What I've Been Reading....

Not enough. Although never enough is  probably the status quo with me. Still, I'll try to provide some highlights from my summer.

Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer by John Leake

My secret brain candy is true crime and this one came recommended to me by my Page-A-Day Book Lover's Calendar -- an eclectic but excellent source of titles. This is the true story of Jack Unterweger, a murderer who becomes the pet of the Austrian literati upon his release from prison only to begin again. He even poses as a journalist and visits the police to investigate his own crime spree! A good example of truth is stranger than fiction.

Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

There's little I enjoy more than a bit of Pratchett. The perfect anecdote to heavy-duty literature and haunting crime. Pratchett makes me laugh in every paragraph. Pratchett's witch trio Nanny Ogg, Granny Weatherwax and Agnes Nitt are the central champions of the story of Lancre, a town poised to be taken over by modern vampires -- ghouls that have trained themselves to be impervious to garlic, holy water and sunlight.

Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore

Am I really listing two vampire novels? Guess so. Moore and Pratchett's titles are more spoofs of vampire novels, however. Moore's is certainly adult humor all the way and not something the prudish will enjoy. Still this love story set in San Francisco is hilarious. My personal favorite along with his other vampire tale, You Suck.

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

My vanity insists I include some serious literature on this list and can I say that revisiting Greene's novel of the Catholic oppression in Mexico last century is musical and remarkable. This title, to me, is reminiscent of Steinbeck in that seemingly simple incidents and dialog suggest powerful and thought provoking philosophical discussion.

In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck

I can't remember how this title came across my radar, but whoever put it there included the observation s/he deemed it Steinbeck's best. Steinbeck's best? And I didn't even know about it. Well glad I rectified that. I love Grapes of Wrath -- so much that I can still make an argument for including it on a high school curriculum. That said, here's the first title I'd consider substituting in lieu of Grapes. Here, Steinbeck tells the story of labor unrest from the organizer's perspective which allows him to cut to the chase in much of what he considers from the working man's point of view in Grapes. Surely less epic in scope, but Steinbeck is a magician at hiding big ideas behind spare dialog and events. 

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

The only regret I have about Joyce is that reading him in short spurts -- which is usually all life permits me -- does not afford his language the attention it deserves. Flocks of good writers can compose music out of words, but Joyce, I think, is among the few that manages a symphony. Putting the lyrical qualities aside, Portrait is also a coming-of-age story everyone should read.

Gone too long...

Not only have a few great books re-inspired me to get my blog going again, but a few great conversations about books, too! Addressing the latter first, my first great conversation was my school's second annual ReCreate Reading Day -- a day in which everyone at school participates in small reading discussion groups. Anecdotal information and post-ReCreate Reading survey results confirm a resounding success! Highlights include a Skype session with author Dave Cullen (Columbine) and approximately 60 students. Our head of school came by to tell me that is was excellent. When the bell rang to end the session, no one moved. Surely, the ultimate teen-endorsement of a reading experience. My only regret was that I missed it because I was facilitating a discussion on Lev Grossman's The Magicians -- hardly a hardship since the kids loved this book as much as I did and it was so wonderful talking about it. Conversation quickly got to discussion of ethics of leadership and morality of power and such. Also, the kids tell me Grossman has a sequel due out summer 2011. Let's hope it's on time!

The second conversation about books happened just yesterday in my school library's reading club -- which we call the Non-Required Reading Reading Club. The basis is that we don't require reading of anything in particular. Students just come in and talk about whatever they've read lately. It's a small group, but wonderful. A student shared his recent discovery of C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. I'll come clean and admit I didn't even know about this, but have already ordered copies for my library. He was put on to it by one of our Latin teachers. Another student is part way through Neal Stephenson's Anathem. I gave this a shot last year and found it tough going. But another student had read it with a Physics teacher in our ReCreate Reading program last year. I was mostly proud to be sitting in a room with two people who successfully tackled this title. Anyway, conversation got on to the relationship between science and science fiction, if the literary cannon will include fantasy in the future -- since it dominates not only our fiction but many forms of contemporary entertainment these days -- and whether or not the Apollo 11 mission was the peak of scientific human endeavor. We all tend to leave these meetings feeling like there's so much more reading to do. But agree that if ever comes a time when there isn't will be the truly unhappy hour...

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

When I mention to folks that I just finished and loved Zeitoun by Dave Eggers I get a consistent response: "You mean you haven't read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius?" or "Isn't he the guy who wrote What is the What?"

Okay, yes, I have not read those books -- an omission I will rectify promptly -- but I did I mention that I just finished and loved Zeitoun? What an amazing story! Tragedy has a way of precipitating powerful writing and Katrina was no exception. Egger's Zeitoun recounts not the natural disaster but the ensuing human disaster that unfolded in the days immediately followed the levees' demise. Not to be missed!

