Where’d You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple

A 2013 Alex Award winner (meaning its a book in the adult section found to be highly appealing to teen readers), Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a laughable and adventurous satire packed with hilarious characterization and witty dialogue mostly in the epistolary fashion using email correspondence, letters, police reports, report cards, and other documents.  Modest readers might find some strong language offensive yet very in-character when utilized.

You’ll find hilarious characters, some to love, some to hate, and some to drive everyone crazy!  Semple pokes fun at Seattle’s subcultures of anti-fashionable, pro-geek, tech-talking, community-oriented, hyper-diverse, ultra-green, alternative-lifestyle embracing citizens.  Semple herself is a transplant to the Seattle region from Los Angeles, as is the character Bernadette, where she wrote screenplays for “Beverly Hills, 90210,” “Ellen,” “Mad About You” and “Arrested Development.”

Caution, spoilers (because the events are revealed asynchronously and non-chronologically): Bernadette Fox has escaped her failed career as a genius architect by isolating herself in a crumbling fortress of a home where she can’t sleep and torments herself with self-pity.  She’s become so anti-social that she’s hired a virtual assistant to handle even the most mundane logistics of her life.  For years, her precious 15-year old daughter Bee has been Bernadette’s only reason for living.  Bee’s been promised this trip to Antarctica as an award for her perfect report card (Her Microsoft-guru dad can afford it).  Now, she’s having a panic attack brought on by the prospect of accompanying Bee through the sea-sickening Drake passage, “the roughest and most feared water in the world,”  and this leads to a series of outrageous circumstances that culminate in a final resolution that just might restore Bernadette’s artistic passion.

The narration, and actual singing, by actress Kathleen Wilhoite, is extraordinarily energetic and adds much to the listening experience of the audiobook version, which I was whizzed through completely enraptured with joyous laughter.  When hearing her voicing the hysterics of the ‘gnats’ (aka the condescending moms of Bee’s classmates at Galer Street School), I was reminded of Tea Leoni’s over-the-top character in the movie Spanglish.

Check the WRL catalog for the print or large print versions, too.

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King City by Brandon Graham

King City is more than a comic book, it’s a love letter to all of geekdom. Every drawing overflows with detail, containing little Easter eggs tucked into the background that make readers search each page before turning to the next one. A city setting is naturally dense, and artist/writer Brandon Graham doesn’t let any opportunity pass by to include a sly off-color pun, so everything from signs, graffiti, and character’s t-shirts are used as a canvas for amusement. This cacophony can be distracting, but it makes multiple re-reads an enjoyable requirement.

The story follows Joe, a ninja/spy/thief, who has recently returned to California after a few years away. During those years, he trained to become a Catmaster, and the main tool of his trade is a cat named Earthling whom he carries around in a bucket. But this is no ordinary cat; depending on the injection Joe gives it from a collection of syringes he carries around on his belt, the cat can transform into a variety of tools or weapons. Armed with his feline and his knowledge of the Way of the Cat, Joe travels the city.

Lest one think Joe is an anomaly in an otherwise normal population, we are introduced to a host of other misfits. Pete, Joe’s best friend, is a wrestling mask-wearing petty thief who falls in love with a water-breathing alien woman and embarks on a quest to free her from her captors. Anna, Joe’s ex-girlfriend, paints large and often intricate mustaches on billboard faces. And then there is Anna’s current boyfriend, Max, who is a veteran of the recent Xombie wars and is fighting the drug addiction he picked up in order to cope with his memories.

The artwork could be described as ska-punk manga and it is busy and sometimes manic. The plot twists over itself like a Moebius strip with no pretense of plausibility, so readers shouldn’t get caught up on the hows or whys of some situations while reading this book. Where Joe gets the syringes he needs to inject Earthling and who pays Anna to paint mustaches on billboards are questions that never get answered. There is sex and violence, but they play a secondary role to humor, taking the edge of seriousness off of both. Originally released as a serial, King City doesn’t really lend itself to that format. However, as a book, it is an engrossing experience, though definitely not a quick read. Recommended to readers of comics and humor.

Check the WRL catalog for King City.

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The Sky is Everywhere, by Jandy Nelson

I saw this YA novel on a list of books being made into movies – and I decided to read it before the movie rocketed it up the “it” list.

The plot synopsis sounds like the saddest story ever.  Lennie and her sister Bailey were abandoned by their mother when both were quite young.  They live happily with their quirky grandmother and uncle, believing that one day their mom will wander back into their lives.

Lennie is an introvert and band geek who lives in her vibrant sister’s shadow.  She likens herself to the companion pony that walks beside the sleek racehorse to keep it calm before a race. And suddenly Bailey dies.

Lennie thought she was happy walking behind Bailey, letting Bailey make decisions on what to do, and now Lennie is floating through each day without that anchor.

