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

True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society by Farhad Manjoo

Americans and other earthlings are divided by more than opinions these days. We do not even sense the same reality. There are few facts to which everyone agrees, no matter how much evidence can be produced and disseminated. Diverse portions of our population believes that NASA faked the moon landings, that Saddam Hussein planned the 9/11 attacks, and that anyone who wants a good paying job can get one easily. Modern communication technology is supposed to supply news and information to bring us to common understanding, but it has failed. According to Salon staff writer Farhad Manjoo in his new book True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, there is too much information and much of it is manipulated for partisan purposes.

Four or five decades ago, we got our news from a handful of mainline sources, as many people watched network news every evening. With cable television and the Internet widely available, people now choice other sources that have more "point of view" and less objectivity. Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, Larry King, Bill O'Reilly, and other media stars have more influence on public opinion than most politicians. Most people only check news sources that will tell them what they already believe. When mainline and liberal channels carried refutations of the Swift Boat Veterans claim that John Kerry acted cowardly in the Vietnam War, conservatives who believed the story did not even notice.

Manjoo rebukes many local television stations for the use of video news releases or VNRs. Many political, professional, and industrial interest groups send slick videos to the stations, which may air them on their local news programs without any verification of the content. The stations are more interested in advertising revenues than the veracity of the news and are happy to reduce the cost of news gathering. Tobacco companies, the oil industry, and pharmaceutical firms often get their viewpoints reported as facts.

The manipulators do not always get their way. I found the most encouraging story was how tobacco companies ultimately failed to stop much of the regulation of the use of their products. Big tobacco counted on its customers to stand up for them, not realizing that addicts do not really love their pushers. Wanting help to break their habits, many smokers actually favor regulation . Tobacco killing over 400,000 people per year is a "fact" that just can not be glossed over anymore.

True Enough is a lively and engaging look at "truthiness" which should be in more public libraries (institutions devoted to the presentation and dissemination of all viewpoints).

Manjoo, Farhad. True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society. John Wiley & Sons, 2008. ISBN 9780470050101

The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith

I think the thing that I like best about books in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith is the universal compassion that runs through the stories. There are special moments and thoughtful exchanges, such as this conversation on page 125 of the latest title The Miracle at Speedy Motors.


Mma Ramotswe introduced herself. You do not know me, Mma. I am Precious Ramotswe."

The woman listened attentively, with the manner that older people have with names. She belonged to a Botswana where names meant something, connected people with places, cousins, events; even with cattle.

"Ramotswe? There was an Obed Ramotswe in Mochudi, I think. He . . ."

"Was my father. He is late now. My father."

The woman lowered her eyes in sympathy. "I am sorry. He was a good man."

Mma Ramotswe felt proud, as she always did when someone remembered her father. Invariably they used the expression good man; and he was. He was the best of men.


Readers everywhere will understand the emotions of the characters in this story set in remote Botswana. The local flavor of the story may draw readers in to the story. The universal themes keep them.

The Miracle at Speedy Motors is the ninth title in the series. Public libraries need to have them all.

McCall Smith, Alexander. The Miracle at Speedy Motors. Pantheon Books, 2008. ISBN 9780375424489.

Wild at Heart: Man and Beast in Southern Africa: Photographs by Chris Johns

Bonnie brings home great books.

I wonder if Wild at Heart: Man and Beast in Southern Africa will be a rare book some day. Not many libraries bought this over-sized booked when it was published by the National Geographic Society in 2002. Inexpensive used copies can be found on the Internet now, but new copies are still $65. It is awkward to shelve, and the landscape layout with the binding at the top makes it heavy to hold. Still, for someone who loves African wildlife and longs to visit the preserves of Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and South Africa, it is a wonderful book.

Unbind the book and many of the photos could be mounted and framed, especially the landscapes and wildlife scenes. Not all the photos, however, are pleasant. Photographer Chris Johns includes candid shots of poaching, predators killing prey, poverty, and squalor. Essayist Peter Godwin frankly discusses the problems of mismanaged parks, shrinking habitats, displaced people, and political misdeeds along with his accounts of wildlife conservation.

My favorite section is the remarkable story of a female cheetah who successfully raises a litter of five cubs to adulthood on Mambo Island in the Okavango Delta. It is followed by a section about the plight of wild dogs, which are not really dogs but a separate line of canines. Some of the wild dog hunting photos are rather bloody. You have to be a wildlife enthusiast (as I am) to like this book. If so, it is worth the wait to ILL.

Wild at Heart: Man and Beast in Southern Africa. National Geographic Insight, 2002. ISBN 0792269055

The Story of My Life by Helen Keller

It seems like I have always known about Helen Keller. I probably heard about her as an elementary school student many years ago. I may have seen The Miracle Worker (1962) with Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke on television. What I had not done until last week was read The Story of My Life.

Of the many surprises the book had for me, first was how visually descriptive it seems. When Keller relates incidents, I can almost see them. I think this is because she puts everything into context, includes motion, length, depth, and position. I would know these qualities of a scene if I saw them. Keller knew them from sense of touch and the narration supplied by her companions, especially her teacher Anne Sullivan.

The second surprise was her eloquence and rich vocabulary. It is amazing to think that she began her education with only the memory of the word wawa for water remaining from her infancy. She relates that she was a vibrant child with advanced language before she went deaf and blind at the age of nineteen months. She claims to have lost all of the early learning, but I wonder if it really was the foundation of her revival.

The third big surprise for me was that Keller wrote her autobiography as a college student. She was only twenty-three when it was published. Already she had traveled extensively in the U.S. and Canada and met Alexandre Graham Bell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Mark Twain. She had read their works as well as much history and classical literature. She read Latin, French, and German. The only subjects that she seemed to find difficult were geometry and calculus.

