"Who is Paul Auster?" I asked myself when I saw his memoir Winter Journal on so many of the 2012 best book lists. Perhaps I would know if I were a devoted fiction reader, as he has written over a dozen novels. The book jacket indicates that he is a bestselling author and has won lots of important awards for his books and screenplays. He has also written essays, poetry, and other memoirs. No bells, however, rang in my librarian's head. There is a reason I need library catalogs and reference books. There is far too much to remember.

One of the trends that I both celebrate and fear is the publishing of more memoirs by people that our readers and we do not recognize. Some of my best reading experiences have been with autobiographical books by unfamiliar authors. There is so much for a reader to discover in such books - if written well. But there are so many of these books now, and our book budgets are inadequate. How do we pick memoirs that our readers will want? I read the reviews and still miss picking some of the books that readers later request.

So, who is Paul Auster, besides being an author? Turns out he is an aging guy just a little older than me, with a family he loves, with the clock ticking away. Many of his concerns are also mine, but, unlike me, he lives the literary life - books, travel, interviews with editors and publishers, making ends meet, overcoming writer's block, etc. In Winter Journal, it is not a glamorous life. I am happy not to be Auster.

Looking at the cover, I notice how the author's name is much bigger than the book title. It is as if the author is the title, which would be appropriate as he is the subject. The book is described as a memoir of his body, but I am not so sure that I would agree. There are so many tangents and so much detail. Much of the narrative did not seem to be about his body.

Auster sometimes overwhelms the reader with lists within paragraphs. Several times I just skipped to the next page to find where the narrative continued. I debated whether to drop the book, but I did finish. I enjoyed most of his stories and can imagine that he is a talented novelist. I suspect this memoir appeals mostly to his fiction readers and people who give prizes. I am glad to have discovered him and am enjoying thinking about all the places I have lived. (Auster tells readers about every place he has lived.)

Auster, Paul. Winter Journal. Henry Holt, 2012. 230p. ISBN 9780805095531.

Here by Wislawa Szymborska

Reading books leads to reading more books. Along the path down which an author leads readers are signposts to paths blazed by other authors. In reading a collection of newspaper columns by Mary Schmich, I noted her quoting the Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska. Liking the quote, I emailed Bonnie who borrowed for me Here, a collection of poems in Polish with English translations on facing pages. At only 84 pages of text with a lot of white space, of which I read only the English half, it was a attractive choice, a short path that may lead to wider roads.

Even 42 pages of poetry can be hard going if the reader can not discern the topic or the meaning. I had no worries with this collection by Szymborska. Most of the poems chronicle daily life or describe tangible ideas of art or science. I was particularly struck by "Hard Life with Memory." Of an age when there is more to look back on than to look forward to, it tells about a struggle to balance one's attention in the present. "She" refers to Memory in this verse:

She thrusts old letters, snapshots at me eagerly,
stirs up events both important and un-,
turns my eyes to overlooked views,
peoples them with my dead. 

With some poems I identify, see myself. In others I am introduced to others and their views. Here is a mixture of emotions and high ideals, familiar and the strange, new and old. Szymborska's poems are never dull.

Szymborska, Wislawa. Here. Houghton Mifflin, 2010. 85p. ISBN 9780547364612.

Chike and the River by Chinua Achebe

The late Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian author Chinua Achebe is most known for his novel Things Fall Apart, set in the 1890s when British colonization disturbed the balance of tribal societies across Africa. Not only did Achebe write several sequels to the story, he also wrote poetry, essays, and children's books. The first of the children's stories, Chike and the River, first published in 1966, has recently been reissued with bright new  illustrations by Edel Rodriguez.

Chike is a young Nigerian boy of eleven living in rural Umuofia with his widowed mother as the story begins, but he is soon sent to stay with his uncle in Onitsha, where he attends school and learns about city life. He is an innocent who sometimes falls prey to the deceptions of city boys.While he misses village life, he is ready for adventures that the city offers, particularly riding a ferry across the Niger River. His mother has warned him never to go close to the River, so you can easily imagine what he wants to do.

Written for children, Chike and the River is somewhat light and optimistic and has been criticized as not up to Achebe's standards for realistic fiction. Being just a big kid, I enjoyed it for the story and sense of place.

I read a digital library copy of Chike and the River (88 pages in print but unspecified as an ebook) using Overdrive Read, a new ebook reader that works on Internet browsers, saving the borrower from downloading any files. I started in Firefox on a PC running Window XP, switched to Safari on my iPhone, and finish in Chrome on an iMac. Overdrive claims that my place will be kept each time I switch devices, but that did not happen. Each time I logged in, I started at the beginning. Luckily, the table of contents made it easy to navigate, and it was helpful not having to download the files.

Achebe, Chinua. Chike and the River. Anchor Books, 1966. Illustrations, 2011. 88p. ISBN 9780307473868. eISBN 9780307742070.

Aerogrammes and Other Stories by Tania James

The popularity of short stories is growing, according to commentators on the New York Times Book Review podcasts. They cite recent titles, such as Tenth of December by George Saunders, which have become best sellers in a market that is usually dominated by novels. Long a short story fan myself, it is a trend I welcome. The latest collection that I have enjoyed is Aerogrammes and Other Stories by Tania James. 

If her stories may be used as evidence, James has wide-ranging interests. Her stories include wrestling, scriptology, Indian classical dance, chimpanzees, and ghosts. Most involve immigrants from India or their children living in the United States or Great Britain, and all have uncommon problems. How can serious wrestlers win respect in a country where wrestling is scripted farce? How can a young girl cope with a grandfather who thinks she is his deceased wife returned to her youth? How can a down-on-her-luck widow adjust to a new marriage to a wealthy Louisville ghost?

Aerogrammes and Other Stories is not a book full of happy endings. Most of the stories conclude with characters facing truths they have previously ignored or denied. Readers may think James a bit hard on her creations, but if readers care so much, the author has succeeded in making her stories believable. Let readers look beyond the endings and imagine what the characters can now do with their new-found knowledge. 

James, Tania. Aerogrammes and Other Stories. Knopf, 2012. 180p. ISBN 9780307268914.

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris

In telling stories about the five 1967 Academy Award Nominees for Best Picture (announced in 1968), Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, describes a generational struggle that changed how American films were made and viewed. The nominees were:

• Bonnie and Clyde 
• The Graduate 
• Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? 
• In the Heat of the Night 
• Doctor Doolittle 

Without looking online or in a reference book, can you identify the film that got the Oscar? I could not before reading Pictures at a Revolution. I know that I did not see any of the movies that year, growing up in a town that was much like that in The Last Picture Show. Even if the doors to our theater were still open, at 14, I was too old to want to see Doctor Doolittle and was considered by film reviewers of the Catholic Church to be too young to see the others.

So Pictures at a Revolution fits well into a category of books that I now find fascinating - history that I lived through without actually witnessing. I listened to the audiobook over the course of two weeks, which worked well for me. There were many names and subplots to follow, and I appreciated having time for thought between chapters. I knew many of the names, but I suspect readers from my daughter's generation do not and may find the book more challenging. I enjoyed the backstories of the actors and directors as much as the behind the scene stories of film production. Since each of the films took up to five years to develop after being conceived by a writer or producer, readers get a sustained account of an era of studio politics. The collapse of decades-old censorship rules is also an important subplot.

I especially enjoyed details that are almost hard to believe over forty years later, such as the following.

Extras on the set of In the Heat of the Night earned $1.50 a day. And it was often a long day.

A few weeks after shooting of The Graduate ended, Dustin Hoffman collected $55 a week unemployment. He was so disregarded by the studio, he was not invited to any of the early screenings. 

The producers of Doctor Doolittle had no inkling that their California-raised animals would be quarantined by British Customs when they traveled to England for location shots. It also rained almost every day that they planned to shoot.

While Harris does not give awards, there are winners and losers in his book. Warren Beatty, Mike Nichols, and Sidney Poitier get his admiration, and Rex Harrison, Bob Hope, and numerous studio executives fair poorly. Other losers were Doctor Doolittle and other lavishly-funded musicals that wanted to repeat the successes of The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, and Mary Poppins. American filmgoers with a new era of films to view were very big winners.

