Westport Public Library BOOK blog

Have you noticed anything different about our catalog lately? We have added Library Thing! LibraryThing is an online service which allows users to catalog their home libraries and share them with others. Since we are a library, we obviously already have our books cataloged, but we have found a different use for LibraryThing: tagging.

As you'll notice, our catalog entries now include "related links," which you can click on to find other books that are assigned the same keywords. The larger the font, the more LibraryThing users have assigned that keyword to the particular item. This makes our catalog more interactive and easier to browse. If you enjoyed one book, you can now use the keywords to find books that are similar.

Published in 1900, the book is a little different from the 1939 famous movie. But, even if you have not finished reading, bring your whole family to an afternoon of fun at the Library on Saturday (March 1) from noon to 4 pm. Drop in to hear The Flying Monkeys Woodwind Quintet (aka the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra Woodwind Quintet) play wizard music in the Great Hall from 12:30 to 1:30. Have your picture taken with characters from the story. Enjoy puzzles, games and coloring. Enter the March raffle. Mingle with other travelers to the Land of Oz.

During WestportREADS month, there will be thoughtful discussions, entertaining performances, festive sing-a-longs, book discussions for all ages, and even a talk about strange weather.

One hundred years ago at the founding of the Westport Library, people were reading and discussing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. We’re still reading and discussing it and celebrating our community and our Library.

I hope to meet you on the Yellow Brick Road!

If the name sounds familiar it is probably because Colucci pops up on television news shows, including Nancy Grace, Larry King Live, MSNBC and Fox News, all the time.

By the way, Colucci steadfastly maintains Skakel’s innocence, but you will have to read the book to find out why!

Another Greenwich related true-crime story is that of the Kissels, who are the subject of the recently released Never Enough by Joe McGinniss.

Successful investment banker Robert Kissel and his wife Nancy were living the seemingly perfect "expat" life in Hong Kong with their three children.

Robert began to suspect that she was having an affair, which he confirmed via a hired detective, and then suspected that Nancy was poisoning him. His body was found soon after.

Nancy was tried and convicted of his murder in Hong Kong, where she awaits appeal.

There is a truly bizarre subsequent chapter to this story. Robert's brother, Andrew, a Connecticut real estate tycoon facing prison for fraud and embezzlement, was also found dead in the basement of his Greenwich mansion, stabbed in the back by person or persons unknown.

We have also recently added The Best American Crime Reporting, 2007, a diverse collection featuring 15 of the year's best crime stories, written by noted journalists such as Tom Junod (Esquire), Sean Flynn (GQ) and Steve Fishman (New York) and edited by author Linda Fairstein.

This collection got a starred review in Publishers Weekly that said of the stories “… it’s often hard to believe they’re non-fiction.”

I am usually able to say something to the effect that this year’s nominees were announced with great fanfare, but somehow this year the fanfare went unnoticed by me and the dozen or so people who usually e-mail me the news! It appears the announcements were made back in January – I really had to go digging for details on the Internet after it suddenly popped into my head that the list was overdue.

At any rate, this years Best Novel nominees are:

Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (the pseudonym of Booker Prize winner John Banville)
Pathologist Garret Quirke uncovers a web of corruption in 50s Dublin surrounding the death in childbirth of a young maid, Christine Falls, and the deeper he delves into the mystery, the more it seems to implicate his own family and the Catholic Church.

Priest by Ken Bruen
Recovered from incapacitating guilt over the death of a child on his watch, alcoholic Galwegian ex-cop Jack Taylor is released from the loony bin only to become involved in an unofficial investigation of the death of a pedophilic priest, who was beheaded.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
An alternate history detective story based on the premise that after World War II, a temporary Yiddish-speaking settlement for Jewish refugees was established in Alaska in 1941. Meyer Landsman, an alcoholic homicide detective with the Sitka police, investigates the murder of a man who was a fellow resident in a fleabag hotel.

Soul Patch by Reed Farrel Coleman
Set in late 80s New York City, Moe Prager, an ex-cop turned PI, has a cryptic encounter with a former fellow officer who slips him a covertly recorded tape of an interrogation of a snitch claiming to know the secret behind the murder of a major-league drug dealer in the early 70s who then turns up dead himself.

Down River by John Hart
After being narrowly acquitted of a murder charge, Adam Chase is hounded out of his home town. Years later, within hours of his return, he is beaten and accosted, confronted by his family, and when bodies start turning up, the small town rises against him again and he finds himself embroiled in the fight of his life to prove his own innocence.

