“Time moves very slowly when you’re standing naked on Hackney Road at three o’clock in the morning. I can hear music from the bar below, and I realize there must be a party with a late license, but I can’t go down there completely naked. Luckily, there’s an umbrella standing up against the door, so I open it up between my legs, like in a Marx Brothers movie, and use it to shield my genitals. Did I mention that the umbrella is pink? That’s one detail of this story I often try to forget.”

Oh, that Russell Brand, he’s a funny guy. Took me a while to find a quote to prove it, mind. Though I laughed on nearly every page, the passages I liked were all disqualified for this G-rated forum on account of containing naughty words, or sexual scenes, or, in most cases, both.

If you don’t like naughty words or sex scenes, this is probably not the book for you. Ditto that for scenes with drug and/or alcohol consumption and abuse. Oh, and if you didn’t like Brand’s routine as host of last year’s MTV Awards (he referred to then-president Bush as a retarded cowboy whom the English wouldn’t trust with a pair of scissors), then… yeah, this is probably still not the book for you.

But if you typically shy away from celebrity memoirs, you might be pleasantly surprised. In my experience, celebrity authors tend to be people with loads and loads of money who happen to write, or try to write, a book. Russell Brand could easily make a living as a writer who happens to have loads and loads of money.

I first encountered Brand’s work when I saw a clip of his stand-up comedy. (He’s also worked in television and movies.) His observations are droll, his delivery perfect, his Essex accent campy and grand. You don’t get the accent in My Booky Wook, but otherwise his humor transfers nicely to the printed page. Look up “Russell Brand” in youtube for a taste of his style; if you like what you see, you’ll like the book.

Here’s another reason I avoid celebrity memoirs: I don’t care for the name-dropping. I don’t want to read about the writer’s interactions with other celebrities, who honestly are probably just like me, only they have loads and loads of money. If you’re looking for an inside peek into the glitz and glamor of the celebrity lifestyle, Brand doesn’t deliver.

What Brand does give us is memoir, emphasizing not the acting nor the showbiz (though obviously these parts get mentioned), but rather the addictions and the the demons he’s faced. Despite the hot pink cover and the juvenile title, this is actually a dark book about unhappiness, loneliness, and self-destruction. It is written with intelligence, pathos, and humor, a combination difficult to get from any author, celebrity of otherwise.

Check the WRL catalog for My Booky Wook

On New Year’s Day, in an unidentified country, everyone suddenly stops dying. Disease still strikes, accidents still happen, the elderly get even more so, but everyone just keeps on ticking.

Havoc ensues, but it is very funny havoc, if you go in for dark social satire. The funeral workers are in a tizzy. The government is scrambling to placate the voices of the newly-irrelevant health care industry. The church is trying to interpret doctrine now that there’s no afterlife. About the only folks enjoying the chaos are– this is great– are the people who sell life insurance: they’ve discovered how to bilk everyone out of even more money than before.

Saramago’s delightfully nasty assessment of society constitutes the first part of the book. Then, just when you’ve had your fill of cynicism and allegory, along comes… a romance novel?

Yeah, I wasn’t expecting it, either.

It seems that no one’s dying anymore because Death is on holiday. It’s the same idea Terry Pratchett used in Reaper Man, only this time Death is a lady. After a restful few months away from the job, she resumes her duties, thereby restoring normalcy to society with one stroke of the scythe. There’s just one catch: now that she’s killing people again, she faces an ethical quandary when she finds herself falling for a human who’s supposed to die.

Saramago is a joy to read. He does these delicious things with the language, or at least his translator does, though I’m guessing he’s good in his native Portuguese, too. They don’t give the Nobel Prize in Literature to just anybody.

Check the WRL catalog for Death with Interruptions

If you like to sleep soundly at night, satisfied in the knowledge that people are basically decent and that your children will grow up with the freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, permit me to gently nudge you toward Cute Overload, a website that has nothing to do with reading but which does have pictures of adorable animals.

Alternately, if you seek to confirm your suspicions that the world is run by lunatics and that things are only going to get worse, you’ll want to try the gloomy (but superb!) political analysis of David Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent with the New York Times. (Though it couldn’t hurt you to look at Cute Overload. Everyone likes pictures of adorable animals.)