The Story of My Life was originally published in 1903. Keller lived until 1968, writing other books and articles. She was surprisingly active as a reformer, espousing the causes of women's rights, birth control, fair labor practices, socialism, and pacifism. A Gallup Poll taken in 1999 listed her fifth among most admired people of the Twentieth Century, behind Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr, John F. Kennedy, and Albert Einstein. I would move her up.

Obviously, The Story of My Life is a book that every public library should have. The restored edition from Modern Library, published on the centennial of the original edition, has a selection of Keller letters and other supplements.

Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life. Modern Library. ISBN 0679642870

Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut

Recently, Nonanon praised Armageddon in Retrospect, a new volume of previously unpublished pieces by the late Kurt Vonnegut. Now that I have read it, I agree. The short stories, his letter to his family from post-World War II Europe, and the speech Vonnegut gave in Indianapolis just before he died are all filled with wit, candor, and compassion. Together they make a bold statement about the futility of war and the ethics of victory (if there really is such a thing in war).

I wonder why the stories sat unpublished. Was Vonnegut not satisfied with them or did he just move on to other projects so quickly that they were left behind? Several are set in Dresden during and after the Allies leveling of the city at war's end, when many children, women, seniors, and other noncombatants were killed needlessly, arbitrarily. Collateral damage. Maybe the author felt that he had said enough with Slaughterhouse Five. Whatever the reason, now is a good time for them to emerge, as they speak well to the generation questioning the sense of the war in Iraq.

My favorite story is "The Unicorn Trap" set in the time of William the Conqueror's consolidation of control in England. I like the conscientious serf who does not want to become a tax collector, denying his wife upward mobility. I also especially like "The Commandant's Desk," one of several stories around the issue of soldiers looting the homes and shops of the towns that they liberated. The cabinet maker is another vehicle for Vonnegut's voice.

Though the book can be put in the 80os, I think it will be more easily found by readers in the fiction collection. All public libraries should add this treasure of Vonnegut.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Armageddon in Retrospect. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2008. ISBN 9780399155086

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

At a time when some writers have tried to pass off fiction as memoirs, Sherman Alexie has taken a different tact. He has written The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a novel based on his experiences as an Indian attending an all-white school. In an interview with Rick Margolis of School Library Journal (August 2007, p. 29), he explains that he had written 450 pages of a family memoir and part of it just did not fit the rest thematically. He said readers would hardly believe it anyway, so he made it into a novel for teens to fill a promise that he had made to write such a book. The resulting book has been widely praised in reviews and won a National Book Award.

So there may be a more serious memoir still coming. I suspect that too might be powerful reading. I enjoyed The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian thoroughly, but one thought nags at me. With the exception of his family support, his depiction of the reservation is almost totally negative. Everyone has given up on life and turned to alcohol. This broad generalization is probably more acceptable in a teen novel because it is part of the hero's feelings more than objective truth. It will be interesting to see how he portrays the reservation in a memoir.

I also wonder how the Indian community views this book. I think about The Oldest Rookie by Jim Morris, part of which takes place in my hometown. It is fortunate for Morris that he no longer works there (he commuted in daily so he never actually lived there), as the locals mostly did not like the book. Truth hurts. Also, Morris may not have been totally fair.

I hope Alexie keeps writing for readers of all ages. The success of this book should encourage it.

Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Little, Brown and Company, 2007. ISBN 9780316013680

The Nonfiction Narrative: Exploring Nonfiction in a Readers' Advisory Context

Neal Wyatt of Chesterfield County Public Library in Virginia, author of The Readers' Advisory Guide to Nonfiction, spoke to about 40 librarians from around the western and southern Chicago suburbs about The Nonfiction Narrative: Exploring Nonfiction in a Readers' Advisory Context this morning at the Metropolitan Library System headquarters in Burr Ridge. In the spirit of her presentation, here is a brief on the workshop.

Narrative: Low, for this was an instructional workshop. Wyatt did incorporate some story telling. I especially liked her quick summaries of the books that she highlighted.

Nonfiction Categories: Task Instruction, How-To

Nonfiction Types: Explanations

Subjects: Library Science, Readers' Advisory, Nonfiction Books

Pace: Fast, Quick, Lively

Tone: Upbeat, Affirming, Instructive, Humorous

Intent: Learning/Experiencing

Special Features: The attendees formed four groups (1) to write up RA briefs for popular nonfiction books and (2) to prepare to recommend other books to a client based on the book enjoyed and its appeal factors. Wyatt also provide helpful handouts with tips for working with nonfiction.

What You Should Know: Narrative is just another word for story. Narrative nonfiction includes books that are basically true (some memoirs less so) that score high on story factors, as apposed to straight factual style. Like fiction, narrative nonfiction appeals to readers for characterization, story line, setting, good pacing, and appealing tone. Unlike fiction readers, nonfiction readers want books about subjects from which they learn or experience. Any librarian can with just a little thought and practice adapt to recommending nonfiction as well as fiction, to work toward a whole collection approach to readers' advisory.

Target audience: This workshop (which I assume will play in other venues) will appeal to librarians wishing to improve their ability to get good nonfiction books into the hands of appreciative readers. They will also like getting a few new titles to put on their own reading lists.

What I'm Taking Away: I will play around with her nonfiction types, which are sub-genres that can move around beneath various nonfiction categories. Wyatt said that as a profession we are still sorting out how to organize our readers' advisory tools. This is of particular interest to me as I try to write a book on biography, which ends up as both a category and a type in the Wyatt's scheme. There is no one right way to do this. Various schemes will probably always be needed for differing client needs.

Last Thought: Wyatt says that pace and tone are the two most important appeal factors in recommending books that clients enjoy. I think that she is right, and they may be the most challenging to identify. The librarian and client may not have a common vocabulary from which to work. We're going to have to do good interviews, welcome feedback, and try again and again.

