Andy Warhol: Prince of Pop by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan

Looking through the YALSA Best Books for Young Adults lists in search of biographies, I came upon a book with a pretty scary cover, Andy Warhol: Prince of Pop by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan. Though I readily recognize Warhol's distinctive paintings, I really did not know much about his life other than it was shocking in the eyes of many moralists and probably not a life to recommend repeating. Reading this mostly nonjudgmental book confirmed my general impression and filled in the story of the 1960s icon.

When you read about the lives of artists, you discover that many lead unconventional lives, often outside the strictures of their societies. To make their art, they devoted themselves to their work and obsessed about the details. Often shunning society at large, they associated with other artists when they were not isolating themselves. Andy Warhol's life seems to have been a variation of this model notable for being extremely social within the counter culture of the times. Warhol's Factory, where he painted and shot films was almost always open to his associates, employees, and fans until one of them shot him. Then it became a fortress.

Why is the book on the 2005 YALSA list? "Books with proven or potential appeal to teens" is the criteria for inclusion. According to the web page for 2005, the book was a unanimous choice of the fifteen member committee. I suspect that they all recognized the teen appeal of rebellion and celebrity. Adults enjoy reading about these themes, too. I enjoyed the quick read and now want to see the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

Andy Warhol: Prince of Pop goes well in either teen or adult collections. The authors included a chronology, glossary, bibliography, and film list, giving the book some reference value.

Greenberg, Jan and Jordan, Sandra. Andy Warhol: Prince of Pop. Delacorte Press, 2005. ISBN 038573056x

Herbert Hoover, Boy Engineer by Mildred H. Comfort

As frequent readers of this blog know, I have been thinking about biography a lot for over a year now. As I am preparing to write a chapter on Coming of Age Biography for my book, it has occurred to me that my first experience with biography that I remember was with a book in the Childhood of Famous Americans series. It was a summer day in 1964, and my mom had taken my sister and me to the Reagan County Public Library in Big Lake, Texas. There I found John Audubon, Boy Naturalist by Miriam Evangeline Mason (Bobbs-Merrill, 1962). I started reading while still in the library. I continued on the ride in the station wagon back out to the ranch and took the book to my bedroom. I was captivated by the story of Audubon's coming to America and traveling around its woods and prairies drawing and painting its birds. I did not put the book down until I had finished. It may have been the only time in my life that I read a regular-size book cover to cover in one session.

I know that I read a bunch of books from the Childhood of Famous Americans series in my fourth to sixth grade years. I remember titles on George Washington, Sacagawea, Robert Fulton, and Eli Whitney. As I reached college age, I heard a professor putting them down as sanitized and idealized. He said this as part of his "do not trust what your high school football coach told you about history" speech. Since then I have seen them in libraries, but I had not thought to read one again until now.

Wanting to refresh my knowledge and reassess these books, I found Herbert Hoover, Boy Engineer by Mildred H. Comfort in the 1965 book jacket still in my library. There are three copies in the SWAN Catalog of the Metropolitan Library System, and 244 more entries for books in the series, which is still being published and republished in more modern jackets. I prefer the 1960s jackets, which have two-color printing over the older covers with silhouettes or the newer versions with red, white, and blue framing.

I chose the book about Hoover because Bonnie and I recently visited the Hoover historical site in West Branch, Iowa. Reading the book, I thought about what I had read at the visitor center and museum and had seen in the historical buildings. Like when I was ten, I found that I was enjoying the story and was reminded of Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The book is about Hoover's childhood but it is also about any childhood in rural America in the later part of the nineteenth century, as there is wealth of cultural information. The books in the American Girl series follow right along with this same formula that Wilder created.

The professor was right about the sanitizing of the story but it did not veer away from what I learned in West Branch. As a young Quaker, Hoover probably was a very well-behaved youth, which is what most of this book is about. He graduates from Stanford University as an engineer on page 168. The rest of his life gets 24 pages.

The story is somewhat fictionalized, as it is told as a series of incidents with setting descriptions and conversation. I thought Comfort did a good job of describing the places of Hoover's youth. I saw again the small family home, the blacksmith shop, and the Quaker meeting house, as well as the hills and the stream. I think a few lines of dialog are suspect, especially line of page 53 in which his father says, "I hope, Bert, that thee'll live to see fifty stars in that flag." Why would anyone in the 1880s pick out fifty? There were only thirty-eight on the flag in the Fourth of July scene in the book.

