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Staff (and Patron!) Recommendations!

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I’m not sure if you’ve noticed this by now, but I really like books.  A great deal.  I wouldn’t say I like them more than most people…especially not in a crowded room….but that is what is great about working in a library.  Not only am I surrounded by books (very friendly books, by the way), but I get to work with people who love books (and who are also very friendly), and I get to talk with patrons who love books, as well!
When you have a group of people who are all gathered in the same place for the same general purpose, magic happens.  In this case, we all share what we’ve been reading, what we enjoyed, what we didn’t, and what we plan to read next (when, magically, we start getting 30-hour days, or no longer need to sleep or something…).  And since, as Oscar Wilde said, “The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on”.  Thus, here is another round-up of staff recommendations, with some additions from our Beloved Patrons!
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Just as a side note here, patron recommendations are my favorite thing ever, besides chocolate-chili cupcakes and Jonathan Strange.
From the Archives:
Real_frank_zappa_book_frontThe Real Frank Zappa Book, by Frank Zappa, with Peter Occhiogrosso: There aren’t a great many star/rocker autobiographies that survive the test of time, but Zappa’s is not only of these.  Upon it’s publication, Vanity Fair raved that it was an “autobiography of mostly hilarious stories…fireside war tales from the big bad days of the rockin’ sixties”, and the New York Post stated that a copy of the book “belonged in every home”.  Nearly 26 years after its initial publication, this book is still delighting readers and music fans alike with its humor, wild stories, and frank discussions of the musical avant-garde scene in which Zappa reveled.
From Our Patrons!
2089106Bloody Jack : being an account of the curious adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber: L.A. Meyer’s swashbuckling series has plenty to offer–a fierce heroine who manages to survive not only life as a beggar on the streets of London, but life on the high seas aboard a British man-o-war.  Jacky’s adventures have stretched into twelve books, each full of derring-do, romance, adventure–and some fun historical details.  Our patron was particularly taken with the song lyrics that are included in the text, which not only bring the culture of Jacky’s world to life, but offer a neat soundtrack for the series, as well.

91zvp7FGSkL._SL1500_Copper: Fans of gritty British dramas like Ripper Street (be still, my heart!) will adore Copper, another original scripted police procedural, this time set on the streets of New York in the 1860’s.  At the center of the drama is Kevin Corcoran, a driven, intense Irish immigrant who refuses to give in to the corruption that stains the law enforcement of his city.  This leads Kevin into some dangerous confrontations, but also allows him into places where other policemen are never allowed, leading to a show that is continuously gripping and surprising.  Our patron was heartbroken that there were only two seasons, but assures us all that they are each phenomenal!

From the Director’s Desk:
2121333Cry the Beloved Country: Alan Paton’s seminal novel of South Africa, and the social structures and prejudices that would lead to apartheid is not only our Director’s favorite book of all time–it was also a huge hit with our Classic Books Group.  Beautiful and sympathetic, this book is drenched in atmosphere, drawing the reader into the heart of this world, and making the characters feel blisteringly real, especially as the fear that drives them all leads to tragedy.  Indeed, the title is echoed in this stunning quote about fear from Chapter 12: “Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear.  Let him not love the earth too deeply.  Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers…nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.” 
From the Circulation Desk:
3679651Carter and Lovecraft: All of Jonathan L. Howard’s books are so wonderful and original and funny and moving that it’s impossible to pick just one, but since this book has just been released, it seems timely to sing its praises.  Howard is a connoisseur of H.P. Lovecraft, and all of his books not only reference them, but reshape and reimagine them (check out the Cthulu Song in Johannes Cabal the Necomancer for a perfect example).  This book deals with Lovecraft a bit more directly, as Private Eye Daniel Carter inherits a bookstore–and a cheeky bookseller named Emily Lovecraft, the great H.P.’s niece.  As the bodies begin to pile up around them, Carter and Lovecraft have to grapple with the realization that Emily’s uncle wasn’t making this stuff up….Talk about a perfect Halloween read!
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At the Movies: Crimson Peak

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This is a very tricky post to write without getting mired in a vast quagmire of spoilery-spoilers, but we’re going to give it our best shot.