Harris, Mark. Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood. Penguin Press, 2008. 490p. ISBN 9781594201523.

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Annual Report 2012

Annual reports usually focus solely on a company or an organization, identifying directors, highlighting a year's developments, and providing lots of statistics. The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Annual Report is not, however, a run of the mill report. This account from a leading wildlife conservation organization offers readers an up-close view of the critical situation brought about by the increase in poaching in Africa and efforts being made to resolve the crisis.

2012 was a difficult year as over 1000 elephants were poached in Kenya alone. The force behind the crimes is the growing demand for ivory in China and other Asian nations. In the report is the year's poaching news, a litany of elephant death and the arrest of numerous Chinese nationals caught trying to smuggle ivory out of Africa. Efforts to stem the demand included a publicity campaign featuring basketball star Yao Ming telling the Chinese people not to buy ivory. Apparently many Chinese people believe that elephants shed tusks and grow more. Of course, some Chinese people do know the true story yet still long for ivory, a traditional status symbol.

What is being done to help the elephants? The beautifully-illustrated 104-page report details the work of the trust, which rescues dozens of orphaned elephants each year. Readers also learn that the trust works with rhinoceroses and small hoofed animals, providing a second chance for a variety of infants whose parents have been poached or otherwise died. I particularly like seeing photos of the elephant keepers tending and playing with the elephants.

The report online includes links so you can help with the effort.

Bomb: The Race to Build - and Steal - the World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin

Among the winners of awards at this winter's American Library Association conference was Bomb: The Race to Build - and Steal - the World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin. It won both the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award for most distinguished informational book for children and the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults, as well as being named a Newbery Honor Book. Though these awards firmly identify Bomb as a book for middle and high school readers, I believe it works well with adult readers as well. I enjoyed it.

Of course, my perspective is different from that of young readers. Though I was not around when these events occurred, I remember the resulting Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union built huge nuclear arsenals aimed at each other. There was assured mutual destruction if the weapons were ever used, which some historians contend assured our survival. This might be news to young readers. For me, it is a review, but even then, I found stories that I had not heard and read with interest.

I was also impressed with how well Sheinkin characterized the players in the drama. No one is vilified. Readers can grasp why the scientists, spies, federal agents, generals, and political leaders of various nations felt and acted as they did. Readers can see why President Truman felt justified in using atomic weapons on Japanese cities. Likewise, they can understand why Robert Oppenheimer led the effort to build the first generation of atomic weapons and then refused to develop the second. Sheinkin judges no right or wrong. Even with the scientists who passed their secrets to the Soviets, the author simply reports.

For adults, Bomb is a quick read. For students it is a helpful introduction to a period that shaped the world we have today. Illustrations are well-chosen and the index is helpful. A worthy award winner.

Sheinkin, Steve. Bomb: The Race to Build - and Steal - the World's Most Dangerous Weapon. Roaring Books Press, 2012. 266p. ISBN 9781596434875.

The Best of Mary Schmich: Selected Writings by the Tribune's 2012 Pulitzer Prize Winner by Mary Schmich

I do not always make time to read Mary Schmich's columns in the Chicago Tribune, but when I do, I often appreciate her wit and insight. So, when we signed up for the Digital Chicago Tribune, which was free with our print subscription, I chose her The Best of Mary Schmich as the first free Tribune ebook to download.

Over the course of about a month, I have been reading a few columns a day, usually at the beginning and end of the day. I've enjoyed revisiting events of the past twenty years, many of which took place in or around Chicago, and learning about Schmich and her family. Being her age and growing up somewhere else but now living in the Chicago metropolitan area, I find I have a lot in common with her and can identify with much that she says. I am the perfect target audience.

Schmich has had a more challenging life than I have for sure. My Texas family did not have a lot of money either when I was young, but there were not so many of us, so we never had to actually pinch the pennies as hard. Still, I can remember not wanting to pass on notes from school asking my mom to make a couple of dozen cookies for a bake sale. Could we afford that? It turns out that we could, and I should not have worried so. As Schmich's dad explained to her, we were not actually poor, having more than the people who really were.

Her columns about her mother and her sister Gina are the pieces that I found most touching. She always writes respectfully and with the intension of informing readers about life in general. Though she uses the personal as her foundation, she and her family are not the real focus.

Wondering whether readers other than Tribune subscribers can get this collection, I discovered that it is available digitally from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but not Google Play. It will be coming out in paperback later this year.

Maisie Dobbs: A Novel by Jacqueline Winspear

British women mystery authors have brought much joy to readers over the last century. Following in the tradition of Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, P. D. James, and others is now Jacqueline Winspear with her series of mystery novels featuring personal investigator Maisie Dobbs. Unlike many of her predecessors, Winspear is writing from the United States, where she has lived since 1990. Maisie Dobbs: A Novel was published in 2003. I have been handing it out to readers for several years but just now finally read it myself. Why did I wait so long?

Winspear's novel starts in 1929 as Maisie starts her own detective agency. She had been the assistant of Maurice Blanche, an academic man whose expertise had been for hire for an unspecified number of years. He had also been Maisie's tutor since her days as a young maid discovered by her employer Lady Rowan reading in the library in the wee hours of the morning. The prospects for a young woman up from poverty to succeed in a man's business world are not encouraging, but Maisie is determined.

Maisie Dobbs is a book divided in thirds with the middle section taking readers back into the heroine's past. In doing so, it examines divisions in British society before World War I and the great changes of the war. A mystery is introduced in the first section and solved in the third. In some senses, the mystery is not even needed to sustain the reader. Winspear's evocation of Britain in the 1910s and 1920s and her descriptions of Maisie's life can hold their own without the mystery. Readers, however, do ultimately enjoy having Maisie use her learning, so the mystery is welcomed.

I appreciated Maisie's loyalty to her father and the concern she shows for both her clients and the people she investigates. Readers can not help but love her. Maisie Dobbs is a hard first act to follow. I am now eager to see how well Jacqueline Winspear has continued the story with her sequels.

Winspear, Jacqueline. Maisie Dobbs: A Novel. Soho Press, 2003. 294p. ISBN 1569473307.

Vivian Maier: Street Photographer by Vivian Maier

My interest in the photographer Vivian Maier continues. A few weeks ago I reviewed Vivian Maier by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams, which tells how the finding of Maier's abandoned prints, negatives, and over 1,000 rolls of undeveloped film in a storage facility in Chicago in 2007 surprised the art world. No one had ever heard of her, but some critics instantly proclaimed her among the best of twentieth century photographers.

Now I have seen Vivian Maier: Street Photographer edited by John Maloof, who purchased one of the auctioned blocks in 2007. In this book, after a very brief introduction by critic Geoff Dyer, he lets the photos speak for themselves. This is a smaller but more focused collection of images than the previously reviewed book. Here each photograph gets a full page. Someone not knowing her story would assume on viewing this collection that Maier was a renowned Life or Look photojournalist of the 1950s and 1960 instead of an unknown nanny who took photos on her day off.

Being a nanny did not make Maier sweet in any way. She strolled rough streets in New York and Chicago documenting drunks, panhandlers, weary commuters, and police against a backdrop of decay and ruin. Though the scenes are sometimes stark and I doubt some of the subjects were aware of Maier's photographing them, Maier is respectful. She was even whimsical in the series of self-portraits, which may be found at the back of the book.

If you reserved the Vivian Maier book by Cahan and Williams, order this one, too.

Maier, Vivian. Vivian Maier: Street Photographer. PowerHouse Books, 2011. 123p. ISBN 9781576875773

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow

There was a second depressing book that I read while also reading the uplifting The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba. Unlike Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, which is fiction, this book is history. Some readers might dispute the author's sources and interpretations of history, but the people are real and the events are true. The book is the 2012 bestseller Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow, which I borrowed in downloadable audio read by the author.