In The Inheritance, Sanger takes us on a scary tour of current international politics, specifically concerning America and her most troubled relationships. By “scary” I mean that the most optimistic section in the book is the one on China. Compared to the other countries Sanger discusses– Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North Korea– America’s relationship with China is positively rosy.

Thanks to Sanger’s cogent storytelling, I am now uncomfortably aware of which countries dislike us most, and why they dislike us, and (here’s the part to keep you up at nights) what they may do about it. This knowledge has very little practical value– I cannot make Kim Jong-Il play nice with his nuclear weapons, nor can I persuade Pakistan to please stop aiding the Taliban– but at least, when Iran goes nuclear, I will be able to nod sagely and say “Ah, yes, I saw that coming.”

Sanger’s writing is crisp, uncluttered, and very well-informed. He has some harsh words for former president Bush, but I’m not sure his perspective falls under “liberal bias,” as he also has some hard words for former president Clinton. The (very small number of) negative reviews on Amazon suggest that the book has a liberal slant; make of that what you will.

As an ADDED BONUS, every reader who makes it through thirteen chapters of dire current affairs will encounter a coda of not one, not two, but THREE doomsday scenarios! With this really excruciatingly vivid detail, Sanger describes how terrorists might wreak havoc with nuclear weapons, with biological weapons, and with Internet attacks. Get your apocalyptic forebodings today!

Check the WRL catalog for The Inheritance

If, hypothetically, someone completely neglected to read comics in her childhood like she was supposed to, how would this person, now a grownup, become familiar with the superheroes?

Discuss.

I posed this entirely hypothetical question to a geek friend of mine, explaining that the reader, hypothetically, was intimidated by superhero books because she wasn’t familiar with the decades’ worth of backstory associated with each character. Where should the newbie begin?

“Uhm,” said my geek friend. “You should. Um. Start with… Er. Um.”

He was stumped, but rallied gamely a few days later by suggesting a graphic novel by Brad Meltzer. And though I (hypothetically) had never cared for Meltzer’s traditional thrillers, I found him to be quite engaging in Identity Crisis. (Which I read for no real reason; it’s not like there was a great big gaping hole in my knowledge, or anything like that.)

Identity Crisis features several superheroes of the DC variety. (This means that Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are fair game, but not Spiderman, who is Marvel. To me this does not seem fair.) The spouse of one of the superheroes– I am not going to tell you which one– has been murdered. It’s a locked-room mystery, with no signs of entry or egress, no forensic evidence, and in fact no evidence of a crime at all, except for the bit about there being a dead body.

But the whodunnit bit was not the primary appeal. Instead I liked the story because I got to know and enjoy the characters. Meltzer draws them with depth, metaphorically, and artist Rags Morales draws them with grace, literally. Having read the book, I am proud to announce that I have formed my first tentative, independently-reached conclusion about a superhero, to wit: I think Green Arrow is kind of cool and funny, and if can recommend some other Green Arrow books, I’m listening.

There are some violent moments, but there’s nothing too awfully bloody, and the very worst parts are left to the reader’s imagination. Also, all of the women are busty and tall and gorgeous, which might make the female reader feel, in comparison, like a dumpy old cow– but even inexperienced readers of superhero books know to expect that, I suppose. Hrmph.

Check the WRL catalog for Identity Crisis

The baby blue eyes of the panther* on the cover called me across the room. Before I knew what was happening I found myself with an impulse grab from the New Book shelf.

*Leopard, actually. The kitty is a black leopard, but I didn’t discover this till the very end, because there are no words in the book until you get to the last few pages. Except for the index, which helpfully identifies all the animals you didn’t recognize, Creature has no text at all.

With no words to interfere, you as the reader get to devote all your energy to looking at the pictures. Within each picture you get to devote all your energy to looking at the animal, only the animal, and nothing but the animal: there’s no clutter to distract the eye, just a stark white background to throw the critter into focus. It’s marvelous.

Sixty-three animals are featured in 150 photographs. My very favorite is the wild boar, who looks– I don’t know how else to describe this– who looks sassy. I’m also fond of the spotted hyena, who appears thoughtful and inquisitive despite the way her tongue sticks out. Zuckerman’s photos made me fall in love with all the animals in the book.*

*Except for the millipede. And the emperor scorpion.