All outstanding novels, but my money is on Ken Bruen.

There is a terrific interview of Bruen by, interestingly enough, Reed Farrel Coleman – one of his fellow nominees – on the Mystery Readers International website.

And … there is an interview of Coleman himself by Megan Abbott there as well.

The winner will be announced at the 62nd Annual Edgar Awards Banquet on Thursday May 1, 2008 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.

This year’s Grand Master will be Bill Pronzini.

Born in 1856 into a wealthy family, Baum’s life before the success of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz contained many hints of the adventures that Dorothy experiences in the book.

• Baum’s total formal education consisted of less than two years at the Peekskill Military Academy.
• As a 15-year-old, Baum published a newspaper with his brother Harry. The Rose Lawn Home Journal was in publication for three years.
• When he was 19, Baum worked as a salesman for his father’s dry goods company, Neal, Baum & Company.
• Baum became an actor and traveled with the Shakespeare Company.
• In 1875, Baum started raising & breeding chickens. He became the first secretary of the Empire State poultry Assn. and organized Annual Poultry Fairs.
• Baum managed a string of theaters owned by his father.
• In 1882, Baum was known for his playwriting – especially the popular Maid of Arran-acting and songwriting.
• Baum also worked as a salesman for his father’s Castorine Company.
• In 1888, Baum moved from Syracuse NY to Aberdeen SD and opened a general store. Baum’s Bazaar. The store took in $60 on opening day.
• After two years, the store closed. Baum spent most of his time ignoring the store and sitting outside telling stories to children.
• Baum took over as editor & publisher of the Dakota Pioneer where he wrote about women’s suffrage, theosophy, and politics and economics of the time. His column, “Our Landlady” discussed issues and personalities important in Aberdeen. The least tolerant tone of all his writings appeared when he wrote about native Americans, after Wounded Knee.
• Baum joined the Episcopalian church – his only church membership- to perform in a production of The Sorcerer.
• Baum lost the Pioneer, moved his family to Chicago and worked briefly for the Chicago Evening Post, before becoming a traveling salesman for the Pitkin & Brooks Chinaware company.
• In 1895, Baum’s poetry, stories and essays begin to appear in the Chicago Times Herald.
• Baum applied for a copyright on two books in 1896. One was Tales from Mother Goose.
• Short stories by Baum were published in a variety of journals.
• In 1898, Baum wrote, printed and bound by hand 99 copies of a book of verse, By the Candelabra’s Glare, for his friends.
• Baum completed a new fairy tale and wrote it in pencil on scraps of paper in 1899. He called it The Emerald City. This was re-titled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, when it was published in 1900.

For more on Baum.

Although Art Deco buildings come first to mind at the mention of South Beach, in the greater Miami Beach area there are actually three predominant architectural styles — Art Deco, Mediterranean Revival and MiMo (Miami Modernism.)

The Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL) is a non-profit organization devoted to preserving, protecting, and promoting the Miami Beach Architectural Historic District.

The League offers tours of the District — which extends from 6th Street to 23rd Street — guided, recorded and one that can even be done listening on a cell phone.

Stops include the Mediterranean Revival style Amsterdam Palace at Ocean Drive and 11th Street. Today it's known as Casa Casuarina, a five-star luxury hotel, where Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace was gunned down in 1997.

Most of the district hotels are small, Art Deco and aglow with neon light. These hotels catered to the middle-class tourists. The wealthy vacationers went to Palm Beach.

My favorite is The Tiffany Hotel at 801 Collins Avenue, now known as simply The Hotel of South Beach. The entry facade looks like a rocket ship and it has a spire on top. Very Flash Gordon.

There is lots of good food to be had in the district. Gloria Estefan has a restaurant there called Larios on the Beach, which serves the most delicious Cuban food.

Check out our Miami travel guides before you go. If Key West is your destination you might want to take a slight detour!

While it might be fun for your book club to read The Jane Austen Book Club, the movie was much more effective in getting me to think about reading Jane Austen again! Her books were serious, but humorous critiques of English society. Austen’s books are famous for heroines that show real strength. Her female characters know what they want and find ways to make it happen. Pride and Prejudice, the story of the Bennet sisters and their romantic entanglements, is probably the most well known of her novels. Emma and Sense and Sensibility, follow close behind in popularity. Although I haven’t read Persuasion, considered Austen’s most serious, but most romantic book, I’ve decided that it will be added to my long list of books to read. The two other Austen novels discussed by the book club were Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey.