Crimson Peak has been touted as several things, all at once: a horror movie, a gothic romance, and, perhaps, most interestingly, as a feminist revisionary tale.  While the jury still seems to be out on whether it has succeeded in any of these categories, what everyone seems to agree on is that fact that this is probably one of the most unabashedly lush, visually detailed, and simply beautiful films you will see in quite some time.  Guillermo Del Toro doesn’t just use all the crayons in the box…he melts them down and creates new ones, because there simply aren’t enough colors (or textures, or nuances) in our everyday world for him, and the results are sometimes overwhelming, sometimes a little garish, but they are always extraordinary in their own way.

crimson-peak-houseWhile an ideal Halloween film in its own right, Crimson Peak offers plenty of literary perks.  It pays reverent homage to the gothic romances–those marvelous blend of love and death, and the clash of the fantastic with the mundane.  No where is this more evident then when Tom Hiddleston (as Sir Thomas Sharpe) arrives with his new bride, Edith (Mia Wasikowska) at his family estate.  The front lawn of the manor is covered with these weirdly grotesque, spider-like cranes, which we are told are the height of technological achievement, that will dig clay from the depths of the earth.  The manor itself, however, is a ghastly, crumbling wreck without a roof.  While it makes for stunningly beautiful shots, it’s snowing inside the house.  I’m not sure even Tom Hiddleston could convince me to hang out in a hatless house.

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Oh, who am I kidding? Not even Victorian sunglasses could make me abandon Tom Hiddleston.

What’s interesting here is that it is the people in the house, and not the house itself, that makes this story what it is.  This is no “Fall of the House of Usher”, where the characters are trapped within the walls of a crumbling house.  Instead, they make the house into the inhospitable nightmare that it becomes.

In addition, Crimson Peak also affirms what The Guardian claimed over the weekend: The Ghost Story is back…with a vengeance.  Some point to the rise of genre fiction and the general acceptance of ghost stories as legitimate, but there is a lot more behind the ghost story to simply wanted to enjoy having our pants scared off.  They also offer us a safe place to deal with some of our greatest concerns–about death, about the possibility of an afterlife, about the weight of regrets, and the hope of righting irredeemable wrongs.

It’s also about scaring the pants off people, too, let’s be honest.

And so, since we have begun the countdown to All Hallows Read, and because Crimson Peak is a great deal of fun, regardless of whatever else it might be, here are some suggestions for some other gothic/ghost stories for your reading pleasure:

1436746Northanger Abbey: The first of Jane Austen’s novels to be completed for publication was not published until after her death in 1817.  The book is a send-up of the standard novel, which was wildly popular in the opening years of the nineteenth century.  Rather than having a ravishingly beautiful heroine who is too good and pure to consider her hero’s affections until the final scene, Austen gives us Susan, who is a wonderfully down-to-earth, middle class young lady who loves the hero before he has actually even given her a second thought.  Austen also explicitly shows all of Susan’s fears and premonitions of danger to be utterly unfounded (and often the result of quite commonplace occurrences).  This is definitely one of Austen’s snarkier novels, and a terrific entrance into her work for those who haven’t had much experience with her–it’s also fun to see the way social criticism worked in the era before Buzzfeed.

3142162The Woman in Black: You can’t wander too far into a study of the ghost story without bumping into Susan Hill’s classic.  The fact that it has been a success in print, on stage and on screen gives some idea of the endurance and the power of this story: when Arthur Kipps, a young solicitor is sent to a solitary estate in the north of England to settle the estate of a reclusive elderly woman, he finds not only a house full of inexplicable noises, terrifying visions, and a rising sense of menace, he also finds himself touched by a deadly curse.  Though the story is full of subtle illusions and creepy descriptions, the film is a smorgasbord of jump-scares and musical stings that are guaranteed to keep your heart pumping.