In Drift, Maddow recounts how our country has veered away from our Founders' idea of citizen soldiers who were only in uniform when our country was at war. Of course, there was never a time when there were absolutely no soldiers, as there were always a few to stand guard in the capitol and to maintain a bit of structure should it be needed. However, the idea of a large standing army was thought a danger to democracy by many in the first two centuries of our nation. Through the bloody 20th century, the idea eroded, taking an especially big hit when Ronald Reagan and his political alliance arranged a massive expansion of our military force and vast spending on weapons at a time when we had actually been without a ground war to fight. So he and his advisers arranged for us to send weapons through Israel to Iran to get money for fighting rebels in Nicaragua - all under the table and off the books. In defense, Reagan touted the superior strength and spending of the Soviet Union, when in truth the communist power was crumbling. His administration was admonished for the illegal activities but never punished. All of the presidential administrations since have interpretted Reagan's success as a nod toward their own bypassing Congress and the American people in extralegal military activities. 

Maddow recounts all the subsequent wars to arrive at the present, when we are in a state of perpetual war exhausting our economy and straining our ability to find willing soldiers. It is a time when the CIA has become a branch of the military with missions and budgets that are kept secret even from Congress. There is also a stockpile of atomic weapons that is aging and redundant to maintain; using them is unthinkable. Democracy seems to have no role in the running of the military. It seems that our nation is unredeemably lost in this account, until the epilogue in which Maddow lays out some ideas for reforming the military, making it accountable for its spending and actions - a surprisingly upbeat end to a woe-filled story.

I am left thinking everyone should read Drift (and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind) and believing that few will. Too many are sedated by reality TV playing constantly in their homes on their big screens, as predicted by Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451.

Maddow, Rachel. Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power. Crown, 2012. 275p. ISBN 9780307460983.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

In my previous review of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, I mentioned depressing books. One of the titles that I had in mind was Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, which I just read for a book discussion. I am not knocking Bradbury for his imaginative story not only exposed problems of his own times but foresaw some of the troubling trends in 21st century. It is depressing but essential to read.

We had a good variety of ages for our group discussion, which helped with our exploring Bradbury's context. Some of us remember the 1950s and strong forces compelling everyone to conform to societal norms, a movement that may have lost strength but has not actually gone away. Others first encountered Fahrenheit 451 as assigned high school reading, along with Lord of the Flies and 1984. No one was unaware of Bradbury's tale, but it was a good time to revisit this story that includes earbuds that deliver sound and music, big flat-screen televisions showing a police chase live, and robot drones used to deliver death.

In case you have never read Fahrenheit 451, do not expect to understand what is happening from the beginning. Give the story a chance to develop and stay open to surprising developments throughout the story. Late night might not be a good time if you like to sleep undisturbed. Save the forewords for afterwards.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. Ballantine Books, 1953. 147p.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

If you have been reading depressing books and need a pick-me-up to lift your mood, you should consider The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. You may have passed before it thinking that it was just a technical achievement story. Your library may have contributed to this misconception by shelving it at Dewey 621.31 with how-to books about electricity. If there is ever a contest for books most-handicapped by Dewey, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind can contend. It is a great story unlikely to be borrowed by someone just wanting to rewire their house.

Running electrical wires is part of the story, but no one should do it as Kamkwamba did. After he built a power-generating windmill from scraps mostly found at a local dump, he strung second-hand wires for lights and a radio in his family's house in rural Malawi, but he almost burned the place down. Constantly reading textbooks borrowed from the library of the school he could not afford to attend, he had no one with whom to consult. Safety was not one of his strong subjects and there was no one to warn him of dangers, which adds suspense and a bit of humor to this entertaining story.

Readers will be drawn into The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by the quality of Kamkwamba's storytelling, a talent the author inherited from his father. He was born into poverty in an undeveloped country where superstition still played a large role in daily life. His parents worked hard to provide for their children, but corrupt government and severe droughts threatened their survival. Kamkwamba shows how having a dream of a better life can lift a person, his family, and his village out of a seemingly hopeless situation. Likewise, his story is a great antidote for depressing books. Ask your librarian if you have trouble finding it.

Kamkwamba, William and Bryan Mealer. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope. Willaim Morrow, 2009. 272p. ISBN 9780061730320.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

"… the right book exactly, at exactly the right time."

Who is to say I would not have like Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan as much or more if I read it last week or maybe next month? What I do know is that I had begun reading it just days before I got a snow day. With an unexpected day off and the magic and beauty of the snow to go along with the magic inside the book, it was a perfect day for a book, if not the only right day for the only right book.

I see that the library from which I borrowed a copy of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore put a fantasy label on its spine. This is curious for the setting is the present and nothing that happens is beyond what is possible. What is magical are the relationships among the characters and their creative solutions to problems. Friendship, care, and wonder generate the power needed to drive Clay Jannon in his quest. He is the rover, accompanied by his warrior and his wizard. The roles are defined by their favorite fantasy trilogy, but they live in contemporary San Francisco.

Granted, the bookstore is unlike any that you are likely to find, as is the library Clay and friends visit in New York. The ancient order with which he becomes involved has an unusual methodology, it is true, but its mission is in line with the scholarly pursuits of all peoples of the book. His friends at Google have developed some amazing technologies, too, but I can imagine it all could be true. Robin Sloan has made the possibilities in our real world seem wonderful.

I so wish I could have set this review of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore in the Gerritszoon font.

Sloan, Robin. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. 288p. ISBN 9780374214913.

Proposing the End of Nonfiction as a Label and Organizing Default

It's been said before. "Nonfiction" is a poor label for what is a majority of the books in our libraries. As librarians, we define these books by what they are not instead of what they are. It is no wonder that some readers fail to be attracted by this ill-defined category of books. We are not touting the legitimate appeal factors of reality-based books when we use such a vague word. "Reality-based." See, I am struggling myself to find an alternative encompassing term.

Think about "nonfiction." This term means "not fiction." "Fiction" itself means "not true." So we offer our readers a "not not true books section" from which to find books. Who'd go there if they did not already know the treasures to be found? Terrible labeling. Let's try to clean it up. Cancel the two negatives, and we are left with "true books." Better, but can you truly believe everything you will read from a book from the not fiction section of the library? No, there is much to dispute in reality-based books (lacking a better term). Will scientific theories prove true? Do histories recount events correctly? Are the policies of one political party really as bad as the opposition pundits claim? "True" sounds certain when much of the content is not.

"Real books," "verifiable books," "fact books," or "Dewey decimals books." I try to replace the term "nonfiction," but I find no better collective word or phrase, a brand with a good ring to it. Perhaps the reason is that "nonfiction" is really the section that we have created - a grouping of books with little in common other than not being fiction.

I think our stumbling block to connecting books with readers is our mind-set of grouping together all these diverse books that are not fiction. In libraries, when we separate fiction from everything else and then group all the remaining books together by Dewey Decimal numbers, we imply there are only two kinds of books - fiction and nonfiction. Then, when prospective pleasure readers enter the nonfiction area and come face to face with the 000s or generalities, they may stop and turn back toward the dramatic, action-packed, suspense-filled novels. They may never discover the many well-told narratives scattered among the books of psychology, religion, science, art, sports, history, and biography.

Librarians are not alone under the yoke of nonfiction. Some book review journals use fiction and nonfiction labels for grouping their reviews and lists. Laid out much like a library, part of a typical journal is the fiction section and another is the nonfiction section. Navigation to reviews can, of course, be improved with headings, and readers who have learned the layout can find what they want, just as they may in a library. But is it a good layout?

There are beginning to be some signs of breaking apart nonfiction at review journals. Library Journal has turned nonfiction into several sections. Also, within the last five years, the editors of the New York Times Book Review moved how-to and self-help books off of the "Nonfiction Bestsellers" lists (hardcover and paperback) and into new lists called "Advice and Misc." I suspect the literary minds at the newspaper tired of seeing investing guides and cookbooks crowd well-reviewed narratives off the revered nonfiction bestseller lists. Making new lists dividing the books was a simple but effective act. Dividing our library nonfiction books will take a bit more effort.

