Sea of Glory, by Nathaniel Philbrick

Nathaniel Philbrick is one of our most readable chroniclers of American history. While less well known than his breakout book, In the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex and focused on a more obscure event than later works like Mayflower, The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and 2013′s Bunker Hill: a City, a Siege, a Revolution, his book Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery: the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 is one of his best. The fact that the history of this expedition has mostly been forgotten by modern Americans only makes the book more astonishing.

The Exploring Expedition, often known as the U.S. Ex Ex, would journey down the U.S. and South American coasts, continue into Antarctic waters, then cross into the Pacific and chart South Pacific islands and portions of America’s Northwest coast, including the mouth of the Columbia River before returning via the reverse route over four years later. It would make contact with many native populations, create sea charts that would be used well into the 20th century, and bring home an astonishing number of scientific specimens that would ultimately form the start of the Smithsonian’s collection. It would do all of this in an era when propulsion was still by sail, cold weather gear was substandard, and navigation was hazardous. Pretty good for an expedition unknown to most modern Americans!

But what makes the story even more astonishing is that it succeeded despite the inept, self-aggrandizing leadership of young Charles Wilkes. Wilkes was barely 40 years of age, only a lieutenant, but won command of the expedition through diligent campaigning and the general opposition to the expedition of most of the Navy’s officers. When political wrangling back at home refused him the honor of a Captain’s rank even after he was away with the expedition’s five ships, Wilkes became ever more of a martinet, pretending to have achieved rank that he didn’t have so he could play the other young officers of the expedition against each other. He would often arrange the traveling order of the ships so that he could claim personal discovery of major sites or ignore the successes of other officers. He resorted to corporal punishments at the least offense and subverted the work of the expedition’s scientists.

I’ll let you discover the expedition’s many events for yourself, but I will hint at a bit of the ending. Wilkes returned home to find a different president than the one who backed his expedition, many dismissed officers waiting to level charges against him, a Navy determined to have him court-martialed, and powerful enemies in the country’s political leadership. The last part of the book considers the events of the case made against him. Wilkes may have been a disaster, but modern readers will be enthralled by the adventures of this little known expedition. This is an enthralling history that reads like a suspense novel.

Check the WRL catalog for Sea of Glory

We also have Sea of Glory in large print or audiobook on compact disc formats

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Sutton, by J. R. Moehringer

J. R. Moehringer first came to the attention of readers with his 2005 memoir The Tender Bar. In 2012, he returned with a novel, Sutton, which chronicles the life of the American bank robber Willie “the Actor” Sutton. The two works might be closer in nature than that summary first suggests: told from Willie’s perspective, and dependent on his memory (his fictionalized memory: the real life Sutton didn’t talk much to reporters about his exploits, and when he did, as in his 1976 ghostwritten memoir, the information was often questionable), this historical novel reads like one of those contemporary memoirs that leaves readers wondering if they’re getting the whole truth. In this case, however, that’s not a negative, it’s kind of the point.

The novel opens with Sutton’s surprise parole from New York’s Attica prison on Christmas Eve, 1969 at the age of 69. Willie is on death’s doorstep with emphysema and weak arteries in his legs, a bit bewildered by the world’s changes, but he makes a deal with the New York Herald to tell his story. So on Christmas Day, a cub reporter and a beatnik photographer drive him around the city, visiting the sites of all of his life’s major events in chronological order. Arnold Schuster, the young man who spotted the heavily disguised Willie and turned him in to police, was killed by the mob. The question that hung over Sutton’s head was whether he had somehow ordered the hit. In the book, this piece of information is all that the reporter really wants from Willie, but Willie refuses to talk about Schuster until he has visited all of his old stomping grounds. The narrative alternates between Willie’s remembrances and his reactions to what has become of his former haunts and accomplices.

Sutton was born into an Irish Brooklyn neighborhood at the start of the 20th century. As he tells his story, the cycle of economic depressions, a lack of opportunities, and a desperate attempt to win the wealthy girl who was the love of his life away from her parents’ control were the key elements in his descent into a life of crime. He ultimately became famous for nearly one hundred nonviolent bank and jewelry store robberies, made successful mostly through disguises. While highly successful, Willie was always tripped up by undependable accomplices (at least that’s his story, perhaps the largest conflict of the book is deciding whether Willie is a dependable narrator). He went to prison often, but also became famous for his daring prison breaks. Sutton was on the FBI’s first Most Wanted list when it was released in 1950.

This novel should have broad appeal to crime fiction fans, historical fiction lovers, and literary fiction buffs. Willie makes a likable and fascinating narrator, even as one questions his veracity. Moehringer admits up front that he had to create most of his narrative with imagination, but the historical settings feel accurate and just when you think the plot is getting predictable, a surprising twist is always at hand.

I can highly recommend the audiobook, which actor Dylan Baker reads in fine style, switching deftly between many character voices. Baker is one of those great character actors whom everyone recognizes but few recognize by name. He attended college at William and Mary and acted in many local theater productions before making it big on the stage, on television and in films.

Check the WRL catalog for Sutton

Or try Sutton as an audiobook on compact disc

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Libriomancer, by Jim C. Hines

I’m an unabashed fan of fantasy fiction, but the genre has changed massively in the last five years. A few years ago, most fantasy novels were fat books with lots of story lines and a setting that was usually medieval. These books take a certain patience until all of the plot lines and characters are clearly established, but can pack a real wallop of excitement and emotion when the story comes together.

Now, urban fantasy has at least half of the market. The books are shorter, have a clear central character, and are lighter reads. It’s a format that doesn’t usually work for me. The books don’t have enough depth for my tastes, and when they do, that depth often comes after several books. In particular, the contemporary setting makes it hard for me to suspend disbelief, and I can’t buy into the fantastic elements enough to become engrossed.

Jim C. Hines’ Libriomancer, the first in a new series, was a happy exception for me, perhaps because it’s centered on the book world and the magic that can come from reading good fiction. In this case, that magic isn’t just symbolic, it’s a literal manifestation. The book follows Isaac Vainio, a librarian on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. As an encounter with vampires in the book’s first chapter makes clear, Isaac is more than just a book lover: He can reach inside books and pull magic from the pages.

As the story develops, the reader learns more about Isaac’s back story and the limits and costs of his magic. Isaac was once a practicing field agent for the Porters, a group founded and led by the still-living Johannes Gutenberg. They work, unknown to regular folk, to keep other magical figures like vampires under control and to prevent rogue libriomancers from doing wrong. Isaac got in trouble and has been reduced to the role of cataloger. He looks at new books and makes sure that the magic potential in them won’t accidentally destroy the world. As the book opens, the Porters are losing control as mysterious forces attack them on several fronts.

Isaac returns to active duty, but he’s in a precarious position, without the full support of the Porters, who may be succumbing to internal forces, and targeted by a host of powerful enemies. His allies are his pet fire spider Smudge and Lena, a dryad who’s a fierce warrior and whose magic makes her a powerful love draw to those with whom she bonds. These two provide plenty of comic relief and add some physical power to Isaac’s magical gifts.

