Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver

Here's food for thought. (I could not resist the pun.)

I have just finished listening to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver, read by the authors. I was not sure how interesting twelve compact discs about a family growing, buying, and eating local food would be, but I was hooked. Kingsolver is so talented a storyteller that she could probably entertain readers with a story about asparagus. In fact, she does tell a good story about the tall green vegetable, first food of spring.

In one essay in her book Small Wonder, Kingsolver discusses the great waste of shipping foods around the world when they could be grown locally. Admittedly, they would not always really be the same foods, but buying local would foster strong local farming communities. No one would go hungry, and third world farmers would not be enslaved by corporations to feed wealthy Americans. In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, she and her family take the topic much farther.

I enjoyed hearing three voices on the audiobook. Kingsolver delivers the main narrative, which hardly sounds like reading. Her husband Hopp is "Mr. Science," reading his fact-filled sidebars about politics, economy, and ethics. Her college-bound daughter Camille reads her essays on nutrition, describes meal plans, and provides a young point of view.

Kingsolver's younger daughter Lily is also a principle in the narrative. One of the best recurring themes is development of the budding entrepreneur's egg business.

The central story is that the family pledges to eat locally grown foods for one year. Each person gets an exception, such as coffee. To accomplish the feat, they garden and raise their own chickens and turkeys on their farm in North Carolina. They also frequent the local farmers' market, visit neighboring farms, and buy from grocers who stock regional foods. There are some sacrifices; they have no bananas with breakfast or any foods out of season. There are a few failures: they never find a good local source for grains and flour. Still, they succeed in the spirit of the venture, helping the local economy, reducing the burning of fossil fuel, eating well, not losing any weight.

In an interview on the last compact disc, Kingsolver says that she does not expect everyone to replicate her family's experiment. What she does hope is that concern readers will start to examine what they eat and question its origins. If they start buying more local products, the food industry will have to take notice and will adjust to meet the demand. Eventually, a more sustainable system will be established.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle would be a good book for discuss because our whole way of life is questioned. Libraries should expect this book to continue to be popular for a long time.

Kingsolver, Barbara with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Harper Audio, 2007. ISBN 0060853573

Women Empowered: Inspiring Change in the Emerging World by Phil Borges

Photographer Phil Borges has traveled to many developing nations to witness the efforts of CARE to assist women's rights and welfare. The result is his book Women Empowered, which includes photos of and captions about individual women who are prospering and in turn assisting their neighbors to fight poverty, disease, illiteracy, rape, genital mutilation, child trafficking, political repression, and environmental exploitation.

The beauty of this book is its direct appeal. Readers see and learn about strong women who have defied conventions to demand their rights in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Benin, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, and even Montana. Several of the women have used microloans to start village industries that have allowed them to feed their families, secure homes, and send their children to school. Others have chased off illegal loggers, stopped slave traders, and joined village governments for the first time. You see photos of these women and then of young women and girls who are in line to benefit.

With the effects and ethics of foreign aid often in question, this is an important book for students and citizens who contemplate their charitable giving. It is a good addition to any library.

Borges, Phil. Women Empowered: Inspiring Change in the Emerging World. Rizzoli, 2007. ISBN 9780847829279

This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley

Are you one of many readers who have dreamed of being a novelist? If you are, Walter Mosley has written This Year You Write Your Novel for you. Why has he done this? Did he do so to help you, or did he do so to take your money?

Evidence of helpfulness #1 - In this small book, which takes only a couple of hours to read, Mosley strips down the process of novel writing to its essentials, making his points clearly. The author says that to write a book you have to be disciplined and write every day, and he lays out a plan that can help you do that in a year. He says to get a first draft written before you worry about all of the books problems. Then he gives advice for rewriting. This may be just the encouragement that you need to rise to the call. He has given you a method.

Evidence of helpfulness #2 - This Year You Write Your Novel is small and attractive. It might work as a nice gift of encouragement to a friend. I would like to give the book to several people I know. Giving it might be that extra statement of faith that would spark a friend to do what he/she has promised/threatened.

Evidence of taking the money - The book is rather small for the price. It is sketchy. It does not refer to any other tools to help the writer. (He does mention using a thesaurus.) Like many self-help books, it is common sense spelled out.

