue velvet—‘a joy forever,’ as Keats said, ‘a cheering light unto our souls.” The planets also profoundly touched the art world. Sobel says that eccentric artist Vincent Van Gogh was so transfixed by the beauty of Venus that it appears in four of his paintings including his masterpiece Starry Night. The author begins her planetary journey with the fiery cauldron Mercury, which has a surface temperature “hot enough to melt metals in daylight, then chill to hundreds of degrees below freezing at night” and concludes with frigid Pluto (the surface temperature on Pluto can dip to an unimaginable minus 369° F). She writes that the planet Mercury’s name is steeped in Roman and Greek mythology. The god Mercury was a swift marathon runner. Sobel adds, “After the goddess of the harvest lost her only daughter to the god of the underworld, Mercury was sent to negotiate the victim’s rescue.” Modern scientists tell us that the planet Mercury appeared swift to the ancients because it completes one orbit of the Sun (a year) in only 88 days as opposed to 365 days for our Earth. One of the best chapters is about Earth’s beautiful sister planet Venus where Sobel provides readers with an array of amazing facts. She begins by asking readers to imagine a sunrise on Venus where the sun “comes up in the west and sets in the east.” Venus rotates on its axis in the opposite direction (east to west or retrograde) than Earth. The book also mentions that when Russian unmanned spacecrafts were sent in the 1970s to explore our neighboring planet “within and hour or so of landing, each vehicle either melted in the heat (Venus has a surface temperature of 850 degrees Fahrenheit) or crumpled under the atmospheric pressure (comparable to that found underwater on Earth three thousand feet below sea level)!” The Planets is a monument to how people of diverse cultures and backgrounds have expressed their love and wonder for the planets throughout history. Sobel’s book also shows us that today’s inquisitive people who search for answers about the universe have all just skimmed the surface of what we can know. The important thing is that we continue to explore outer space because the heavens might hold the keys that unlock the answers to the age-old questions, “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?”
Reviewed by Library Patron Ashleen Wicklow
I loved Raging Quiet! Perhaps not a work of absolute gold but it definitely made me smile more than once. When I finished the novel, it made me happy and surely that means a good deal. The characters were wonderfully real, with great chemistry with one another, motives for what they did, actual dreams. They felt like real people, and the love between the two main characters actual felt solid and tender, not forced.
Anyway, this well-written novel takes place during the Middle Ages. Marnie moves to a cottage in the strange village of Torcurra that is different from her home. She is with her new husband Isake Isherwood, whom she married so her family could live on their old manor farm. She knows no one, not even her husband, really. Upon their arrival in the town, Isake shows just the sort of husband he is going to be by spending hours in the alehouse, leaving Marnie (who is younger than his youngest daughter) to tend to their things. She sees a boy being whipped, and is told it’s to get the devils out of him, because he is mad. Isake and Marnie discover their new cottage is more of a hovel, but apparently it is worth more than this former lord’s lands combined. Isake forced himself on Marnie, causing a deep-rooted fear of male closeness that continues throughout the novel. Two days later, he is dead from falling through the roof, and Marnie is suddenly widowed and alone. She befriends the local priest, who offers witty comedic relief throughout the novel, and learns of Raver, the village madman (who is more of a boy, about Marnie’s age) who makes only strange noises from his mouth and often lives in his own little world.
Over the course of the novel, Marnie learns the boy is actually deaf and decides to talk to him with hand signals. It is a long, difficult, frustrating, but most importantly real process, and as the novel goes on it is apparent their bond runs deep and true. They have run ins with the simple minded suspicious villagers and Isake’s older brother is out to reclaim the house, but mostly the story is about their growing friendship and the boy’s transformation from Raver to Raven, the kind, compassionate, totally lovable boy who only wanted to understand and be accepted.
I really liked this novel and recommend it to others.
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