The Heart Has Reasons: Holocaust Rescuers & Their Stories of Courage by Mark Klempner

Imagine that you live in the Netherlands in 1940. The German Army has invaded your country and taken over your government. At first, the spokesmen for the new regime promise that you will be able to continue with your life as it has been for your ancestry is the same as theirs. In fact, life will be better because they will clean up the bad influences in your society. Do you feel reassured? Do you ignore that Hitler had promised to honor Dutch neutrality just days before the invasion? Do you ignore the firebombing of Rotterdam? Do you ignore the past seven years of news from Germany? Why do some people have a J on their newly issued citizenship cards?

According to Mark Klempner in The Heart Has Reasons: Holocaust Rescuers & Their Stories of Courage, a small number of Dutch citizens knew exactly what they should do in 1940. There was no way that they would sit still and comply with restrictions. They would resist and undermine the Nazi authorities by hiding Jewish children in their homes or helping transport them to Dutch farms to be kept or shuttled out of the country. They may or may not have considered the dangers. Not to act would have been immoral.

In his book, Klempner presents the stories of ten Dutch resisters whom he interviewed in 1996. They risked their freedom and lives daily by carrying children on bicycles, on trains, or through alleys. Some stole identification or ration cards from municipal offices. Others took food and money to the foster parents who kept the children. Some kept children either in attics or pretended that they were their own. All found the resistance thrilling and fulfilling. Most report that in a strange way that the war years were the best in their lives.

The Heart Has Reason is about more than just World War II. Klempner questioned his subjects about their lives after the war. Many have worked for other causes. In their responses, they portray the world as a dangerous place filled with evil that has to be faced and defeated. They are all pragmatists, who point out the shallowness of the post-war "never again" pledge from world governments. There have many "holocausts" since.

Most readers will find the rescuers' stories inspiring and Klempner's analysis thought provoking. They may feel a bet remiss for not doing more themselves. The Heart Has Reasons would make an interesting book discussion club choice.

Klempner, Mark. The Heart Has Reasons: Holocaust Rescuers & Their Stories of Courage. Pilgrim Press, 2006. ISBN 0829816992

The Man Whom Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus by Jashua Kendall

There are no synonyms, according to Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869), author of Roget's Thesaurus, for no two words have the exact same meaning. There are many words with near meanings from which to choose to clarify messages, and the eccentric polymath and classifier tried to organize them. He created his thesaurus first for himself, as he found he needed a stronger vocabulary. When he published it late in his life, many reviewers cheered it, but some opposed him for providing a crutch to lesser minds.

According to journalist Joshua Kendall in The Man Whom Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus, Roget was a physician and scientist who made compulsively made lists from childhood in response to the discord and chaos of his life. He did not realize that his focus on the lists would help him to stay free of the madness that infected his grandmother, mother, sister, and uncle. His thesaurus was a byproduct of his effective personal therapy. It also eventually made him rich.

Roget rubbed shoulders with almost everyone in science, medicine, literature, and government of his time. At one point, he was considered the most eligible bachelor in London, but he seemed blind to the designs of young women around him. His lectures were well-attended, he was president of nearly every learned society in London at some point in his life, and he was praised for perfecting the logarithmic slide rule. His family, however, fell apart around him, and he also suffered mental breakdowns.

General readers will enjoy this biography full of vocabulary facts and family drama. Most public libraries should consider adding it to their collections.

Kendall, Joshua. The Man Whom Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2008. ISBN 9780399154621.

Jack Plank Tells Tales by Natalie Babbitt

Gardening season has finally begun here in Illinois. For me that means that audiobook season has also begun, as I often listen to a good book while weeding and dead-heading outdoors. On Saturday while trimming rose bushes and trying to keep getting terribly scratched, I listened to a jolly pirate's tale, called Jack Plank Tells Tales by Natalie Babbitt.

Jack Plank was rather a washout as a pirate for he did not really like the noise and danger of attacking other ships. He preferred watching the seagulls, feeling the sea breeze, and peeling a few potatoes for soup. His shipmates on the Avarice kept him on for years because he was pleasant to have around, but in hard times when booty was scarce, they put him ashore at a port called Saltwash, now in Jamaica. The innkeeper Mrs. DelFresno told him that he could stay for one gold sovereign per day, provided he behaved himself and got a job within a week.

Every day Jack joined the residents of the inn for dinner to say that he did not find a job that day. For reasons he explained in stories, he could not be a farmer, baker, fisherman, or take any of the other recommend jobs. His stories involving sad trolls, beautiful mermaids, gullible ghosts, and other fantastic creatures kept his dinner companions entertained.

Jack Plank Tells Tales read by John H. Mayer is fun listening for young and old.

Babbitt, Natalie. Jack Plank Tells Tales. Listening Library, 2008. 2 compact discs. ISBN 9780739364086

E. E. Cummings by Catherine Reef

I noticed E. E. Cummings: A Poet's Life by Catherine Reef in the Best Books for Young Adults 2008 list from YALSA in the March 1, 2008 issue of Booklist.

Poet E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) is remembered by contemporary readers more for his novel use of capitalization and punctuation than his verses. Scattered across pages and broken up into fragments, his words are hard to follow, their meanings difficult to grasp. In this compact, illustrated account of the revolutionary poet, author Catherine Reef explains that Cummings viewed his poems as bridges between language and visual art. Early in his career, he was more successful as a painter than poet. He viewed his life as an artistic mission that should not be compromised or limited by medium. The result was a life full of good friendships with other poets (Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams) and difficult romantic and family relationships.

While aimed at teenage readers, Reef does not filter adult themes like prostitution and infidelity from Cummings life. Adults may also enjoy this sympathetic portrait of a gentle but complicated man. The author includes many samples of Cummings poetry and photographs of his associates and the places that he lived and visited.

I notice that only sixteen of the public libraries in the SWAN catalog of the Metropolitan Library System have this well-done biography, and there is no agreement where it goes. More should have it somewhere in their collections.