That’s the sad part.  And believe me, you’ll need to keep some tissues handy.  Why put yourself through that?  Because you’ll quickly come to realize Lennie is more than just Bailey’s little sister.  She has to work through her grief – and reconnect with friends – and fall in love – and forgive herself for feeling happy again.  But that discovery is compelling, I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.  Some of it is like watching a train wreck, but it ends in a good place (I promise!).

The coolest thing about this book is the poems and brief memories that Lennie writes on walls, paper cups, homework assignments, books, benches… These memorabilia are described every few chapters, along with where Lennie left them.  How cool would it be to find a piece of someone’s life like this?  It is so much more honest and revealing than “Lennie was here” or other typical graffiti.

The book is certainly worth waiting on a long hold list for — so if you can’t pick it up right away, keep it in mind once you hear the movie hype.

FYI – the movie option was purchased by Selena Gomez’s production company.  The Disney star is set to play the main character, Lennie.  I haven’t seen anything that gives more details than the movie is “in development.”

Check the WRL catalog for The Sky is Everywhere

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The Fat Man: A Tale of North Pole Noir, by Ken Harmon

In my opinion, any book that includes the tag line “Someone’s Playing Reindeer Games for Keeps” is worth reading.  Written in the style of a noir detective novel (think Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler), this is advertising copywriter Ken Harmon’s first novel.  It pokes fun at the genre, while creating a delightful yarn set in and around Kringle Town.  Mostly, the book is silly, funny and entertaining.  Harmon clearly has spent many hours immersed in classic Christmas imagery and stories.

The author fills his text with not-so-subtle puns and references to classic Christmas characters and fairy tales that most readers will recognize with a smile.  He includes well-known names like Comet, Tiny Tim, the Whos of Whoville, Frosty the Snowman, and Kris Kringle.  To these he introduces an enjoyable assortment of new, appropriately-named characters such as Charles “Candy” Cane, Dingleberry Fizz, Jubilee Rosebud, and the protagonist Gumdrop Coal.

Gumdrop is a 1,300 year-old elf who has been working by Santa’s side since the beginning.  He’s a tough little fellow.  For most of his career he was in charge of the Coal Patrol – a group of elves who deliver coal to kids on the naughty list.  As the story begins Santa fires him for being too mean and Gumdrop Coal is left to his own devices.  That’s when the intrigue starts and Coal finds himself up the North Pole, without a paddle.  He’s becomes a pariah, accused of mischief and murder.

The majority of the book is Gumdrop’s adventure trying to clear his name, get the girl and survive the twelve days of Christmas.  I found that a couple of times, Harmon is heavy-handed with his moral.  It seems out of place with the rest of the book, for me.  The book is wacky so often, when his message of good will toward all is so blatant it doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the story.  But, this is a Christmas story, so it’s not unexpected.

Harmon leaves himself room to write more stories with these characters.  Who knows, maybe the next title will be The Woman Behind The Fat Man.  In any case, The Fat Man isn’t a standard Christmas story and it isn’t a children’s tale either.  An easy read, it is a romp into silliness and a satirical tribute to noir detective novels.  Go ahead and read it.  I dare you.  I double dog dare you.

Check the WRL catalog for The Fat Man

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Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, by T.S. Eliot

To continue last week’s leitmotif of books of cat poetry, I have gone back to what many people consider the original and the best. Rather than a series of poems from the cats’ own perspective, like I Could Pee on This, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats is a series of narratives and how-tos about cats. It was first published in 1939 and has been in print ever since. Our library owns several versions with black and white drawings. We also have a winsomely illustrated version with only three of the poems called Growltiger’s Last Stand.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats is based on Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. I have never seen the musical and can’t quite picture how it would work as a musical, but I know it was hugely popular on the stage and is available at our library to borrow on DVD.

In some circles T.S. Eliot is most famous for his serious poetry like “The Waste Land” or “The Hollow Men.” Many students of English literature are familiar with these poems (willingly or not). And many of these same students of literature are surprised that the mind that produced the dark and cynical lines of his serious poems could also produce his light and lilting poems about cats.
Compare this gem from “The Waste Land”:

“I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.”

And from “The Hollow Men”:

Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

To the rollicking:

Macavity’s a mystery cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw –
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the flying sqad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime — Macavity’s not there!

And

Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer were a very notorious couple of cats.
As knockabout clowns, quick-change comedians, tight-rope walkers and acrobats

T.S. Eliot’s skill and dexterity with language show through in both cases, lilting or dark. These are great read-aloud poems that roll off the tongue. Some of our copies of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats are shelved in the children’s section, and the poems are certainly suitable for and loved by children, but I also recommend them for cat lovers and lovers of language.

Check the WRL catalog for Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

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The Bagthorpe Saga, by Helen Cresswell

Have you ever wondered how British humor can be so consistently different from American humor? After all, the two countries share a language and much culture. Re-reading the Bagthorpe Saga by Helen Cresswell, I suspect the difference may persist because the training starts very young in dry, witty, ridiculous British humor.