3654037Little Sister Death: This new release was discovered posthumously in the papers of beloved southern writer William Gay.  Apparently, Gay had a career-long interest in the Tennessee Bell Witch case (which was also the inspiration for The Blair Witch Project).  In this telling, a young author brings his new wife and young daughter on his exploration of the myth of Virginia Beale, known as the Faery Queen of the Haunted Dell…but what he finds is a deep and tangled family history of blood and hatred that forces him to reconsider everything he believed–including his own sanity.  This book also features a touching introduction to Gay himself that will convince new readers to explore the rest of his body of work as soon as possible.

3573177Penny Dreadful: If you’re looking to capture the same aura of Crimson Peak, and revel in that late-Victorian clash of life and death, sex and propriety, honor and secrecy, you won’t have to look any further than this gruesomely delightful series.  Penny Dreadful is a marvelous mash-up of gothic adventure and literary references, as Victor Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, and Count Dracula all rub shoulders with the relentless and bewitching Penny, who is driven by a quasi-spiritual, deeply personal need for revenge.  Though certainly not as shocking or as difficult to watch as, say American Horror Story, this is still a series that pushes boundaries, but does so in a clever way that will leave you curious and eager for what dark marvels wait around the next corner….

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Countdown to All Hallows Read: A spooky Saturdays @ the South

allhallowsreadBatsOnly one week left until All Hallows Read, a event that we here at the blog have been celebrating all month long, frankly because it’s worth celebrating for such a span of time. It’s also one more week until we’re able to open that trick-or-treat candy that’s been taunting us (also worth celebrating in my humble opinion)… but I digress. The South Branch has a “Spooky Stories” display up all this month to tantalize those of you with a ken for the macabre, creepy, supernatural, or just plain unsettling.

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The display offers a wide selection of Halloween reads to suit plenty of tastes, from the gory and terrifying of blog favorite Stephen King, to the unsettlingly supernatural by Dean Koontz. We’ve got the brilliantly horrific Dan Simmons whose Drood I’ve already mentioned as a favorite of mine and makes for a great Halloween read. For a lighter side, Janet Evanovich’s Wicked (Lizzy & Diesel) series offers laughs with a witchy bent and Christopher Fowler’s Peculiar Crimes Unit books offer a lively take on impossible crimes.

Here are a few of the most recent additions to our collection’s spooky side:

3653483Ghostly: A Collection of Ghost Stories ed. by Audrey Niffenegger

This book is a delightful, eclectic collection of ghost stories old and new. Some reach back to the beginning of the genre, others turn the typical ghost story on its head and still others will make you quake with laughter rather than fright. Niffenegger’s own black-and-white illustrations are spot-on and add an extra level of creepiness to the stories. It’s easy to see why these stories are favorites of the editor’s and several may just become your new favorite ghost stories, too.

3690517The Monstrous ed. by Ellen Datlow

Another collection of stories, this time pulling together 20 stories that examine what it is that makes something a monster. In this anthology, 10-time World Fantasy Award winner Datlow pulls together a collection of stories, all about non-human (though some are incredibly close) monsters, all of which are struggling to adapt to the modern world and encourage us to look a little deeper at what’s beneath our own skin. This anthology is also illustrated , but with sparse, almost icon-like drawings that give the pages a more atmospheric tone.

3635070Expiration Date ed. by Nancy Kilpatrick

Organized into sections with headings such as: Negotiating Oblivion, Resisting Extinction and Best Before/After, Kilpatrick has collected stories that take a look at the expiration dates that surround us from the short and insignificant to the long and terrifying. Everything ends eventually, no matter how remote or dear, and that is the horrific truth behind these stories.

3690594The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

Yes, this is technically classified as one of our children’s books and it’s certainly an easy enough read for kids who are enjoying chapter books, but like so many kids’ books that have depth and layers, this book has plenty of adult appeal as well. This new edition was just republished this year with amazing illustrations by Gris Grimly that give whimsy and depth to an already wonderful story. As seven boys go through time, space and the origins of Halloween celebrations to find their missing, sick friend, they learn how true friendship can involve sacrifice. Their guide is the delightfully named Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud and the journey, naturally enough, starts at a creepy, dilapidated old house. This book is reminiscent of A Christmas Carol and, much like the Dickens classic, deserves a read every time its eponymous holiday rolls around.

