Monthly Archives: August 2017

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Found Footage Horror in Books?

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It’s summertime, which means I’ve been indulging my love of horror novels, dear readers.   And I’ve found myself feeling a bit nostalgic…

…How many of you remember The Blair Witch Project?

Though it wasn’t the first “found footage” horror film–‘found footage’ being a sort of sub-genre where the film is presented as amateur video discovered after an event–The Blair Witch Project came along at precisely the right time, harnessing the power of the new technology that was the Internet to whip everyone into something of a tizzy.  Debates sprung up everywhere as to whether the events depicted in the film actually happened, what truly happened to the three young film-makers seen in the footage, and just what the Blair Witch really was.  I remember three people in Blockbuster video (yes, Blockbuster Video)  arguing together about whether the film was a ‘hoax’, and if so, what it meant for the horror genre as a whole that this film had so blurred the line between fiction and reality.

Because that’s what ‘found-footage’ does so well, and why it’s such a fascinating genre.  Found-footage creates a reality in a way that few other movies do.  It’s power comes from its incompleteness.  Real life usually doesn’t play out with a well-plotted beginning, middle, and end.  It’s messy.  There are plotlines that go nowhere.  And, in the end, we don’t get the answers to all our questions.

Horror as a genre allows us to deal with the unpleasant, the scary, and the overwhelming aspects of life in a safe way.  Found footage helps us deal with a reality where something are just un-knowable.  And for creatures whose brains are programmed to think in narrative form, that in itself is pretty terrifying.

Anyways, looking back on The Blair Witch Project today (not the sequel, for which I had such high hopes)…it’s a bit campy.  The plot doesn’t really hold up (they argue for 10 minutes out of an 80-minute movie about a map).  The steady-cam makes everyone a wee bit nauseous.  But what is does beautifully is harness our inherent terror of not knowing.  And even though ‘found footage’ is a tough genre to do successfully, especially with today’s passion for special effects and IMAX panoramas and computer generation, I don’t think that fear of not knowing has dimmed at all.  If anything, it’s probably gotten even stronger now that we have so many resources to look up anything we want, to know all we want…to dispel those shadows lurking in the corner…

But when that ability is taken away, when sentences end with ellipses or a comma, and not a period, when the camera is dropped and there is no resolution–it triggers something in our cave-brain that thinks in narrative to flip out and start climbing the walls.

And for those of you looking for a “found footage” fix in a book–there are any number of options from which you can choose.  Dracula and Frankenstein, the very foundations of the horror genre, are themselves ‘found footage’ of a sort, in that they are collections of media produced by the characters.  So let’s take a look as see how this genre has expanded and evolved–just don’t look too closely at those shadows in the corner……

The Supernatural Enhancements: We’ve covered this book here a few times before, but that’s because it’s so flipping good.  The plot centers around a twenty-something gentleman named A., who inherits a house in the backwoods of Virginia from an unknown relative who apparently died after jumping out of a window at the precise age that A himself is now.  Together with Niamh, a mute young woman who is a force in her own right, A sets out to discover the secrets of the house, and of his mysterious family.  The book is a mish-mash of letters written by A to his aunt, of transcripts of conversations between A and Niamh (who writes instead of speaking), and transcripts of video and audio recordings made inside the house.  And codes. So many, many codes.  Because A’s family has plenty of secrets, both fascinating and terrible–and while we learn a good deal of them, there is plenty in this book that is left up to the imagination, not the least of which is what precisely lives in the upstairs bathroom?

House of Leaves: Another old favorite here, and one that very well might take the found footage tale to a whole new level.  Mark Z. Danielewski’s book, ostensibly, is about a family who buys a house that turns out to be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.  And not in a fun, TARDIS-kind of way.  This is a house with a mind of its own, and it’s quite easy to get lost forever.  But if that wasn’t enough, this is a found story about a found story–and, as such, this book is a chilling maze of footnotes, as the multiple layers of storytellers all work through their own issues with this tale–and reveal just how badly this house has affected them all.  This is one of the few books that can make citations scary.  Read it on a beach.  In the sunlight.  Probably, read it outside.  It’s just safer that way.

