Westport Public Library BOOK blog

Mystery, crime & science fiction are great escape reads. Suspend disbelief and enter a world apart from your everyday life.

If legal thrillers grab your attention, try The Legal Limit by Martin Clark. This one is based on a true story about two brothers – one in jail as a drug trafficker and the other- a district attorney. Clark is a circuit court judge in a small Virginia town.

Nevada Barr is a former park ranger who sets each mystery in a different national park. Winter Study features Homeland Security and a pack of wolves in bitterly cold and isolated Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior.

In Slip of the Knife by Denise Mina, a leading Scottish Newspaper columnist discovers her former lover killed, possibly by the IRA. To complicate her life, a child killer is released from prison putting her young son in jeopardy.

The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber centers on an unknown painting by Spanish artist Velazquez hitting the market. How does a new drug meant to heighten creativity figure in the story?

Supernatural events- a murdered boy’s ghost – shake two teens in this story which also reflects the uncertainties of adolescence. One for Sorrow by Christopher Barzak is a horror story with heart.

Space opera fans will enjoy The January Dancer by award winning author Michael Flynn. An epic tale of interstellar adventure full of intrigue, revolution, mystery and music.

Next time: Biographies

With Halloween upon us, you might want to indulge in some macabre fun.

Joe Barone’s first mystery novel, The Body in the Record Room, takes place in a state mental hospital in 1954, when a patient who calls himself Roy Rogers finds a dead body in the hospital records room.

“Roy” – along with his friend Harry and Harry’s dog Bullet – investigates and finds out that the present murder may be linked to a gruesome crime that occurred twenty years earlier, when a mutilated corpse was found lying on the altar of a Catholic Church. As he perseveres, he finds within himself the courage and moral strength of his hero, the real Roy Rogers.

The author was raised on the grounds of a Missouri mental hospital, where his father, a medical doctor, was the long-time superintendent. Barone has served as an ordained minister for 25 years. An unusual credential for a mystery author!

Peggy Webb’s Elvis and the Dearly Departed, features mortuary hairdresser Callie Valentine Jones – who “fixes up the hairdos of the dead.”

When the corpse of a prominent physician goes missing, Peggy takes off in hot pursuit of the recently embalmed, last sighted in Vegas. She is assisted in her investigation by “Elvis,” a basset hound who believes he is the reincarnation of the King of Rock 'n' Roll – and who really knows how to sniff out a killer.

Ain't nothin' but a hound dog …

Both of these books put me in mind of Bubba Ho-tep, a novella by mystery writer Joe R. Lansdale, which was adapted as a 2002 horror/black comedy film starring Bruce Campbell as a decrepit Elvis Presley – or a man who thinks he is Elvis Presley! – now a resident in a nursing home.

The film also stars Ossie Davis as Jack, who claims to be John F. Kennedy – he says he was patched up after the assassination in Dallas, dyed black, and abandoned by Lyndon Johnson.

Eventually, Elvis and Jack face off against a re-animated ancient Egyptian mummy stolen during a museum tour and then lost when the bus being driven by the thieves veered off the road and into a river near the nursing home.

The mummy takes on the garb of a cowboy and is dubbed Bubba Ho-tep by Elvis who is given a telepathic flashback of the mummy's life and death when he looks into its eyes following the murder of an elderly woman resident of the home.

Très bizarre – trick or treat!

You have probably read or placed a hold on the current bestsellers, like American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld or Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. What next?
The Library is an excellent source of the latest information on newly published books.

Here are a few of the newest fiction books:

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti is a retelling of Oliver Twist set in 19th- century New England. Dramatic & traditional, this is an adventure with a moral- just like Dickens.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery is translated from the French by Alison Anderson. A graceful fable, it features a precocious 12-year-old and the middle-aged concierge of her exclusive Paris apartment. All of their differences melt away as they recognize their kindred souls. About art, beauty, hypocrisy, classism and the meaning of life and death.

The Road Home by Rose Tremain is seen through the eyes of an immigrant, who leaves his Eastern European country, spends time in Britain and then returns home. This contemporary story highlights his impressions of Western culture and the realization that everyday survival is a kind of heroism. Menial jobs, small hopes and disappointments are leavened by the author’s compassion & humor.