The Bagthorpe Saga started in 1977 with Ordinary Jack. It continued for over 20 years with ten books chronicling the bizarre, but highly entertaining Bagthorpes, including Bagthorpes Abroad (1984) and Bagthorpes Haunted (1985). It was made into a T.V. series in 1981, which is looking dated now, but the books are still hilariously funny.

Eponymous Jack is certainly ordinary, far too ordinary to live in his overwhelming and extraordinary extended family. His three siblings are “genii” with multiple talents they call Strings to their Bows. His prima donna father writes scripts for the BBC while his mother writes an Agony Aunt column for her Problem people. His only ally is his mongrel dog, Zero, although he sometimes collaborates with his foppish Uncle Parker. Capricious and stubborn Grandma, Selectively Deaf Grandpa, along with precocious and out-of-control cousin Daisy round out the family. Other characters, like the put-upon cleaning lady Mrs. Fosdyke come in and out of the stories. Helen Cresswell managed to take the mickey out of over-scheduled children and helicopter parents before the terms were invented, because Ordinary Jack is the hero and the rest of the Bagthorpes are obnoxiously pretentious.

The humor is both dry and slapstick and relies a lot on wordplay. These books manage to be laugh aloud hilarious and also make comments about human nature.

I was surprised to discover that my library owned this older British series at all, and I was delighted to discover that we own three of the series on CD. I was even more delighted with Clive Mantle’s dry delivery. His sonorous and grave voice was a wonderful foil to the books’ over-the-top humor. In fact, I often thought he sounded like a commentator for a BBC nature documentary—ponderous, serious and reverberating.

Try Ordinary Jack or any of the Bagthorpe Saga for a quick and light read that may make you laugh out loud. Although it is a children’s series, I recommend it for fans of the absurd British wit of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or Monty Python.

Check the WRL catalog for Ordinary Jack in book form.

Check the WRL catalog for Bagthorpes Unlimited in book form.

Check the WRL catalog for Ordinary Jack in CD form.

Check the WRL catalog for Bagthorpes Unlimited in CD form.

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I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats, by Francesco Marciuliano

In ancient Egypt

We cats were gods

We ruled the heavens…

So kneel before me

I have long suspected that cats are utterly self-centered and only interested in their human companions for what the felines can finagle out of them.  I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats proves it!

This little book is told from the point of view of various cats.  The poems often start with an enchanting description of normal cattishness, with a surprising twist:

Sometimes when I lie on your warm chest /  And wonder, ‘Who is that?’

Just in case all the cat lovers out there accuse me of slander (and perhaps even that I may be a dog person) I asked three fat cats of my acquaintance what they thought of the book.  Mushroom and Pimpernel sniffed it hopefully, I suspect for food.  Bandit was a bit more proactive and tried to bite it and then batted it with his paw. But all three are shocked at such a slur on their characters.  Or, at least they would be if they had time to consider it -  if it wasn’t time for food, or maybe a nap, or maybe to chase the long-suffering dog’s tail…

If you need a fun little book to brighten up these winter days, I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats could be just the thing to make you laugh out loud.  It is illustrated throughout with dozens of cat photos, many with extreme awwww qualities.  It may be a bit late to gift this book for the holiday season, but bear it in mind for special occasions for the cat-lovers in your life as it captures the utter and complete, but endearing, selfishness of cats.

Check the WRL catalog for I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats

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Angry Birds: 50 True Stories of the Fed Up, Feathered, & Furious by Mel White

I have been an avid birdwatcher for years and I am always on the lookout for new and interesting bird books in the library’s collection, so I was excited to see this on the library’s new book shelf.

This book is unique in that it shows what happens when real birds get angry.

Birds are grouped into four levels of angry behavior: annoyed, testy, outraged and furious.  Each level presents snapshots of a wide variety of birds, which include a photo of the bird, a helpful “rap sheet”  of useful facts about the bird that includes its species, physical description, known whereabouts, aliases, and a very brief description of its angry behaviors along with a one-page summary of the bird and its angry behavior.

I found a few of these birds and their behaviors to be quite common, like the Northern Cardinal fighting its reflection in a car window.  But most were new to me and I think they will be new to most readers here in the United States. I especially enjoyed reading about the following birds.

The Fieldfare is one of the annoyed birds. It is a medium-sized songbird from Europe that groups together for protection—when a larger bird like a raven encroaches on their territory, the alarm call is given, and a flock of fieldfares will mob the intruder and shower it with a burst of their collective poop.  This is not just nasty but can prevent the intruder from flying and staying warm, and can even lead to death.

The Masked Lapwing is a testy bird that looks like a character from a Stars Wars movie. It likes to hang out in open spaces like golf courses and playgrounds. It  screams at any people who get too close, and it will not hesitate to use the sharp spurs on it wings, which like a pocket knife can inflict painful wounds on any intruders.