It is hard to judge a series by a single book, but the Hoover book does encourage me to try a few more. It is fun to be ten again.

Comfort, Mildred H. Herbert Hoover, Boy Engineer. Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965. There is no ISBN.

Book Line in the University of Iowa Main Library

Book line in the Main Library
Originally uploaded by dzou.

One of the encouraging stories out of Iowa this week is the great volunteer effort to save the library collection at the University of Iowa. All the story is not told as yet, but there are photos appearing across the web. Using Flicker I found this photo from dzou showing the line of students and employees moving books out of the Main Library's basement to upper floors.

Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, and many other communities will be telling their library stories soon. Among those will be some tragedies and calls for help from the wider library world.

Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II by Jennet Conant

Here is a great biography for entertaining summer reading.

The story of Alfred Lee Loomis (1887-1975) sounds like 1940's Hollywood movie plot, something for the kid's matinée on a Saturday afternoon. Handsome millionaire stock broker Loomis kept a secret laboratory in his fabulous mansion where he met with great scientists to invent devices to save the world from the Nazis. When he wasn't at a night club or on his yacht with attractive women, he was meeting with Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Enrico Fermi. According to author Jennet Conant in Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II, this adventure story is true. Loomis really led a double life of financial business by day and developing radar and the atomic bombs by night.

Currently every copy of this exciting book in the SWAN catalog of the Metropolitan Library System is on the shelf. It is time for action! Put it on display and offer it to readers.

Conant, Jennet. Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II. Simon & Schuster, 2002.

Havanas in Camelot: Personal Essays by William Styron

Before he died in 2006, William Styron selected fourteen of his essays for a volume reflecting his lighter side. Of course, Havanas in Camelot is still very frank and confessional, for he was a man of strong opinions willing to take on anyone in a debate. Still, he succeeded in avoiding the topic of depression to celebrate the mostly good times of his life.

The title essay ran in Vanity Fair in 1996. In it Styron tells about his brief acquaintance with President John F. Kennedy. Through White House friends Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Richard Goodwin, he was invited to a state dinner and later to the more intimate gathering afterwards. The President was very interested in Styron's upcoming book about rebel slave leader Nat Turner. The author admired how the President could enjoy Cuban cigars at a time when he himself had made them illegal.

The second essay in the volume is "A Case of the Great Pox." You might wonder how he might lightly regard an episode in his life when he was mistakenly told that he had syphilis, but he portrayed himself as a raw nineteen year old recruit confined in a military hospital by a judgmental Navy doctor who wanted to see him suffer for his sins. He was quite happy to learn that he only had a dental disease. To his dying days he harbored a wish to again expose the bad doctor for his terrible bedside manner, as he had in the New Yorker in 1995.

My favorite essays are a series of tributes that Styron wrote about friends and acquaintances that had died, including Truman Capote, James Baldwin, and Terry Southern. There is also a revealing previously unpublished piece about joy and utility of walking a dog.

Readers who enjoyed Styron's previous books or who want a look into the literary world of the 1950s and 1960s will enjoy this quick read.

Styron, William. Havanas in Camelot: Personal Essays. Random House, 2008. ISBN 9781400067190

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing by Elmore Leonard and illustrated by Joe Ciardiello

Elmore Leonard must have laughed all the way to the bank. His advice to would-be authors, Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, is an attractive publication but the text would make a short powerpoint presentation. He must have gotten the idea from David Letterman that he can make ten quirky statements and entertain his fans. It is entertaining, but it could be reproduced on a couple of postcards. You can read the book in five minutes or less.

To be fair, Leonard may have aimed this book more at the gift market. I can imagine it as an encouraging item to give to an aspiring author, who would keep it next to his/her desk as a reminder not to start novels with weather or use adverbs to modify the word "said."

The book does quickly convey Leonard's philosophy and the drawings are clever, but the book hardly seems worth taxpayer dollars. If you have a request at your library, you may borrow ours.

Leonard, Elmore. Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing. William Morrow, 2007. ISBN 9780061451461

The Wisdom of Donkeys: Finding Tranquility in a Chaotic World by Andy Merrifield

The Wisdom of Donkeys: Finding Tranquility in a Chaotic World by Andy Merrifield is a book to read slowly. I took ten days to read this account of the author's walking trip through the Auvergne region of central France with a rented donkey named Gribouille. I fell asleep several times while reading his descriptions of the tranquil bridle paths and rural villages far from the hectic cities of his somehow unsatisfying career as a teacher and writer. Merrifield urges readers to daydream. Unlike many authors, he probably smiles when readers drop his book as they nod off.