What really makes this book click for me, however, are all of the loving references to fantasy and science fiction titles that Hines works into the plot. He clearly loves this literature, and cleverly finds a way to make its imaginative power into something more real in his book. Libriomancer is the start of a series which I’ll follow closely. I predict it’s the series that will make the well-reviewed Hines into a more household name.

Check the WRL catalog for Libriomancer

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Just Kids, by Patti Smith

Patti Smith is the proto-punk goddess whose music is fierce, but hardly every listener’s cup of tea. Robert Mapplethorpe was a photographer whose most famous works were pictures of nude men, often depicted in sexually explicit poses and masochistic acts. I like some edgy things, but neither of these artists really do much for me, and a more conservative person might run the other way. I’m not even a huge fan of their scene, where style and innovation seem to matter more than substance, but I’ve always been curious about those magical moments in history where a group of creative people find each other and use the energy of their meeting to create something new.

Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids, captures just such a time perfectly. Smith came to New  York in 1967 after giving up a baby to adoption upstate. She was young and looking for a fresh start. One of the first people she met was Robert Mapplethorpe, a minor acquaintance who became her fast friend after saving her from a bad date. The two moved in together and tried to make a go of a relationship, even though it soon became apparent that Mapplethorpe was obviously homosexual. Patti somewhat naively believed that their love would overcome Robert’s sexual preference, and so began several years of ups and downs. Robert could be incredibly supportive of Patti and her art, but substance abuse and a need for fame could make him neglectful at other times.

The background here is fascinating, as Smith and Mapplethorpe rub elbows with the artists and scenesters of the Chelsea Hotel, Andy Warhol’s Factory, and the pioneering music venue CBGB’s. The story follows the early rise of both friends, then jumps forward a decade and ends poignantly with Robert’s death from AIDS in 1989.

Smith writes with real heart. The prose gets a bit florid at times, but that’s easy to forgive, as is her sometimes naive view of Mapplethorpe, as the author so clearly feels all of the emotions behind her story honestly. This especially shines through on the audiobook. Smith is a clumsy reader, a bit monotone and with funny pronunciations for some words (“drawlings” instead of “drawings”), but she’s so absolutely free of pretense that I found the awkwardness charming and authentic, not off-putting.

Check the WRL catalog for Just Kids

Or try it on audiobook on CD

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Kane & Abel, by Jeffrey Archer

I have a lifetime reading project. My goal is to read one book from each fiction shelf at the Williamsburg Library. I allow myself the option of skipping a shelf if I’ve already read two books on it, but that isn’t most shelves. I’ve been at my project for over two years, and I’m still only 18 shelves in, still reading authors whose last names begin with the letter A! Since I only allot my project a small percentage of my reading time, I may never finish, but it’s a good project, and I’ll keep at it. The intent is to read authors whom I would otherwise never attempt, and this post is about one of these authors.

Jeffrey Archer is an English author who once was a Conservative Member of Parliament. He resigned that position in financial scandal. He was later investigated for insider business dealings and even served time in prison after being convicted of perjury from 2001 to 2003.

Archer’s writing style is a little old fashioned, and not something I would normally read, but he’s held popularity over the years, with a career that began with 1976′s Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, and continues right up to 2013′s Best Kept Secret. That makes him the perfect candidate for my reading project. Archer’s plots can be melodramatic, but as I read his second book, 1979′s Kane & Abel, I found that despite my skepticism, I was sucked into the story and found it hard to put aside.

Kane & Abel is the story of two men, born on the same day in 1906, destined to cross paths and butt heads throughout their eventful lives. Wladek Koskiewicz is a Pole who rises from impoverished birth, survives both the Germans and the Russians in WWII, and eventually emigrates to America. William Lowell Kane is the scion of a Boston banking family, a prodigy who rises to the top despite family problems and bitter enemies. Both men are admirable but intensely stubborn, and over the course of the novel, they cross paths many times but never become close acquaintances. In later life, they become fierce rivals because of misunderstanding and a failure to communicate.

More happens to each of Archer’s protagonists than normally happens in the lives of a hundred men, and both are too perfect to be believed most of the time and too stubborn to be believed the rest of the time, but what happens to them is consistently interesting, and as a reader, you can’t help but play along, thinking about how you would react to each new crisis, cheering the protagonists when they overcome another obstacle, cringing when they let pride bring them to a new low. It’s enthralling stuff with a strong connection to the world, even if it is at times hokey. It’s easy to see why Archer continues to hold a spot on the fiction shelves after all these years. When you’re tired of all the artsy literary fiction with flashy style and clever ideas that just doesn’t quite connect at the gut level, pick up this old warhorse and cleanse your reading palate with a bit of classic storytelling.

If you like this story, it continues with another generation in The Prodigal Daughter. Archer turned to books that are closer to political thrillers, but his most recent series, The Clifton Chronicles, which begins with Only Time Will Tell, returns more closely to the style of Kane & Abel.

Check the WRL catalog for Kane & Abel

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ABBC 2012: Final Edition

The compilation of 180 sources is done, and the final version of the All the Best Books Compilation (ABBC) is ready for your download! In final tally, we found mentions of over 2700 books published in the United States in 2012.

You can download the ABBC spreadsheet here: Best2012. Librarians, booksellers, and others who work with readers are welcome to download the spreadsheet, re-sort the results by title, votes, or author and use it to identify great books, develop collections, build displays, or otherwise advise readers. If you re-publish any aspect of the ABBC, just make sure to credit Blogging for a Good Book, Williamsburg Regional Library, and chief compiler Neil Hollands.

Over the past weeks, I have annotated the leading books in each of the ABBC’s twelve categories, either here at BFGB or at my other blogging home, Book Group Buzz. Browse through past posts at both sites to find out more details about some of 2012′s most honored (the last of these posts, on the leading books in contemporary literary fiction, will appear April 1st, no fooling!) Don’t stop there! There are hundreds of fantastic books, many of which were less publicized and thus less frequently reviewed lurking further down in the lists.

Thanks again to Largehearted Boy and the Readers’ Advisor Online Blog for compiling links to many of the best-of-the-year lists. That head start makes compiling this resource, what I like to think of as the most thorough best-of-the-year list of all, much easier. Thanks to Williamsburg Regional Library and all of my colleagues here for the time and support needed to get this work done.

That said, here’s the quick version, the honor roll of the 95 books most frequently mentioned by 180 different authoritative sources: all of the books that were mentioned by at least ten different sources. Each listing provides, the title, author, the number of mentions the book received, and the category of the ABBC spreadsheet in which the book is listed.

Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn (65 mentions, crime and thrillers)

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo (53 mentions, nonfiction)

This Is How You Lose Her, by Junot Diaz (52 mentions, short stories)

Bring up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel (49 mentions, historical fiction)

Wild: from Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed (44 mentions, bios and memoirs)

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain (42 mentions, general fiction)

The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green (40 mentions, young adult fiction)

Building Stories, by Chris Ware (36 mentions, graphic works)

Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter (34 mentions, general fiction)

Passage of Power: the Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert A. Caro (32 mentions, bios and memoirs)

Where’d You Go, Bernadette (30 mentions, general fiction)

Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein (28 mentions, young adult fiction)

The Yellow Birds, by Kevin Powers (27 mentions, general fiction)

The Round House, by Louise Erdrich (26 mentions, general fiction)

Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon (26 mentions, general fiction)

The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker (25 mentions, speculative fiction)

Dear Life, by Alice Munro (25 mentions, short stories)

Canada, by Richard Ford (24 mentions, general fiction)

NW, by Zadie Smith (24 mentions, general fiction)

The Orphan Master’s Son, by Adam Johnson (24 mentions, historical fiction)

Alif the Unseen, by G. Willow Wilson (23 mentions, speculative fiction)

Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman (23 mentions, young adult fiction)

Are You My Mother?, by Alison Bechdel (22 mentions, graphic works)

Sweet Tooth, by Ian McEwan (22 mentions, historical fiction)

Arcadia, by Lauren Groff (21 mentions, general fiction)

Redshirts, by John Scalzi (20 mentions, speculative fiction)

Broken Harbor, by Tana French (19 mentions, crime and thrillers)

Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver (19 mentions, general fiction)

Tell the Wolves I’m Home, by Carol Rifka Brunt (19 mentions, general fiction)

Mortality, by Christopher Hitchens (18 mentions, bios and memoirs)

Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain (18 mentions, nonfiction)

The Diviners, by Libba Bray (17 mentions, young adult fiction)

The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller (17 mentions, speculative fiction)

Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: a Life of David Foster Wallace, by D. T. Max (17 mentions, bios and memoirs)

A Hologram for the King, by Dave Eggers (17 mentions, general fiction)

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan (17 mentions, speculative fiction)

Every Day, by David Levithan (16 mentions, young adult fiction)

Joseph Anton: a Memoir, by Salman Rushdie (16 mentions, bios and memoirs)

Angelmaker, by Nick Harkaway (15 mentions, speculative fiction)

Battleborn, by Claire Vaye Watkins (15 mentions, short stories)

The End of Your Life Book Club, by Will Schwalbe (15 mentions, bios and memoirs)

Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, by Andrew Solomon (15 mentions, nonfiction)

2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson (14 mentions, speculative fiction)

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss (14 mentions, bios and memoirs)

House of Stone: a Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East, by Anthony Shadid (14 mentions, bios and memoirs)

Iron Curtain: the Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956, by Anne Applebaum (14 mentions, nonfiction)

The Killing Moon, by N. K. Jemisin (14 mentions, speculative fiction)

Railsea, by China Miéville (14 mentions, speculative fiction)

The Raven Boys, by Maggie Stiefvater (14 mentions, young adult fiction)

The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey (14 mentions, historical fiction)

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, by David Quammen (14 mentions, nonfiction)

Defending Jacob, by William Landay (13 mentions, crime and thrillers)

Gods without Men, by Hari Kunzru (13 mentions, general fiction)

Home, by Toni Morrison (13 mentions, historical fiction)

Live by Night, by Dennis Lehane (13 mentions, crime and thrillers)

May We Be Forgiven, by A. M. Homes (13 mentions, general fiction)

The Orchardist, by Amanda Coplin (13 mentions, historical fiction)

The Rook, by Daniel O’Malley (13 mentions, general fiction)

Throne of the Crescent Moon, by Saladin Ahmed (13 mentions, speculative fiction)

The Twelve, by Justin Cronin (13 mentions, speculative fiction)

Why Be Happy when You Could Be Normal?, by Jeanette Winterson (13 mentions, bios and memoirs)

Bitterblue, by Kristin Cashore (12 mentions, young adult fiction)

The Casual Vacancy, by J. K. Rowling (12 mentions, general fiction)

Grave Mercy, by Robin LaFevers (12 mentions, young adult fiction)

HHhH, by Laurent Binet (12 mentions, historical fiction)

The Middlesteins, by Jami Attenberg (12 mentions, general fiction)

The People who Eat Darkness: the True Story of a Young Woman who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo–and the Evil that Swallowed Her Up, by Richard Lloyd Parry (12 mentions, nonfiction)

Red Country, by Joe Abercrombie (12 mentions, speculative fiction)

Thomas Jefferson: the Art of Power, by Jon Meacham (12 mentions, bios and memoirs)

The Cove, by Ron Rash (11 mentions, historical fiction)

Drama, by Raine Telgemaier & Gurihiru (11 mentions, graphic works)

The Gods of Gotham, by Lyndsay Faye (11 mentions, crime and thrillers)

How Should a Person Be?, by Sheila Heti (11 mentions, general fiction)

Jerusalem: a Cookbook, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi (11 mentions, how-to)

The Light between Oceans, by M. L. Stedman (11 mentions, historical fiction)

Shine Shine Shine, by Lydia Netzer (11 mentions, speculative fiction)

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: the Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis, by Timothy Egan (11 mentions, bios and memoirs)

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce (11 mentions, general fiction)

At Last, by Edward St. Aubyn (10 mentions, general fiction)

Caliban’s War, by James S. A. Corey (10 mentions, speculative fiction)

Carry the One, by Carol Anshaw (10 mentions, general fiction)

Dare Me, by Megan Abbott (10 mentions, crime and thrillers)

Half-Blood Blues, by Esi Edugyan (10 mentions, historical fiction)

How to Be a Woman, by Caitlin Moran (10 mentions, bios and memoirs)

The Hydrogen Sonata, by Iain M. Banks (10 mentions, speculative fiction)

A Land More Kind than Home, by Wiley Cash (10 mentions, crime and thrillers)

The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters (10 mentions, crime and thrillers)

My Friend Dahmer, by Derf Backderf (10 mentions, graphic works)

Patriarch: the Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy, by David Nasaw (10 mentions, bios and memoirs)

The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, by Jonathan Evison (10 mentions, general fiction)

Seating Arrangements, by Maggie Shipstead (10 mentions, general fiction)

Shadow Ops: Control Point, by Myke Cole (10 mentions, speculative fiction)

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, by Deb Perelman (10 mentions, how-to)

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar, by Cheryl Strayed (10 mentions, nonfiction)

The Troupe, by Robert Jackson Bennett (10 mentions, speculative fiction)

Zona: a Book about a Film about a Journey to a Room, by Geoff Dyer (10 mentions, nonfiction)

I’ll be back next year, with another installment of the ABBC!

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ABBC 2012: Second Edition

Compilation of the best books of 2012 steams on, and today WRL releases the second edition of our 2012 All the Best Books Compilation (ABBC) (Best2012.) Since the release of the first edition, the compilation has grown from 66 sources to 120. The spreadsheet now documents mentions of over 2200 books published in 2012. We’ll continue to fill in the grid until the final edition is released at the end of the month. The ABBC is the most extensive resource of its kind.