Marcus Zusak

Just polished off Zusak's I am the Messenger. I really have no clue why this is considered a YA book. Surely it has appeal to teens, but -- much like his previous title, The Book Thief -- its appeal is clearly universal. The story of Ed Kennedy, a young man who becomes an unlikely delivery man of various forms of happiness, is engaging and magical. Ed, the book's narrator, has an intangible appeal that makes him strangely loveable and I was routing for him and his goofy friends immediately. Zusak manages to consider some pretty hefty subjects in a book that moves along at a nice clip and is a light read. Inspite of this, it's just as hypnotic as The Book Thief, which really swallowed me whole for the duration. While very different, both are excellent books for any age.

Libba Bray's "Going Bovine"

Just finished listening to Libba Bray's Going Bovine and just need to know what all the fuss is about? Bovine won lots of recognition, but I must be missing something. Seemed disconnected and predictable and confusing all at the same time. Loved much of the dialogue and Bray's clearly a talented YA author, but I was left wishing for much more.

For some reason this book makes me think either I -- or Bray -- or the critics -- have missed the teenage mark on our assessment of a good Young Adult title. I know there are books I think are just not terribly great that really speak to teens (Sacher's Holes comes to mind) and vice versa. And there are plenty of books I love that fall completely flat with teens.

As a reader and reviewer of YA titles, I'm always conscious of this. How much of my adult brain do I need to temporarily excuse to get a good fix on the value of a book written for teens? Or do good books transcend age parameters?

One of my favorite teen readers and students came in the library looking for a recommendation the other day. Actually we share many of the same favorites but couldn't have been farther apart on our recent assessment of Anna Jarzab's All UnquietThings. She loved it; I couldn't wait to finish it off. Anyway, as we started perusing the shelves she said, "Pick out something you really hated, Mrs. Vaughan." We laughed and I gave her Justine Larbalestier's Liar which I told I half liked and half didn't like.

I wonder what she'll think of Going Bovine?

My latest reads and listens...

It's been longer than I'd like so, probably a good time to review some of the things I've read or heard lately. Let's see...

I partook a bit of Raymond Chandler for the first time ever -- heard Elliot Gould read The Big Sleep. While the entire style seems dated, it's quite clear Chandler was a master. I understand now why Chandler fans are so faithful. Clearly he launched an entire genre and style. I don't always like having the image of an actor in my mind while I hear a character voice -- as I think it can take over the imaginative nature of a storyline too much. But Gould made an excellent Marlowe!

Just finished reading Grann's Lost City of Z in which he recounts Fawcett's fateful search for El Dorado in the Amazon in 1925 -- and parallels the journey with one of his own. Usually I eat books like this alive -- and did with this one after a slow start. It called to mind a book I read recently about the Gardner museum theft (The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser) in the 1990s. Much like the Fawcett mystery, the unsolved theft of several very valuable paintings has taken on almost mythic status and fostered the creation of dozens of obsessive amateur detectives. The Gardner phenomenon has taken a modern-day version of the Fawcett trail with, I understand online networks of information sharers exchanging ideas and clues.

Might be interesting to read about how an incident seems to pass over into the kind of viral sleuthing behavior that each of these seemed to have spawned. Surely there are lots of unsolved mysteries and crimes that might capture the public's attention? Why have these done so and the the amazing extent that they have? Is there something about the perceived attainability of answers?

Either way, Z was a great read and it makes me want to go back and revisit Peter Fleming's Brazilian Adventure. Grann mentions Fleming's book and his attempt to track down Fawcett in the 20s, although I seem to recall Fleming -- that would brother of Ian -- using the rescue idea as little more than pretense for a great adventure.

Best Teen Books for Adults.

My friend Andrew passed on this wonderful link from Flavorwire. Since I became a young adult librarian, I'm convinced that YA lit is the most under recognized genre out there. So much for everyone to enjoy in spite of -- or because of -- its intended audience. I was so charged to see the Vizzini title on the list. Can you hear me hollering, "Yes!" I have to say, I think King Dork should be here too, though. Still -- a great place to start if you'd like to tap into Young Adult Literature.

Harry Potter for grown ups

Just finished listening to Lev Grossman's The Magicians and can't help but take a sec to reflect on it here. To say Magicians is fantasy is so not enough. More like meta-fantasy. More like socio-meta-fantasy with a tinge of horror. Is that a genre?

Clearly Grossman did some thinking about what the world would be like if it really had a magical element. Okay -- that sounds a little like saying Brooks' World War Z is grounded in scientific fact except for the zombie part. But hang in there a minute.