Gribouille, a chocolate brown donkey with a placid personality is more than a beast of burden. He is a friend and adviser who makes the pilgrimage possible. His calm restrains Merrifield who might pick up the pace and miss much of what there is to see if he were alone. If the donkey declines to cross a bridge or go down a path, the author reconsiders the way. If the way can not be changed, the man waits for the donkey to agree, which he always does.

On the way, Merrifield recounts many donkey stories from history and literature, showing that the equines are intelligent and companionable animals. He rues their misrepresentations in Aesop's fables and stereotypical comedies. He contends that communities that still harbor donkeys are more pleasant places. A man or woman with a donkey is better off than someone with an SUV.

The Wisdom of Donkeys is a quietly persuasive book that deserves more attention at this time when our whole way of life is questioned. More libraries should consider it.

Merrifield, Andy. The Wisdom of Donkeys: Finding Tranquility in a Chaotic World. Walker & Company, 2008. ISBN 9780802715937

Isn't it cool that the publisher is "Walker"?

Readers' Advisory Online Demonstartion by Sarah Statz Cords

Sarah Statz Cords asked me to pass along that she is presenting on Friday, June 13, a web-based demonstration of Readers' Advisory Online, which includes content from her The Real Story: A Guide to Nonfiction Reading Interests and books in the Genereflecting series from Libraries Unlimited. If you would like to learn about the online source, register quickly by emailing Laura Calerone at laura.calderone@lu.com.

Here is the official notice:

Sarah Statz Cords, from Madison Public Library, Wisconsin, author of The Real Story, and associate editor for the Reader’s Advisor Online, will be offering a web-based demonstration Friday, June 13, 2008 at 1PM EDT / 10 AM PDT (noon central time). Attendees will view the training via the web and will call a conference number to enable full participation in the training. Spaces are limited ­ please register ASAP! You may reserve a seat by emailing laura.calderone@lu.com. Confirmation of registration and access instructions will be sent by email

http://www.readersadvisoronline.com/blog/index.php/2008/06/06/webinar-demo-for-readers-advisor-online-tues-may-20/

The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street by Charles Nicholl

William Shakespeare is the subject of many biographies that take threads of evidence and try to weave his whole life. In The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street, historian Charles Nicholl takes a different approach. He focuses on a short period of Shakespeare's life, 1603-1605, the time during which he resided in an upstairs room in the home of the tyremakers Christopher and Marie Mountjoy. Without making many firm statements about the Bard himself, Nicholl fully describes the circumstances of his life.

The Mountjoys were French Huguenots living in exile in London, a very cosmopolitan city to which many European refugees had fled. Many of these people were living fairly prosperous lives as artisans, a sore point with many English-born craftspeople who felt that the immigrants were stealing their jobs. Nicholl thinks it is very interesting that Shakespeare whose Catholic affiliations are highlighted in many recent biographies lived with Huguenots, Protestants who were chased from Catholic France. The author's suggestion is that religion did not really matter that much to the playwright.

Nicholl tells much about the making of tyres, fancy ladies head decorations. These works, including hats and wigs, were created for wealthy ladies, ladies of ill repute, and theatricals. The author speculates that Shakespeare may have been introduced to the Mountjoys as a customer of headpieces for some of the plays that his company produced. In residence above the workshop, he would have come in contact with ladies of all sorts who visited to get their tyres.

While he lived on Silver Street, Shakespeare was middle aged and at work on the plays Othello, Measure for Measure, King Lear, and All's Well That Ends Well. Nicholl quotes heavily from them to show how the playwright incorporated his surroundings and the events in his own life. The historian especially draws on documents concerning a lawsuit involving Christopher Mountjoy and his son-in-law Stephen Bellott. Shakespeare gave a deposition for the case and was later required to testify what he knew about an unpaid dowry. Nicholl draws parallels between the facts of the case and King Lear disinheriting his daughter in the tragic play.

I listened to the book superbly read by Simon Vance, who kept all the minute details of daily life interesting. While working in the garden, cooking, and driving the car - my daily activities - I got the scoop on what Shakespeare did with his days 400 years ago. It is a bit of gossip that you might enjoy hearing.