Till next week, dear readers, remember that it’s not too early to start preparing for All Hallows Read. After all, it would be difficult to decide what spooky story to share if you weren’t familiar with at least a few scary stories with potential…

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A Frightening Five Book Friday

As the days draw ever darker, and the time ever nearer to All Hallows Read, we thought we’d offer you some interesting facts about fright itself…and some interesting books inspire it!

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1) Many fears tend to be common in people regardless of their culture or nationality.  An estimated 4% of the world’s population suffers from arachnophobia; the fear of spiders.

2) There actually is a thing called phobophobia, which is the fear of developing a phobia (which just seems like a cruel meta-joke to me, but anyways…)

3) Trypophobia is the unofficial term for the fear of small irregular holes, clusters, or asymmetrical patterns.  This is an inherited fear which is thought to have originated way, way back when we were hunter-gatherers on the proverbial plains.  Very often, poisonous plants and animals had such small, irregular patches, patterns, or holes, and there is a part of people’s brain stems that still remember this and warn us to stay away.  Allow me to tell you, from personal experience, that trypophobia is real.  After looking for pictures of this, I had to hide under the circulation desk for a while.

4) You know when people say “I can smell your fear”, or some such?  It’s actually true.  When we are frightened, we secrete pheromones that can be noticed by others, even if only on a somewhat sub-conscious, primal level.

5) We also have these neat things called “mirror neurons” that can pick-up the sense of fear in others.  This is why, when characters in scary movies are scared, you get scared, too…or why, when you are sitting next to a person reading a scary book, you want to read it, too….

Ok, that last bit was a smidgen of a falsehood, but the intent was good, as it allows me to give you this list of scary stories for your Frightening Five Book Friday!

 

1702838Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: Anyone who was in grade school in the early nineties will tell you that these books are, bar none, the most terrifying things ever to exist, ever.  My inner nine-year-old just has to think about these stories and wants to crawl under the bed…no, wait!  There are spiders under there!  And we all know what happened in that story with the girl and the spider!   Gah!  Basically, take a look at the cover of this book, and you’ll know precisely what you are in for here…sheer, unbridled, bewildering terror.

 

3571383Evil Librarian: I would like to promise you, here and now, that none of our librarians are demons.  The magnetic high-school librarian in Michelle Knudsen’s novel, however, is.  And a mighty powerful one, at that.  And it is up to teenage patron Cynthia to save her best friend, Annie, from the devious, and devastatingly handsome Mr. Gabriel’s clutches before he destroys Annie–and the rest of the student body, as well.  This story is a bit funnier than it is scary, but I just couldn’t resist this title–or the sinisterly comic cover!

 

3579557The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft: So, true story: back in the 1970’s, some undergrads at Yale University stuck made up a fake card-catalogue card for H.P. Lovecraft’s infamous Necronomicon (the mysterious book in which all the evil of the world resides).  No one caught it, and there are still people who come in every once in a while to request it.  While you may not be able to open the real Necronomicon–which is probably for the best, since it tends to drive all those who read it barking mad–you can read this fresh, fascinating, annotated volume of Lovecraft’s work, and learn a whole bunch of new facts and stunning insight regarding Lovecraft and his work.

 

2385049The Terror:  Dan Simmons has penned a number of chilling historic tales in his time (as well as the beloved Drood), but this story is a personal favorite.  Simmons takes for his setting the doomed Franklin Expedition, which set off from England in 1845 to try and discover the Northwest Passage.  Months later…all 129 souls had vanished.  There are theories that the provisions they brought with them were tainted with lead or possibly botulism.  Others assume that the crew starved to death being moored in the ice…but Simmons takes up another option entirely.  In his book, the crew in also menaced by a mysterious monster who thrives in the dark, and isn’t at all afraid of the cold….