While I sometimes find it difficult to pinpoint the titles that I seek in bookstores, I do appreciate that they rely less on the nonfiction idea for grouping books than libraries do. Instead of a big nonfiction section, shoppers find specific sections for travel, art, sports, business, psychology, religion, cooking, health, history, biography, etc. The bookstores do not suggest by placement that mathematics texts or guides to writing resumes belong with histories of polar exploration or memoirs by movie stars. Dependent on sales to stay in business, bookstores are betting that most of their customers are browsers or will ask for help. Sadly, we see bookstores closing. Perhaps this is not the time to embrace the retail model expecting it to be enough to lure folks to the library.

Reorganizing and relabeling the reality-based books will help, but we will never find one method that will serve all of our readers well. Each reader comes into the library with different interests and skills at navigating collections. This is why libraries need skilled readers' advisory librarians who know their collections and their tools of discovery. The library is a service, not a building full of books, and the staff is the primary delivery system getting books to readers. Using word of mouth, in-library displays, printed book lists, book review blogs, and even social media, we tout our titles. We will lead readers straight to the books when allowed. Even when readers find the books on the shelves themselves and use self-checkout machines, staff have made discovery possible. In an effort to advance our cause, we need to design better tools for ourselves and for our readers, especially better online catalogs that serve discovery more than inventory.

Can we do this and not say "nonfiction"? Habit is hard to break, but we would be better off without it. Readers trust us to organize by design, not by default, and to be able to lay our hands on specific books or lead them to topical material. Some even know that we earned advanced degrees to learn how to organize and manage our collections. Let's not discourage them by using fuzzy words.

Time Ain't Got Nothin' on Me by Mark Dvorak

Mark Dvorak's latest CD sounds old in a very good way. I have been listening to Time Ain't Got Nothin' on Me for a couple of weeks and am struck by how I feel transported back to the 1950s or 1960s. I can almost hear Patsy Cline or Jim Reeves singing some of them and my country-music-loving father humming along with the radio. Other tunes could have been sung by the Weavers or Leadbelly. The songs, however, are not that old. Dvorak wrote 12 of the 15 in the 21st century, but they certainly hark back to less-hurried time and feel very comfortable. They seem like classics.

While listening to the CD, I have played a little game that marks me as an oldster. I have been musing on which tracks should be issued as singles. I first thought of this while listening to "The Bluebells in Kentucky," a song that should be all over the radio. "Song for a Dismal Day" would make a good contrasting B-side for a 45 rpm disc. Then the title cut with "Ruben You Can Play Your Banjo" as the flip side would get my nod if I were a record company executive, to be followed later by "The Middle Years" and "Livin' with the Blues." We'd keep Dvorak on the charts for months.

Which charts? Dvorak is a bit difficult to label and has crossover appeal. I can't imagine anyone not enjoying his songs. You can sample cuts and read his lyrics with informative notes about how he came to write them at his website.

Dvorak is a very library-friendly performer. He has played all over the Chicago area, and we have had him for both adult and children's programs at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library. Listening to his new CD, I'm thinking it's time to call him again.

Dvorak, Mark. Time Ain't Got Nothin' on Me. Waterbug, 2010.

On Hearing the Webinar "Are Books Your Brand? How Libraries Can Stay Relevant to Readers"

I am glad that some webinars are recorded for future viewing. Like many others in smaller libraries, I can not count on actually attending webinars live even when I am off the reference desk. Such was the case when I prepared to attend "Are Books Your Brand? How Libraries Can Stay Relevant to Readers." Just as I was about to log in, a client wanting followup on a prior request asked for me and then a computer at the checkout desk had a problem. By the time I got back to my desk, the program was more than half over. I saw no use in even logging in, knowing that I could hear it later.

I finally "attended" the program two weeks later. While I did not have the opportunity to tweet a question, I still enjoyed hearing the conversation about trends in readers' advisory services. The panel included Robin Nesbitt of Columbus Metropolitan Library, Duncan Smith of NoveList, and Barry Trott of Williamsburg Regional Library. The moderator was Laurel Tarulli of Dalhousie University.

While listening was much more important than viewing in this presentation, I did notice right off the bat  a slide showing that Columbus Metropolitan Library has a plan through 2020 to increase spending and the size of the physical collection. Robin and Barry affirmed their libraries were committed to both physical and digital collections. Barry did note that his library will not buy either format when overpriced (ebooks to libraries at 3 or 4 times the retail rate).

Early in the conversation, the delivery of asynchronous readers' advisory was discussed. This would include suggesting books through displays and booklists - pretty much every pitch that is not face-to-face. Barry pointed out that this important work is sometimes labelled "passive." He dislikes "passive" which suggests it is easy RA, which he wants to dispel. Much study and preparation is required to do effective asynchronous RA. Staff needs time to do it.

One of the panelists mentioned how RA is usually done from desks where some of the staff are not confident in their skills to suggest books, but the job falls to them anyway. Or staff knows some genres but not others. Perhaps it was Robin who said her library keeps short read-a-like lists for major authors handy to help these staff members. Making our own read-a-like lists is something that we would like to do more at my library, but we rarely find much time to do it (asynchronous RA takes time). When in need of read-a-likes for a reader, we pull up NoveList, which has nine titles to suggest for pretty much every title that has an entry. Of course, we then have to see if we own those titles. We do not look as smart as if we had our own in-house lists, but we do teach readers they can use NoveList themselves at any time anywhere.

Duncan noted how readers' advisory is not like most reference work. Usually, librarians are diligent in getting the right answer. With RA, there is not right answer. Librarians are judiciously offering possibilities. The readers will decide what is right for them.

Duncan noted that libraries do well in promoting the message that libraries save people money. What they do not do well is convince people that they save them time. For some people, time is more important than money, and they would be willing to pay to get what they need quickly. Barry (I think) said that people are beginning to ask more frequently whether libraries can sell them books. Perhaps this is a result of bookstores disappearing. Is there an opportunity here for libraries to bridge the gap? Should libraries allow "Buy it now" buttons on websites and in catalogs? The panel seemed willing to consider such changes, but Duncan warned of confusing library users as to what is free library service and what is not.

Robin, who comes to RA as a cataloger, said that the digital transformation of libraries has spread RA services to full library staffs. Anyone who designs the website, writes reviews, or enters data into the catalog influences how well the library delivers reading suggestions to library users. Robin, Barry, and Duncan agreed that the most needed development for RA and for library service as a whole is improving online library catalogs. Surveys of library users have shown that when polled about their library's website experiences, a majority of them think the online catalog is the website. Statistics show that online catalogs have tremendously more traffic than library websites. Robin said that we should focus on catalogs and that they need to change from inventory tools to tools for discovery. Catalogs need to cater to library users' needs with information about library services, programs, and collection, including tools to guide readers to good materials.

I enjoyed the panel discussion which both affirmed RA work being done at our library and offers plenty of ideas to consider.

Birds of Paradise: Revealing the World's Most Extraordinary Birds by Tim Laman and Edwin Scholes

Using baseball lingo, I feel like I've hit for the cycle. I have seen all four of the National Geographic Society's presentations about the bird of paradise research conducted in New Guinea and Australia by Tim Laman and Edwin Scholes.

The single - Distributed in the December issue of National Geographic, the article "Birds of Paradise" introduces readers to the decade-long effort to site and photograph all 39 species of birds of paradise. The article has maps and diagrams that  appear in every telling of the story. The photos are exquisite. This quickly-read article is how the greatest number of readers will learn the story.

The double - We saw a DVD of the National Geographic Society's television program Winged Seduction: Birds of Paradise. Viewers learn through location shots exactly how difficult it was for Scholes and Laman to find and photograph the birds and their behaviors. Many people able to get the National Geographic Channel on cable television saw this incredible program, and it will be available through libraries on DVD for years to come.

The triple - The triple is always the hardest hit to get. We saw Scholes and Laman's National Geographic Live multimedia presentation at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. The exciting program only visits a limited number of cities. We were so lucky.