Nicholl, Charles. The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street. Viking 2008. ISBN 9780670018505

8 compact discs. Tantor Audio, 2008. 9781400106288

The Library Ivy

I nominate my library as most worthy of being in Hobbiton or an English village.

Picasa Web Albums

Bonnie received via email a link to a Picasa Web Album from our niece Stephanie with photos from birthday party. The photos in the slide show were big and sharp, and I was impressed. This morning I decided to see if I could set up an album myself and discovered that I already had one web album. By being a member of Blogger and already having loaded Picasa onto my PC, I had a default album collecting all the illustrations that have added to this blog this January 3, 2007.

Because I mostly review books, my Picasa Web Album is mostly a wall of books. It looks pretty cool. We could easily set up something like this for our library website. You could, too.

203 pages of The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil

I come to The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil with a bias to like it. Kurzweil is a fascinating man, and I applaud his efforts to invent machines to help people with visual handicaps to read. The primary reason that I am reading the book, however, is that I now know Toshi Hoo, who is co-director, co-producer, and editor of the forthcoming documentary with the same title. (Since I last looked at the Internet Movie Database, there are many more details. At one point, it only listed Toshi and Kurzweil as involved.)

As you can tell from my title, I have not actually finished The Singularity is Near, a large book of 652 pages of which 496 are text. Kurzweil explains his subject well and can at points be very entertaining, and I especially like the imagined conversations involving figures from the past, present, and future that end the chapters. Some sections include many graphs and can be skimmed through pretty quickly. Other sections require slow thoughtful reading. The author includes much detail, but his arguments are accessible. I have just not made enough time to finish.

I wish the book was commercially available in audio. I would enjoy listening while I pull weeds and trim the shrubs. With as much gardening as I have before me, I could finish in another week.

The subject should interest anyone who wonders about our future. Kurzweil predicts that artificial intelligence will become more and more powerful in the next several decades. This is not of itself a surprising prediction, but the author proposes that the key is reverse engineering the human brain. The brain has much more duplication and is self-organizing, while current computers are very linear in their decision-making. Brains are more flexible and can to some extent repair themselves. They also use much less energy and produce less heat than power hungry computers. Kurzweil wants future computers to be as cold as rocks when preforming their calculations.

There is so much more in the first 200 pages than I indicate in this summary. The aim of the book as a whole is to describe the singularity - the point at which human and technical intelligence become one. Kurzweil believes this will be good because humans will have shaped the technology. The technology will enhance humans.

Of course, there is much to discuss and weigh ethically. Many people will fear these developments. Others may wish to have their brains uploaded to more lasting equipment than the human body.

I look forward to the documentary. I suspect it will bring more readers to the book. It will also serve those people who are interested in the subject but are unwilling to start such a big book. I hope to schedule the DVD for our film discussion group.

Kurzweil, Ray. The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Viking, 2005. ISBN 0670033847

Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation by Cokie Roberts

Cokie Roberts told us about Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation back at the American Library Association in New Orleans in 2006. At that point her new book was only an idea, but she had her stories and publishing date, which she met. As a reader who enjoys history, I am glad to have now gotten my hands on the library's audio copy, which Roberts reads herself.

Ladies of Liberty continues the story of Founding Mothers: Women Who Raised the Nation, which tells about leading women during the American Revolution through the writing of the Constitution and to the presidential administration of George Washington. Ladies of Liberty takes us through the presidencies of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe to the inaugural ball for John Quincy Adams. While there is an emphasis on the women in the White House, the book weaves in stories of other U. S. women, including Rebecca Gratz who founded many of the educational and charitable organizations in Philadelphia and Elizabeth Ann Seton, who founded benevolent societies, schools, and the first American order of Catholic nuns.

Louisa Adams may have been my favorite woman in the book. She had to have great strength of character to join the Adams family as wife of John Quincy Adams. He was always a loving but difficult man who might go away to distant lands for years (and Louisa sometimes followed). In his absence, she had to deal with her strong-willed mother-in-law Abigail Adams. Abigail at first disliked Louisa for having been born in London of a British mother and American father, making her not completely American. In time, Louisa won her over by showing her devotion to husband and country. One of the best stories in the book is about Louisa's forty-day journey across Europe (St. Petersburg to Paris) during the Napoleonic Wars. With cunning and a bit of deceit, she was able to avoid being taken prisoner by rival factions. Louisa also stood up for Elizabeth Monroe who offended Washington society by not attending every social function.