Reef, Catherine. E. E. Cummings. Clarion Books, 2006. 149p. ISBN 9780618568499.

A Soldier's Story

A Soldier's Story, a 1984 film about racial segregation in World War II, is a mystery in several ways. Most obviously, it is a film in which an military investigator seeks to discover who murdered the friendless Sargent Waters on a foggy night right outside camp. Did a local member of the Ku Klux Klan kill the black soldier as a "get out of Louisiana" message aimed at the African Americans in training? Did a white officer who felt Waters was disrespectful shoot him? Could it have been one of his own men, all of whom came from the Negro baseball league?

The other mystery is how so few of us remembered A Soldier's Story, which was based on a Pulitzer Prize winning play and nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Out of nineteen people at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library's showing of the film, only one had seen it when it was released twenty-four years ago. It was really quiet good. How had it been forgotten?

The story follows Captain Davenport, an African American investigator well played by Howard E. Rollins, Jr., as he questions anyone who knew the victim. Among the men from the company that he interviews is Private First Class Peterson, played by a very young Denzel Washington. In flashbacks, Waters is played by Adolph Caesar, who was nominated as best supporting actor.

The film has a very theatrical quality, as one might expect from a movie based on a play. At points lighting spotlights characters telling their memories. Dialogue has a scripted and quotable feel that one used to find in movies. It also seems almost like a musical, as it starts with Patti LaBelle as Big Mary singing in the local colored bar, and several other scenes follow with Larry Riley as C. J. Memphis singing in the mess hall or back in the bar.

A Soldier's Story was a good choice for our discussion group. We talked about the characters and the mystery first. Then we discussed the segregation of the American military until 1948 and the importance of military integration for the civil rights movement that followed. I recommend the film to film fans and other libraries holding discussions.

Laughing Without an Accent by Firoozeh Dumas

It is fun reading books before they are published. I get a privileged feeling just holding a review copy, which may be a bit silly, seeing that the publishers gave many of them away at the Public Library Association Conference in Minneapolis. Still, I was really pleased when Uma from our library offered to let me read an advanced reader's edition of Laughing Without an Accent by Firoozeh Dumas, the author of Funny in Farsi. The book is due out at the end of April 2008.

In her new volume, Dumas continues to tell amusing stories about her life as an Iranian who moved to the United States as a child before the revolution of 1979. In some ways, she grew up very American, watching television, eating fast food, and going away to college. Still, because of her early years in Iran, her perspectives remain atypical. She is a sort of inside outsider, a perfect person to notice the odd aspects of American life that natives tend to take for granted.

Many of her stories are about adjusting or not adjusting to a new culture. She features her own experiences, as well as those of her parents and her husband, who is French. Each story is well-crafted and compelling, and she makes readers feel as though they too are immigrants trying to sort out what to do in unfamiliar situations. I think my favorite story may have been her telling of her uncle's funeral at which the family traded the usual Iranian mourning customs for eulogies remembering the uncle's humorous traits; Dumas could hardly believe the family would accept this break with tradition but they did. She makes a point about how America has changed her family. She also tells how Iranians and other immigrants have changed America.

Most public libraries are going to want Dumas's new book. It should be very popular with memoir readers. It should also be popular with librarians, whom she compliments several times.

Dumas, Firoozeh. Laughing Without an Accent. Villard, 2008. ISBN 9780345499561.

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment by Anthony Lewis

If I wrote "All war is immoral," could I be arrested and sent to prison. In many countries where the military holds power, I could. Even in the U.S., it depends on the time and the place, according to Anthony Lewis in his recent book Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment.

During the First World War, when there was very little tolerance for dissent across the country, the Montana legislature passed a very repressive sedition law. A traveling salesman who said in a Montana saloon that wartime food restrictions were a joke was sentenced to seven-to-twenty years of hard labor. At the same time, socialist Eugene V. Debs was convicted of violating the Espionage Act for saying in a speech in Canton, Ohio that three men who had been arrested for helping a draft resister were heroic. Did the Supreme Court help Debs? No, it upheld his conviction in 1919 and he served three years in prison. The man in Montana was luckier, as a federal judge there ruled that he and 47 other residents of the state had been wrongly convicted.

Though the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution protecting free speech was established in 1791, the first favorable ruling in the Supreme Court was in 1931. It took the efforts of numerous federal judges and Supreme Court justices through time to finally uphold the right of free speech. Among the heroes in this book are Learned Hand who was ruling in favor of First Amendment rights before most other federal judges, Oliver Wendell Holmes who took up the cause after the First World War, and Louis D. Brandeis whose dissenting opinions eventually swayed the Court.

A point that Lewis makes throughout the book is that our constitutional rights are not protected simply by the existence of the constitution. There have to be brave jurists willing to uphold the rights when legislatures, governors, and presidents try to circumvent them. In making his point, he points out the many attempts of the current administration to brush the constitution aside. The job of protecting our rights never ends.

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate is a quick and compelling read that discusses many aspects of what is protected by the First Amendment. Librarians should read it and put it on display.

Lewis, Anthony. Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment. Basic Books, 2007. ISBN 9780465039173

Your Brain on Cubs edited by Dan Gordon

When I heard the title Your Brain on Cubs, I pictured an ironic collection of confessional stories from die-hard fans. I expected to enjoy reading about long afternoons of watching the Phillies and the Cubs run their scores into double digits and of the heartbreak of seasons lost. I did not expect a serious book about brain science and psychology.

Your Brain on Cubs is a collection of essays by neurologists who tell about what is going on in the players' and fans' brains during the game and away from the park. Central to the discussion in "The Depths of Loyalty: Exploring the Brain of the Die-hard Fan" by Jordan Grafman is the idea that Cub fans actual find social benefits from the team's losing tradition. Around the team is a community of disappointed fans who live with a sense of mission from year to year. Members of this group exhibit great ability to delay gratification, to accept other hardships, and to reflect on life. Rooting for the team is thus character building and good for self-esteem.

