Welcome to the end of another week, beloved patrons, and our first Five Book Friday post from November! The last of our 30-day months for the year (not that there are many left), November is the kick off of the holiday season, so brace yourself (and don’t go into a crafting store unless you must–I nearly drowned in tinsel). But there are plenty of holidays in November that fly under the radar, and deserve to be savored as well. Here are a few days worth observing this month:
November 6: National Nachos Day! So the story goes, a maître d’hôtel at a restaurant in Piedras Negras, Mexico named Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya invented the dish in 1943 when some American servicemen stationed in Eagle Creek, Texas, crossed the border for dinner. The restaurant had closed for the day, but Anaya took pity on the men and invented a dish with tortillas, cheese and salsa, calling it “Nacho’s especiales“. Word of the dish spread, and very soon entered into immortality.
Also November 6: Daylight Savings Time: Commemorate the First World War, which established daylight savings time in order to save on fuel to light munitions works and factories, as well as to give workers a few brief moments in the sun every day, and spend an extra hour in bed!
November 11: Veterans’ Day: Known in most countries as Remembrance Day (and formerly Armistice Day), this day commemorates the end of hostilities of the First World War, and a day to honor the fallen in that war and all subsequent wars. However, the United States had already designated Memorial Day in May as the day to commemorate the fallen, so we acknowledge living veterans this day, as well as the end of the Great War at 11am. The Library will be closed on November 11.
November 14: National Pickle Day: Did you know Americans eat approximately nine pounds of pickles a year? Or that America is named after a pickle merchant? Ok, Amerigo Vespucci started his career as a ship chandler, which means he sold supplies to outgoing ships, but his nickname was ‘the pickle merchant’. Nerd alert.
November 28: National French Toast Day: French Toast was neither invented in France, nor by a French person. The earliest reference we have to the dish is from the 4th century, where a Roman cookbook describes a dish called “Pan Dulcis”, which is essentially French Toast as we know it. Since then, it’s been used the world over to bring new, delicious life to day-old bread.
And now, on to the books!
The Comet Seekers: Critics have been waxing rhapsodical over Helen Sedgwick’s debut, which opens on the barren plains of an Antarctic research station. And it isn’t just because Sedgwick has created two indelible and beautiful characters in Róisín, an Irish scientist who treks around the world to study comets, and François, the base’s chef, who has left his hometown only twice in his life–it’s because she gives us not only their lives, but the lives that fill both characters’ past and future, and showing how they are all inextricably bound together. By moving through time to explore all that have made these two into what and who they are in their present, Sedgwick is able to tell a story that is as multifaceted, and as fascinating, as the comet that brings her characters initially together. Publisher’s Weekly agrees, calling the novel “A haunting and wonderfully ethereal debut novel about first loves, inescapable loss, and the search for one’s place in a complicated world . . . Uniquely structured and stylistically fascinating, the multilayered story comes full circle in a denouement that is both heartbreaking and satisfying.”
Smoke and Mirrors: Acclaimed mystery writer Elly Griffiths returns to post-World War II Britain, and her Magic Men series in this second adventure with D.I. Edgar Stephens and the magician Max Mephisto–who is currently starring in a production of Aladdin that has all of Brighton a-buzz. But Stephens is on the hunt for a killer who strangled two children in the woods, then abandoned alongside a trail of candy in a gruesome recreation of “Hansel and Gretel”. Does the answer to the case lie in the strange and disturbing plays that one of the children wrote? Or is the staging of the bodies a clue towards the theater? It lies with Stephens, and his erstwhile partner Max Mephisto, to find out the truth in this investigation, which Kirkus called “A dazzlingly tricky mystery, oddball characters, and an authentic feel for life in post-World War II England.”
Certain Dark Things: Silvia Moreno-Garcia combines elements of Latin American folklore with a surprisingly modern twist on the vampire to bring this noirish, gritty tale to life. At its heart is Atl, a descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, who requires the blood of the young to survive. Desperate to escape a vampire gang that is hunting her down, she grabs a young man named Domingo and flees, never dreaming that her split-second choice will lead to a real affection between these two survivors. But as the cops, gangs, and vampires all move closer and closer to a final showdown, what chance does their fledgling bond have to survive? The New York Journal of Books loved this novel, noting how it “beautifully and powerfully reinvigorates one of the seminal horror fiction monsters in some truly unexpected and sublime ways….this novel is by turns sensual and grim, introspective and disturbing, suspenseful and moving, and all told in the sleek and lyrical prose for which Moreno-Garcia is deservedly acclaimed.”
The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novels of Ursula K. Le Guin: Le Guin is not only a pioneer in the science fiction and fantasy genres, for exploring issues of psychology, gender, and environmentalism in her work, but she has also influenced authors from a number of genres, as well, including Salman Rushdie and Neil Gaiman. While collections of her stories have been published in the past, this is the first book to form a conscious retrospective of her writings, from the 1971 “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow” to her 2002 work “Paradise Lost”, allowing readers to follow Le Guin as she explains, to “wander around the universe, leaping from hither to yon”. Though a big of a weighty tome, these thirteen stories are a sensational bit of escapism for fans and newcomers alike. Publisher’s Weekly agrees, writing in their starred review that “Le Guin is never soggily sentimental, but throughout her long career she has preferred to deal with heartbreakingly real characters who discover that they can extend themselves into acts of generous compassion. These stories are wonderful, and full of wonder.”
You Will Not Have My Hate: On November 13, 2015, Antoine Leiris’s wife, Hélène Muyal-Leiris, was killed by terrorists while attending a rock concert at the Bataclan Theater in Paris. Three days later, Leiri wrote an open letter to his wife’s killers in a Facebook post that was read around the world. His letter was one of deep grief, but it was also one of defiant hope, as he promised that his young son’s life would not be defined by the violence that took his mother: “For as long as he lives, this little boy will insult you with his happiness and freedom.” In this book, Leiri shares the full story of his loss and his determined struggle to go on, forcing us to realize, in simple, stunning prose, what it means to be a survivor, and urging us all to find the hope to make a better world. This is a book that is already been hailed as a best–and most important–book of 2016, and the Irish Independent notes that it is “An extraordinary read, honest, intimate and lightly poetic. It is a testament of love, loss and grief and also the often untold story of those who are left behind and must find a way to go on”.