I also liked Sacajawea who saved the lives of the men of the Lewis and Clark expedition countless times. She had more knowledge of the land and sense than her traveling companions, and her advice kept them on the right path. She knew where to find food and braved rapids to save drowning men. Just her presence with the men told the tribes of the West that the explorers were not a war party and kept them from being attacked.

Ladies of Liberty is a very entertaining look at history. Roberts loves telling about the times when women prove essential to international affairs, as in the time Thomas Jefferson turned to his granddaughter to translate an important Spanish diplomatic letter. Libraries should have plenty of copies now and keep some for many years.

Roberts, Cokie. Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation. William Morrow, 2008. ISBN 9780060782344

8 discs. Harper Audio, 2008. ISBN 9780061227257

Advice for the Readers' Advisor

Ann Rule or Anne Rice,
Neither author is very nice.
Gentle readers will complain
If you give them either name.
Give Jan Karon to this bunch.
Read John Gardner with your lunch.
Which John Gardner, can you tell?
There's James Bond or Grendel.

When matching reader to a book,
You must take a careful look.
Readers are picky, you will see
When you do readers' advisory.

Citizen Reader: A Blog About More Than Nonfiction

The blogger formerly known as Nonanon has remade herself into Citizen Reader. In her welcome to the new site, she explains that the new title reflects that her interests are a bit broader now. Though she will still review nonfiction books most of the time, she will include fiction or other media when inspired. I expect she will continue to be provocative and pan the books that deserve panning, while lifting up titles that we should consider for our collections and personal reading. Bookmark her site.

Serving Teen Through Readers' Advisory by Heather Booth

I am excited to report that the Thomas Ford Memorial Library has hired Heather Booth as our Teen Librarian. In preparation to work with her to revamp our services for teens, I read her idea-filled book Serving Teens Through Readers' Advisory.

I often skim rather than read library science texts, but Heather writes to entertain as well as inform and persuade, so I read it all. In this book about connecting teens with books and other library materials, she skillfully adapts adult readers' advisory ideas from Joyce Saricks, Barry Trott, Neal Wyatt, and others. Amidst her points about the unique needs of adolescent readers, she tells short stories about hand-selling and indirectly marketing books. I readily identified with her sample cases of offering books to reluctant readers, parents with vague ideas about class assignments, and teens who want more books like the ones that they already read.

Heather's book can also be used as a selection aid. Throughout her text, she includes many title suggestions, and in the appendices she identifies popular authors in teen genres and sure bets according to reading abilities. I am sure we can improve our collection with some of her suggestions.

A lot of libraries and librarians can benefit from reading Serving Teens Through Readers' Advisory. Consider it for your collection.

Booth, Heather. Serving Teens Through Readers' Advisory. ALA Editions, 2007. ISBN 9780838909300

Doubt: A Parable by John Patrick Shanley

One of the factors that keeps people out of book discussion groups is choosing big books that require many hours to read. Some people will read portions and skim, but many will not, so attendance is low when the books are gigantic. There is no need to worry with the choice of Doubt: A Parable by John Patrick Shanley. The 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama is only 58 pages. It reads very quickly, yet my book group found plenty to discuss for an hour and a half.

Doubt has only four characters: two nuns, a priest, and the mother of a student at a Catholic school. The year is 1964, and Sister Aloysius is unhappy with the times. A shortage of nuns has required the school to hire some lay teachers. The students are unruly and unmotivated. Ballpoint pens are replacing fountain pens. She thinks the song "Frosty the Snowman" is offensive to the church. Most importantly, Sister does not like the charismatic priest whom she suspects of abusing students.

Shanley has written a play that works on many levels, making it very discussable. It is of current interest because of the recent revelations of abuse by clergy in many denominations. It can also be scene as a political parable. Short as it is, it made members of the discussion remember many other works that they had read and plays that they had seen. With one character believing something for which there is no evidence, reading Doubt confirms a theme in True Enough by Farhad Manjoo, which I recently read. The intrigue within a community of nuns reminds me of The Abbess of Crewe by Murial Spark.

Book groups looking for a worthy and marketable book should consider this gripping play.