You’re encouraged to download the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet Best2012 and use it as you see fit: to find the best books for yourself or to promote reading to others. We only ask that you link here to Blogging for a Good Book (http://bfgb.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/abbc-2012-second-edition/) instead of reposting the entire spreadsheet and that you cite Williamsburg Regional Library’s Blogging for a Good Book and chief compiler, Neil Hollands. The newest edition of the spreadsheet is available for download, and is easy to re-sort by author, by title, or by number of mentions in any of the ABBC’s twelve major categories.

I’ve written already about the results so far in short stories, crime and thrillers, speculative fiction, romance, young adult fiction, graphic works, and nonfiction. Today at my other home, Book Group Buzz, I’m discussing historical fiction. Results in literary and mainstream fiction and biographies and memoirs will follow there over the next couple of weeks.

With over 2200 books tabulated to date, these are just the tip of the iceberg, but here are the books that have received 15 or more mentions so far:

Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn (48 mentions to date)

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in the Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo (42 mentions)

Bring up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel (38 mentions)

This Is How You Lose Her, by Junot Diaz (38 mentions)

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain (33 mentions)

Wild: from Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed (33 mentions)

The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green (32 mentions)

Building Stories, by Chris Ware (29 mentions)

Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter (26 mentions)

Where’d You Go Bernadette, by Maria Semple (23 mentions)

The Yellow Birds, by Kevin Powers (23 mentions)

Canada, by Richard Ford (22 mentions)

Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein (22 mentions)

Passage of Power: the Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert Caro (22 mentions)

The Round House, by Louise Erdrich (22 mentions)

The Orphan Master’s Son, by Adam Johnson (20 mentions)

Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon (20 mentions)

Dear Life, by Alice Munro (19 mentions)

Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman (19 mentions)

The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker (18 mentions)

Alif the Unseen, by G. Willow Wilson (17 mentions)

Broken Harbor, by Tana French (17 mentions)

Sweet Tooth, by Ian McEwan (17 mentions)

Are You My Mother?, by Alison Bechdel (16 mentions)

Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain (16 mentions)

Tell the Wolves I’m Home, by Carol Rifka Brunt (16 mentions)

Arcadia, by Lauren Groff (15 mentions)

Joseph Anton: a Memoir, by Salman Rushdie (15 mentions)

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan (15 mentions)

NW, by Zadie Smith (15 mentions)

Come back at the end of the month to download the final spreadsheet and get the final word on the best books of 2012!

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ABBC 2012: Speculative Fiction

This post concludes an unusual week for Blogging for a Good Book. Instead of our usual fare of one great review a day, this week we’re exploring the results of the 2012 ABBC: the All-the-Best-Books Compilation. It’s a spreadsheet that tabulates all the votes from dozens of best-of-the-year lists and awards. You can download the first edition from this earlier post or come back to BFGB in the next few weeks to get further editions as we compile even more lists into the spreadsheet.

Today, we’ll look at the most frequently recognized titles in speculative fiction: fantasy, science fiction, and horror. The health of these genres is indicated by the number of different titles that have received best-of votes to date: 242. There are some great books here, although I feel the need to preface the list with this comment: speculative fiction marketed as mainstream literary fiction often rises to the top of the best-of-the-year lists because mainstream reviewers won’t give the same level of consideration to titles published by genre presses. If you love the mainstream of fantasy and SF publishing, not its haughtier cousin, download the full ABBC and look a little further down on the list.

With 17 mentions to date, the first title on the speculative list is Karen Thompson Walker’s debut, The Age of Miracles. The setting is a very near apocalyptic future where the rotation of the earth has begun to slow, but the subject matter is coming of age for 11-year-old Julia and the tribulations of her California family. Melissa reviewed this book for us at BFGB back in October and found the tale of how life goes on, even in the face of the end, equally redeeming and disturbing. As the cycle of a day slowly increases from 24 to over 72 hours, Walker does a good job of capturing the sense of loneliness, the increasing reflection of her narrator, and the discoveries and suffering of a life that’s coming to an end just as it reaches the brink of adult awareness.

I’m currently reading one of the titles in a tie for second, at 11 mentions. Alif the Unseen, the debut of G. Willow Wilson,  is about an Arab-Indian hacker in an unnamed Persian Gulf state. This is a place where “hacker” has a different significance, as every computer user, every website is under close supervision by the state, and narrator Alif’s skills aren’t just used for mischief-making and financial gain (although he’s still involved in these aspects), they’re critical to hiding both his own identity and that of his clients, who are tortured and often killed if unmasked. A breakup with an illicit girlfriend leads Alif to create a program that can identify an individual by voice, word choice, keystroke rates, and other factors after he or she has typed only a few sentences. When the state hacks into his computer and takes the program, Alif realizes he has unleashed a Trojan horse that will be turned on the entire hacking community. Add the Alf Yeom, the daytime analog of One Thousand and One Nights; underworld figures that end up being from the world Alif once thought of as mythical; and several mysterious and interesting women, and you get a real winner, a truly original work of speculative fiction.

The other title with 11 mentions is Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars, reviewed here by Andrew in July. It’s set in a postapocalyptic world ravaged by flu nine years before. The protagonist is Hig, a pilot who’s trying to maintain a sense of compassion in a world where others are increasingly inured to the suffering of others. Dug in at a Midwestern airport for years with his dog Jasper and one neighbor, the ruthless and cynical Bangley, Hig is going a bit stir crazy. He decides to fly toward the source of a distress signal, trying to help the suffering, but facing dangers at every turn. Andrew liked the immediacy of the first-person narration. Other reviewers note the poetic way in which Heller finds new beginnings even at the end.

In fourth with ten mentions, and also reviewed by Andrew for BFGB, is Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. It’s about web designer, Clay Jannon, who has hit a career slump and in financial peril answers the Help Wanted ad in the window of an odd bookstore. He ends up working the night shift, selling books with languages and letters he doesn’t recognize to a small clientele of  strange customers. He uses his computer skills to create a kind of inventory for the store, and what he discovers in doing so leads him down the proverbial rabbit hole. The results are kind of Haruki Murakami meets Neal Stephenson meets Borges, but perhaps less complex than any of those works, a fantastic bookstore/library adventure with a mystery at its core and lots of references to make us nerdy folk happy.

Rounding out the top 12 in this category are Lydia Netzer’s Shine Shine Shine with eight mentions to date; a four-way tie for 6th at seven mentions between the middle book in Justin Cronin’s trilogy The Twelve, Nick Harkaway’s Angelmaker, Daniel O’ Malley’s The Rook, and John Scalzi’s Redshirts; and a three-way tie for 10th at six mentions between Deborah Harkness’s Shadow of Night, N. K. Jemisin’s The Killing Moon, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312.

I’ll summarize other categories of the ABBC — literary fiction, historical fiction, narrative nonfiction, and biographies and memoirs — at my other blogging home, Book Group Buzz, in upcoming weeks. Come back to us at Blogging for a Good Book to get further editions of the ABBC, a resource that if it nears the level of past years, will include results from nearly 200 different great sources by the time it is finished.