What if a brilliant young man -- someone smart enough to  spend a life frustrated by not being able to acknowledge that there really is something more to his fancy card tricks than hours of practice -- suddenly discovered magic existed after all? That alone, really, would have to put even the most grounded of us a little on edge. I'd like to think we'd all handle it as well as Harry did, but really -- wouldn't closeted magicians need a bit of therapy?

Unfortunately Quentin Coldwater barely readjusts before he's plunged into five years of grueling training that make Hogwarts look like an all-inclusive island vacation. Grossman's magical world is imaginative and creative and loaded with lots of fantastic bits, but it never feels safe. It's edgy and downright terrifying at times -- and really, wouldn't a world where physics and the like no longer applied feel a little out there? Especially in the hands of  outwardly cocky but inwardly unsure 19 year olds? 

And so what do full trained and graduated magicians actually do? And once they've done it, then what? What do they do with all of it? Like in their heads? Really, if you really had to face down He Who Must Not Be Named one day, wouldn't that just wreck your plans to go to hang out at Starbucks the next day? Life just doesn't march cheerily on, really?

I love that Grossman tackles these questions and tells a great, heart-pounding story too. The novel is loaded with lots of nods to Lewis, Rowling, Tolkien, White, Baum and the rest, but Grossman takes things to a whole new level. Adults who loved those classics might think themselves ready to handle magic without the safety net -- but expect to be chilled to the bone!

Fascinating NYT article: Do School Libraries Need Books?

Here's a great article that puts the digital/print discussion in context of students and learning. Bravo to the Times for collecting a nice variety of commentary on this. Also, the posted reactions are just as enlightening as the article.

Just finished Oscar Wao --- Wow!

Saw Junot Diaz's The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao on several lists, but it wasn't until two people -- folks who score very high on my they-know-a-good-book-when-they-read-one meter -- told me they deemed it the most important book they'd read lately that I sought it out. I think one of them used the word "tranformative."

I rarely buy books anymore (it's a librarian thing) but made a beeline to the bookstore when I discovered the reserve lists were too long at not one, two but three local libraries. It's one thing for some one to tell you X is a good book. It's quite another to have them say it's "important" and quite another thing again to hear it from two people. Not too far into it someone noticed the title on my email signature line and wrote back to echo the first two recommenders. Need I mention that none of these folks knew about each other? By then, I was very grateful I had it in my hand and rearranged my schedule yesterday to put in some time with it. I was not disappointed.

Oscar Wao is down right hypnotic. The narration pulled me through from page one without let up until the very end. Diaz's use of the second person point of view kind grabs you around the throat and he has no problem sustaining the level of intensity. Feels like something really important will happen on every very next page. And he does this while sliding fluidly between generations and settings. Felt like he could have easily kept going for another 300 pages.

Besides a great story, great characters and slick narrative structure, Diaz's book is brilliant this way, too:
Being a middle-age white girl from the suburbs of Buffalo (my husband calls it the Midwest), I couldn't help but feel a little left out of Diaz's story. My Spanish barely sufficed to wrap my head around the frequent injection of Dominican idiom and I'm sure I missed much. I was grateful for his employment of footnotes (which allow him to extend narrative tangents) to provide me with the historical and cultural context I needed. Diaz brilliantly, I think, included plenty of the universal to carry me through and make me wish I was more aware of the experience of families like the de Leons and the Cabrals. I, too, will be telling people this is an important book.

For younger readers and anyone who has lived a life anything like Oscar's or Oscar's family, Diaz's novel must read like the story that's being waiting too long to be told. It will speak directly to them. Literature is important because it reflects back our own culture, in all it's beauty and horror, and makes us better for it. Thank you, Junot Diaz, for writing this book.

Near the end of the novel, Diaz's narrator Yunior makes a passing reference to lovers of good books enjoying literary epiphanies. It seems to me Diaz wrote one.

Teens Like to Read if you let them Read what they Like

Last spring the school which employs me as a librarian, let me radically redesign our summer reading program. It took a bit of doing, but the basic design was -- and continues to be -- founded on the premise that teens will like to read if you let them read what they like. Teachers volunteered to sponsor titles and students were allowed to sign up for whichever teacher/title they wished. If they wanted to not decide -- and read any book they hadn't read before -- they signed up for a group in which everyone had read a different book. Armed with loads of discussion questions, teachers facilitated conversation about the variety of books.

Anyway, it was a resounding success! Sure we had some duds who didn't read anything, but most did. And they read great stuff, too! Here's the list of titles that were selected by teachers, sometimes at the suggestions of some of their students, sometimes based on their own individual book passion.