My favorite bird is the Northern Fulmar, an outraged bird from the Arctic regions that protects itself in a unique way, by vomiting a noxious stomach oil onto its predators (or victims).  This particularly nasty oil, which is based on their diet of seafood that includes fish and shrimp, can cause death  to other birds and some rodents,  but can also be used as an emergency source of nourishment for the Fulmar if the bird is unable to hunt for food.  I think the photo of a baby Northern Fulmar engaging in this behavior is particularly amusing.

Interspersed among the snapshots of these real angry birds are two other features. The first is a series of short feathered facts about birds getting angry and taking action.  The second feature is a description of several of the major birds from the mega-hit Angry Birds game, including Terence, Chuck, Matilda and Red.  Each bird gets a background story, a  description of what makes them mad and a rap sheet much like the real angry birds, all of which can help you better appreciate the game.

This book would definitely appeal to younger readers with the tie-in to the popular Angry Birds game. But the interesting stories, high-quality photographs, and well-organized content make this a must-read for anyone interested in birds.  Highly recommended.

Check the WRL catalog for Angry Birds

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Christmas in the Clouds

I remember one of our library users recommending Christmas in the Clouds to me last year.  She said it wasn’t a typical feel-good holiday movie, but in a good way.  It was a movie she would check out to watch again and again.  I’m sorry it took me a whole year to get around to watching this – it is delightful!

Sky Mountain Resort is located on an American Indian reservation and is in desperate need of some publicity.  The resort manager, Ray Clouds on Fire, receives a letter that a travel magazine is sending a reviewer to check out the resort over the Christmas holiday week.  A good review would be just what they need to get more guests to the resort.  The staff doesn’t know who this reviewer will be — so of course, they assume it’s the wrong guest.

One of the many quirky characters at the resort is the chef played by Graham Greene (Dances with Wolves, Twilight).  He’s a vegetarian, reluctantly fixing dishes with meat to appease his boss.  But when he comes out to the dining room to greet the guests during dinner, well, you just have to watch what happens.

And there’s romance!  Ray’s dad has been corresponding with a widow who decides to surprise him with a visit to the resort.  Again, a mistaken identity worthy of a Shakespearean play ensues.  But with the attraction, flirtation, tongue-in-cheek silliness… the movie delivered more than what I was expecting.

Christmas in the Clouds was featured in the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.  It also competed in the 2001 editions of the Austin Film Festival and the Santa Fe Film Festival, winning the Best Competition Feature Film Award and the Best Native American-Themed Film Award, respectively.

While the mistaken identity theme isn’t new, it is treated well.  It’s not zany; it’s amusing.  You won’t guffaw; but you’ll have a smile on your face.  If you’re looking for a sweet romance with a touch of Christmas cheer – snuggle up with Christmas in the Clouds (94 minutes, rated PG).

Check the WRL catalog for Christmas in the Clouds

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One Pair of Hands, by Monica Dickens

The popularity of Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs has brought interest back to old books like Below Stairs,  first published in 1968, and Rose, My Life in Service from 1975, not to mention older TV series like Flambards.

Another half-forgotten book in this category is Monica Dickens’s One Pair of Hands from 1939. Monica Dickens was the great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens, but this isn’t her main claim to fame in her series of books about her forays into the working world in the 1930s.

Monica Dickens is unusual in the stable of domestic servant memoirists as she didn’t have to take on domestic servitude to prevent herself or family from becoming destitute. She came from a wealthy family and was a debutante who came out with all the glamour of a debutante ball. She became bored with her social existence and thought, “Surely… there is more to life than going out to parties that one doesn’t enjoy with people one doesn’t like?”. She was thrown out of drama school and had taken a class in French cooking, so she decided to turn to cooking.

I have difficulty believing that anyone would do the dishes who didn’t absolutely have to, let alone scrub a stone floor on their hands and knees using a wooden handled pig’s hair brush and harsh ammonia. As I said in my October post about Dick’s Encyclopedia of Practical Receipts and Processes, our ancestors had to work very hard in the domestic sphere. My children often claim (with good reason) that I seem to like the Roomba and the dishwasher more than them. It’s really that I appreciate how much work those esteemed appliances do for me, freeing up my time and energy to pursue more interesting tasks like writing blog posts (which is not something I can truthfully say about my children).

Her tone is light, but as I said, she does have the choice to go home to the comfort and support of her parents’ house. In her gentle way she sums up the cruelties acted upon the powerless servant class by saying “my jobs at various houses only served to convince me that human nature is not all it might be.” Her jobs are generally short term, but she does quit one job when a sleazy Butler tries to blackmail her.

The book is often funny as Monica Dickens points out the foibles of the personal lives of the people she meets. She makes even her most obnoxious employers amusing and shows the human side of the people below stairs.  ”I threw down my sodden dishcloth and went to gatecrash the most wonderful party that was being held in the kitchen. The Butler, a sporting old devil with white hair was taking advantage of his possession of the wine cellar key to celebrate his birthday in the best champagne and port that the house could offer. There he sat, jigging one the the parlourmaids on his knee.”