I like to think that Mosley's intentions are honorable. Perhaps a bigger book with more details would be less read and not as influential. Still, I think more people would be better served by a cheap paperback version. This definitely does not need to be hardbound.

Mosley, Walter. This Year Your Write Your Novel. Little, Brown & Company, 2007. ISBN 9780316065412

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie

The popularity of Agatha Christie mysteries continues thirty years after her death. Thanks to new editions of the books published by Black Dog & Leventhan, my library has restocked the mystery shelves with a couple dozen new Christie volumes. Among these is The Body in the Library.

I have opened the library many times and never found a body in front of the fireplace. At Thomas Ford, we do have a fireplace but no blood stains. Actually, there were no blood stains on Colonel Bantry's library floor either. Obviously, the heavily made-up young woman with the bleached hair in the cheap white gown was strangled somewhere else. Who was she and why was she in the library? Mrs. Bantry knows the local police will botch the investigation, so she calls her friend Miss Jane Marple.

As I read the book, I started remembering much of the plot, which I saw dramatized on Masterpiece Theatre recently, but I did not recall who the murderers were. This may be because as a viewer and a reader I spent almost the entire story contemplating the clues and testing scenarios. Then Miss Marple reveals the solution and the book ends rather quickly. In Body in the Library, there is no great scene were all the suspects are brought together. Two weeks from now, I may have forgotten the solution and could read it all over again.

I was struck on this reading how Miss Marple is not a sweet old lady. She is the least trusting of all the investigators, attune to the moods of the suspects. She also tells about catching her housemaids at lies. Christie hints that the sleuth has perhaps gone through many maids. I do not think I saw that in the dramatizations.

Libraries may want to inspect their Agatha Christie collections now as there are inexpensive editions available to fill the gaps and replace the tattered copies. Your readers will appreciate them.

Adventures of a Biographer by Catherine Drinker Bowen

A colleague at the library wished recently that publishers would stop the flood of new books so she could catch up with all the old books. I would not go so far, but I sympathize, as there are many old books that I will never read, and every time I go in the stacks to weed I find more.

I do what I can. So, here is a new review of a book from 1959.

I first became aware of the biographer Catherine Drinker Bowen in August when I was studying the ALA Notable Books lists. Bowen had seven books on the lists, second only to Sir Winston Churchill. When I looked through our library catalog to see if any were still available, I found that they all were somewhere in the Chicago suburbs. The title that caught my eye was her memoir Adventures of a Biographer, published in 1959, before ISBN numbers.

I could tell I had made a good choice from the first page of the first chapter. The year is 1937 and a Russian friend tries to talk Bowen out of going to Moscow to research pianist Anton Rubinstein. She had already written a book about Tchaikovsky without visiting his homeland, but she felt that it lacked authority. Now she is determined to wade into Stalin's Soviet Union to get the goods that she needed to write a great book. Of course, she finds many barriers to her research in the cold capital. She cannot go anywhere without her official translator, who seems at first bent on showing her all the city's factories and communist shrines instead of letting her study a musician who was a loyal subject of the last czar. Eventually she gets into Moscow Conservatory where she is only allowed in certain rooms. During an afternoon concert, when no one is looking, she sneaks into the upstairs archive where an old librarian welcomes her and shows her some of Rubinstein's manuscripts.

Not all of the chapters are as thrilling as the first, but Bowen usually finds people or institutions opposing her work. When she goes to Boston to study Oliver Wendall Holmes in the 1940s, when many people remember him, she is viewed as an outsider and shunned. In Washington, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter tries to discourage her from writing a "popular" book and denies her access to the Holmes papers under his care. He then hires an academic read these papers and write a scholarly book. Bowen is not able to cozy up to Holmes' old friends until she pulls out her family tree.

While writing about John Adams, Bowen attends a conference of history professors. Thinking that she will learn some new techniques for research, she finds herself frustrated by the academic attitude that requires the scholars to be almost without opinion about their subjects. Bowen believes biography should be written with a point of view. She admits to bias. She says most biographers learn to love or hate their subjects.

Of course, my favorite chapter is the ninth, "Salute to Librarians." Early in that chapter is a great paragraph.