1984 by George Orwell
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Vol. 1: The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson
The Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
The Elfish Gene: Dungeons and Dragons and Growing Up Strange by Mark Barrowcliffe
The Endurance by Alfred Lansing
Godel's Proof by Ernest Nagel
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Hooked by Matt Richtel
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
Maus I by Art Spiegelman
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Paper Towns by John Green
Petey by Ben Mikaelsen
The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
The Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer

I am in the process of making a suggestion list for this year. No one has to stick to it, but providing an annotated list of titles proved very helpful last year. I would welcome any suggestions.

My short speech to 600 teens about reading

I had the opportunity to put a plug in for my reading club at the weekly meeting at the high school where I am blissfully employed as a librarian. I started with a plug for reading in general. Here's what I said:

When I was in college I spent my summers working as an aide in the offices of the Buffalo Courier Express -- at the time, a major morning paper in a city of over a million people. Even though I spent my time taking dictation from reporters, sorting mail and pouring coffee, it was all very exciting. It was my first job in a professional setting. I strived to make a good impression. And for the most part, I did. I worked hard and felt pretty good about how I was doing.

One night, the fatherly reporter who sat across the desk from me attempted to make friendly conversation. I think he was mostly trying to humor the new kid.

"So what are you reading?" asks he. I sighed and admitted I really wished I had time to read, but I didn't. He looked at me aghast. "No!" he said. "You have to make time to read." He mumbled the same thing a few times and that was pretty much the end of the conversation. So much for my professionalism. What I learned is that professsionals don't just talk the talk, they walk the walk.

He was right, of course, and ever since that night, I have made an effort to have something to read around. I don't always get to it, but I try. I discovered how easily reading floated back into my life -- a life I was convinced had no spare hours for reading for fun.

Read something, anything that's purely for your own enjoyment, every night before sleep. Even if it's just 5 minutes -- you'll be better for it. Even if you fall asleep before the end of the first paragraph for 2 or 3 nights running, by the end of the week you'll probably have hit lift off with an interesting article or a great book. And that will be a wonderful thing. You will have become a reader.

2010 ALA Awards Announced!

In case you missed it, the American Library Association announced their annual slew of awards at its mid-winter meeting in Boston this month. Check out the ALA Award Winners!

Yikes! Has it really been a month?

Where did the time go? My family has already left and returned from our holiday travels. The last thing I remember is my husband saying, "How many books are you bringing?" as he tottered on the scales with the suitcases. I had a very hard time making the short list of titles much shorter than my previous post. The good new is, I really committed myself to getting lots of reading done, so here's the round up:

Columbine by Dave Cullen
Powerful book! Anyone interested in learning about contemporary American culture should read this title. An amazing amount of research compiled in a well executed revisit of that fateful day. Cullen's look back is as much about the event (and the personalities that created and were touched by it) as it is about the media swirl that swallowed it (and perpetuated myths about it).

King of Heists by J. North Conway
Honestly, a big disappointment. Conway spends more time leading up to the big event than he does recounting it. Terribly anti-climatic. I felt compelled to finish because I hauled it along, but it wasn't suitcase-worthy.

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
Stork's novel tops my holiday fiction reading. Reminscent of The Curious Incident of the Dog at Nighttime, Marcelo is narrated by a troubled young misfit trying to find his place in the world. It has the hallmarks of many great books: beautifully simple on one level and intensely complex at the same time. Adults and teens who enjoy tackling big philosophical questions will love this!

Wherever Nina Lies by Lynn Weingarten
I heard about this one on NPR, so had to pick it up. Excellent story. Great characters and even a mystery, too. After I closed the back cover I thought it was all a bit outlandish -- but had to admit that I was completely taken in -- and loved every minute. I hope Weingarten is busy writing her next one.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
I don't know if Lockhart is writing another novel featuring Frankie, but I sure hope so. She's easily one of the most engaging fictional characters in any recent book -- teen or adult. Creative, funny, and a bit devlish.

Liar by Justine Larbalestier
A solid read. The review I read compared this to Disreputable History, and while it's certainly a good book, I don't think they're quite in the same category. Larbalestier is definitely on an upward trajectory with her writing, however, so I'll be looking for her next book.

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Horses, was one of those books that came at me from about a half dozen directions: reviews, friends, best of lists, that it became impossible to ignore. Lovely writing. Absolutely hypnotic prose. Great story. Lush scene setting.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Did I say Marcelo,  was my favorite holiday fiction? Can I take it back? Okay, since I actually finished  Cloud Atlas after I got home, possibly I can count it as a different category? My favorite post-holiday fiction! Mitchell is just amazing. I loved, loved, loved Black Swan Green which sent me looking for this. It took a bit of patience to hit lift-off, but it was well worth the effort. Mitchell could have made these disparate stories completely different books, but somehow weaves them all together.