Later essays deal with many serious issues, such as player use of performance enhancing drugs, the superstitions of fans and players, and the psychology of winning. It is best to allot ample time to read.

Your Brain on Cubs is not for the casual reader, as there is professionally serious vocabulary at points. If you have time and patience, there is a much to ponder. Warning: serious fans may see themselves in the clinical studies.

Your Brain on Cubs. Dana Press, 2008. ISBN 9781932594287

Jordan County by Shelby Foote

At some point this winter, Chicago Tribune book columnist Julia Keller wrote about authors who wrote fiction and nonfiction. One of the names included was Shelby Foote. I have never taken the time to attempt his Civil War history set (we have a ten volume illustrated edition in my library), so I thought I'd try his fiction. I got Jordan County, published in 1954.

On the paperback cover is the label "A Novel." That is a mistake. I wonder if the marketing department at the publisher whipped this up without opening the book. Jordan County is collection of seven short stories set in a fictional county in Mississippi along the Mississippi River, presented in reverse chronological order. The presence of the river is about the only connecting element. Short is also a relative idea. One of the stories is 150 pages and could be called a novella.

"Child by Fever," the long short story, is a masterpiece of slowly simmering Southern tragedy. As a reader, I knew what would happen in the end because Foote told me right at the beginning, but I was as caught in the narrative as its characters. Neither they nor I could do anything about the outcome. Readers who enjoy dark family sagas will appreciate this well-crafted, symmetrical story.

The first story is set in the late 1940s or early 1950s. What the World War II veteran does in "Rain Down Home" could easily be in a story about a returnee from Vietnam or Iraq.

Of the seven stories, only "Pillar of Fire" is set during the Civil War, the era with which Foote's writings are generally associated. In it we get both Northern and Southern viewpoints in an incident of useless violence. I mourned for the needlessly destroyed cabins and plantation mansions.

Foote was a well-spoken scholar, as we saw from his commentaries on Ken Burns's Civil War documentary. He was every bit as eloquent in his fiction. I bet that Civil War history is worth reading, too.

Foote, Shelby. Jordan County. Vintage Books, 1992. ISBN 0679736166

Library Books from a Vending Machine: Go Where They Are

In yesterday's Library Link of the Day is an article from China about a vending machine for library materials. It holds up to fours hundred books, CDs or DVDs on three conveyor belts behind glass. Clients can use their cards to borrow items that drop into a drawer. If they do not have a card, they can make them on the spot. The inboard catalog links back to the Shenzhen Library which has 2.17 million items for which reserves can be placed. Clients are notified to return to the vending machine when items are available. Items may also return the items to the machine. RFID is used in the checkout and return processes.

This seems an interesting way for the library to go to the client. There might be an interesting number of applications we could make in both our urban and rural communities. In our suburb, it might be interesting to have one at the commuter rail station. We could probably stock it with donated popular reading and hardly touch the main collection. Time strapped commuters might be grateful!

The Canon: The Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier

I am 3.5 billion years old. More about that in a moment.

In the opening pages of The Canon: The Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, author Natalie Angier rues the attitudes that parents, educators, and other common folk often express about science. They say things like "We know it is hard, but just bear with it" to their children, passing on their prejudices. She contends that most children like science until adults dissuade them with their apologies and the dry ways that they teach. Wondering about how the world works is naturally interesting until young minds are worn down with standardized assignments and deadlines.

Believing the kids do not stand a chance until adults are re-educated, she takes readers through a tour of all the sciences in The Canon, starting with mathematics and statistics. Here she starts with her many splendid science stories and observations that awe and entertain. One of the sections that I liked best was about numbers and the age of the earth. She holds that the earth is really quite young, which may be hard to believe considering that it is 5.7 billion years. She points out that the number is not unimaginably large. Take the ages of all people currently living and add them up, and the formation of the earth can be reached over twenty times. Our body surfaces have more than 5.7 billion bacteria cell on them. What's the big deal about 5.7 billion?

Throughout the text, Angier is enthusiastic and entertaining. She talks about the three kinds of dental floss she uses, vividly describes the inside of the planet, and gives the best explanation of the expanding universe and the end of time that I've ever heard. In telling about the wines ancient civilizations drank to keep from getting water-borne diseases, she says "Better tipsy than typhoid." Her accounts of chemical reactions with their affairs, partners, and bonds is definitely for the mature reader.

As I said before, I am 3.5 billion years old. So are you. According to Angier, it was about 3.5 billion years ago that the first single cell organisms appeared, and the DNA within them evolved to form all the life that followed. All of the code from our initial and intermediate ancestors is still in our DNA. Life has never died out in that time, and we are the continuation of what went before. We are not really individuals. We are communities.

Angier spends a good bit of time explaining evolution and how the word "theory" does not mean the scientists are just guessing. She is 100 percent behind evolution and contends that any good scientist is as well. There is no doubt.

I listen to the audiobook brightly read by Nike Doukas over the course of a couple of weeks. I recommend it for making the drive to work and dusting the house entertaining.

Angier, Natalie. The Canon: The Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. Houghton Mifflin, 2007. ISBN 9780618242955

11 compact discs. HighBridge Audio, 2007. ISBN 9781598870893

A Mile Square of Chicago by Marjorie Warvelle Bear

A Mile Square of Chicago by Marjorie Warvelle Bear is a book with a long story of its own. Bear wrote the manuscript in the 1960s and 1970s and died in 1982 without publishing. Though her daughter Marjorie Harbaugh Bennett's efforts to sell the book to a publisher were described in a Chicago Tribune column by Eric Zorn in 1994, it was late 2007 when the long-awaited book finally appeared in print.