"In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret's nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eyes bright with battle. But I did not know this. All unaware I used to make my way to those long-block municipal buildings, hope in my heart and in my hand a list of ten or fifteen books. Not books to read in the library but to take home, where I could copy at length, with time to think about what I was copying. I did not telephone beforehand and ask to have my books ready at the desk. I took my list and looked up the proper numbers in the card catalog, rechecked each one and carried the cards to the desk. The young woman would glance at the cards and then she would say, "Only two books at a time can be taken from the circulation department, miss." Black hatred would then well up in a heart that had been ready to love."

Bowen continues in this chapter to tell stories about her sometimes difficult but usually rewarding work with librarians. Some are just as reticent as the Bostonian friends of Justice Holmes. Others bend as many rules as they can to widen her access.

In the final chapters, Bowen tells about a dry period when she struggled to select a subject for her latest book. When she finally settled on Edward Coke, an adviser to Elizabeth I and James I of England, she found some English ancestors very suspicious of having an American writer in their midst. They claimed Coke was an English topic for an English scholar. For Bowen, the research was never easy.

Not many libraries have Adventures of a Biographer now, but it is a book worth seeking out. Try out your local interlibrary loan.

Bowen, Catherine Drinker. Adventures of a Biographer. Little, Brown, 1959.

Graduate School of Art, University of Iowa

On Saturday, Bonnie and I toured the Graduate School of Art at the University of Iowa with our daughter Laura. Laura told us that there was a really cool exhibit, but it had closed when we got there. So we just wandered around the building. There was still plenty to see.

We went up the industrial metal ramps to the second level, where we found a collection of paintings around the landing walls. Most had no attributions. Were they by students? What I liked best was a little green figure, a detail in a larger piece. I'd tell you what it is, but I do not know. Maybe it is an angel.

The art school library was fairly deserted while we walked around. It was mostly an unadorned, more functional than artful space, but I saw much to like from a service point of view. The reference collection and new titles were right up front. There were still many empty shelves for future acquisitions, and there were many interesting looking periodicals. Around the library were displays of red-colored uncovered structural steel.The large glass windows looked out on a goldfish pool under a limestone wall. If the windows were washed, it would be very nice. If I were a student, I'd like studying in the art library, away from the noise of dorms.

On the third level was a display of metal box sculpture. I liked the the burned-out oven. There were three other pieces, one of which I almost tripped over when I was looking at something else. There were more big windows, lots of faculty offices, and more naked structural steel.

It was a cool building. I have loaded 18 photos from around the graduate school in a set on Flickr.

Great Tales from English History: Joan of Arc, the Princes in the Tower, Bloody Mary, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, and More by Robert Lacey

In his series Great Tales from English History, Robert Lacey retells some of the most known stories about the monarchs and subjects of England. While this could be pretty dull reading in a less talented author's hands, Lacey entertains with humorous details, thoughtful observations, and swift portrayals of the key historical figures. In doing so, he often dispels myths and humanizes the exalted figures about whom he writes.

I read the second book Great Tales from English History: Joan of Arc, the Princes in the Tower, Bloody Mary, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, and More. In this volume, Lacey covers events and people between 1387 and 1687 in chapters that range from three to seven pages. You could read several a day and enjoy the book for a couple of weeks and then get one of the other volumes.

I most enjoyed reading about people whose names I knew but about whom I knew little.

• Famous for his role in the folk tale Puss in Boots, Dick Whittington really did rise to become mayor of London and a counsellor for King Henry IV, but there is no evidence that he ever owned a cat.
• Lady Jane Grey was a pawn in a political struggle and never deserved to lose her head at the block.
• William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English and who lost his head for criticizing King Henry VIII's divorce, is the source of many famous phrases, including "salt of the earth," "the powers that be," and "eat, drink and be merry."
• Samuel Pepys traveled to Holland to get an exclusive interview with Charles II before he was restored to the crown.
• William Caxton, the first Englishman to own a printing press, is responsible for many of the inconsistent spellings in the English language.

Of course, Lacey tells stories about all the kings and queens of the three centuries. Richard II died because he went on a hunger strike in prison; he was not assassinated. Charles II really did hide in a tree to escape Puritan soldiers. Mary was hailed as a fair and just queen when she succeeded her brother Edward, but she spent her political capital rather quickly and everyone was happy to see her die.