The home run - With their book Birds of Paradise: Revealing the World's Most Extraordinary Birds, Laman and Scholes touch all the bases and bring home the deepest, most complete telling of their story. The photos are beautiful. In the back is a species atlas with portraits and maps for all 39 birds of paradise. One of the most beautiful books I've ever seen.

Laman, Tim and Edwin Scholes. Birds of Paradise: Revealing the World's Most Extraordinary Birds. National Geographic/The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 2012. 227p. ISBN 9781426209581.

The Importance of Being Seven by Alexander McCall Smith

Many people admire Downton Abbey for its great cast of characters. To these people, who enjoy the continuing shifting of focus from one compelling character to another, who like a cast whose relationships are evolving with the changing times, I recommend the 44 Scotland Street novels by Alexander McCall Smith. They may lack the grand house and estate of the hit BBC television series, but they have the high and low streets of Edinburgh and all of Scotland. There is also a good dose of humor.

Foremost in the cast is Bertie. In The Importance of Being Seven, he is six years old, as he has being since the stories began. McCall Smith admits in his introduction to the book that this is not chronologically possible, but he says that at six Bertie is a perfect character bound to win the sympathy of readers. He just wants to be a boy, but his mother Irene wants him to be a genius. While his struggle to be free of his mother's demands is humorous, he speaks for all of us who are still children well into middle age.

Like Downton Abbey, The Importance of Being Seven has its young married couple concerned about whether they can take over and maintain an old house. The series cast also includes an older woman ready to express her strong opinions. Then there is Bruce, a vain young man who just when you think he is reforming cruelly deceives others as a means of his own advancement. Sound familiar?

No one dies in this novel but continuing readers won't mind. They hope everyone will return in the next 44 Scotland Street novel.

McCall Smith, Alexander. The Importance of Being Seven. Anchor Books, 2012. 311p. ISBN 9780307739360

Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams

Every time I read a book, there is someone to thank. The author obviously and whoever helped get the book published. Right now, however, I am thinking about librarians, and in this case, Matthew at my library. He added an outstanding book, Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows to our photography collection. Before I saw the book on display, I had never heard of Maier, but the jacket caught my eye. The book went home with me to sit on a shelf for a couple of weeks before I finally opened it. Then I devoted much of a day off to reading and examining the photographs.

Hardly anyone had heard of Vivian Maier when she died in 2009, but the wheels of fame had started to roll in 2007 when her abandoned prints, negatives, and over 1,000 rolls of undeveloped film were auctioned in Chicago. She spent over fifty years as a nanny, housekeeper, and caregiver for the infirm, mostly in the northern Chicago suburbs, at every opportunity taking black and white photographs with her old Rolleiflex camera. Her early images focused on children and suburban life, but she began to catch commuter trains and wander the city. She documented downtown Chicago, Maxwell Street, and Skid Row through several decades, and even captured the protesters in Grant Park before the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Restrained by her finances, Maier rarely wasted a shot. Experts now praise her work both for its artistry and for its documenting decades of city experience. Seen as a body of work, it could be called her diary, but she rarely photographed herself. In her younger days, she traveled the world, but much of this book reflects life in Chicago.

As a nanny who would take children on adventures into poor parts of the city, Vivian Maier is compared with Mary Poppins. As a very private soul whose prolific work has only been revealed after her death, she is compared with Emily Dickinson. Much about her is still not really known. This excellent collection introduces her and leaves us wanting more.

Cahan, Richard and Michael Williams. Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows. Cityfiles Press, 2012. 287p. ISBN 9780978545093.

Blandings Castle by P. G. Wodehouse

Blandings Castle is a wonderful place. With fresh air, quiet, and gardens full of beautiful flowers, it is just the place to be alone. If only the ninth Earl of Emsworth could be alone to raise his prize pumpkins and pigs in peace. There always seem to be young people moping about, however, each wanting to fall in love with an unsuitable other young person. Take his son Freddie wanting to marry a young American woman who happens to be some relation of his gardener. Who ever heard of such a thing? Freddie would have to move to America. Hey, what! There's a thought. It would get him out of the old ancestor's hair. 

Blandings Castle is the setting for a series of books by P. G. Wodehouse. While I have read numerous Wodehouse books featuring the ever resource Jeeves, man servant of Bertie Wooster, I had not entered the world of Lord Emsworth until I read a collection of five stories called simply Blandings Castle tucked inside an anthology A Bounty of Blandings.

Being Wodehouse stories, each is filled with silly people facing small problems blown out of proportion. They respond with actions that escalate their problems. Perhaps this is so funny because in a sense it is what many of us actually do. What I particularly like about the five stories in this collection is that what Lord Emsworth at first dreads is exactly what he comes to want in the end.

There are many Blandings books and stories. I may never lack something fun to read.

Wodehouse, P. G. A Bounty of Blandings. W. W. Norton, 2011. 656p. ISBN 9780393341270.

The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit by Emma Thompson

There is always a danger of disappointment when old characters are resurrected for new tales, especially by authors generations after the originals. Will stories be carelessly modernized? Will character traits change? So, it was daring of the publisher Frederick Warne to invite actress Emma Thompson to write a new tale for Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit. Thompson is unquestionably talented, but would she get it right?

Having now read The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit, I think Thompson and her illustrator Eleanor Taylor got it right. Peter is still the irresponsible innocent who sees anything edible as his own. As in the original stories, he gets into trouble, what you might call a pickle if it weren't a radish. Mr. McGregor and Benjamin Bunny play roles in the comedy. And the setting is still the slow-paced 19th century British countryside, filled with verdant forests and ever-watching wildlife.

So, if you had doubts about the new tale, be reassured. You can never have too much Peter Rabbit. 

Thompson, Emma. The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit. Frederick Warne, 2012. 63p. ISBN 9780723269106.

Horton Foote: America's Storyteller by Wilborn Hampton

When Horton Foote left Wharton, Texas for Pasadena, California in 1933, he thought he was gone for good. According to Wilborn Hampton in Horton Foote: America's Storyteller, rather than work in his father's clothing store, Foote planned to be a stage actor, a dream that he nurtured annually when seeing the traveling Dude Arthur Comedians in his home town. Despite his thick Texas drawl, the seventeen-year-old succeeded in getting into acting school at the Pasadena Playhouse and then win small roles in plays in New York, the epicenter of American theater. In 1938 or 1939, after seeing Foote improvise scenes in acting exercises, choreographer Agnes de Mille suggested the struggling actor try writing. Of what should he write? Of what he knew. What he knew best was life in and about Wharton, Texas. His family history and childhood would be sources for his stories for nearly seventy years.

Though he won a Pulitzer Prize for a play and two Oscars for screenplays, Foote never became a household name like his contemporaries Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller. Though many proposals were made, few of his plays ever made Broadway. He turned to film and television initially just to support his family and later to find venues for his stories. He is considered one of the pioneers of television drama. For each success in Hollywood, however, there were several failures. Foote excelled at finding producers who praised his works and then demanded he change plots and characters drastically. Happily for viewers, he prevailed with his screenplays for To Kill a Mockingbird (based on the novel by Harper Lee), Tender Mercies (original), and The Trip to Bountiful (based on his own play).

Readers will learn Foote's role in the growth of regional theater, public broadcasting, and independent film making. They may also enjoy learning of his work with Lillian Gish, Harper Lee, Gregory Peck, Robert Duvall, Geraldine Page, Matthew Broderick, and many other writers and actors.

Hampton's book about Foote recounts the life of a writer devoted to honest storytelling, an author often labeled as non-commercial by the producers in New York and Hollywood. Readers will admire his persistence, decency, loyalty to lifelong friends, and devotion to family. This biography is a rare uplifting book to offer to readers tired of sordid tales.

Hampton, Wilborn. Horton Foote: America's Storyteller. Free Press, 2009. 292p. ISBN 9781416566403.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce

Bonnie brought home another great children's book. She does that a lot.