Unfortunately this is the only book by Monica Dickens that our library owns. She also wrote books about her other jobs as a nurse, One Pair Of Feet (1942,) and in a newspaper office, My Turn To Make The Tea (1951), and later went on to become a successful novelist and children’s book writer. One Pair of Hands will suit people interested in the upstairs/downstairs conflicts of Downton Abbey, but it will also be appreciated by readers of domestic humorists like Erma Bombeck.

Check the WRL catalog for One Pair of Hands.

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The Father Hunt, by Rex Stout

He’s pigheaded and high-nosed and toplofty, and he thinks he’s the best detective in the world, and so do I, or I would have moved out long ago.  – Archie Goodwin, The Father Hunt

As much as I love exploring new mystery authors, I like to periodically return to old favorites, revisiting those iconic characters created by Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and others.

Rex Stout introduced the world to Nero Wolfe in 1934 with a style that was definitely American, and unabashedly New York.  Although his characters followed a familiar trope, the eccentric but successful detective with a less-brainy but resourceful sidekick, the interaction between his characters is what drives the stories.  Detective Nero Wolfe is an orchid grower with a greenhouse filled with 10,000 orchids and a gourmand who requires a full-time cook.  He has an abhorrence of physical activity and an even greater dislike of having his strict schedule interrupted, especially for work.  His legman and the narrator of the stories, Archie Goodwin, is a tough, street smart, witty, ladies man whose narrative voice is unlike other sidekicks such as Watson or Hastings.  He is a fully-fleshed out character, existing not only as an observer and foil for Wolfe but as an integral part of the story.  He interviews suspects, soothes concerned clients, and knows his greatest value is in his ability to badger Wolfe into working so that the firm earns enough to keep all three full-time staff employed, fed, and with a roof over their heads.

In The Father Hunt, a young woman (always a weakness of Archie’s) named Amy Denovo hires the pair to find her father.  She had gone most of her life with no knowledge of her family outside of her cold and distant mother.  Her mother’s recent death from a hit and run driver has revealed a secret: every month since Amy was born, a check for $1,000 was sent from her father.  Being a proud woman who knew she could support her daughter herself, her mother cashed the checks and placed the money in a metal box.  Over the 22 years of Amy’s life, this has amounted to $264,000.  No small sum, especially in 1968.  She decides to use some of that money to track down her father, a task made more difficult because Amy is convinced that her mother was living under an assumed name.  Who she was and where she was prior to Amy’s birth is as much of a mystery as the identity of the father.

Tracking down the birth name of Amy’s mother as well as discovering the man who wrote the checks is a relatively easy task for a detective of Wolfe’s abilities.  However when the man can prove the impossibility of his being Amy’s father, the case hits a major snag.  If he is not responsible for Amy’s parentage, why did he send over a quarter of a million dollars over the years to Amy’s mother?  Who actually is her father?  And is it a coincidence that Amy’s mother was killed by a yet unknown hit-and-run driver?  Only by focusing on the last questions is Wolfe able to bring about a resolution to his case.

Readers of mystery and crime fiction who are not already familiar with Nero Wolfe will find this a great introduction to the series.  Wolfe fans like me will always enjoy an afternoon spent in his company.

Check the WRL catalog for The Father Hunt

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Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie

Confession time?  I never read anything by Salman Rushdie until I picked up Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002.  I found his essays on everything from “Being Photographed” to “Going to Electoral College” to be funny, pointed, and written in approachable, engaging language.  So what was holding me back?  Perhaps it was that intimidating glare, which makes him look as if you’re going to disappoint him no matter how hard you try.  (Of course, looking for the picture I was thinking of yielded only photos of a smiling, avuncular wiseman.  Strange.)

On a whim, I picked up Haroun and the Sea of Stories and began reading it aloud to my wife.  It quickly became a standing date–9pm each night we’d sit down and I’d dive into The Sea.  Rushdie’s enchanting story drew us along right to the wonderfully satisfying end.  It practically defines what I love to see in totally escapist reading, but with a punch that few writers can pull off.

Haroun is the son of Rashid, a famous storyteller who lives in his own imagination and sometimes visits the “real” world to perform the pieces he finds in his fancy.  Haroun’s mother Soraya sometimes frets over money, but is largely happy until a nasty neighbor poisons her image of Rashid, and the two run off together.  Haroun rejects his father’s fantastic view of the world, and Rashid loses his storytelling facility.

Unfortunately, it’s election time in the country Alifbay, where Rashid has been hired to enchant voters so the politicians can tell equally large whoppers to earn votes.  Without his skill Rashid cannot perform, and only professional pride makes him go to his last gig in the isolated Valley of K to entertain provincial voters.  Haroun talks them onto a wild bus ride with a driver named Butt, who delivers them to their putative employer Snooty Buttoo and his fantastic houseboat.  But aboard the houseboat, Haroun finds himself flown away to an invisible moon that houses the Sea of Stories.  An immense ocean whose currents of standard storylines flow together to create new tales, the Sea is also being poisoned by “popular romances” which have turned into “long lists of shopping expeditions, and “talking helicopter anecdotes” that are spoiling the rich imaginative source that has nourished both tellers and listeners for all of human history.  The poison leads back to the enemy of storytelling, “Prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech” Khattam-Shud, whose name means “The End.”