Some of creatures are in cute poses, but the point isn’t to look at pictures of adorable animals. Instead we get to look at a lot of different animals in a lot of different emotional states. (The alligator is smiling. That’s a good sign, right?) Mature readers will want to luxuriate over each gorgeous photo. Immature readers will want to race through the pages to get maximum animal sensory overload.*

*Yes, that’s exactly what I did, thanks for asking.

Check the WRL catalog for Creature

This movie is about the most extensive plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler, the one that came the closest to actually killing him. Since most people will actually know what resulted from such a famous historical event, a movie like this needs to show us what it was like for the conspirators to make it worth our while to spend two plus hours of our time. Valkyrie performs this admirably.

First, the movie does a fine job of presenting the many details of the assassination plot that was codenamed operation Valkyrie. We learn that the plot was essentially an attempt to use the German reserve army to seize power from the Nazi SS once they had successfully assassinated Hitler. We meet the key conspirators and discover that the plot involved hundreds of people from the German military and civil authorities. Most of these details of the plot will be new to viewers and it’s fascinating to see how they are carried out.

Second, Tom Cruise does a fine job as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg who not only is the mastermind behind the plot but is also the key player who carries it out.  His performance here reminded me of his role as Ethan Hunt in the Mission Impossible movies, a very different kind of movie for sure but with just as impossible of a mission and lots of action and suspense. Another plus for Cruise is that he even looks like Stauffenberg, as you can see here:

Cruise is backed up by an excellent cast of supporting actors, including the award-winning Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and many others. They make the movie all the more interesting and create tension as they portray people who are risking everything in their attempt to kill Hitler. Valkyrie is recommended for anyone interested in the history of World War 2.

Check the WRL catalog for Valkyrie.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. A blog sponsored by a public library would eventually have to have a review of the movie The Librarian: Quest For the Spear. I may be putting my professional credibility on the line, but I have seen this movie several times and never fail to laugh at the comical situations and great one-liners in this over-the-top but funny look at one very special library and its librarian.  Noah Wyle is great as Flynn Carsen, a professional student in his thirties who has over 20 degrees and still lives with his mother, played very well by Olympia Dukakis.

When one of his professors finally gives him the boot so that he can experience life in the real world, Flynn is invited to apply and accepted as “The Librarian” of the Metropolitan Public Library. His boss, Judson (Bob Newhart),  charges him with the responsibility for protecting this secretive library’s vast holdings, which includes some of the world’s greatest treasures. When thieves break in and steal a part of a magical spear, Flynn is given the mission to recover the stolen spear and find its remaining two parts, which are hidden in different places at opposite ends of the Earth.  To help him on his task, he is teamed up with Nicole Noon (Sonya Walger) and together they risk life and limb to recover the three parts of the magical spear. There is lots of action that spoofs Indiana Jones and other action heroes, and a highlight is to see Bob Newhart as Judson take on a gang of thugs by himself near the end of the movie.

If you enjoy action comedies, or if you want to see a movie about a very different kind of library, or if you have ever enjoyed any of these fine actors in the past, including Noah Wyle (ER), Bob Newhart, Olympia Dukakis, and Jane Curtin (3^rd Rock From the Sun) , then you should definitely give this movie a try. The Williamsburg Regional Library also has the next two movies in this series, which are also lots of fun to watch, The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines and The Librarian 3: Curse of the Judas Chalice. All three are highly recommended.

Check the WRL catalog for The Librarian: Quest for the Spear

Check the WRL catalog for The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines

Or try The Librarian 3: Curse of the Judas Chalice

I recently saw the new Star Trek movie and I liked how the new set of actors emulate the original cast of Star Trek. It’s a throwback to the old days, as it attempts to tell how James T. Kirk and the other crew members got their start. It’s a bonus to have Leonard Nimoy in it as an older, more wiser Spock.

It’s a great movie,  and it got me interested in seeing all of the original movies that were made in the 1980s and early 1990s. Of the six original movies, my personal favorite and the most popular in the series is Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The plot is typical Star Trek fare – the crew of the USS Enterprise (in a captured Klingon starship) has to go back in time to 20^th century San Francisco to recover 2 humpback whales and then somehow transport them back to the 23^rd century so that they can communicate with and hopefully stop a strange alien probe that is wreaking havoc on the Earth.