Everyone has a story. Because he loved books, Morris Lessmore wrote his story into his book every day. He was very content doing just this, but then a storm destroyed his home and scattered his library. Even the words from his book blew away. It was a blessing in disguise. In The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce, Morris then sees the lady with the flying books. She loans him one that takes him to a home for flying books.

As you may guess, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is a book that children, parents, and librarians will love. Illustrated by Joyce with Joe Bluhm, it is beautiful, sweet, and right in line with everything that I believe. I hope that I can live my life so gracefully as Morris, i.e. be a little more understanding when all the books get out of order.

Read the author bio on the jacket to learn more about the origin and meaning of this fantastic book.

A short film inspired by Morris's story won an Academy Award. Take 15 minutes to watch. Enjoy.

Joyce, William. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2012. ISBN 9781442457027.

On Assignment with National Geographic: The Inside Story of Legendary Explorers, Photographers, and Adventurers by Mark Collins Jenkins

2013 is the 125th anniversary of the National Geographic Society. In celebration, the society has publishing several books, including On Assignment with National Geographic: The Inside Story of Legendary Explorers, Photographers, and Adventurers by Mark Collins Jenkins. With such a big title, you might imagine a jumbo coffee table book, but in this case, the volume is compact. (National Geographic 125 Years is a much bigger book.) While the size of On Assignment with National Geographic is small, the anniversary publication is still packed with stories about the history of the society, its monthly magazine, and many of its most famous naturalists, scientists, explorers, and editors.

Readers will readily recognize many names, including its second president Alexander Graham Bell, arctic explorer Richard Byrd, oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, primatologist Jane Goodall, and paleontologist Paul Sereno. Many now mostly forgotten scientists, such as adventurer William Beebe and balloonist William Kepner are also featured. As I read, I recognized many photos and magazine covers that I have seen over the last fifty plus years. I also realized how National Geographic has documented the mapping of the planet, the disappearance of traditional societies, the evolution of scientific knowledge, and the development of technologies that could not have been imagined at the society's founding. Look at a National Geographic from 100 years ago and you see a radically different world.

Finally, On Assignment with National Geographic lets readers see into the processes of grant funding and publishing the big stories. This quick reading history will interest many of the society's members and fans.

Jenkins, Mark Collins. On Assignment with National Geographic: The Inside Story of Legendary Explorers, Photographers, and Adventurers. National Geographic Society, 2013. 134p. ISBN 9781426210136.

Astray by Emma Donoghue

I do not read much fiction, but I listened to an intriguing interview with Emma Donoghue on an NPR Books podcast recently. She spoke about her latest book, a collection of short stories titled Astray. I was charmed by the idea that Donoghue combs through archived documents, historical incidents, and even statistics to find subjects for her stories. Finding the recent book at my library, I brought it home and was rewarded with several mornings and evenings of good reading.

Being mostly a biographical and historical reader (though I also like science), I found Donoghue's short stories appealing. They dramatize times about which I have read, focusing on rare events, giving me new insights into the movements of people across oceans and continents. For example, I had not thought much about the range of emotions within families split by the Atlantic, when a husband preceded the family in immigrating to Canada. Loneliness was a given, but other factors, such as envy, insult, despair, and surrender, shaped the handwritten letters that passed slowly back and forth across the ocean. Having now read "Counting the Days," I now also wonder how many wives and children were not met at the wharves in the New World and what became of them.

Donoghue's reading must be wide ranging. Her stories in Astray go back to Cape Cod in1639 and up to Newmarket, Ontario in 1967. Locations include the goldfields in Alaska, Louisiana slave plantations, and row houses in London. After each she reveals the documents and books that gave her characters and settings. In the back of the collection, she includes an essay that further explains her interests and methods.

Looking at her bio, I see Donoghue's books are wide-ranging, too. I suspect they will be popular in libraries for many years.

Donoghue, Emma. Astray. Little Brown and Company, 2012. 274p. ISBN 9780316206297.

My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile by Isabel Allende

"A country, like a husband, is always open to improvement." 

If you were a librarian, where would you shelve My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile by Isabel Allende? Various libraries in my area have it in the Dewey 800s because it reflects on her fiction, 900s because it is about her country of birth, and biography because she tells how grew up in and left Chile after 1973 military coup d'etat. I would choose the 900s because much of the text is about Chile and the title seems to say that the country is the focus of the book. Someone might counter that the title also says that it is the Chile of Allende's imagination, much like William Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, and thus should be an 800. It may also be argued that My Invented Country is a memoir, though one that is only lightly self-revealing. Our book group may have tended toward calling the book a country description, but we were in by no means unified.

Is it fair to say the book is only lightly personally revealing? Allende tells numerous short stories about her life and admits to many faults, but it seems to me that Chile is really her main focus. Does all this matter? Readers mostly want good reading and do not worry about classification. We were not agreed whether My Invented Country passed that test. Several members of the club who had read Allende's novels were unsatisfied. They thought her voice was very different, somewhat arrogant, not engaging. Others enjoyed her alternately witty and serious assessment of her country and life.

I enjoyed what might just be called "encyclopedia facts," the sections in which Allende describes the country. She is, of course, more entertaining than most encyclopedias. I'd now like to travel through the country, something that none of us had done.

My Invented Country is an imperfect book in that its perceived message clearly is not the same to every reader. Ironically, that makes it a good candidate for book discussions. Discussion leaders should also prepare to discuss what has changed in the ten years since it was published.

Allende, Isabel. My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile. Harper Collins, 2003. ISBN 006054564X.

National Geographic Live: Birds of Paradise

Over the course of ten years, Cornell ornithologist Edwin Scholes and biologist/photographer Tim Laman trekked through the least accessible forests of New Guinea 18 times in search of all 39 species of birds of paradise. After spending thousands of hours in blinds, they have over 39,000 photographs documenting the resplendent colors and courting behaviors of the earth's most strikingly unusual birds. Bonnie and I saw some of the shots and a few amazing videos at their National Geographic Live presentation at the Goodman Theater in Chicago this week.

You may also see these birds in their article in the December 2012 issue of National Geographic, starting with an impressive greater bird of paradise on page 70. You will then want to get their new book Birds of Paradise: Revealing the World's Most Extraordinary Birds. I await the book to learn more than Laman and Scholes were able to say and show in a short hour and 45 minutes. I suspect Bonnie and I will have dueling bookmarks when we get it.

The Goodman was a wonderful place to attend National Geographic Live. The seats were really comfortable and a brilliant screen mostly hid the set of a current play. We were close - no need for binoculars. I also enjoyed eavesdropping on conversations before the lecture. We were among an interesting crowd full of world travelers. I suspect keepers from both of Chicago's zoos and members of the Chicago Geographical Society were there. It did not look like the opera crowd.

I enjoyed the question period at the end also. Someone asked if there might be more than 39 species of birds of paradise. Scholes said there might be and explained how museum collections had been studied to arrive at the current number. He and Laman hope to return to New Guinea to seek out any proposed candidates.

National Geographic Live appears in over a dozen American cities, including Austin, Phoenix, and Seattle. Check the NG website for its events.

Minnesota Beatle Project

Since the early days of Beatlemania, other performers have recorded songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney or George Harrison. It was common practice before the emphasis on the singer/songwriter for many performers to record "covers" of hit songs. The Beatles did it themselves on their initial albums, covering songs by Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, and several Motown composers. The Beatles helped shape a new attitude when they resolved to record only original material.

Of course, many musical acts were not up to the challenge of songwriting, and they continued singing Beatle songs on their pieced-together albums. "Yesterday" is sometimes said to be the most recorded song of the 1960s. I remember watching an Ed Sullivan show in tribute to the Fab Four with all sorts of singers covering Beatle songs. I thought it was awful and eagerly awaited the finale which was a new song performed by the Beatles via a film shipped from London directly Sullivan in New York.

With so many fans like me knowing Beatles' recordings so well, it is risky for any performer to cover what are almost sacred sounds. Only the best can pull it off, usually by not sounding like the originals or by recording lesser known songs. Even Frank Sinatra and Elton John stumbled with Beatle covers. I know there are some good covers out there, but I can not think of any off hand. Maybe Joe Cocker's "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window."