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ABBC: Romance Fiction

A week of posts about results from WRL’s ABBC continues today with a look at the romance category. ABBC stands for All-the-Best-Books Compilation, and it’s a spreadsheet that compiles the results from many best-of-the-year lists and awards for the books published in the previous year. We count the number of mentions each book receives and document which sources mentioned each title. You’re welcome to download the spreadsheet and use it for yourself or to help other readers find great books. We do ask is that you cite Williamsburg Regional Library and Blogging for a Good Book if you republish any part of the results.

Romance fiction doesn’t get much attention in the end-of-the-year lists, and sometimes the groups that do give out romance awards can be so inclusive that almost every author published by a major house gets some form of recognition. Others don’t publish their results until after our compilation is typically finished, so it’s harder to identify clear favorites in this genre. Finding more votes for the books in this category requires digging into romance-focused blogs, and I haven’t drilled quite that deep into the list in this year’s compilation yet. I’ll annotate the top four so far, but you may want to check back with later editions of the ABBC, which won’t be fully compiled until the end of the month. Still, the four books mentioned here should offer something to most romance fans, as they come from four different corners of the genre.

Tops so far with four mentions is one of romance writing’s most familiar names, Nora Roberts. Her 200th (!) book, The Witness, was reviewed here at BFGB by Christine back in May. This time she sets her story in the Arkansas Ozarks, and follows Abigail, a woman who runs a computer security firm and tries to maintain the lowest profile she can, as she’s created a new identity after a run-in with the Russian mafia. A well-meaning sheriff named Brooks tries to draw her out of her shell, and part of her wants to give in to his pursuit, but he doesn’t understand that becoming part of the community will endanger her life. Christine praised the book’s creation of community, sense of place, and the clever interaction of the central couple, and it appears that other reviewers agree with her judgment.

To date there’s a three-way tie for second with books of three mentions each. Kresley Cole’s Lothaire is the latest in her paranormal romance series, Immortals after Dark. As usual, this tale pits different factions and powers among the creatures of The Lore against each other, and this book focuses on the ruthless and half-mad Lothaire.  Lothaire captures Ellie Pierce, an Appalachian girl  possessed by an evil spirit. He intends to sacrifice her to gain power for himself, but instead finds that something about her soothes his tormented soul. What’s a vampire to do? This is the 12th in a series that started back with The Warlord Wants Forever, part of a compilation, Playing Easy to Get, published back in 2006. Lothaire has figured into the stories before, so you might want to gobble down some of the earlier titles before you launch into Cole’s latest.

Tessa Dare brings us A Week to Be Wicked, the follow up to A Night to Surrender in her Spindle Cove series. This is a historical romance in which a rake, Colin,  and a scientist spinster, Minerva, fake an elopement. He wants to escape financial difficulties by marrying Minerva’s more vulnerable sister, so she makes a deal with him. If he’ll accompany her to Scotland so she can collect a prize from the Royal Geographic Society, she’ll give him the prize money, as long as he leaves little sister alone. She’s cerebral, but awkward; he’s the ultimate ladies man. But as the novel progresses, both begin to unlock hidden sides. Opposites proceed to attract as they have many adventures on their 400-mile road trip, and the differences between the two lead to humorous situations and lots of fun banter.

The final member of the second-place tie is Sophie Kinsella’s latest bit of contemporary chicklit fun, I’ve Got Your Number. The setup is that Poppy Wyatt loses her engagement ring and her phone in a hotel fire drill and its aftermath. The ring is an heirloom of her fiancee Magnus Tavish’s snobby family, and since they’re already trying to stop the marriage, Poppy can’t really confess that she lost it. When she finds another phone in the chaos, she takes it, with the intention of having the hotel call her when the ring is located. Businessman Sam Roxton isn’t thrilled to find out that his phone has been appropriated, and the two wage a comic battle through email, text messages, and other means, upending each others’ lives at every turn. In the process of leading each other on a merry chase, a relationship begins to form between the two, and soon Poppy has to decide between the man she once thought was the perfect catch and the one who came into her life by surprise.

I’ll be back with one more post about the ABBC results tomorrow here at BFGB. Watch here afterwards for the final editions of this year’s compilation to get the final vote totals as we search for the best books of 2012. I’ll also be sharing results from some of the other categories at my other blogging home, Book Group Buzz, such as in this post about the results among short story collections.

Click on the individual book title links to go to the WRL catalog.

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ABBC: Graphic Works

Coverage continues this week of results from some of the categories in the ABBC: Williamsburg Regional Library’s All-the-Best-Books Compilation, which compiles the results from dozens of different lists and awards to give you the final count on the most lauded books of the year in a single spreadsheet.

Today I’m exploring the top vote-getters in the category of graphic novels and nonfiction. Yes, these are comic books, but they’re not just kid stuff anymore (and believe me, I love the kid stuff, too!) Modern graphic artists use their art to help tell a variety of sophisticated tales and 84 different books have received mention as a best of the year so far.

Topping the list is Chris Ware, an innovative artist whose Building Stories, because of its unusual format, probably won’t be found in most library collections. The title has two meanings: first, the collection is about the residents of a Chicago apartment building; but second, each reader has to build the story for her or himself. Building Stories comes as a collection of objects: pamphlets, newspapers, game boards, and bound books that can be assembled in whatever order the reader likes. The protagonist is a one-legged woman, and the stories follow her through her difficult life as she considers her existence — past and present — and interacts with both the building and the people with whom she comes in contact. Look at a review like this one from Brain Pickings to get a better understanding of this unusual product that has been mentioned as a best of the year in 24 sources compiled so far.

Next up is Alison Bechdel, who previously told the story of her difficult relationship with her father in Fun Home, a top pick of 2006. Now she turns her eye on her mother in Are You My Mother?: a Comic Drama, which has garnered 14 mentions in the ABBC so far. Bechdel portrays the life of a reader, music lover, and actor who wanted more out of life than her unhappy marriage to a closeted gay man. That unhappiness led to a lack of intimacy between mother and daughter, in fact a rather extreme gulf that Bechdel mines with a darkly comic but deeply poignant touch.

There’s a tie for third between two works with seven mentions each. The first is Drama, a work that resides in our juvenile collection but that can be enjoyed by all ages. Writer and illustrator Raina Telgemeier — with color work from the artist Gurihiru — tells the story of drama both in front of and behind the curtain at a middle school production of a musical called Moon over Mississippi. The story is told from the perspective of Callie, a gifted young set designer with no budget and  a crush on two boys in the cast. The play has a colorful cast, and that’s reflected wonderfully by the bright artwork.

The range of graphic works becomes clear when one examines the other work with seven mentions.  My Friend Dahmer illustrated in a style reminiscent of Cracked magazine, tells author “Derf” Backderf’s remarkable true story as a high school friend of Jeffrey Dahmer. He’d even see the infamous serial killer on the day he probably committed his first murder. Don’t expect a grisly recreation of the murders. This is more the poignant study of the differences (somewhat slight) between one troubled kid who goes on to a successful career  and another that commits crimes so heinous they can hardly be believed.  When I read this book, I saw uncomfortable similarities between Backderf’s group of nerdy friends and my own high school pals. It certainly left me thinking. We don’t have this one in the collection yet, but if you’d like to see us add it, just ask! We try real hard to be responsive to as many patron requests as budgets can accommodate.