The Great Tales from History series is fun to read and makes a nice introduction to English history. All public libraries should get Lacey's series.

Lacey, Robert. Great Tales from English History: Joan of Arc, the Princes in the Tower, Bloody Mary, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, and More. Little, Brown & Company, 2004. ISBN 031610924X.

Other volumes:

Great tales from English history : the truth about King Arthur, Lady Godiva, Richard the Lionheart and more. ISBN: 031610910X

Great tales from English history : Captain Cook, Samuel Johnson, Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, Edward the Abdicator, and more. ISBN: 0316114596

Library Outreach Services, London, 1895

I always enjoy finding references to libraries in my pleasure reading. I found the following opening paragraph in the second chapter of The London Yankees: Portraits of American Writers and Artists in England, 1894-1914 by Stanley Weintraub.

Externally, Lancaster Gate had an ambience of comfortable gentility rather than showy fashion. At number 69, for example, lived retired Indian civil administrator Sir Richard Strachey, whose gaunt, precocious son Giles Lytton was often home from public school on sick leave. Every week the van from the circulating library would deliver half a dozen novels to Sir Richard's door, perhaps even the latest title by Bret Harte, or by Pearl Craigie under her well-known pseudonym, "John Oliver Hobbes." Deaf and doddering, Strachey very likely had no idea that Lancaster Gate was being overrun by authors or tainted by scandal by such Americans.

The next paragraph tells the reader that the time is 1895.

I wonder whether the books were for the father or the son or someone else in the house. Also, was delivery service just a benefit of membership in the circulating library or a special arrangement? Did someone have to have a doctor's signature to get delivery? It must not have been an uncommon service, for the library had a van.

One of the current ideas that is being batted around is that public libraries should send out their books by mail (like Netflix) or deliver more to homes. It seems to be an older idea than we thought.

Will There Be Books on the Colorado Rockies?

With their sweep of the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League Playoffs last night (this morning), the Colorado Rockies have won 21 of their last 22 games. In doing so, they surprised much of the baseball world, as they had been written off for the season. Because that level of winning is the stuff of legends, expect to see books on the Colorado Rockies 2007 season by next spring. If they win the World Series, there may be some instant publishing. Sports writers from the Denver media will take this opportunity for some windfall profits.

I see only one book about the Rockies aimed at adults in the current SWAN catalog (our Chicago suburbs consortium), and there is only one copy of that 1994 title, Mile High Madness: A Year with the Colorado Rockies by Bob Kravitz. There are, of course, more copies in Coloado, according to Worldcat. I also see that some profit minded people are putting their copies for sale on EBay.

There are several books aimed at young readers available. Children's librarians should put them on display to catch the eyes of young fans.

The Rockies now have eight days off before the World Series begins. The concern of some fans is that they will lose momentum. These fans may take some comfort in the statistic that teams with that many days off have won the World Series seven out of ten times.

No Fines in Libraries

Aaron Schmidt has posted a piece about libraries not charging overdue fines but using other means to get items returned. There are been some interesting comments added by other librarians. He has now also set up a wiki for libraries to add their names to the no fines list. It will be interesting to see how long the list grows.

I have always wished we would get away from overdue fines. It costs us good will and our circulation staff have better things to do than argue over insignificant amounts of money.

I also think we should not insist that less in demand books come back so quickly. Too many of our books spend too much time on our shelves. I'd like to see the books off the shelves and in readers hands more of the time. We could keep more of our older books if more of them were out. Longer loan periods for these books might be a good move for libraries and readers.

Pontoon by Garrison Keillor

If you like Garrison Keillor's monologues on his radio program Prairie Home Companion, you will like his newest novel Pontoon. It is very funny, and like those monologues, the story takes place in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. It includes a few characters that radio listeners will recognize. The most familiar is Pastor Ingqvist of the Lutheran Church, who has to worry about a visit from 24 agnostic Lutheran ministers from Denmark at the same time he is trying to help a dysfunctional family with an nontraditional celebration of death. Fans will also know Dorothy, who is waiting tables at the Chatterbox Cafe, and Clint Bunsen, who helps the pastor haul some donated champagne, French cheese, and shrimp back to the church. Fans will also recognize the statue of the Unknown Norwegian, the Whippets baseball team, and Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery.