With Haroun’s assistance, the good Guppees, the Plentimaw fish, and the people of P2C2E (Processes Too Complicated to Explain) defeat Khattam-Shud and his Chupwalas, and balance returns to the moon.  With the Sea of Stories saved, the world undergoes a transformation that ensures the defeat of the colorless and the victory of the whimsical.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is called a children’s story, but it would be an exceptional child (indeed an exceptional reader of any age) to catch all the puns, literary allusions, political caricature, and meaningful verbal tics Rushdie gives his magical characters.  Haroun is a marvelous stand-in for readers living in the dull world.  His sudden gift of a wildly psychedelic experience reminds of what we set aside as we “grow up.”  It must have been a Chupwala who decided it belonged outside the realm of those who need it most.

Check the WRL catalog for Haroun and the Sea of Stories

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The Devil in Silver, by Victor LaValle

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A guy walks into a bar…

Well I promise you haven’t heard this one. The guy in question goes by the name of Pepper, which would also be a good description for his personality. Pepper’s a hothead and his trip to a Queens bar to warn his girlfriend’s ex-husband to leave her alone turns into a brawl that includes three off-duty cops. Not wanting to take the time it would require to put Pepper through the booking process, and also wanting to teach him a lesson, the three take him instead to a mental health facility, where he’s committed for a 72-hour surveillance.

That’s the starting point for LaValle’s tale. Pepper’s lack of friends or family, his temper, his mishandling of initial contacts with some of the other patients, his run-ins with the overworked staff, and the numbing effects of powerful meds soon stretch that three-day stay into months. To make matters worse, a patient who is mysteriously protected by the staff in a separate wing that nobody is allowed to enter makes nighttime trips through the ceiling tiles, occasionally murdering other residents. They call him the Devil, and most think him a  monster while a few think he’s just a very sick man. Pepper becomes allied in a plot to stop him with the facility’s longest-held resident, a deceptively tough African-American teenage girl, and a man who obsessively uses the phones to try to get help from outside.

LaValle has a fluid, unusual style and a real gift for original characters. I found it easy to get immersed in his story, a kind of blend of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and a monster novel like Stephen King’s It. The book is great summer reading fun, but it also has a serious side with indictments of bureaucracy and the mental health system, insightful glimpses into human nature, and a thorough exploration of what it means to be mentally ill. Pepper is an antihero whose screwups you’ll lament, whose ultimate victory you’ll always desire. To top it off the book is often flat-out funny. In short, there’s something here for almost any kind of reader, making The Devil in Silver an easy book to recommend.

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Europe on 5 Wrong Turns A Day, by Doug Mack

One Man, Eight Countries, One Vintage Travel Guide…

In 1870, the English diarist Francis Kilvert complained that, “Of all noxious animals…the most noxious is a tourist.”  But despite this scathing criticism, Doug Mack, author of Europe on 5 Wrong Turns a Day, desperately wants to be one.  Unlike the trailblazers of recent decades seeking to explore new and uncharted parts of the globe, Mack wants to undertake a journey on the very firmly well-beaten path, hoping to obtain “full immersion in the modern tourist experience.”

And so he decides to backpack around Europe using only a 1963 edition of the quintessential Europe on Five Dollars a Day by Arthur Frommer that he found at a secondhand book festival in Minneapolis.  To add to the retro charm, he also brings with him the postcards and letters that his mother wrote to her fiancé (Mack’s father) during her own Grand Tour in the late 1960s.  And that’s it.  There would be no Internet research, no competing guidebooks.  As much as possible Mack planned to stay in the same hotels recommended by Frommer, eat in the same restaurants, and visit the same sites – although perhaps not on the same budget.

On his Not-So-Grand Tour, Mack visits eleven of Europe’s great cities, including Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Rome, and Venice, boldly going  “where millions have gone before, relying only on the advice of a travel guide that’s nearly a half century out-of-date.”  Setting out on this well-beaten path, Mack’s goal was not to live on $5 a day in some kind of “gimmicky challenge,” but to explore the ways the traditional tourist experience has changed–and hasn’t–during the last fifty years.

Just like any traveler, he enjoys some cities more than others (a big fan of Madrid, not so much of Venice).  But of course, as Mack travels around Europe, he finds most of Frommer’s suggestions are either closed, have been converted into a giftshop, or serve food so expensive that if Frommer were writing this guide today (adjusted for inflation, of course!) they would never have made the cut.  Other differences include Frommer’s choice of seventeen “must-see” cities, which leaves out destinations that are very popular today, such as Prague and Barcelona.  And let’s not forget that Berlin was a divided city in 1963.  But in 2009, Mack finds the American and East German soldiers at Checkpoint Charlie are now played by Russian and North African actors, demanding tips for photos.