After that, the voting gets close. At five mentions to date are Brian K. Vaughan’s latest series, Saga and Mark Siegel’s Sailor Twain: or the Mermaid on the Hudson. One more vote back are Joe Sacco and Chris Hedges’ Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt; Ed Piskor’s Wizzywig: Portrait of a Serial Hacker; Hope Larson’s graphic adaptation of the Madeleine L’Engle classic A Wrinkle in Time, and Faith Erin Hicks, with Friends with Boys.

I’ll summarize the results of two more categories on Thursday and Friday this week, while others will get similar treatment at my other blogging home, Booklist magazine’s Book Group Buzz. We’ll continue to release further installments of the ABBC spreadsheet until compilation is complete at the end of March, so keep checking back to get the final word on all of the best books of 2012.

Click on the individual book title links to go to the WRL catalog.

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ABBC: Crime Fiction

This week we’re taking a break from the usual BFGB fare to post about the results in some of the categories from WRL’s All-the-Best-Books Compilation (ABBC) for 2012. The ABBC adds up mentions in dozens of best-of-the-year lists and awards in a spreadsheet you can download. We’re about 75 sources into the compilation, and although it’s not complete, here are the leaders so far in the category of crime fiction.

Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn is not only the runaway top Crime Fiction selection this year, but the most mentioned  book overall so far (38 mentions), holding a slight lead over Katherine Boo’s nonfiction title Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Gone Girl is a literate suspenseful thriller about Amy, a young wife who goes missing on her 5th wedding anniversary. Flynn leads readers through a twisty maze as they discover the secrets lying behind the facade of the couple’s marriage and try to decide if unlikable husband Nick is the killer or not. Employing devices like Amy’s diary and the novels in which her psychologist parents made her a famous case study, Flynn slowly unwraps the folds of the shroud and saves one of the best twists for last.

In second place, with 14 mentions is Tana French’s fourth Dublin Murder Squad novel, Broken Harbor. This time a father and his two children are found dead in a half-finished estate outside the city, and his wife is on the way to intensive care. It seems at first like a clear case of a financially destitute man snapping and trying to kill family and self, but further investigation yields a more complicated case. As usual, French explores the lives of her detectives a carefully as she builds the plot of the central crime, this time focusing on Scorcher Kennedy, a star detective with a lonely personal life. While these novels can stand alone, you might want to start at the beginning with In the Woods.

Ben H. Winters debuts in the third spot with nine mentions to date for The Last Policeman. It’s a blend of mystery and science fiction, a trilogy starter in which an asteroid is heading towards Earth and will end civilization in six months. Amid a spate of suicides, Detective Hank Palace latches onto a hanging that seems suspicious. While the rest of civilization focuses on the bleak future, Palace decides to keep doing his job and stays focused on the investigation. Strong characterizations and interesting philosophical questions make this mystery a cut above the usual.

The fourth spot is a three-way tie (eight mentions) between William Landay’s Defending Jacob, a psychological legal thriller; Dennis Lehane’s Live by Night, a loose sequel to his Boston historical The Given Day; and Jo Nesbo’s latest Harry Hole mystery, Phantom. Another mention back are Joe R. Lansdale with Edge of Dark Water and Lyndsay Faye’s Gods of Gotham. I’ll round out a top twelve by mentioning the crime novels with six mentions: Louise Penny’s The Beautiful Mystery, James Lee Burke’s Creole Belle; Megan Abbott’s Dare Me, and Wiley Cash’s A Land More Kind than Home. As you can see, after Gone Girl and Broken Harbor, the race in this category is tight.

We’ll post more editions of the ABBC compilation as sources are added, finishing the work later this month. Look for analysis of other categories here at BFGB and also at my other blogging home, Booklist‘s Book Group Buzz.

Click on the individual book title links to go to the WRL catalog.

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ABBC: Young Adult Novels

This week on Blogging for a Good Book, I’ll be making a variation from our usual pattern of one review a day to highlight the results of WRL’s annual compilation of the best-of lists into one spreadsheet: the All-the-Best-Books Compilation (ABBC). I’ll look at the results to date from one of the ABBC’s 12 categories each day. The remaining categories will be covered at my other blogging home, Booklist’s Book Group Buzz, where I’ve already explored the short story category. Stay tuned here at BFGB for releases of further editions of the ABBC compilation, as I compile more lists into a spreadsheet that already includes over 70 prominent sources.

The growth in young adult publishing can be seen in this year’s results, as mentions for 174 works have already been compiled into the ABBC. We’ve already posted about some of the top titles at BFGB.

John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars has a healthy lead, with 23 mentions to date. As Charlotte noted back in January, Green writes about highly literate teenagers in stories with intelligent romance, a dose of mystery, and plenty of real emotional content. Here he tells the story of a girl who gets a terminal cancer diagnosis on her 13th birthday, but is then swept into a romance with a boy from her support group who uses his final wish to take her to Amsterdam in search of the reclusive author of her favorite book. The phrase “it will make you laugh and make you cry” may be overused, but it’s certainly true here.

Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity is in second place, with 16 mentions to date. Charlotte reviewed this one on BFGB in May. It’s a WWII thriller about a Scottish girl who has been captured by the Gestapo. In her first person narration, she confesses her involvement with the resistance movement in France to Hauptsturmfuhrer von Linden of the SS. This isn’t sugar-coated: it’s a story full of torture and other realities of war, but it’s full of twists, excitement, and some powerful poignant moments.

Third in the ABBC results is Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina, reviewed here in September by — guess who? — Charlotte. This one opens on a truce between dragons and humans in an age-old war. It’s a fantasy notable for political intrigues, dispassionate dragons, and the title character’s gift for deceptions and for a magic born from lucid dreaming. With an involving mystery at its core, Seraphina is the start of a new series.

In fourth place is Libba Bray, a mainstay at the top of young adult best of the year lists since 2003′s A Great and Terrible Beauty. A gifted and diverse writer, her 2012 offering was The Diviners, given 11 best-of-the-year mentions to date. This one’s about a Jazz Age girl Evie, who comes to live with her Uncle Will, the curator of the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult in New York City. Evie can read people’s pasts by holding their possessions and she uses this gift, in concert with those of a group of new oddball friends, to combat the perpetrator of a series of killings. This is the fun, creepy opening to a new series.

One mention behind in 5th place is David Levithan, with Every Day. It’s protagonist “A” wakes up every morning in a different body, some male, some female, but one thing remains the same: A is always in love with the same girl, Rhiannon. A’s different lives and encounters with Rhiannon range from humorous to harrowing, and as usual, Levithan uses an unusual premise to engage in philosophical explorations while still telling a good story.