We Eat Our Own: This is a story less comprised of found footage, and more about found footage–specifically, about the first new found-footage horror movie, the Italian Cannibal Holocaust, which was widely believed to be a ‘snuff’ film when it was first released (a subsequent trial revealed that the human actors all survived, though the scenes of animal brutality were indeed real).  Kea Wilson’s novel follows a nameless, struggling actor in 1970s New York who gets a call that an enigmatic director wants him for an art film set in the Amazon…not because of his talents, but because he so closely resembles the former star who is unable to complete the film.  The conditions on-set are terrible–the atmosphere is so damp that the celluloid film disintegrates, the director himself seems near madness, and there are strange rumors on set about the goings-on in the village around them.  This book is less about Cannibal Holocaust itself than it is a book about violence, and what is does to people who cannot escape it.  It’s a twisty, twisted, thought-provoking, bizarre story that skips perspectives with dizzying ease, and ends with a scene as ambiguous as The Blair Witch Project itself.  Try it, and tell me what you think is going on!

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Yes, You Can Do That With Your Library Card!

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Do you enjoy reading ebooks?  Do you enjoy listening to e-audiobooks?  Do you enjoy downloading titles from the Library?  (You probably should…we have oodles and oodles of titles, and are eagerly adding more regularly!)

If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions…Have you met Libby?

Libby is the bright, shiny, surprisingly easy-to-use and comprehensive app designed to help you access all the fantastic e-titles available from the Library!  It (she?) was developed by the good people at Overdrive, and allow you to access all the phenomenal titles available via Overdrive in just a few easy clicks.

Check it out:

Here are some of the neat things Libby can do:

If you have a card from more than one Library system, like the Peabody Library and the Boston Public Library, you can save both your card numbers in one app for easy use.

You can keep track of your reading history to remember authors or narrators you particularly enjoyed.

Libby also allows you to read zoomable graphic novels, or a picture book with read-along audio.

And the best part is that it’s really, surprisingly easy to down-load and use…take it from me, who openly bickers with computers on a regular basis.

We have lots and lots of information on Libby and on Overdrive–just come in and ask!  And for those of you looking to get started, click the links below to get the Libby app for your phone or tablet!

Click to access the Apple App Store

Click to access via Google Play

Click to access Microsoft (for Windows 10)

And click here for Overdrive’s Help Guide for Downloading and Using Libby–Enjoy!
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The Romance Garden!

And so we come once more to a new month, and a new sampling of our genre experts’ favorite selections from their romance reading.  We hope you enjoy–perhaps in your own summertime garden?  Or someone else’s?  Or the beach?  Or the mountains?  There is no where that Library books cannot travel!

Joseph Farquharson 1846-1935 Scottish painter

Bridget: Lady Clare is All That by Maya Rodale

It’s been a while since I found a romance that really worked for me, so it was a treat to come across Maya Rodale’s newest book and remember all the things I love about her romances.

Lady Claire Cavendish is a mathematician, even if no one finds brains attractive in a woman.  She has come to England to find a man–a specific man–another mathematician.  But instead, she finds the handsome, beguiling, and infuriating Lord Fox.  Fox has been nursing his ego ever since his fiancee jilted him.  So when he is offered a bet that he can transform Lady Claire, Society’s roughest diamond, into its most prized jewel, he figures it is the perfect way to divert his attention.  He never bargained on his subject being a real, actual–and fascinating–person.

Maya Rodale is one of those writers who really thinks about the romances she is writing, and the journey on which she sends her characters, so this Pygmalion-esque plot had a lot of depth, and a lot of transformations (though not the kind that either character imagined).  I loved that Claire never bothered to hide her brains, and that Fox, even though he hadn’t a clue what she was talking about, loved her for it.  All in all, this was a really fun, diverting, and heartwarming romance about loving someone both because of, and regardless of their looks.

Kelley: Between the Devil and the Duke by Kelly Bowen

Regency Romance writer Kelly Bowen is back with the third volume in her “A Season for Scandal” series. Angelique Archer is the unfortunate sister of a thoroughly debauched marquess. Since the death of both of their parents, the Archers find themselves on the brink of financial ruin, and Angelique knows for certain that her brother will do nothing to remedy the situation so she decides to take matters into her own hands.