Fine Just the Way It Is by award winning author Annie Proulx delivers her trademark spare prose, struggling characters and harsh Wyoming backdrop. No sentiment here, although her dark humor can be glimpsed. For fans of stories about life in the real West.

Goldengrove by Francine Prose is an uncharacteristically quiet and meditative book for the author. A 17-year-old “golden girl” drowns, leaving her family bereft and her younger sister nearly overcome with grief. She turns to her sister’s older boyfriend for solace, as her parents fall apart.

What Happened to Anna K. by Irina Reyn is a modern take on Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Now Jewish and living in New York, Anna has material wealth and little else when she meets the Other Man. The “Sex in the City” version of the classic.

Next blog: Crime & Science Fiction.

Mayor is the author of the highly acclaimed Vermont-based series featuring detective Joe Gunther, described by the Chicago Tribune as “the best police procedurals being written in America.”

In addition, Mayor is a death investigator for Vermont's Chief Medical Examiner, and has served as a deputy sheriff, firefighter and EMT.

Marilyn Stasio, writing in the New York Times Book Review (Nov. 7, 2004) best summed up the scope of his work: “… these solidly built police procedurals don't trouble themselves with the theatrical antics of spree killers and serial murderers. (And wouldn't they look foolish if they did, since Vermont averages only about seven murders a year.) But over the course of 15 books, Mayor has devised a vivid overview of the kinds of criminal behavior -- from domestic violence to interstate drug trafficking -- that relentlessly wear down the social fabric in the postindustrial mill and factory towns of northern New England, giving people the uneasy feeling that they are losing control over their lives.”

The 19th Joe Gunther mystery, The Catch, was recently released.

When a deputy sheriff is shot to death during a routine traffic stop on a dark country road, it is believed that his killers – seen partially on the cruiser’s tape recorder – were a couple of Boston-based drug runners who had just crossed into Vermont from Canada, a hotbed of cut-rate pharmaceuticals.

The shooting gets Gunther involved in a major illicit prescription drug investigation which focuses on the activities of one Alan Budney, the disaffected son of an old-time lobsterman.

The Catch is a veritable alphabet soup of police and drug enforcement agency acronyms as the action moves – and does it ever move! – from Vermont to Massachusetts to Maine, and back and forth a few times in between as the collaborative investigation proceeds. Even the RCMP (The Mounties) are involved.

Great cop stuff! Archer’s website has a variety of video clips from his various appearances – which will give you a taste of the wonderful talk you are in for – my favorite being “The truth about cops and doughnuts.”

Libraries and authors have a symbiotic relationship. Some of our local authors sent us their thoughts about the Library to help us celebrate 100 years. The excerpts here give a sense of the different ways that the Westport Library and our local authors appreciate each other.

*A library is a building with books in it, and in most cases that's good enough. But for a writer, the Westport Public Library is something else, something more, enough in the way of resources and assistance to make up virtually the whole "acknowledgements" page of the writer's book. Which is to say, if there is a source that the staff cannot find, it cannot be found or does not exist. Eric Burns

*The Westport Public Library has been a vital source to me in researching my last book on former heavweight champion Gene Tunney and my current book on the New York Giants football team of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
In addition to using books from the library as sources, I've also spent countless hours going through microfilm of long-ago newspapers obtained for me by the Library’s Inter-library loan service, as well as difficult-to-find and even out-of-print books from around the country that have also contributed to my work as a writer of non-fiction. Jack Cavanaugh

*The people who work at the Westport Library are lovely. I always have the feeling that library folk are immediately fond of you just because you’re using their library, so they actually want to help you. I never feel like I’m an imposition here. Frank Deford

*Every published book of mine--some 260 over the past 54 years--whether only illustrated or written and illustrated by me, has had a foundation of library exploration and research--all sorts of libraries: public, private, school, college, university, special, corporate, and government.
Leonard Everett Fisher

*The Westport Library is not a storage of information. Rather, through its librarians, holdings, and extended facilities it is an extension of the minds and lives of its patrons.
Since I moved to this delightful town thirty-five years ago, the Library has served me remarkably in the writing of my books and professional papers. J.T. Fraser