The square mile of Chicago in question is directly west of downtown, a bit west of the Chicago River. It now includes the United Center, surrounded by its parking lots. Along its southern edge is the Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center and the Eisenhower Expressway. It is no longer thought of as a family oriented neighborhood, as it was in the 1850 to 1920 period described by Bear in her book .

A Mile Square of Chicago, more of a reference book than narrative, is divided into three books. The first part is "Book One: Before My Day," which tells about the area up to 1897, when Bear was born. The first chapter tells about Brown School, an elementary school started in 1852, and its famous students. Tad Lincoln, Bertha Honore Palmer, Lillian Russell, Flo Ziegfield, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Eddie Foy, and five others each get between two and twenty-two pages telling about their lives, much of it beyond their years at Brown School. Most get pictures. The second chapter then tells about Old Central High School and another list of students, none of whom I recognize. The third chapter tells about the beginnings of all the area hospitals.

"Book Two: In My Day" starts with a detailed description of Bear's house at 654 West Monroe Street, which was later renumbered 1743 West Monroe Street. This may be the most important contribution of this book, as the author gives a deep look into everyday life at the beginning of the twentieth century. She tells about the rooms, the furniture, the bathroom fixtures, the kitchen, and the back yard. She includes interior and exterior photos, and describes ice and coal delivery. Then she tells what a walker would see in the immediate neighborhood and on a walk on Ashland Avenue.

Further along in Book Two, Bear uses school records to tell about textbooks and assigned reading and public library records to tell about children's books and popular periodicals. Her friends at Brown School, the clothes they wore, the music they played, and how they celebrated holidays. Then the author tells about more schools and more famous students. The names I recognize are the animator Walt Disney and the novelist Phyllis A. Whitney.

The third section mostly updates information about schools and hospitals in the area up to the 1970s. For a pleasure reader, this is the least interesting section as there are no personal details.

Bear ends with a short philosophical section, which is most quotes from poetry. It expresses the idea that a small neighborhood can give much to the world at large.

The 548-page book is a model of what would be a great personal project for any family history-minded person. A collection of family and neighborhood information could be invaluable to grandchildren and later generations, making their ancestors more than just names on charts.

A Mile Square of Chicago is an important acquisition to Chicago area libraries and research collections outside the area. The only way to obtain it appears to be through Google Base. If I read the source's entry correct, there may only be 32 copies left.

Bear, Marjorie Warvelle. A Mile Square of Chicago. TIPRAC, 2007. ISBN 9780963399540

Sports Genre Study from the Adult Reading Round Table

Last week I did something I should do more often. On Thursday afternoon I attended the Adult Reading Round Table Nonfiction Genre Study. Twenty-five librarians from around the Chicago area and Wisconsin met at the Downers Grove Public Library and spent nearly two hours talking about narrative sports books.

The homework assignment was to read one sports title by David Halberstam and two other sports books either from a recommended list or from one's own library. The idea was that there could be some common ground to begin the discussion and many directions it could go. And it did go in many directions, as we discovered a great variety of subjects, styles, and appeal factors in sports books.

Someone took minutes, which I will get in my email as a member, so I did not write much down. After three days, this is what sticks in my memory.

You don't have to like sports to like good sports books because they are about much more than games. They are always about overcoming some type of difficulty if not downright adversity. They may also be coming of age stories, friendship stories, tributes, memoirs, exposes, history, or even how-to-do-it. If they are stories about women, they may be women's rights stories. If they feature African Americans, they may be civil rights stories.

Being a fan does help some sports books. We had librarians totally disagree on whether Lance Armstrong was an inspiration or a jerk. What the reader brought to the book guided how she/he perceived the author's voice. Being a fan also helps if the book focuses on the action of a game, which a non-fan may find tedious if not written well. Fans are more likely to like the less narrative books on statistics or sports equipment or stadiums.

Some sports fans read books on their favorite athletes or teams to relive their lives. Lots of memories are mixed up with the days that their teams did well.

It is not enough to put out a selection of area sports team books and expect them all to move. Hand selling may help. They still need to be attractive for most readers to select them.

We probably talked more about Friday Night Lights by H. G. Bissinger than about any other title. I am going to have to move it up my reading list. I heard other titles that sound as though I might like them, including Can I Keep My Jersey? by Paul Shirley and Your Brain on Cubs edited by Dan Gordon.

The next ARRT Nonfiction Genre Study will meet at the Des Plaines Public Library on June 3, 2008. The title of the discussion is "Mining the 800s," and we will all try to identify those great books that get lost in the Dewey graveyard. You can become a member and get the announcements and minutes. The details are on the ARRT website.

Mr. Adams's Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams's Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress by Joseph Wheelan

After reading Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy several weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to know more about John Quincy Adams, sixth U. S. president and the man who knew both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Fortunately for me, the new biography Mr. Adams's Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams's Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress by Joseph Wheelan just reached the library. Like the chapter in Kennedy's book, Wheelan book focuses on the later part of Adams's public career, when he served in the U. S. Congress long past the age most politicians retire.

Like his father before him, John Quincy Adams had few friends. Both men were studious, serious, and unforgiving. Neither would bend to the dictates of a political party, thus separating them from their colleagues. In the son's case, Washington liked him for his skillful diplomacy on European assignments and Lincoln liked him for his long-running opposition to Southern Democrats trying to expand the reach of slavery. Most of the country's leaders in the years between the first president and the congressman from Illinois, however, hated Adams for his arrogance and tenacity. Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and John C. Calhoun were bitter enemies.

Much of Wheelan's book is about Adams's fight in Congress to remove a gag rule that prevented members from introducing citizen petitions if they opposed slavery. A coalition of Southern congressmen and Northern friends had passed the restriction to quiet Adams and his abolitionist allies. Adams argued that the restriction violated the U. S. Constitution's First Amendment. Of course, the deeper struggle was over how to end or extend the institution of slavery, which Adams predicted would end in war. As part of the fight, Adams fought bills to annex Texas, condemned the forced removal of Native Americans from their lands, and supported the rights of women to write petitions (but not to vote).