Given her strength in mathematics and skill at cards, Angelique tries her luck at a gaming hell that allows masked women to attend anonymously. The success she has at the vingt-et-un table allows the Archers to keep up appearances, but it also attracts the attention of the gaming hell’s owner Alexander Lavoie. Alexander is initially attracted by Angelique’s mysterious beauty, but that attraction becomes something much more when he witnesses her quick mind, independence and resourceful nature firsthand.

A romance that includes mystery, a taste of London’s underworld, and a surprising plot twist, Between the Devil and the Duke is not your traditional Regency, but I think my favorite aspect of this book is that Alex and Angelique’s “happily ever after” is refreshingly different as well. However, if you want to know what happens, you’ll have to read the book. No spoilers in the Romance Garden! Happy reading!

Until next month, dear readers!

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Five Book Friday!

And a very happy August to you, beloved patrons!

We may be, meteorologically speaking, in the doldrums, but for those of us who enjoy celebrating all that there is to be celebrated, August is far from a dull month.  Here are just a few of the holidays that you can savor this month:

August 8: National Sneak Some Zucchini On To Your Neighbor’s Porch Day

This is not a joke.  It’s in the Farmer’s Almanac, so clearly, it must be true.  August is high season for zucchini, and some people are lucky to have an over-abundance of the lovely green squashes, which can grow really quite mammoth if not picked, and really don’t store very well.  As a result, Pennsylvanian radio host Tom Roy designated August 8 as a day to off-load some of your zucchini by until the dead of night and quietly creeping up to your neighbors’ front doors, leaving plenty of zucchini for them to enjoy.

August 9: National Book Lover’s Day

This is not a drill.  It’s a whole day to celebrate you–and me–and all of us who measure our lives in pages and chapters.  So get out there and celebrate bibliophiles!  Or, better yet, come into the Library and visit with some treasured volumes!

August 24: National Waffle Day

The first U.S. patent for a waffle iron was issued in the U.S. on August 24, 1869 to Cornelius Swarthout of Troy, New York.  The first recipe for waffles (or, at least, a food recognizable as waffles) was written in the 14th century, so indulge in some history as well as some brunch today, and don’t skimp on the maple syrup!

August 30: National Toasted Marshmallow Day

Sponsored by the National Confectioner’s Association of America, this day is reserved for the blazing glory and the smoky deliciousness that is the toasted marshmallow.  Mind you, it’s not National Smores Day….that’s August 10th.  This day is for the marshmallows alone.

And every day in August is a good day for books!  So let’s take a look at some of the new titles that have paraded onto our shelves this week for your reading pleasure!

The Unwomanly Face of War: Nobel-Prize Winner Svetlana Alexievich’s stellar 1988 book is finally available in translation, and has lost nothing of its power or insight over the years.  Alexievich traveled thousands of miles and visited more than a hundred towns to record the oral histories of women who fought, worked, and served in the Second World War. nurses and doctors, pilots, tank drivers, machine-gunners, and snipers. They battled alongside men, and yet, after the victory, their efforts and sacrifices were forgotten.  In this collection, this symphony of voices reveals a different aspect of the war—the everyday details of life in combat left out of the official histories, and the remarkable, every day women who made history.  This is an incredibly important work, and a huge book for anyone interested in military history, women’s history, human interest stories, and storytelling in general.  The Guardian summed it all up beautifully, calling this book “A monument to courage . . . It would be hard to find a book that feels more important or original. . . . Alexievich’s account of the second world war as seen through the eyes of hundreds of women is an extraordinary thing. . . . Her achievement is as breathtaking as the experiences of these women are awe-inspiring.”

Among the Living and the Dead: A Tale of Exile and Homecoming on the War Roads of Europe: Another fascinating tale of women in the Second World War, this one from Inara Verzemnieks, whose grandmother Livija and her grandmother’s sister, Ausma, were separated when they fled their family farm. They would not see each other again for more than 50 years. Raised by her grandparents in Washington State, Inara grew up among expatriates, scattering smuggled Latvian sand over the coffins of the dead and singing folk songs about a land she had never visited.  When Inara discovered the scarf Livija wore when she left home, this tangible remnant of the past points the way back to the remote village where her family broke apart.  This book is the interwoven story of Grandmother Livija’s life as a refugee, Ausma’s harrowing exile in Siberia under Stalin, and Inara’s quest for her family’s story, all coming together to form a beautiful, haunting tale of resilience, love, and profound loss, not only of one family, but of a nation and a generation.  Booklist called this work “Spellbinding and poetic, this is a moving tribute to the enduring promise of home.”