If you are puzzled by the title, just let me say that there is a boat in the plot. It is mentioned about half way through the book and reappears near the end. Knowing this does not spoil the ending. You can not imagine what's going to happen. The plot also involves a wedding that is not really a wedding and a funeral that is not really a funeral.

Keillor must have had a lot of fun writing Pontoon. It's as much fun to read.

Keillor, Garrison. Pontoon. Viking, 2007. ISBN 9780670063567

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin

Ideology has always trumped precedence in the rulings of the Supreme Court of the United States, according to Jeffrey Toobin in The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. The law does not change and necessitate new decisions. What changes are the judges. To get the decisions you want, you need to put your judges on the bench.

Toobin is a story teller with a great subject, nine people who are appointed to the highest court for life. If there is a hero to the story, it is Sandra Day O'Connor, who is appointed as first woman on the court by President Ronald Reagan. She is a lifelong moderate Republican, an Arizona friend of William Renquist, whom she eclipses in power. As the swing vote during much of her tenure, she is the most influential of justices. She always seeks to find the will of the American public's political center, not a strict interpretation of law. Her biggest mistake is her vote in Bush v. Gore. She discovers that Bush has no concern for the rule of law and the political center. His power comes from the extreme right, whom she abhors. Her traditional Republican Party has ceased to exist, and she blames Bush.

In telling the story, Toobin sprinkles the serious matter with some amusing details. I never knew that justices get to decorate their offices with paintings and sculpture from the Smithsonian's Museum of American Art. David Souter eats an apple and a cup of yogurt every day for lunch. Clarence Thomas got through an entire term without asking any questions.

A key point that Toobin makes is that the Bush administration has put more effort into focusing on the political viewpoints of its appointments that any previous administration. There is no pretense that recent appointments will weigh the merits of cases. There is to be no straying from the right wing position. Now neither reasoning nor public opinion really matter.

Readers will learn much about all the justices appointed in the past forty five years. Toobin seems to admire most of them. The Nine would be a great discussion book. There are bound to be readers who disagree.

Toobin, Jeffrey. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. Doubleday, 2007. ISBN 0385516401

Illinois Blue Book, 2005-2006: It's Time Has Passed

Today, my library received the Illinois Blue Book, 2005-2006. If you have noticed that it is already October 2007, you see the problem. This is an out of date directory when you get it. It always has been.

Perhaps this book is really intended as a historical reference item or collectors item and not as a directory at all. It is printed on nice glossy paper and the binding is stitched. The cover is dark blue with gold emblem, lettering, and stripes. Though it is no larger than many novels, it weighs twice as much (estimate). There must be half a pound of lead in the ink.

So, why is it full of possibly out of date addresses and phone numbers? It also tells what governmental departments have to spend in 2006. If you want to know Illinois legislative committee assignments of two years ago, this is your source.

There are some helpful sections in the back of the volume. All the legislators since 1819 are named, as are all the governors and other elected officials. There is also basic information on the counties, a copy of the Illinois constitution, and pictures of all the statues around the capitol.

It is interesting to learn from the chronology that Disco Demolition Night at Comisky Park in Chicago, July 12, 1979, is one of the highlights of the state's history.

Why do we still get this book? The information is all available on the Illinois Secretary of State's website. (It would be more useful and searchable if it were in HTML instead on PDF format.) State officials of Illinois are always pleading that revenue is short, denying funding to useful projects. The state library has been strapped for funds for years, as have all the regional library systems. I suggest that all the money spent to produce and distribute this heavy, rarely used book could be better spent.

Marlene Dietrich: Photographs and Memoirs

Before looking at Marlene Dietrich: Photographs and Memoirs, I knew little about the actress. After looking at it, I know more about her public persona, but she is still a mystery to me. The book has many photos, some being family snapshots, but she seems always to be acting a role. I am unable to solve the riddle of her personality.