The rest of the young adult top ten to date are Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys, Lois Lowry’s finish to The Giver quartet in Son, Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue, Robin LaFevers Grave Mercy, and Emily M. Danforth’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post. These and other books are packed close enough together that positions may easily change by the time the compiling of the ABBC is complete.

Click on the individual book title links to go to the WRL catalog.

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All the Best Books Compilation (ABBC) 2012, First Edition

Williamsburg Regional Library is once again pleased to present the best of all the best-of-the-year lists. Sure, you can consult a single source to find the best books of the year, but which list should you believe? After all, no reviewer or even organization can possibly read even a fraction of everything published in a calendar year. With the All-the-Best-Books Compilation (ABBC), you don’t have to choose. The ABBC compiles all of the major lists and awards of 2012 into a single spreadsheet (Best2012) so you can see the true consensus of critics, authors, bloggers, librarians, and other people in the know about books.

The ABBC spreadsheet includes twelve categories:

• novels–literary and mainstream fiction
• short stories–literary and mainstream fiction
• crime fiction and thrillers
• speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, and horror
• historical fiction
• romance fiction
• young adult fiction
• poetry
• graphic works
• narrative nonfiction (but not life stories)
• biographies and memoirs
• informational nonfiction: how-to books, art books, cooking, and reference works

In each category, books are listed by the number of mentions they’ve received as a best-of-the-year. Titles and authors are given, and also a coded list of which compiled sources mention each work. The final page of the spreadsheet provides a key to the source codes and a link to the page from which the information was obtained. Thanks to the Reader’s Advisor Online Blog and Largehearted Boy, two sites which collect great link lists for best-of-the-year lists and make it easier to complete this compilation. The ABBC takes their concept one step further and compiles the results into a single document.

The ABBC comes in the form of an Excel spreadsheet (Best2012) that you can download and re-sort alphabetically by title, by author, or in any other way you choose. Libraries, bookstores, and others who promote books are welcome to re-use information from the list to build displays, advise readers, inform collection or stock development, or just share the results with your patrons. We ask that you credit to Williamsburg Regional Library, Blogging for a Good Book, and chief compiler Neil Hollands if you use information from the ABBC in print or online. Do not republish the ABBC as a whole, but instead, link to this post (http://bfgb.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/all-the-best-books-compilation-abbc-2012-first-edition) or those that follow for future editions of the list.

This first edition of the list includes 66 sources (about half of the number that will make the final edition), but it should already show the general trend of which books are likely to make the top of the list. The biggest changes are likely to occur in genre categories, where many of the genre-specific lists have yet to be compiled. Stay tuned here at Blogging for a Good Book to find future editions of the list as additional sources are compiled.  The final edition of the 2012 ABBC will be completed in March as compilation takes time and we’re still waiting for some of the major awards for 2012 to be presented.

Previous editions of the list can be found at the WRL site.

To be compiled, works must have first been published (or first published in a substantively new edition or translation) in the United States in 2012. The ABBC definition of genre (particularly speculative fiction and historical fiction) may be broader than those used by some publishers, so if you don’t find a book in the list where you expect it, look in another category where it might also be placed.

I’ll be posting about results in the different categories of the ABBC at my two blogging homes, here at Blogging for a Good Book and also at Booklist’s Book Group Buzz. Check in at both sites over the coming weeks for annotated summaries of the most frequently mentioned titles and my thoughts about trends in publishing and awards.  I’ll kick off coverage later today at Book Group Buzz with a quick list of the most mentioned books overall so far.

Finally, due to time constraints and the complications of figuring out which works published in Britain, Australia, and other English-speaking countries were also published in the U.S. in the same year, this year I’m not compiling all of the great lists from English, Canadian, Australian, and other international sources into the ABBC. Hopefully next year I’ll have time to put them back in the ABBC!

Enjoy! I hope you have as much fun using this list as I did in compiling it.

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The 50 Funniest American Writers, according to Andy Borowitz

The Library of America, better known for republishing the works of classic novelists and poets in special editions, breaks new ground by letting humorist Andy Borowitz pick short pieces or excerpts from 50 of America’s funniest writers. The selections range from Mark Twain at the earliest up to several contemporary funny people.

Those who have followed American humor will find many pieces they recognize mixed in with plenty of funny new surprises. Humor is always in the eye (or perhaps it’s the funny bone) of the beholder, but part of the joy of this book is that with only a little over 400 pages and many contributors, the selections are brief and if one selection doesn’t make you giggle or smirk, the next comes quickly and probably will. Humor often lives on the edge of darkness or crudeness, and Borowitz does a fine job of walking that edge, picking pieces that are certainly not pasteurized but also aren’t vulgar or cheaply gross.

My favorites included H. L. Mencken’s vitriolic “Imperial Purple,” James Thurber’s “More Alarms at Night,” S. J. Perelman’s hilarious noir spoof “Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer,” E. B. White’s Hemingway spoof “Across the Street and into the Grill,” Peter De Vries’ “House of Mirth,” Lenny Bruce’s “How to Talk Dirty and Influence People,” Woody Allen’s “A Look at Organized Crime,” a three-writer effort called “Our White Heritage,” some of Charles Portis’s old “Your Action Line” columns, Veronica Geng’s newspeak masterpiece “Curb Carter Policy Discord Effort Threat,” director John Hughes’s story that originated, and is raunchier than, the film Vacation, Bruce McCall’s spoof of mail ads, Calvin Trillin’s spiteful “Corrections,” Dave Barry’s relationship tips, Susan Orlean’s baby-bashing “Shiftless Little Loafers,” Ian Frazier’s application of biblical language to “Laws Concerning Food and Drink,” David Sedaris’s “Buddy Can You Spare a Tie?,” Jack Handey on “What I’d Say to the Martians,” and George Saunders’s “Ask the Optimist.” But those are just my choices. Yours will be different.

There are bibliographic annotations at the end of the book for each of the writers, so read these excerpts, pick your favorites, and search the library for lengthier examples of their work.

Check the WRL catalog for The 50 Funniest American Writers

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Miserere: an Autumn Tale, by Teresa Frohock

In Teresa Frohock’s debut fantasy novel Miserere, action takes place on Woerld, a plane that is the waystation between Earth and Hell. On Woerld, different religions have citadels, and are represented by Katharoi, paladin warrior magicians drawn from the people of Earth for their varying magical powers. Working together, these Katharoi citadels have just enough strength to prevent the forces of Hell from rising up and invading Earth, and through Earth, Heaven. Using a divide-and-conquer strategy, the forces of Hell try to drive wedges between the various Katharoi, and in the past they succeeded in tricking the Zoroastrians into rebellion against the others. Separated, the Zoroastrians were easily picked off and their land was destroyed, becoming a vast Wasteland. Having somewhat learned their lesson, the other Katharoi returned to working together and held, beleaguered, the balance.