Shanley, John Patrick. Doubt: A Parable. Theatre Communications Group, 2005. ISBN 1559362766

Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai by

Wangari Maathai won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her founding of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. Two years later, her book Unbowed: a Memoir was published to critical acclaim. Now her story is told again in a picture book for children called Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai by Claire A. Nivola.

The telling of a story of environmental abuse may seem a bit serious for younger children, but Nivola has simplified the story for ease of elementary understanding. The important point made is that when a person sees a problem, she can do something to solve it. Maathai could have easily accepted that a person could do little about deforestation, but she instead believed that she could with others do very much. As a result 30,000,000 trees have been planted. Caring, cooperation, and the importance of the individual are good lessons for young readers. Older readers should be reminded of this as well.

Planting the Trees of Kenya is the kind of book that parents and teachers may want to read aloud, so they can explain some of the unfamiliar words and describe the problems to their listeners. Then the children should be allowed to look at all the pictures which subtly include much about the culture in Kenya. Libraries with environmental or world cultures collections for children will want to consider this attractive book.

Nivola, Claire A. Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. ISBN 9780374399184

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri's latest collection of short stories Unaccustomed Earth comes at a great time for my library. We are featuring short stories in our summer reading program for adults, and it is great to have something new and brilliant to tout. Lahiri has excelled with this group of tales about the difficult relationships of Bengali immigrants to America who wish to preserve their culture and their children who long to assimilate.

I listened to the collection read by Sarita Choudhury and Ajay Naidu. In the both the first and the final stories, the two readers alternate as Lahiri has two voices telling these poignant stories. The first is the title story, which features an academically gifted daughter who has married late and is a new mother rather isolated in a new community. Her widowed father comes to visit and starts a garden for her. She wonders whether this is a sign that he expects her to offer him permanent place in her home, as a daughter would back in India. She is uncertain what cultural rules still apply.

Lahiri tries out a variety of scenarios in the collection In "Only Goodness," a brother and sister drift apart as they react very differently to their Bengali parents expectations. Both choose non-Bengali mates with opposite results. In "A Choice of Accommodations," a Bengali man reluctantly returns with his wife to the private school that he attended. The draw is the wedding of the schoolmaster's daughter, an attractive woman that he always worshiped from afar.

The collection ends with three interconnected stories about two Bengali children and their lives over thirty years. Hema's family gives Kaushik's family rooms while they look for their own house in the Boston area. While the families drift apart over cultural differences, Hema and Kauchik loosely bond in the first story. The story is written as a letter from Hema to Kauchik, who she remembers and wishes she could see again. In the second story, Kauchik wishes he could tell Hema about what has happened to him in his life. In the final melancholy story they do meet again. The book cover has meaning after you read this story.

Public libraries should definitely have this outstanding collection and use it to introduce readers to their short story collections.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. Unaccustomed Earth. Knopf, 2008. ISBN 9780307265739

8 compact discs. Books on Tape, 2008. ISBN 9781415943564

Hungry: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin by Allen Zadoff

I was attracted by the cookie cutter on the cover. I like cookies a lot. So does Allen Zadoff, the author of Hungry: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin. In fact, cookies are one of his trigger foods and a contributing factor to his food addiction.

Allen Zadoff is a compulsive overeater, and Hungry is a witty memoir more than a self-help book. He repeats throughout the book that the methods that he used to return to a more normal weight after having expanded to 360 pounds may not work for others. His aim is to encourage others with eating disorders that they can gain control of their lives through behavior modification.

Diets are out of the picture for Zadoff, as none ever worked. Daily planning and abstaining from trigger foods is in. (A trigger food is something that a person can not stop eating once he/she starts, like potato chips or cookies.) It has worked for him for twelve years because he starts every day with a plan of what to eat - three good meals and no snacks. If he fails one day, he starts over the next day with three good meals. He insists that penalizing oneself for past failure just leads to more failure and that it is important to start fresh each day.

Though Zadoff aims his book at people with serious eating disorders, Hungry is entertaining and thought-provoking quick read for almost any reader. I am sure many readers will identify and empathize with his story, as many of us imagine what would happen if we just gave in to all our desires. It may help some understand the problems that their friends have.

Not many libraries in my area bought this helpful book. I urge them to reconsider, for it might help someone a lot.

Zadoff, Allen. Hungry: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin. Da Capo Life Long, 2007. ISBN 9780738211053