According to the compiler of this book, Marlene Dietrich kept everything, including letters, telegrams, playbills, and photographs. The actress claimed that she had every dress, blouse, cape, shoe, hat, and accessory she used on stage or in a film. When she died, her estate opened six storage units in London, Paris, New York, and California, for which she spent thousands of dollars annually in rent, and donated her personal possessions to the FilmMuseum in Berlin. This book is a selective catalog of those items. Through family photos, movie stills, displays of artifacts, and comments of her friends, this big museum book gives fans an archaeological look at the life and career of the legendary actress.

There are some especially interesting sections of the book. After watching Ken Burn's documentary The War, I was struck by the twenty plus pages of photos showing her visiting and entertaining American troops in Italy. Seeing her in uniform contrasts sharply with the elegant and sophisticated attire in most of the book.

Dietrich fans will appreciate this attractive book, which may suggest a trip to the museum in Berlin.

Naudet, Jean-Jacques, compiler. Marlene Dietrich: Photographs and Memories, from the Marlene Dietrich Collection of the FilmMuseum Berlin. Knopf, 2001. 262p. ISBN 0375405348

The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film, Based on the Lost Interviews from the Official Lucasfilm Archives by J. W. Rin

How many books about Star Wars do we need? At least one more, that being The Making of Star Wars by J. W. Rinzler. Based on four boxes full of interviews 1975 and 1978, which are now called the "lost interviews" because they had been put in the Lucas archives and forgotten, The Making of Star Wars is a thick, very detailed account that movie fans will enjoy.

The book starts at the beginning with an account of how George Lucas first conceived of Star Wars and how his ideas changed through his many handwritten drafts. Among the illustrations are photos of pages from the drafts, written with pencil on lined notebook paper. It is a wonder the story ever gelled. The early drafts were far different than the scripts issued for shooting. Lucas had ideas about certain scenes instead firm ideas of a story. Lots of ideas that reappeared in later movies were dropped. All the names changed.

Early in the development, the central character is Captain Annikin Starkiller. When Han Solo first appears, he is described as 150 years old. The droids were originally construction workers. There is a minor character named Skywalker.

The book includes many drawings showing how costumes, creatures, and sets evolved, and there are photos from the sets showing the cast as they work. What's funny to see is that when all the stormtroopers remove their helmets, they have huge amounts of hair. It was the 1970s.

At 314 oversize pages with small font text, this wonderful book takes time to read. Libraries should give readers extended loans.


Rinzler, J. W. The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film, Based on the Lost Interviews from the Official Lucasfilm Archives. Ballantine Books, 2007. ISBN 9780345477613.

God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir by John Bul Dau

John Bul Dau was naked when he ran out of his village after 2 a.m. on a night in 1987. According to the author in his memoir God Grew Tired of Us, all Dinka children of southern Sudan sleep naked and there was no time to find clothes and dress in the dark when the Djellabas attacked. He ran eastward into the bush with a man he thought was his father, but he learned when they stopped that the man was a neighbor. They nearly died several times on their march to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. Thirteen year old Dau was naked most of the way.

There was much nakedness among the Lost Boys of Sudan in the initial months before they received international aid. Many boys had run away in the night like Dau. Others bartered their clothes away for food. Some who had kept their clothes wore them until there was nothing left. As bad as nakedness was, it was only one of the problems for the Dinkas, who were being hunted down by the northern Sudanese. Even in the relative safety of the refugee camps, there was terrible heat, disease, and hunger.

If God Grew Tired of Us stopped at the point Dau reached Ethiopia, it would be a shocking, but not insightful book. Things get worse before they get better, but Dau claims that he always had hope, even when he jumped in a crocodile rich river to escape Ethiopian rebels. He and his friends continually find ways to stay alive. The book is mostly upbeat. I can not explain the title, as Dau always seems to think tomorrow will be a better day. He may have adopted the title to align it with the documentary by the same name in which he appears.

After years in various refugee camps, where he learns to write and read, Dau is resettled in Syracuse, New York, where he is sponsored by a local Presbyterian church. They furnish an apartment with three other Lost Boys, teach him American customs, and give him rides to his work or school day or night.