A Dark So Deadly: Beloved thriller-writer Stuart MacBride is back with a fascinating, fast-paced standalone story of an erstwhile group known as the Misfit Mob. It’s where the Scotland police dump the officers it can’t get rid of, but wants to: the outcasts, the troublemakers, the compromised. Officers like DC Callum MacGregor, lumbered with all the boring go-nowhere cases. So when an ancient mummy turns up at the Oldcastle tip, it’s his job to find out which museum it’s been stolen from.  But when Callum uncovers links between his ancient corpse and three missing young men, life starts to get a lot more interesting. The “real police” already have more cases than they can cope with, so, against everyone’s better judgement, the Misfit Mob are just going to have to manage this one on their own.  No one expects them to succeed, but right now they’re the only thing standing between the killer’s victims and a slow, lingering death. The question is, can they prove everyone wrong before he strikes again? Clever, funny, and full of sensational atmosphere, this is an ideal way for new readers to discover MacBride’s talent.  Library Journal agrees, praising this novel’s  “Wickedly twisty plotting and dazzling displays of black humour”.

The Half-Drowned King: It isn’t often that we get a fiction debut about mythical Vikings, but here one is, and we couldn’t be more excited!  Ragnvald Eysteinsson grew up believing that he would one day take his dead father’s place as chief of his family’s lands. But, sailing home from a raiding trip to Ireland, the young warrior is betrayed and left for dead by men in the pay of his greedy stepfather. Rescued by a fisherman, Ragnvald is determined to have revenge for his stepfather’s betrayal and rescue his beloved sister Svanhild. Meanwhile, Svanhild is desperate to escape the arranged marriage her stepfather organized–but when freedom comes at the hands of her brother’s hatred rival, will she have the courage to take it?  A fascinating adventure with lots of rich characters and deep questions, this is a book for all the adventurers out there seeking new literary lands to explore.  Kirkus Reviews loved this one too, saying in their review “While Hartsuyker’s prose is straightforward, the plot is as deliciously complex as Game of Thrones. And, in an era so dominated by the tales of men, it’s nice to see a complicated, cunning heroine like Svanhild swoop in and steal the show. Hold on to your helms and grab your shields—Hartsuyker is just getting started.”

The Seventh Function of Language: If you, like me, like your literature quirky and insolent, then look no further than Laurent Binet’s newest release.  This book has elements of a Dan Brown caper, but with the French intelligentsia as its cast of characters.  We begin in Paris, 1980, when the literary critic Roland Barthes dies―struck by a laundry van―after lunch with the presidential candidate François Mitterand. The world of letters mourns a tragic accident. But what if it wasn’t an accident at all? What if Barthes was . . . murdered?  Jacques Bayard is the hapless detective sent to investigate the case, who finds himself in search of a lost manuscript by the linguist Roman Jakobson on the mysterious “seventh function of language.”  Filled with secret societies, French philosophy, mayhem, and a love of language, Binet’s story is a bizarre and wonderful adventure that earned as starred and a boxed review from Publisher’s Weekly (no mean feat, that), who called this tale “[A] loving inquiry into 20th-century intellectual history that seamlessly folds historical moments . . . into a brilliant illustration of the possibilities left to the modern novel.”

Until next week, beloved patrons–happy reading!

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The Great American Read!

A few days ago, PBS announced the production of a new eight-part television series, and related nationwide campaign “that explores the joy of books and the power of reading, told through the prism of America’s 100 best-loved books”.  The working title of the project?

The Great American Read.

The goal, apparently, is to harness the power of digital media to get the American people to compile a list of 100 books–an “Advisor panel of literary professionals” will also help compile the list, so that we don’t end up with the literary equivalent of “Boaty McBoatface”. The show will also work with local bookstores and libraries (PBS…HERE WE ARE.  SITTING BY THE PHONE.  WAITING FOR YOUR CALL) in order to get under the skin, so to speak, of American readers, and discover why the books chosen are so meaningful.