There are a lot of brave performers in Minnesota. To raise funds for music education in the state, Minnesota-born musicians and immigrants to the state have joined the Minnesota Beatle Project, which has to date released four music CDs. Surprised I have enjoyed listening to volume 4, which my daughter Laura gave me at Christmas. Of the 13 tracks, I am skipping only "For the Benefit of Being Mr. Kite." To be fair, this circus song was already very strange and Van Stee upped the ante in a very John-Lennon-like way. Hearing it once is enough.

What I really like are the modest, low-key covers of "Baby's in Black" by Trampled by Turtles and "Misery" by Halloween Alaska. These are lesser known songs at this point in time, and the results are positive. Almost contrary to my tendencies, I also love the Bloomington Jefferson High School Band's joyful instrumental performance of "She Loves You." I might be happy all day after hearing this brassy bouncy song. 

You can read more about the Minnesota Beatle Project and the good it does at the Vega Productions website. You can even order the recordings - some in vinyl!

Chris Vallillo at Friday at the Ford

Good timing is essential. Thomas Ford could have invited Illinois folk musician Chris Vallillo to play Friday at the Ford earlier, but this past Friday night really seemed a perfect time. We have established a faithful following for our concerts and can almost guarantee a full audience for a folk artist like Vallillo. And Chris has just released a new CD The Last Days of Winter, from which he played six pieces, three vocal and three instrumental.

Chris is an archaeologist of Midwestern song, having been a song catcher in the 1980s when he interviewed and recorded old musicians who started before there was radio. The work shaped his career and his Friday night concert. With his original compositions, he performed for us 19th century songs, such as "Old Joe Clark," "Burglar Man," and "Shawneetown." He had the audience keep the beat with clapping for the latter two of those old songs. He also had us sing with him on another collected piece, "The Sinking of the Titanic."

From the old musicians, Chris also developed a love of old instruments. He started the night playing on his resonator guitar (seen in photo above) and later turned to his 130 year old hammer dulcimer, which he restored himself after finding it in a "working" barn. He also told us about his 9-string guitar, which was unfortunately in the luthier's shop for a tuneup.

I am now enjoying having my own copy of The Last Days of Winter. The song "The River Road" is urging me to take a driving trip downstate this spring. I'm also liking "Tequila," "The Water is Wide," and the title cut.

Chris is an Illinois Arts Council performer and is especially known for his program Abraham Lincoln in Song. His schedule of concerts can be found on his website. Several of the audience last night will attest that hearing Chris live was worth their long drive.

Update on The Complete Ripping Yarns by Michael Palin and Terry Jones

I am happy to report that I have now seen the nine episodes of The Complete Ripping Yarns, a late 1970s BBC television series written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones. Many of the stories make better viewing than reading. I was a little let down by Escape from Stalag Luft 112B, probably because I already knew all the plot twists from reading the script. On the plus side, Tomkinson's Schooldays and Roger of the Raj were much funnier than I expected. I still think Murder at Moorstone Manor is the best of the lot.

What I may have liked even more was the amusing little documentary Comic Roots: Michael Palin, which is included in special features on the second DVD. Palin visits with his mom and neighbors in his old home town and then revisits his boarding school and college, meeting up with old friends, including Terry Jones. Produced in 1983 when the comic was only 40, it is a joyful piece that every Palin fan should see.

The Complete Ripping Yarns. Acorn Media, 2005. 2 DVDs.

Organized Crime in Chicago: Beyond the Mafia by Robert M. Lombardo

I reviewed this book in the November 1, 2012 issue of Booklist. Here are some further thoughts.

Reading the history Organized Crime in Chicago: Beyond the Mafia by Robert M. Lombardo, I am particularly struck by how the author explains the role of organized crime in city life. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many citizens were employed for low wages in factory jobs and had little joy in their lives beyond petty vices. Cheap drinks helped them forget the monotony and weariness. Gambling let them dream of escaping. Both were under the control of corrupt aldermen and ward bosses - not Italian gangs that might be called the Mafia, the Syndicate, or the Outfit. The Italians came later and did not unseat the politicians as crime lords until Prohibition.

Throughout the decades, organized crime was able to flourish in Chicago because it had much support in the neighborhoods. Corrupt aldermen might demand political donations from shop owners but then fixed streets, provided jobs, or even paid for funerals. Members of criminal gangs might spread their wealth among family and friends. Youths aspired to grow up to be in gangs for the prestige.

The violence during Prohibition scared many but did not alter community reliance on criminals. Even as late as 1971, the Illinois Law Enforcement Commission reported the following:

• Organized crime persisted because it catered to the public desire for illicit goods and services.
• A large Majority of the population wanted and used the services offered by organized crime.
• 86 percent of the survey population wished that something could be done to stamp out organized crime in Illinois.

Statement three seems incongruous after statements one and two. Obviously, people did not see that they held the key to reducing organized crime by their own consumer habits. Habits, of course, are hard to break.

In his history, Lombardo chronicles many decades of criminal activity and identifies many of the neighborhoods in which conditions supported the formation of gangs. While he mentions contemporary African-American gangs and Mexican cartels, the bulk of the text concerns pre-Italian and Italian crime. The introductory chapters and the conclusion address theoretical models of how criminal organizations work. The middle part of the book is straight history and will be of interest to many general readers.

Lombardo, Robert M. Organized Crime in Chicago: Beyond the Mafia. University of Illinois Press, 2013. 288p. ISBN 9780252078781.

The Amazing Harry Kellar: Great American Magician by Gail Jarrow

Can you imagine a time long before movies, radio, television, and the Internet? Public entertainment was found in gas-lit lecture halls and opera houses. Colorful posters glued to buildings and fences announced the shows. Young and old thrilled to learn a magician was coming to town. That was the world of Harry Kellar (1849-1922), once America's most famous magician. His story is told in the well-illustrated biography The Amazing Harry Kellar: Great American Magician by Gail Jarrow.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many of the most famous magicians touring the United States came from Europe. Kellar (born Heinrich Keller) was an exception. Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, he had to tour other continents with his magic show for over a decade before he could compete in his native land. During that time he honed his skills, learning amazing tricks and illusions, including how to levitate Princess Karnac. Eventually he became the leading American magician.

Aimed at upper elementary or middle school readers, The Amazing Harry Kellar is an attractive book filled with reproductions of original Kellar lithographic posters and photographs of the time. Its quick-reading text describes the career of a now-forgotten entertainer who paved the way for later magicians, including Harry Houdini. Good for biography reports or pleasure reading.

Jarrow, Gail. The Amazing Harry Kellar: Great American Magician. Calkins Creek, 2012. 96p. ISBN 9781590788653.

Saddened by Gun Appreciation Day

I am saddened to read that yesterday was proclaimed by some to be Gun Appreciation Day. I was not celebrating. Regardless of whose hands a gun is in, it indicates the failure of our society to provide well-being. We live in a culture of violence in which guns plays a key role, perpetuating more violence. Guns are pathogens infecting our population with feelings of fear and the urge for revenge. Nothing constructive comes from guns, only bullets which destroy, tearing through flesh, spilling blood. Even used it self-defense, guns facilitate pain and suffering. We can measure human inhumanity by the number of guns manufactured, sold, owned, brandished, and used in violent acts. I find no reason to like a gun. I do not celebrate guns.

Memoirs That Will Last

My article has been published! In the January issue of Library Journal starting on page 42, you will find "Memoirs That Will Last." It is an installment in the monthly LJ Collection Development Series. In this four page article, I attempt to identify memoirs that will be of interest to readers for years to come and deserve to be in most public libraries, as well as some school and college libraries. Thanks to the editors' encouragement to expand the original draft of the article, I identify 27 books. At the end of the piece, I also name six movies based on memoirs that libraries will want to offer their clients.