Not all of his American experiences are positive. Some people think he is a potential terrorist or resent him taking jobs and federal aid. He has his bicycle stolen five times. He takes this all in stride. After you have seen people killed by the Djellabas or nearly starved to death, the ugliness of some American behaviors seem hardly noteworthy to Dau.

In the last part of the book, Dau tells about returning to Sudan to see his family after nineteen years and about his plans for the future, which include the clinic he is building for the Dinkas. In this part he both defends and criticizes American culture and foreign policy.

God Grew Tired of Us is an engaging book that may tell many reader an important story that they missed in the news. Many public libraries should add the book.

Dau, John Bul. God Grew Tired of Us. National Geographic, 2007. ISBN 9781426201141

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

By now I should have read or listened to In a Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson's entertaining journey across the island/country/continent of Australia. The book has been around for seven years, during which several people have said, "Hey, mate, give it a go!" I had already enjoyed A Walk in the Woods, his difficult hike along the Appalachian Trail, which in a bizarre way made me want to try the trail, too.

However, I had also tried to read I'm a Stranger Here Myself, his trip around the U.S., which I found irksome. In that book, I felt that he belittled the clerks, waitresses, and other small town folk he met. I only read a couple of chapters in before I gave it up. Now I wonder whether it was really so bad or whether I was in a bad mood. Maybe I stopped too soon. Maybe he was having a bad time.

I had no problems with In a Sunburned Country. Within minutes of starting to listen to it on audio book, read by the author himself, I was laughing out loud about some witty observations about the enormity of the land down under. Perhaps it is a crazy place because of the ill-conceived way in which it was colonized, Bryson poses, as he muses on its history. As a listener I was impressed not only by his wit but also by the fact that he had done his homework.

Bryson does find it a problem getting everywhere he wants to go, for the distances are so great. He and his various companions rent a series of sometimes less than ideal vehicles. He also at odd times decides "It's a pretty day, I think I'll walk," which of course leads to sunburn and the great need for several rounds of beer. Some wild dogs scare him pretty badly, and the flies can be maddening.

I like that he goes into every museum that he finds and reports on the wonders therein. It is just what I would do. There are some pretty strange things presented with great skill by the museum professionals in the country. Oh, I wish I could go to Australia.

I should mention poisonous creatures. Bryson finds that there are more in Australia than anywhere else in the world. Snakes, spiders, fish, worms, and so on. He is always watching for them.

There are lots of copies of this book in libraries, so you can probably find one pretty quickly. Enjoy yourself. Prepare to laugh.

Bryson, Bill. In a Sunburned Country. Broadway Books, 2000. ISBN 0767903862; Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio, p2000. 10 compact discs, 055350259X.

Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill by Gretchen Rubin

Author Gretchen Rubin wrote this entertaining book for readers who want to know something but not everything about Winston Churchill. Its forty chapters, some quite short, are essays, quizzes, and lists that present various views of the famous British prime minister about whom many huge books are written. Some essays are like Opposing Viewpoint books, giving evidence for contrary assertions, such "Churchill was an alcoholic" and "Churchill was not an alcoholic." The result is an engaging portrait of the man Rubin says was the real James Bond. I will include Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill in the biography readers' advisory guide that I am writing because Rubin has broken out of the big book biography mold with this creatively organized book. It might be described as "biography lite" but she really did capture the essential life in her small book, which should appeal to many busy readers. More libraries should have it. The author has also written a similar book about President Kennedy, which is also under-represented in libraries.

Rubin, Gretchen. Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill: A Brief Account of a Long Life. Ballantine Books, 2003. 307p. ISBN 0345450477.

Two University of Texas Grads in Reference

It is not often in a far northerly library to find two graduates of the University of Texas library school in one library. For the next month or so, Brent Lipinski is joining us in the public services department at Thomas Ford to answer questions at our reference desk, while we search for a new reference librarian.

Brent started at Thomas Ford in 1998 when he was still in high school. Most of his time with us has been spent at the circulation desk, checking thousands upon thousands of items for the our clients. He has also set up meeting rooms, shelved books, and kept us in good humor with his infectious personality.

Brent is the one on the left with hair. He graduated in 2007. My degree was issued in 1978. According to his degree he is really an information scientist with some library classes, but he seems to have a good grasp on everything reference. It is good to have him around again.

Hook 'em Horns!