Europe on 5 Wrong Turns A Day offers an interesting analysis of the culture of travel, the changes that have taken place since Frommer’s seminal work was published, and the changes that the book caused (e.g. cheap travel as something you could boast about).  To flesh out the travel narrative, Mack includes some history of American tourism to Europe, the evolution of guidebooks, Frommer’s success story, and how politics affect the travel decisions of Americans.

If you have ever traveled abroad, particularly in Europe, you will see yourself in this book.  But Mack’s teasing is kind and you won’t be able to help laughing at yourself.  I freely admit to doing the “Tourist Dance” myself:

Hold out your camera, smile sheepishly, point to yourself.  Half the time the other person is already performing the same gestures to you…”

The book is sweetly charming, with laugh-out loud moments, but it also has some serious points to make about modern travel and the effects of globalism over the last half-century.  Europe on 5 Wrong Turns a Day is an amusing, self-effacing, and very wry travel memoir, told by an observant and affable narrator.  The book is an entertaining mix of social commentary, history,  ode to Frommer’s “manifesto for the common traveler” and exoneration of your average, much-maligned tourist.

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The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson

Psychologists call it “family of origin“.  Really, they’re the people on whom you imprinted: those who gave you your adult world view or against whom you rebelled.  But if you believe there’s such a thing as a “happy family“, you were born in a test tube and raised in a cave by wolves.  Some families are less weird than others, that’s all.

Setting aside all physically abusive families, the Fang family is perhaps the weirdest one I’ve ever read about.  Caleb and Camille are artists, MacArthur Geniuses, grant winners, gallery darlings.  Their medium? Human confusion and anger.  Their canvas–any place they can set people against one another or cause distress.  Like Sasha Baron-Cohen, they find the outer limit of what people will tolerate, then push them past it.  Unfortunately, they decide to use their children to create the chaos they engender.

Annie and Buster, or “Child A” and “Child B” as they were known in the art world, are now grown.  Annie is a successful actor on the verge of her breakthrough into Oscar contention when a director calls for an unexpected topless scene.  Annie’s response puts her on the Web and into the tabloids, and her response to that causes her to flee Hollywood.  Buster is an unsuccessful novelist working as a freelance writer.  When he’s severely injured in the course of writing an article, he reverts to a Fang-style escape and runs for cover.  Both wind up at their parents’ home, the one place they swore they’d never return.  But.

Well, Camille and Caleb have a project on their calendar, so they take off to the big city.  And on the way they…disappear.  Their bloodstained car is found at a rest area, but no sign of them.  Bitter and suspicious, Annie spots it as another panic-inducing art piece.  Buster wavers between Annie’s view and believing that Camille and Caleb are dead,  Together, brother and sister grope their way through the following days, uncertain how to continue their own lives.

Interspersed in the current-day stories are titled pieces from the Fang family’s career, giving the reader a picture of their methods and results.  The projects become stranger the deeper the story goes, and as A and B become more integral to the work, the projects become more manipulative of them, to the point that Caleb and Camille become passive bystanders in the situations they force the children into.  With each revelation, Annie’s fierce independence and Buster’s uncertainty become more understandable.

Kevin Wilson is scarily creative when it comes to envisioning the Fang art, perhaps even more so in developing his storyline.  He also raises a lot of questions that make excellent fodder for contemplation and discussion.  What is Art?  What is an Artist?  What is a family?  What is child abuse?  At what point can a person be described as “grown up”?  So much packed into a beautifully written, imaginative book that it’s no wonder it made so many “Best Book of the Year” lists.

Check the WRL catalog for The Family Fang

Also coming soon as a Gab Bag for reading groups

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Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan

Another advance reader copy that came to Williamsburg Regional Library.

One of my colleagues and I were looking over the cart of ARCs when I pulled this from the shelf.  “Sounds too magical-realist,” she said doubtfully.  I was still intrigued by the title, and decided to give it a few pages.  I took it home and immediately plunged into Clay Jannon’s world, which Robin Sloan writes with anything but magical realism.

Clay’s career is stuck in neutral, a bad place to be in cutting-edge San Francisco’s Web-design world.   Along about the time the last of his savings is headed to pay the rent, Clay is desperate enough to take anything.  A sign in the window of a dim little shop (overshadowed by the neon of the strip club next door) advertises “Help Wanted,” and Clay enters Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.

If the store is surviving on actual, you know, book sales, Clay can’t tell it.  Working the overnight shift, he rarely has any customers except a girl from the club dropping in for the latest bestseller, which Mr. Penumbra doesn’t stock.  What he has, in his queerly shaped store, are tall shelves packed with volumes written in languages and letters Clay can’t decipher.  Odd people sometimes duck in to pick up select volumes and duck back out after putting them on their special accounts.