So when the topic of reading a Jane Austen book at your book group comes up, don’t say “Oh, I’ve already read her books.” Read one again. A good book is often better the second time around. There are many Jane Austen fans that will agree with you. There’s even an entire society dedicated to promoting her life and works. And if you need copies of any of her books or a discussion guide, let me know.

Have you heard about the book in which writers were invited to distill their bios into just six words? It’s called Not Quite What I Was Planning edited by Larry Smith. ("Found true love, married someone else" is an example.)

Can you imagine the characters in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz writing their bios in just six words?

How about “Stuffed with straw. Afraid of matches.” Or “Magic power revealed. Wizard is humbug.”
Or “Bad witch melts. Glinda tells secret.” Or “Good masters. Evil masters. Three commands.”
Or “Timid beast loses fear. Becomes king.”

It's addictive, once you start. Let's see how many six word bios of Wizard characters we can compile.

Smilla Jaspersen is the daughter of a Danish doctor and an Inuit woman from Greenland who lives in Copenhagen. When an Inuit boy she knows dies under mysterious circumstances, she refuses to believe it was an accident. She decides to investigate and discovers that even the police don't want her involved.

Smilla persists, and her investigation leads her from a fanatically religious accountant to a tough-talking pathologist and then to the secret files of the Danish company responsible for extracting most of Greenland's mineral wealth. Finally, she boards a ship with an international cast of villains laden with a large stash of cocaine bound for a mysterious mission on an inhospitable island off Greenland.

After a ten year absence from the literary scene, Hoeg has recently published a new book that, like Smilla’s Sense of Snow, is indeed a psychological thriller, something of a detective story, but, most of all, an intense character study.

Set in modern-day Denmark, The Quiet Girl centers around Kaspar Krone, a world-renowned circus clown with an unusual ability. Krone can access “acoustic essences” – auras of sound revealing the personalities of people in musical key signatures.

Sounds strange? It gets even stranger. Wanted for tax evasion and on the verge of extradition, Krone is drafted into the service of a mysterious order of nuns who promise him they can secure a reprieve from the international authorities if he will help safeguard a group of children who also have this mystical ability.

When one of the children goes missing, Krone sets off to find the young girl. He makes a shocking series of discoveries along the way about her identity and the true intentions of his young charges.

The book has met with mixed reviews, but Publishers Weekly promises that it will appeal to Hoeg’s “many fans and other readers with a taste for the literary offbeat.”

1-Senator’s Wife by Sue Miller
2-The Appeal by John Grisham
3-People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
4-Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
5-T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton
6-New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
7-Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin
8-7th Heaven by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro
9-Plum Lucky by Janet Evanovich
10-Beautiful Children by Charles Bock

Comments: It’s easy to detect the Oprah influence. Her last selection, World Without End by Ken Follett was actually a sequel to his 1989 bestseller, in spite of its length of over 900 pages, Pillars of the Earth. I guess people have reserved Pillars… to read before plunging into the thousand-plus- page World Without End. Together the two books will provide much reading pleasure for anyone intrigued by life in 12th century England.

Oprah waved her magic wand again and selected New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle. Tolle is a well-known guru of the spiritual life; he and Oprah will be teaching a course based on the book free to everyone online. Tolle’s 1999 book The Power of Now has been widely circulated.

Beautiful Children rocketed to the list after a big push from the New York Times. A novel based on the author’s life growing up in Las Vegas it centers on a missing child. It’s both gritty and humorous.

PS: Did you notice the change in our catalog? You can easily browse to find and link to similar books in the Library collection.

If you enjoy literary fiction and if you savor poetic language, you will be happy to lose yourself in What You Call Winter by Nalini Jones. The interconnected stories flow between extended family as their lives take them from home, which is a Catholic neighborhood in India, to new homes in America. Scenes from childhood in both places with poignant memories are written with perfect imagery.

Here is a ten-year-old Marian heading home in the afternoon. “The road flew beneath her feet in jerks and rushes as she began to skip- past the tall gates of St. Jerome’s Church, where families of beggars held out their hands to the Catholic ladies.” Later, in the empty family home, “The day began to rouse itself, flushed and warm, from the afternoon sleep, and the noise from the street grew louder. Marian heard motorcars, the chatter of women, the wailing calls of merchants. She knew her father would soon be home.”