After being asked by Library Journal in July, I had about four months to research, contemplate, and write the article. I scanned Read On … Life Stories by Rosalind Reisner and Life Stories: A Guide to Reading Interests in Memoirs, Autobiographies, and Diaries by Maureen O'Connor to create an initial list of titles to consider and then looked through the SWAN catalog of suburban Chicago libraries. I trimmed the list knowing that not all librarians would fully agree, especially with the 21st century choices. It will be interesting to see if the article gets comments once it is available on the LJ website. 

One thing I would change now that I see the article is the subheading "Twenty-First Century Stories." The books were published after 2000, but the stories go back before. I think I may confuse a few readers with that subtitle.

I'd enjoy hearing what memoirs you believe will continue to merit reading for the next couple of decades. Feel free to comment.

The Grand Tour by Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie, the Queen of Crime, may have died in 1976, but she still has books coming out. I am not referring to reprints. The Grand Tour is a new title, nonfiction instead of fiction this time. How is this possible? In this case, her grandson Mathew Prichard has taken a bit of her autobiography, added letters that she wrote home from a trip around the world, and illustrated the volume with her photographs. The result is an illustrated travel journal that will interest historians and Christie fans.

As a travel memoir, The Grand Tour is not particularly exciting, as Christie had no grand adventures. No one dies. She was often seasick, danced late into the night, learned to surf, and met many Commonwealth industrialists interested in placing exhibits in the British Empire Exhibition of 1924. The Exhibition was the purpose of the 10-month trip. It was 1922, Christie was 32 years old, and she accompanied her husband Archie who was a member of the Exhibition mission to the colonies. Slated as a tag-along, the budding mystery writer with three mildly successful books to her credit helped the mission greatly with social functions.

Why did she go when she had a two-and-a-half year old daughter? Her mother intimated that it was unwise for a young wife to let a young husband travel alone. Christie also loved travel and the mission presented a great opportunity for her to learn about foreign places that she used as settings in future novels. Several of the letter are addressed to her daughter.

The historic setting is the strength of The Grand Tour. Historians get some insight into how Commonwealth business of the 1920s worked. Readers learn about the comforts and hardships of travel when it took weeks to get from London to South Africa and months to Australia and New Zealand. Fans get a rare peek into Christie's mostly very private life. 

Christie, Agatha. The Grand Tour. Harper, 2012. 376p. ISBN 9780062191229.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale

Detective Inspector Jonathan "Jack" Whicher of Scotland Yard was somewhat of a celebrity in 1850s London. One of Great Britain's initial batch of trained detectives, he had been praised frequently in newspaper accounts for solving many cases of theft and murder. Authors Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens followed his career closely and reshaped bits of it into their highly popular tales. Whicher was, of course, the professional to call when the rural Wiltshire police could not solve the mystery behind the murder of three-year-old Saville Kent in 1860.

According to Kate Summerscale in her The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective, the case known as the Road Hill Murder proved more difficult than any other for the great Victorian Era detective. Neither the local constabulary nor the family of the victim welcomed his involvement in the case. As days went by, all described by Summerscale in detail, the family and its staff became primary suspects, as every possibility of outside involvement was disproved. While Whicher asked members of the household many uncomfortable questions, the public demanded for a solution. When Whicher finally arrested a daughter of the house but she was released because no firm evidence could be found, he was vilified widely as careless and "lower class." Good public opinion of the detective never recovered and he was forgotten.

Though a confession was later made, the case is still far from truly solved. Was the confession false or partly false? What were the true motives? Were there accomplices  Summerscale recounts how thinking about the case has evolved over time. She also profiles the lives of the key players in the mystery up to their deaths and tells how Wilkie Collins spun the tale into one of his own.

Biographical but really better classified as history, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a great read for anyone who studies or greatly enjoys the literature of crime fiction.

Summerscale, Kate. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective. Walker and Company, 2008. 360p. ISBN 9780802715357.

Unusual Uses for Olive Oil by Alexander McCall Smith

He's back. American readers first learned of Professor Dr Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, a learned philologist and author of the much-acclaimed and little-read 1200-page Portuguese Irregular Verbs, in 2005 when Alexander McCall Smith's 1997 comic novel Portuguese Irregular Verbs (only 128 pages) was published in America. Other books in the series, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances reached America that same year. It appeared the books would remain a trilogy until 2011, when McCall Smith published Unusual Uses for Olive Oil in Great Britain. It is now available here, too.

Fans will remember the professor is very protective of his reputation and spars frequently with his academic rivalries over very obscure points of philology, manners, and department etiquette. He also gets to travel to conferences to present the same lecture over and over to the same group of academics. He often finds himself in ridiculous situations of his own making. He was, of course, especially hurt when he saw a copy of Portuguese Irregular Verbs that he had given to a potential love interest used as a foot stool.

In Unusual Uses for Olive Oil, life continues for the silly Dr Dr, but I sense a little more sympathy in his soul. Not enough for him to fall truly in love or put others first, but he does seem to learn to look more kindly on the department's talkative librarian Herr Huber.

If ever there is a man who really needed a valet, it is Professor von Igelfeld. Read Unusual Uses for Olive Oil and you'll see why. By the way, you will not learn about the olive oil until the final chapter.

McCall Smith, Alexander. Unusual Uses for Olive Oil. Anchor Books, 2012. 203p. ISBN 9780307279897.

The Complete Ripping Yarns by Michael Palin and Terry Jones

After Monty Python's Flying Circus left the air, not counting reruns and reunions, the members of the troupe unleashed numerous television and film projects. Among these was Ripping Yarns, a BBC collaboration between Michael Palin and Terry Jones. I have never seen the nine episodes, broadcast 1976 to 1979, which may be among the most neglected works in the post-Python portfolio. I was, however, able to secure an interlibrary loan of The Complete Ripping Yarns by Michael Palin and Terry Jones, a compilation of nine scripts published by Mandarin Paperbacks (London, 1991).

As you would expect, humor was still the intent of the Pythonites, but Palin and Jones put a bit more emphasis on story in Ripping Yarns than was evident in MPFC. Episodes develop plots, much like the famous MPFC episode "The Cycling Tour," which we call often "Bicycling Through North Cornwall." The endings may be sudden, but they are endings. Central to all of the funny business was Palin who played the central figure in each of the stories. You can see this from the numerous production stills accompanying the scripts and from reading the credits at the back of the book. Jones appears in only the first episode. The only other Python credit is for a cameo by John Cleese in "Golden Gordon."

The first yarns are "Tomkinson's School Days" and "Across the Andes by Frog," both of which are mostly just good silly fun. Genius kicks in with "Murder at Moorstones Manor," a plot-twisting spoof of British murder mysteries. My favorite story of the bunch is "Escape from Stalag Luft 112B," which is set in World War I, not a later war as you might expect. Palin plays Major Phipps, an inept British officer who spends all of his time devising ways to escape from a very comfortable prisoner of war camp. The story is a classic that everyone should know.

2013 is the 37th anniversary of the start of Ripping Yarns. I think it is a ripe time for a revival.

Palin, Michael and Terry Jones. The Complete Ripping Yarns. Mandarin Paperbacks, 1991. 278p. ISBN 074931222x.

ricklibrarian 2013: What to Expect

It is a new year and I am not sure just what to do with it yet. I have a general feeling that it is time to shake things up a bit on the blog. I am inclined to post more about websites, movies, and music than I have in the past year or two, and I also want to get back to discussing reference librarianship topics.

Biography and memoirs will continue to be strong interests in support of my books and their readers, my upcoming article in Library Journal, and my upcoming speaking engagement. I hope to post a supplement to the Top Biographers list in Real Lives Revealed this spring.

A particular interest I have is charities. At the library we are asked about the legitimacy and accountability of charities. We use several charity reporting websites to answer these questions. I have also noticed at home in the last year or two a great increase in the mailings I have received from charities. Checking some of the websites, I find most have good or excellent ratings for proper use of their funds. Still, I wonder about the profusion of mailings. I have started a spreadsheet to see just how many wasteful and repetitive solicitations I am getting. I plan to report periodically.

Of course, I will not quit reading books and hope my reviews will help you find some good titles to read. Let me know if I succeed.