With nothing much to do overnight, Clay starts building a virtual copy of the Bookstore to aid him in finding stuff from the collection.  Then he starts adding data from past circulations and finds a pattern that amazes him and astonishes Mr. Penumbra.  His discovery leads to another, and another, and the whole chain of discoveries leads Clay right back to the place he really started.

Sloan does a great job with the characters, from the friends who support and encourage Clay to the avuncular Mr. Penumbra.  The characters play off one another, co-operating and offering their skills as Clay carries out his quest.  But it’s the idea behind the story that really intrigued me—that there’s an exciting new frontier at the intersection of print and technology, and that advocates of both need to remember it.  And even if writing about books on a blog is only building a little cabin on the edge of that frontier, well, that’s enough for me right now.

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Goodbye for Now, by Laurie Frankel

I’m lucky enough to get advanced reader copies of forthcoming books.  Here’s one I found noteworthy.

“Data shadow.”  “Digital footprint.”  Whatever you want to call it, it is the remains of your online life.  Emails, blog postings and tweets, purchases, video chats, cell phone pictures, cookies…anything to do with electronics could come back to haunt you one day.  But what if it could come back to help someone?

In her second novel, Laurie Frankel examines the emotional and practical spectrum of what remains of the modern person after he or she shuffles off the mortal chip.  Her main character, Sam Elling, is a talented programmer whose life is wrapped up in his employment with an internet dating company.  He sees the disconnect between customer profiles and their actual behavior—if you were seeing the blockbuster movie and eating popcorn last weekend, not attending the foreign film festival and sampling the amuse-bouches, he knows it.  No wonder his employer has a so-so record of matchmaking.  So Sam sits down and writes an algorithm that asks the actual questions people want to know about their future companions.  (Like the Bloom County first date comic where Cutter John asks the young lady if she shaves her legs.  “Halfway,” she replies, happy to set aside the meaningless chatter.)  It’s so successful that the first match he makes for himself turns out to be his soulmate Meredith (whom he calls Merde, to her great amusement).  Great news for the happy couple, but as the company CEO points out as he’s firing Sam, not so good for the repeat business that keeps the cash flowing.   And just after he’s lost his job, Merde loses her beloved grandmother, Livvie.

It’s a mixed blessing.  Of course Meredith loves and misses her grandmother, but Livvie’s apartment is a perfect legacy to the two of them.  Sam can see, though, that she’s distracted, even distraught, not processing her grandmother’s sudden death.  So he decides to give her a gift.  He writes another program, one which pulls Livvie’s online presence into a whole, then has it send Meredith an email based on the totality of their correspondence.

Upset, then excited, then intrigued by the possibilities, Merde begins to see the value of this kind of healing.  She and Sam form RePose, a service that allows subscribers to “visit” with their deceased loved ones.  They have to pick their way through the emotional minefield that programming can’t anticipate, but most clients love the opportunities RePose offers.  Some use it for healing, some for a chance to tell off the person who tormented them for years, some for the simple companionship they feel with the deceased.  There are business minefields and public relations minefields, but the two of them find joy in working together and drawing on each others’ strengths.  But such things cannot last.

The premise captured my attention, but the way Frankel develops the bond between Sam and Meredith really resonated with me.  (Based on my other posts, you wouldn’t believe that I’m a sucker for love stories, but what can I say?)  She also creates some great secondary characters, especially Meredith’s California cousin, and the community of RePose clients makes a great extended family.  There are dark sides to RePose, and she explores those with real insight into tragedy and the process of grieving.

Publication date: August 7

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Lizard Music, by Daniel Pinkwater

Yesterday, I wrote about James Thurber, whose writing blends a love and mastery of language with a healthy sense of the absurd. A more contemporary writer who shares Thurber’s skill in both these areas is Daniel Pinkwater. The New York Review of Books has re-released Pinkwater’s wonderfully odd book Lizard Music, and I was glad to be able to add that to my shelves.

Young Victor, a fan of Walter Cronkite and TV news in general, is all alone at his house for the week—his parents are having a rough time and have gone off on a trip to reconnect, while his older sister who is supposed to be watching him has headed off with her hippie friends to the Cape. It is a typical start to a coming of age story, isn’t it? Where Pinkwater takes you from here, though, is anything but ordinary. Victor falls asleep while watching the news and wakes to stumble across a late-night TV show featuring human-sized lizards playing music. He heads off to the nearby city of Hogboro, and keeps running into an old man with a chicken on his head, to say nothing of constant references to lizard musicians. Suffice it to say that things only get odder from here on out.

Pinkwater’s deadpan delivery and comic timing make this a perfect read for pretty much anyone. Victor is an appealing lead character, and he does learn some things about himself throughout the course of the book. But it is the surreal humor and the pleasant oddness that characterize Pinkwater’s writing that really are the attractions here. If you like this one, there are lots of other Pinkwater books to choose from (I would recommend The Hoboken Chicken Emergency; Pinkwater has a way with chickens!).

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