Easier said than done: The crew has to split up into teams of two in order to accomplish all that needs to be done in order to get the whales back to the future.  This is where the movie really shines, when the actors have to do the seemingly impossible in what is a strange and somewhat alien culture to them. Some of the funniest moments occur when Spock & Kirk attempt to board and ride a city bus and when Dr. McCoy, in a local hospital to treat and rescue Chekov, lashes out at primitive 20^th century medicine and successfully treats an old woman with kidney problems at the same time.

The fine acting by many of the original Star Trek crew is another plus for this movie, including William Shatner as Kirk, Leonard Nimoy as Spock, DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy, James Doohan as Scotty, George Takei as Sulu, Walter Koenig as Chekov, and Nichelle Nichols as Uhura . The movie is directed by Leonard Nimoy and was nominated for 4 Oscar awards in 1987. Highly recommended.

Check the WRL catalog for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Mired in a bout of bad luck, photographer and big city lover Shreve Stockton decides a major change is needed. Almost on a whim, she decides to move to the very small town of Big Sleep, Wyoming (population: 300).  Stockton adjusts well to her new life in this small town in a  beautiful but very remote part of Wyoming. She makes friends with just about everyone in the town, gets a job as a substitute teacher, and throws away her cell phone (good riddance —- nobody uses them, and most places don’t get coverage anyway).

Stockton’s adventure begins when she meets Mike one day and quickly falls in love with him.  Mike, a trapper employed by the US Department of Agriculture,  surprises her one day when he brings her a coyote pup as a gift.  Shreve carefully considers the factors involved if she takes responsibility for this coyote pup. Thankfully for the soon-to-be-named Charlie, and for her readers, she decides to take on the challenge of caring for him. It is a huge commitment of time and effort, but one that she takes seriously.  This book is about her life with Charlie, which has incredible moments of joy, but sad and even dangerous moments as well.

She decides early on that she will document the experience by taking photos of Charlie and sending them on a regular, daily schedule to friends and family via email. In that way the idea for a “Daily Coyote” blog is born, and  it is only a matter of time before it becomes an online sensation and gets thousands of hits every day. Stockton turned this wonderful blog into this book so that even more people can appreciate her experience.

I was impressed by the many photos of Charlie taken at different times and in many poses.  I enjoyed her stories of Charlie’s interactions with her tomcat Eli  (my favorite is when Eli  “meets” Charlie for the first time!).   Her writing is easy to follow:  It doesn’t take long to get drawn into her adventure with Charlie. Be sure to check out her Daily Coyote blog – http://www.dailycoyote.net – where you can find the latest pictures of Charlie and the other interesting animals that Stockton cares for now. Highly recommended.

Check the WRL catalog for The Daily Coyote.

I enjoy reading books about nature so I was eager to read this book by Julie Zickefoose, a well-known artist who contributes work to Bird Watchers Digest and is a frequent commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered.

Letters from Eden is a collection of stories about the natural world that Zickefoose observes throughout the year in her home in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains in southeast Ohio.  Her illustrations are excellent, they cover a wide range of animals,  from birds to deer to turtles and even bobcats and a copperhead snake, and they really help to draw the reader into her stories.

Zickefoose is a delightfully engaging writer.  When she described her daily walk in the woods I felt like I was right there with her (or at least, I wanted to be there!)  She doesn’t oversentimentalize what she sees. What she finds might be hard for the most sensitive readers to take, as when she finds a “very dead” possum who has been attacked and slowly killed by a hungry owl. In those instances, she is a cool observer, noting the details of the death but accepting it as an act of nature. At other times she steps in and intervenes with what she sees, like in the story “Calling Kali” when she finds several animals that have been cruelly ensnared in a crude trap.

My favorite stories are “The Planting Bird” about a thrasher who encourages her through its song to replant her garden after it has been decimated by both woodchucks and deer. She includes 2 of her paintings of a thrasher, one of which was her first bird paintiing.  I also enjoyed “Once Bitten”  where she describes what it is like to live in the country and what happens when you happen to be alone and are bitten by a poisonous snake.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys getting outdoors. The stories are short and engaging and the great illustrations make the book all the more memorable. I used this book in a booktalk I gave recently to several retirement homes & the people really enjoyed it.

Check the WRL catalog for Letters from Eden