 

3597947The Scarlet Gospels:  Clive Barker is a master of the weird, unsettling, and gruesome, but he is also a master of plotting, providing stories that will keep the pages turning and the imagination sparking.  In the latest, chilling release, detective Harry D’Amour makes his living by finding and hunting all things magical, paranormal, and evil.  But D’Amour is about to go toe-to-toe with the most powerful foe he has ever encountered–Pinhell, the very Prince of Hell himself.  Though not for the feint of heart, this is definitely worth a read for those fans of Lovecraft looking for some more weirdness in their literary repertoire.

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Boston Book Festival!

Today, Beloved Patrons, we wanted to take a moment to remind you that this weekend is the Boston Book Festival, perhaps the greatest literary event within driving distance you can possibly attend.

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The whole event, which has been going on for seven years now, takes place in and around Copley Square in Boston (The Copley or Arlington stop on the Green Line).  There are sensational panel discussions from literary greats such as Louis Sachar (author of Holes, and Sideways Stories from Wayside School), Libba Bray (author of A Great and Terrible Beauty and Beauty Queens), and Margaret Atwood (author of The Handmaid’s Tale and the recently released The Heart Goes Last) .  You can see the full schedule here.

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There are also book vendors, from some delightful independent bookstores like the Barefoot Books and the Brattle Book Store, fun writer’s groups, quirky bookish related exhibitors, spoken word and musical performers, food trucks (yummy, yummy food trucks!), and LOTS &LOTS of books!

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Best of all, save for a few ticketed events, this whole mad, moving, intellectually stimulating day in the sunshine surrounded by books is TOTALLY FREE.

So get yourself out and enjoy all that the Boston Book Festival has to offer.  We’ll be bringing you some updates next week!

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The Iliad: An Update

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Hi Homer!

Remember that time I told you about the 16-hour marathon reading of The Iliad that I attended in London?  For those of you who haven’t been forced to listen to me go on incessantly about how this was perhaps the coolest thing I have ever witnessed, you might want to consider yourselves lucky…..but for those of you who might have liked to have been there, I am happy to inform you that The Almeida Theatre is a great institution.

They have put the entire marathon reading online for your viewing pleasure!  Yay!

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In case you don’t have 16 hours to devote right now to seeing the entire presentation, you can also read the Introduction that was delivered by Professor Simon Goldhill of the University of Cambridge, and watch this five-minute trailer that gives an overview of the whole day, as well as some insight and reactions by those involved in the production (you can, apparently, also see my Big Giant Head around 3:16).

The full set of readings will be available online until September 21, 2016, so enjoy!  And to the Almeida, should you ever read this, thank you, not only for the event, which was unforgettable, but for letting me share it!

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Making History

Our patrons, I’m sure,will know that books still have–and will always have–the power to change and challenge the world, but last week was an especially fruitful one for books in the news: we were treated to the awarding of the Man Booker Prize, as well as the announcement of the National Book Award nominees; but we also encountered some controversy.

36374313651769It all began last Monday on the BBC Radio 4’s morning program, Start the Week.  The show’s guests were both authors whose books had recently been released: Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley, whose book, Golden Age rounds out her Last Hundred Years trilogy, and Professor Niall Ferguson, whose latest release is the first volume of his authorized biography of Henry Kissinger.  Things were going pretty civily, overall, until Smiley began to articulate what she saw as the difference between history and historical fiction: “history and memoir tell us what happened, but novels tell us or have a theory about how it felt”.

On the whole, this seems to be a perfectly sensible statement, and one that also allows the existence and necessity of both genres.  Her statement, however, didn’t sit particularly well with Professor Ferguson, who immediately launched into a defense (mansplaining?) of non-fiction history, sadly, at the expense of historic fiction.

I’ll let the resulting debate, as recorded by The Telegraph, stand for itself:

niall_jpg_2129056b“Historians are as much concerned with how it felt – the difference is we are actually basing it on research rather than our imaginations,” Ferguson said.

An affronted Smiley replied: “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t base it on research? I didn’t realise that.”