This all sounds very serious, but there are light moments in the book. I especially liked descriptions of Adams's relations with his parents and the great devotion of his wife Louisa. The author also had a bit of fun pointing out that after Adams spoke for four and a half long hours at the Amistad slave ship case at the Supreme Court, one of the justices went home and died in his sleep.

For American history collections, libraries tend to buy heavily in the periods of the wars and are often thin in covering the in-between periods. This new and compelling Adams biography is a great title for the gap between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. Many libraries should add it.

Wheelan, Joseph. Mr. Adams's Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams's Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress. Public Affairs, 2008. ISBN 9780786720125.

Off Your Seat and on Your Feet: Continued Conversation

Jodi Lee and Christopher Korenowsky of the Columbus Metropolitan Library have quite bravely asked me for my thoughts about their PLA presentation. Before sending them my thoughts, I looked at their online handouts, which are really quite nice. The handouts do not tell you everything you want to know, but they do start the conversation about proactive reference with very relevant points. What I think is really good is the way that they incorporate staff testimonials into the attractive documents. Take a look at Telling Our Story and Off Your Seat and On Your Feet! The think about your reference service area.

Gulf Music: Poems by Robert Pinsky

April is poetry month. Selling poetry in our fast-paced world is a difficult task, but libraries may catch the eye of a reader or two with Gulf Music by Robert Pinsky on display. The bright Buddhist cover with skeletons who may be either dancing or fighting is hard to pass by without examining. It is a bit morbid, but poetry often is.

In referring to the "Gulf" in the title poem, Pinsky is topical and reflective. He does mean for the reader to think about the catastrophe in New Orleans but he brings in the 1900 Galveston hurricane and the gulf that is within us all.

Pinsky's poems can be enjoy in various ways. They simply sound good read aloud. I also like looking for the bits of wisdom or controversy within the verses. In the poem "The Forgetting" he challenges the reader:

Hardly anybody can name all eight of their great-grandparents.
Can you? Will your children's grandchildren remember your name?

I have spent much time in the past working on my family history (not much lately) and I find even I have trouble answering this question on a moment's notice. Are we too doomed to be forgotten?

The second section of the collection deals with the concept of "thing" and includes several thought provoking poems about the life within inanimate objects. Of course, a reader I am particularly interested in the thought of the poem "2. Book." Do other readers dread finishing books?

Pinsky, who was our poet laureate from 1997-2000, is usually accessible and a good choice for a Poetry Month display in the library.

Pinsky, Robert. Gulf Music: Poems. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. ISBN 9780374167493

PLA Reconsidered

Nearly 10,000 librarians, support staff, trustees, and others attended the 2008 Public Library Association National Conference in Minneapolis last week. Now, they have all gone home and must consider what they saw and heard.

As you might expect, there were some mixed messages. Some of my programs recommended new services and the tasks to accomplish their creation and maintenance. Others admonished us for trying to do too many things. The tough thing now is weighing what is worth doing.

I continued to report on PLABlog during the conference. Here are my final reports:

From Hype to Help: Making A Difference with New Technologies

Think Outside the Book: Online Service as Outreach - about teen services

When the Story is True: Practicing Nonfiction Readers Advisory

The next PLA National Conference is in 2010 in Portland, Oregon. I hope to go.

The Memoir: The Readers' Advisor's Dream or Nightmare

With the controversy of totally fabricated memoirs in the news, The Memoir: The Readers' Advisor's Dream or Nightmare was a hot topic session at PLA A good-sized crowd congregated at 8:30 on the final morning to hear a panel discussion about the collecting and promoting of memoirs in libraries.

The program started with Donna Seaman of Booklist comparing the memoir to biography and autobiography, both of which are usually linear in arrangement and externally verifiable. The memoir is a slipperier item, more akin to poetry than history. Its purpose is to communicate the feel of a life, or, as Seaman says, "the texture of one's days and nights." There is more demand for an honesty of disclosure than for getting every fact straight. Because it is "a life remembered," there is bound to be mistakes. Unfortunately, some authors have violated the trust recently.

A good memoir is about more than the individual life. It usually includes ever widening circles of family, community, and universe. The memoirist seeks to describe experience in a effort to find meaning or identity and to communicate hard lessons learned. Like novels, they do this through the setting of scenes, describing of characters, and telling of stories.

Seaman had an interesting story of being a reviewer. After publishing reviews of memoirs, she sometimes gets calls from the author's family, complaining that what he/she wrote was not true. In response, all Seamon can do is refer them back to their son/daughter/cousin/ex-wife who wrote the book. She is just a reviewer with only the book to judge.

The speaker then reported on two subgenres of memoirs that are currently very popular. The first was the memoirs of people of mixed heritage. Among the books she recommended were:

• Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
• One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life - A Story of Race and Family Secrets by Bliss Broyard
• Sweeter the Juice by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip
• Another Way Home: The Tangled Roots of Race in One Chicago Family by Ronee Hartfield

Identify is a prevailing theme in these books, and the author often has to become a sleuth to uncover the story.

Environmental memoirs are also popular, as new books are coming out to join Walden, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and Desert Solitaire. Among the many books Seaman suggested are the following titles:

• Naturalist by Edward O. Wilson
• Unbowed by Wangari Maathai
• Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams
• Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land by Amy Irving

Joyce Saricks followed with thoughts about why librarians love and hate memoirs. On the positive side, they have many of the same appeal factors as fiction, including character, setting, and story. They are hot in a time when the public is fascinated with the personal story, as shown by the popularity of reading blogs and of watching reality television. On the other hand, they are hard to categorize and shelve and sometimes hard to identify, depending on how the publishers market them.