Enter protagonist Lucian Negru, who carries some difficult burdens. Because of a promise to his dying parents, he rescued his sister Catarina from Hell, leaving his lover Rachael to her own devices in the process. Rachael escaped, but with a demon wyrm inside slowly taking control of her consciousness. In punishment, Lucian was banished from the citadel where he trained as a Christian Katharoi. Too late he discovered that sister Catarina had already sold her soul to Hell. She crippled Lucian to keep him servile by her side while she planned with her demon Cerberus to wreak further havoc.

Miserere opens as Lucian makes a mad dash from Catarina’s control. He suspects it’s a kind of suicide, but he’s tired of living under her thumb. He tries to make a run through the Wasteland to turn himself in for judgment by his former Katharoi allies, but he almost immediately runs into a girl and her brother who have just crossed through the Veil from Earth to Woerld. To save the girl, Lindsay, Lucian uses his magical talent and crosses through Hell gates to rescue her. This further violates the conditions of his exile and two representatives of the spy-beleaguered Christian Katharoi are sent to bring Lucian in. One of these is none other than Rachael, who is battling the wyrm inside her, torn between her former love for Lucian and her desire to revenge herself against him for leaving her in Hell. Meanwhile, despite his attempts not to involve her in his quandary, Lindsay is bonding to Lucian as she tries to cope with the strange surprise of her new surroundings and learn her own powerful magic.

All of that is just the set-up for the main drama in Miserere, a fantasy made exceptional by unusual but convincing world building, by its unique melding of religion and fantasy, by sympathetically tormented characters, and by a story with real emotional power. In only 280 pages—a relatively short span by the standards of modern fantasy fiction—Frohock builds her world, populates it with characters you’ll care about, and brings the first leg of her story to a satisfying close while paving the way for a series. This is a great debut, and I’ll be watching for further installments.

Check the WRL catalog for Miserere: an Autumn Tale

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We Never Talk about My Brother, by Peter S. Beagle

The only real breakout of Peter S. Beagle’s long career came 30 years ago, when he adapted his own 1968 fantasy novel The Last Unicorn into the screen play for an animated film. The 1982 film wasn’t nearly as good as the book, but it wasn’t terrible and did fairly well. The somewhat cruel irony was that it led Beagle into a couple of decades where he focused on screenwriting without vast success and even had to sue the producers of The Last Unicorn to get his contracted share of profits. He left the fantasy genre just as writers like Terry Brooks, Raymond Feist, and Robert Jordan—writers whom in my opinion he surpasses—began to find popularity and strong sales. His early works, books like A Fine and Private Place and The Innkeeper’s Song, are both lovely and innovative and I still heartily recommend them.

In the last decade, Beagle has returned to fantasy writing, this time focusing on writing short stories and editing anthologies. His writing hasn’t lost a step. He has true gifts as a stylist that will give his work lasting value. Because of his elegant way with language, he makes a great gateway into the fantasy genre for readers who have previously focused on “literary” fiction. He’s both lyrical and innovative, and rather than follow the trends in the fantasy marketplace, he often battles against them.

We Never Talk about My Brother, a collection of nine varied stories, is a fine entry point to Beagle’s work. My favorites included the title piece, which is a retelling of the bible’s Jacob and Esau story in which the Esau character is a newscaster who uses his powers as an angel of death to create the stories that have made him famous. Ultimately his country brother, who has never tapped his opposing gifts, forces a confrontation. “King Pelles the Sure” is a powerful little anti-war story in which the king of a tiny but prosperous country foolishly thinks that his nation could also find glory in war. “Spook” pits man against ghost in a duel for rights to inhabit a house (and possibly to the man’s girlfriend). The twist is that the duel is fought (hilariously) with bad poetry. “By Moonlight” brings an English highwayman by circumstance (or is it?) to the fireside of a former cleric who has spent his life trying to regain access to the faerie court. Your mileage might vary: none of these stories is weak and each utilizes a different setting than the others.  I hope this book will prove a happy gateway to all things Beagle. Readers won’t regret the time invested.

Check the WRL catalog for We Never Talk about My Brother

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Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin, by Calvin Trillin

Calvin Trillin is a national treasure, but one not known by enough readers. His lovely ode to his wife and muse Alice, About Alice, made a bit of a splash a few years ago, but for many readers Trillin still isn’t a household name because much of his best work was in the form of columns and short journalism pieces, many of which were published in The New Yorker.

Trillin is a homespun, peevish, wonderfully droll American humorist. He perhaps first made a name by writing about the foods that made America great, not high cuisine but regional dishes like ribs, cajun food, deep dish pizza, and chili. This writing is collected in The Tummy Trilogy, which I also highly recommend.

But over the years, Trillin has tried his hand at all kinds of writing, a novel that is mostly about parking in New York City, impish little poems that skewer our political process, short articles about the writing life, tales of the put-upon family man, a memoir of his father, and so on. To get a sample of all this variety, the easy place to start is with his 2011 collection Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin. It has selections from forty years of his work. My advice for those trying to get started with one of our best living humorists is to sample here, then pursue more of the kind of pieces that you like best.

Check the WRL catalog for Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin

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The Great Santini, by Pat Conroy

Pat Conroy is one of those novelists that I’ve always intended to read, but never quite made time for. I read his memoir The Water Is Wide years ago, a book I can heartily recommend, but I never made time for his fiction until now.

I saw the movie made of The Great Santini years ago. It’s a tour-de-force for Robert Duvall, who inhabits Marine pilot Bull Meecham perfectly, making him in turns terrifying, charismatic, and larger than life. It’s exactly as Conroy wrote him: the purest of Marines, living legend and sometimes embarrassment to the Corps, dedicated family man but bully and abuser to his relations. Bull runs on raw instinct, bravado, and Marine Corps tradition, and he has no doubt about how to act in any situation. Over the years, his wife and children have taken the fallout from his absolute rule, pressing the hair trigger of his temper, failing to live up to his expectations, or serving as verbal and sometimes physical punching bags when they or someone with power over Bull do anything to contradict his view of the world.

What the movie doesn’t get as well, are all of the other characters. In particular, firstborn son Ben, Bull’s most frequent target except for his wife,  Lillian, is just as important to the book as Bull himself. In many ways, the book is primarily about Ben’s coming of age and pursuing his own path despite Bull’s attempts to control him. Ben is a peacemaker, used to tolerating his father’s bluster and violence. His form of rebellion is to be kind and accepting where his father is bullying and never willing to admit wrongdoing. Over the course of the book, on the basketball court, in his interactions with the African-Americans of a small Georgia town, in school, and especially in his family, he learns that sometimes one has to do more than appease. Mother Lillian, a southern belle to the core, and oldest sister Mary Ann, a sarcastic, bright, and self-loathing girl, are memorable as well.

The other thing that is memorable about The Great Santini is its depiction of a particular time and place (the 50s, 60s, and 70s) in the American South. It’s a kind of community that may not exist anymore, and that’s both a good and a bad thing. Although it may have passed out of existence, it’s a kind of place worth knowing and remembering, and through this book you can do that.

Check the WRL catalog for The Great Santini

Or try The Great Santini as an audiobook on CD

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