The books will, according to PBS’ press release, be organized in themes, “such as ‘Being American,’ ‘Heroes,’ ‘Growing Up,’ ‘What We Do for Love’ and more…As summer turns to fall, voting will close and America’s top 10 books will be revealed counting down to America’s Best-Loved in the final episode of the series in September 2018.”

Hey, I’m as intrigued about this as the next person–and I know, as a devoted reader yourself, you’ve already got a list of books ready to got that you would like to force the American public at large to read.  Maybe it’s not a round 100 books, but that’s ok…But I’m also really interested to see how the rules of this Literary Survivor is going to work.  Is it just a book that a lot of people in this country like to read?  Does the book have to be about America?  Does it have to be written by an American?  If so, how do we define American?  Indeed, what makes a novel American in the first place?

We’ll be keeping an eye on all of this for you, beloved patrons.  And it would be exiting if this show got us all talking a lot more about the books that shape us, shape our communities, and, perhaps, shape our country, as vast and varied and confused and contentious and fascinating as it is.  In fact, here are a few 20th century books to get us started thinking about how varied the literary USA really is.  We’ll add onto this list over the coming weeks!

Lolita: Vladimir Nabokov’s most well-known, and most contentious novel is, yes, the story of a middle-aged pedophile.  But the entire framework of the story–the road trips on which Humbert Humbert and Dolores Haze embark during the book–were inspired by the yearly driving trips Nabokov and his wife, Vera, took every summer to catch and study butterflies.  An immigrant from Russia, Nabokov was fascinated by American consumerism and kitsch.  If you ever wondered why ‘Lolita’ insisted on staying in hokey hotels, eating at diners with ads on the napkins?  It’s because those were the details that delighted Nabokov himself.

In Cold Blood: Speaking of road trips, travels across the country make up a significant part of Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel that details the 1959 murders of four members of the  Clutter family in the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas.  When Capote learned about the details of the crime, he traveled to Kansas himself with his best friend, Harper Lee.  Together, they interviewed the Clutter’s neighbors and friends, creating a portrait of a family that was flawed, strong, strange, and wholly realistic.  Following the arrest of Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Smith, Capote turned his focus on them, telling the story of these two men, the life that brought them to Holcomb, and the country they had traveled in their strange, short lives.  This is very much a tale about a moment in American history, about the social framework that shaped all these people’s lives, and the environments in which they existed, giving us all a glimpse into a time and a place that feels at once utterly familiar and shockingly far away.  The image above is of the audio book, which is also stunning.

No Name in the Street: James Baldwin’s non-fiction work, detailing the racial tensions in the United States, especially during the 1960’s and 1970’s, are some of the most insightful, heartbreaking, and inspiring out there, and his name deserve to be on a list of great American writers.  This biographical work displays James Baldwin’s fury and despair more deeply than any of his other works. He vividly detail his Harlem childhood which shaped his early consciousness and forced him to realize the violence of racism first-hand, and the later events that scored his heart with pain–the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.  Baldwin also discusses his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his return to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face.  This is a powerful, unforgettable account of another side of US history.

Goodnight Moon: Hey, if we’re going to talk about books that meant something to as many people as possible, there are few books as widely-read and widely-enjoyed as Margaret Wise Brown’s classic tale about a bunny getting ready for bed, and saying goodnight to all the things in the bedroom.  It’s led to any number of parodies, from the philosophical to the profane, but despite it all, Brown’s 1947 story remains. In a 2007 on-line poll, the National Education Association named the book one of its “Teachers’ Top 100 Books for Children”, and in 2012 it was ranked number four among the “Top 100 Picture Books” in a survey published by School Library Journal…so you don’t have to take my word for it!

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The Girl Who Is Sick and Tired of All These Girls…

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Alright, beloved readers.   It’s time we had a talk about all these books with ‘girl’ in the title.

A number of people wiser, sager, and probably more rational than I have weighed in on this topic already, so let’s take a look through them first.  Perhaps the most statistically interesting factoid about “girls” in books came from Emily St. John Mandel, best-selling author of the National Book Award finalist Station Eleven. 