Saricks added that she usually prefers audiobooks not read by the author. For memoirs, however, authors as readers is often a plus, as their personalities come through. She particularly recommends David Sedaris in audio.

Defining a memoir is not exactly easy, according to Saricks. Many narrative nonfiction books have memoir qualities even when there are third person author because these reporter (1) include so much of their subjects voices and (2) their quests to get the stories are memoirs. She recommended Shadow Divers by Robert Kuson.

Barry Trott of the Williamsburg Regional Library, Virginia, said that while character is the main appeal of a memoir, to choose one to suggest to a reader, you have to look at the other appeal factors such as setting, subject matter, story lines, etc.

Trott talked about the travel memoir, which has several common scenarios: including the hapless traveler (A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson), someone escaping their everyday life, or someone going to exotic places. These have the appeal of letting readers go interesting places without leaving home.

He also talked briefly about the recently hot food memoir. Chefs, waiters, and critics are among the people telling stories about their experiences. Calvin Trillin has been doing this for years, and even Euell Gibbons' Stalking the Wild Asparagus was a food memoir of sorts.

Many more titles were mentioned by all the speakers. Seaman said that she will put a list of them on the Booklist Online website.

When asked whether they would move the recently exposed memoirs to fiction, the speakers said no in most cases. Most of the exposures have been of fudging the truth. The totally fabricated memoirs may require some rethinking.

The Abbess of Crewe: A Modern Morality Tale by Muriel Spark

I am reading old forgotten books again. The Western Springs Library Friends have more books than they can store at the moment and have a table loaded with free books. I found The Abbess of Crewe: A Modern Morality Tale by Muriel Spark, one of my favorite novelists, a couple of weeks ago and chose it to take on my trip to Minneapolis. I started it in a coffee shop yesterday after the closing session of the Public Library Association at 1:00 p.m. and found time to finish it just after takeoff of my 6:45 p.m. flight to Chicago. At 116 pages, it is a delightful quick read.

The story takes place in a convent of nuns in Great Britain in which the old abbess has died and a new abbess is elected. In the period of mourning before the peers select their new leader, who will exchange her black robes for white, a thimble is stolen from a nun's sewing box. The box itself is a highly debated subject among the sisters, as it is a bit grand for a nun who has renounced all worldly possessions. That young nun has also frequently missed attending Matins and Lauds, and the gossip is thick.

The 1974 copyright date is significant. I do not want to spoil surprises, but I will say that Spark skillfully relocated highly reported events of 1972 to 1974 to her fictional nunnery. Anyone who lived through those years will recognize the replay by the end of chapter one. The book is wickedly funny, and Spark's insertion of classical poetry as the new abbess's theatrical asides is masterful.

I have not actually figured it all out. Can someone tell me who Sister Gertrude is and why she is flying around the globe visiting remote cultures?

Spark, Muriel. The Abbess of Crewe: A Modern Morality Tale. Viking Press, 1974. ISBN 0670100293

Off Your Seat and On Your Feet! Proactive Reference Customer Service

Jodi Lee and Christopher Korenowsky of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Ohio, confused an audience of librarians at the Public Library Association today. It was not that their proposal was misunderstood. It was very clear that they are eliminating their reference desks and having their librarians roam, float, wander, hover, whatever. What was confusing was their presentation. At moments they seemed to be saying that the action is a very radical idea, but at other moments they reassured the audience that they are not really changing that much.

Korenowsky also lost many of us with his "three-tiered research phase" portion of the talk. He did not tell us any of the research findings. What did "knowledge vs data" refer to? How are Starbucks, Blockbuster, and Nordstroms relevant? I know I've had lackluster service at each of these stores, and they still have big service desks.

I think the duo make a mistake in organizing their program around dispelling myths. We now know a lot about what they are not doing and not really that much about what they are.

I am sounding very cranky, but I am actually very sympathetic to the idea. Our library has a huge desk that separates the librarians from the clients. I want our reference librarians up and about helping people when there are people to help. I wish they would have given me more solid arguments for redesigning service areas and changing working procedures. They could have talked more about the smaller desk designs and the working of the headsets. I think they missed an opportunity to be really helpful.

Also, the mantra "stop doing things that don't need to be done" to address the work that librarians do at service desks when not assisting clients is not realistic in small libraries where there are not centralized services to do all the non-client assistance work. Lee and Korenowsky are limiting their ideas to larger libraries unnecessarily with this approach. I hope they revisit and revise what can be a liberating idea.

Minneapolis Skyway Hike Slide Show

For those unable to visualize the PLA 2008 experience, here is a slide show of my walk from the Radisson Hotel to the Minneapolis Convention Center. There are a few tricky turns.



My best time was twelve minutes.

Down the escalator at the end of the Skywalk was a really nice convention center, where we had a really good conference.

Girl Scout Cookies on Sale in Late March!

Girl Scout Cookies on Sale in Late March!
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

I knew there was a reason to come to Minnesota in late March besides the beautiful weather. On Wednesday, March 26, there were three tables along the Skyway, selling lots of cookies to conference visitors and office workers of Minneapolis. There seemed to more parents than actual Girl Scouts, who must have been in school. Several of my friends at the conference were thrilled to hear that there were cookies for sale. I gave directions.

No Snow in Minneapolis

The forecasts were for rain and snow in Minneapolis yesterday, but we got a beautiful day instead. It was a good day filled with meetings, three of which I reported on PLABlog:

Readers' Advisory Toolkit III, with ideas about how to get books off the shelves and into the hands of others and how to have the books when the readers want them
Technozoo with Leonard Souza, which featured news about Web 2.o Internet sites and gadgets that will may work their way into libraries
21st Century Library Design, with many out of the box ideas

I also recommend Cat William's report on John Wood's opening session speech. She gets in a lot of quotes I liked.

I expect more to report today.