Meet local author Nalini Jones at the Library on Friday February 8 at noon. After her talk, copies of her debut story collection will be available for sale and signing. More about the author.

Even if you can’t make it to the party this year you can bring a taste of it home.

Julie Smith’s protagonist is Skip Langdon, a former debutante and carnival queen who has traded in her crown for a badge.

The first book in her series is New Orleans Mourning takes place during Mardi Gras. When the King of Carnival is gunned down by a party-goer dressed as Dolly Parton, Langdon scours the French Quarter and beyond for clues, interviewing revelers and street people with names like Jo Jo, Hinky and Cookie, and using her contacts from her white glove days.

New Orleans Mourning won the 1991 Edgar Award for best mystery novel.

Smith is the editor of New Orleans Noir, a recently released collection of eighteen short stories. The book is divided into pre-Katrina (pre-K, as the locals say) and post-Katrina sections, and many of the more powerful tales describe the disaster's hellish aftermath. A portion of the profits from this book are being donated to the New Orleans Public Library.

New Orleans is also home base for private-eye and former go-go dancer Scotty Bradley, star of Greg Herren’s gay noir series. Mardi Gras Mambo, the third book in the series, was delayed due to the author's forced temporary relocation from that city, although the author does not mention the hurricane in the book, since it is very much about the ultimate party city that was pre-K New Orleans.

If these sound just a little too dark for you, celebrate the day with Lou Jane Temple’s lively Red Beans and Vice. Temple’s detective Heaven Lee, a perky Kansas City restaurateur, travels to New Orleans for a food fest benefit for an ancient order of nuns in the city. Several catastrophes ensue, and ultimately a coffee importer turns up dead.

Booklist says “The attraction in this overstuffed story is the Big Easy: landmarks, well-known chefs and restaurants, and local color abound. You'll be longing for beignets by mid-murder.”

Ah, for a cup of Café du Monde coffee and a plate of hot beignets!

Here are the rest of the top ten authors this week. Lots of interesting characters & life styles.

6-James Patterson. The former chair of J. Walter Thompson has applied all his marketing skills to producing a truly amazing number of books. And each thriller zooms to bestseller status. This month, it’s the next in the Women’s Murder Club series written with co-author Maxine Paetro. 7th Heaven (#6) hit the Library’s top ten in-demand titles, even before the books arrived on the premises. With sales of 130 million worldwide, Patterson oversees a well-run industry with various co-writers, merchandise offerings, film and television adaptations and, according to one of his co-authors, well-organized micro-managing. He founded the Page Turner Awards to which he has contributed over $600,000 for the promotion of books & reading. A graduate of Manhattan College, he lives in Palm Beach. For more.
7- Janet Evanovich. She claims to motivate herself to write by spending her money before she makes it. With all her published books, she must do a lot of shopping! Born and raised in New Jersey, she sets her stories in Trenton. Plum Lucky (#7) features Stephanie Plum, lingerie buyer from Trenton and Evanovich’s alter ego. She enjoys book tours, which in 2006 attracted about 3000 people. Her son and daughter manage her financial affairs and her website, as she continues to write for eight hours everyday. More.
8- Greg Mortenson. A different kind of world fame surrounds the subject of Three Cups of Tea (#8) Journalist David Oliver Relin has joined Mortenson to write about an adventure story that is also about good deeds and positive values. Mortenson failed to climb Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain. Alone and hurt, he was cared for by people whom he then helped by turning his attention to the establishment of schools- mostly for girls- in some of the most remote parts of Pakistan & Afghanistan. More.
9-David Baldacci. Another prolific writer of thrillers, Baldacci has a law degree from University of Virginia and spent nine years as a corporate and trial attorney. His sixteen novels have been surefire bestsellers, including Stone Cold (#9) featuring series players Oliver Stone and the Camel Club. Baldacci’s family foundation, Wish You Well is devoted to promoting literacy. His cousin John Baldacci is the two-term Democratic governor of Maine. Visit his website.
10-Sara Gruen. A Canadian by birth, Gruen launched her novel writing career after she was laid off from her technical writing job. Her fondness for animals is evident in her novels, which enjoyed moderate success, until Water for Elephants (#10) - her third book. Her publisher initially turned it down; after she found another publisher, the book spent 12 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list. It continues to be one of the most popular book club selections. Gruen and her husband share their home with a menagerie; her passion for animals is evident on her website.