St. John Mandel and her research assistant used Goodreads to track titles with “girl” in it, and gather data from those results. They whittled down the 2,000 most popular books with “girl” in the title, eliminating children’s and young adult books, eventually getting a list of 810 books.  You can read the full break-down of her data in an article published at fivethirthyeight.com, but the two points that most media sites picked up on was that the “girl” in question was rarely “girl” aged.  68% of the time, she was usually a grown-up woman.  Secondly, “girl” books written by women had a better chance of surviving the book than “girl” books written by men:

via fivethirtyeight.com

First and foremost, can we talk for a moment about how there were more than 810 books with “girl” in the title for St. John Mandel to use?  That is a colossal number–and it seems to be rising.  Though this graph is a little dated at this point, you can still see how many novels are have “girls” in their title and in their plots:

Via fivethirtyeight.com

There are reasons for this: first, publishing is a precarious, unpredictable, and downright weird business.  If publishers can find a trend that works, they will milk it for every tiny drop they possibly can.  So when “girl” books like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, and The Girl on the Train did so colossally well (and their movie adaptations, by and large, succeeded, too), there was a huge push to get more and more books that would attract readers looking for a new fix.  There are a lot of thematic parallels in these books–unreliable narrators, women in peril, noirish themes, conspiracies, small town/home town settings, etc–and publishers are banking on the fact that you will finish one “girl” book and head right for the next.  That’s why they all look so similar, too!  In a piece for The Guardian, Eva Wiseman described them as “embossed covers in shades of storm”.  And as each “girl” book succeeds, the need for more grows.

But there’s way more to it than just linguistics and marketing.  There’s that 68% of “girls” being grown-up women, and everyone still calling her/them “girls”.

Eva Wiseman sees the trend as subversive, because “the girl is a “girl” not because she’s weak, but because she is on the verge of changing into something else. She’s not simply a victim, or a wife.”  Robin Wasserman also argues there is potential in the word:  “To be called “just a girl” may be diminishment, but to call yourself “still a girl,” can be empowerment, laying claim to the unencumbered liberties of youth. As Gloria Steinem likes to remind us, women lose power as they age. The persistence of girlhood can be a battle cry.”  Emily Roese argues that “When ‘girl’ is not taken to mean naïve or innocent, but instead flexible and susceptible to change, the term can be a highly empowering label that neither whittles the protagonist down to a shell of a woman stripped of motherhood, nor demotes her to a naive youth. Within this terminology, woman’s wisdom and awareness is retained, while girl’s ingenuity and creativity can resurface.”

I don’t think any of these wise interpretations are necessarily wrong.  But I think there is something more to it.  But these “girls”, and this is important, are acting independently.  Whether it’s in vanishing, or in solving a mystery, or through lying, or through truth-telling.  These “girls” are, to whatever extent is possible, controlling their own narrative.

In literature, typically, when “girls” grow up, they are supposed to become “wives”, or “mothers”, or fill a position that is inherently relationship-oriented, but “nurse”….Which also explains the rash of books out there called “The [Insert Profession]’s Daughter“, or “The [Insert Profession]’s Wife“, with the assumption being that the [Professional] discussed in a man.  Men are defined by their professions; women are defined by their relationships to men.  But these “girls” are not “wives” or “mothers”, whose existence is dependent on their relationship to another.  They are independent entities, demanding to be the center of the story that is being told.

That we are highlighting the actions and roles of women in these stories is also pretty significant.  But to keep calling them “girls” traps these characters in a kind of fairytale world where young ladies went where they weren’t supposed to go.  The fact that these The “girls” in these titles are very often portrayed as vulnerable, breakable, and, possibly, insane, reinforces that.  Or else it uses “girls” in the same way we say “girls’ night” or call things “girly”.  It trivializes the power and agency these characters have in their stories.

I realize that “girl” is quicker to say and potentially easier to remember than “woman”.   And I also realize that there are times where “girls” are more appropriate to the story than “woman”–I’m thinking specifically of Emma Cline’s The Girls…But we shouldn’t be afraid of “women”, in books, or in real life…in both fiction and reality, women do lots of things all the time, all by themselves. But by insisting on referring to these characters as “girls”, we’re downplaying a really fascinating literary trend, as well as the characters who made that trend possible.