But Ferguson continued: “It seems to me that whether you’re reading Tolstoy or Jane Smiley, people who write historical fiction are telling you what it must have felt like. But that’s not what it felt like, because essentially they’re projecting back, in this case early 21st century ideas, on imaginary characters.”

Smiley: “How do you think that I discovered what it must have felt like? I did research and read what people said it felt like.”

Ferguson: “But your characters are imaginary, Jane. Not to disparage what you do, but we need to recognise that it’s different because these aren’t real people. You’re just telling us what these imaginary people must have felt…Historians are in the business of reconstituting past experience but from primary sources, from things that people wrote down. We’re not allowed to just make it up.”

Smiley, ultimately, had the last word in this debate, however, when she published a letter in The Guardian addressing both Professor Ferguson’s comments and elaborating on why she writes historic fiction:
Jane-Smiley-009“I do not consider literary forms to exist in a hierarchy; I think of them as more of a flower bouquet, with different colours, scents and forms, each satisfying and unsatisfying in its way, but if there is one thing that I do know about history, it is that it must be based on the author’s theory of what happened. He or she may change the theory as the research is completed, but without a theory, and if the research doesn’t fit into the theory, then the text has no logic, and therefore makes no sense. If it makes no sense, then readers will not read it.”

As a historian, as well as a reader, I would just like to state here and now that “what happened and how it felt” are, generally speaking, two totally and completely different things–neither are ‘better’ or ‘worse’–they are just very, very different.

It’s probably fair to say that getting injured in war hurts, regardless of whether it’s 1148, 1916, or 2015–but I would never conjecture to tell you how it hurt.  Even more importantly, I would never, ever, ever, put on my Historian Hat and presume to tell you what it felt like to watch the Titanic sink, or what, precisely, goes through a person’s mind as they wait for a battle to commence, or watch a sunrise.  One can infer a good deal by virtue of being part of the same species, and generally be afraid of things that might kill you, or interesting in colorful, shiny things, but I think it’s fair to say that is as far as one can go.

And that, as Smiley notes, is part of the beauty of historic fiction.  By virtue of being fiction, these stories can go where history simply can’t–into the moments that don’t make it into the archive, into the minds of people whom history didn’t remember, and into the hearts of those who didn’t record their feelings to paper.  By virtue of the research performed by their authors, they can bring a period of time to life in a way that history has neither the space nor the time to do.  A straight-up history of the First World War can describe uniforms and trench conditions, but historical fiction can take the time to linger on details–the scratchiness of wool tunics in the July sun, the smell of sweat and carbolic power, what men experienced putting them on…  What to history might be some atmospheric detail is the stuff of life for fiction.  And because of this, they can serve as an ideal compliment to history, feeding our imaginations and hearts, as well as our brains.

 Don’t believe me?  Come in and check out these sensational historic fiction books for yourself!

3104313Vlad: The Last Confession:  I’ve gone on (and on) about how this is one of the greatest books ever, so I’ll spare you today.  C.C. Humphreys, however, originally intended to write a biography of Vlad Dracula.  However, when he couldn’t find any new sources, he decided to write a fictionalized biography, using all the details he learned to create a fully three-dimensional world and an enthralling portrait of a man who was both a monster and a hero–and what it was like to love and hate him.

2057534Speaks the Nightbird: Though Robert McCammon’s tale of witchhunting is set in the Carolina colony in 1699, this is still quite a timely suggestion.  The sights, smells, fears, and superstitions that fill the world of this book are completely transporting, and makes the battle of laws and wills that ensues over the fate of an ostracized widow in the community that much more intense.  McCammon may be a bug name in the horror genre, but this book, and the resultant series, proves he can tackle historical fiction with equal aplomb.

3092040The Return of Captain John Emmett: Speaking of the First World War, Elizabeth Speller’s debut novel is an evocative and occasionally stunning pieces of historic fiction that captures, in heartbreakingly simple prose, what everyday life was like for those who survived the war.  Though not as successful as a mystery, the stark descriptions of grief, loss, and utter bewilderment that her characters endure helps readers understand the true impact of the war on an individual, as well as a collective basis.

"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." ~Frederick Douglass