*I discovered the Westport library as my home-away-from-home, quite by chance. On our way down from Mother Goose my son and I stopped at the reference library and passed a little room filled with computers. A light switched on. I could write my books here, could let a little structure into my day, could have some peace and quiet until I have to return home with my ‘Mommy’ hat on. That was seven years ago. I have written my last six books at the Westport library. The small room filled with computers gave way to the large table upstairs by the window, which in turn gave way to a quiet reading room downstairs. Jane Green

*I wrote the overwhelming majority of my book at the library. There is no more inspirational site in Westport, from the ducks swimming on the river outside the windows, to the Staples students studying and flirting - not necessarily in that order - among the stacks, to the hushed voices of parents guiding their little ones upstairs to the children's area, where my own children used to play.
Whenever the blank page threatened to overwhelm my senses, I could always recharge with a walk by the water, or a cup of tea from the snack bar, or a few minutes of absolute quiet, which aren't always easy to find. These days every place needs to be about something - about eating or drinking or shopping or working out. The library is about thinking. There is no better place to write.
Mike Greenberg

*It has been said that a town’s library is a measure of a townspeople’s thirst for knowledge. That being the case, Westporters are, by and large, a most knowledgeable group of residents.
Woody Klein

*There’s a phrase for a set-up like that, it’s “The Best of Both Worlds,” a phrase often associated with the Westport Library. It’s a world-class, cosmopolitan institution that feels Americana and quaint. The people who hang there are big-city smart, and small-town friendly. Robert Leleux

*So, Westport Library, thanks for the solace, the knowledge, your state of the art technology, and your old-fashioned, personalized commitment to the community. Mary-Lou Weisman

*With the high quality of books, reference materials and on-going community involvement comes another very important factor that makes this library so special: the wonderful people that work at the library. Hans Wilhelm

*The other thing that struck me was the variety of the people around me. There were high-school students immersed in research papers. There were middle-aged folk laboring over their tax returns. And there were a few people who seemed to have no other place to go, but were drawing on the Library’s resources—newspapers, magazines, cross-word puzzles—with no less claim on the space than the fledgling scholars and tax analysts. Carter Wiseman

*I spent much of that summer reading microfilm, too. I am less mechanically adept than Elmer Fudd, necessitating trip after trip to the research librarians' desk. Yet each time, without fail, they accompanied me back to my machine, where they smiled helpfully, solved my problem, then went back to serve someone with an actual research question. Dan Woog

Surrounded By Words (the complete comments)

The National Reading Group Month web site is a great resource for book clubs. In addition to the planned events you will find lots of information on how to start a discussion group, including a very informative and useful manual that was provided by the New Jersey Library Association. There are also suggestions for some great discussion books. Book Group Buzz, the blog sponsored by Booklist, a publication of the American Library Association, is one of the partners for Reading Group Month. This blog is another great resource for book lovers.

Westport is truly a book community. We have over 50 book clubs that have registered with the Westport Public Library. Our book clubs are a varied group and represent a real cross section of the community. We provide many services to our clubs, including fulfilling multiple copy requests, and providing discussion guides and book suggestions. Last year we also held a Title Swap, where book clubs came together to exchange their own suggestions for good discussion books. And if you want to participate in a book club, the library has two groups open to all for you to consider: the Pageturners and the Usual Suspects.

If you are a member of a book club, this is the month to celebrate yourself and be proud of the role you play in promoting reading, literacy and the value of shared reading. Thinking about joining or starting a book club? What better time than now to do it! If you need more information to get started, please contact me.

Reports of battle-related stress appear as early as the 6th century BC, and in 490 BC the Greek historian Herodotus described an Athenian soldier who, although not himself physically wounded, was rendered blind after witnessing the death of a fellow soldier.

The modern understanding of this psychological trauma dates from the 1970s, largely as a result of the problems experienced by Vietnam veterans, which is when the term post-traumatic stress disorder was coined.

The term “shell shock” was first used during the First World War. Symptoms varied widely in intensity, and often took the form of panic attacks – which sometimes caused men to flee the battlefield, which was invariably regarded as rank cowardice, resulting in court martial for desertion and often ending in execution.

Many shell shock victims recovered quickly, whereas many others continued to feel its effects for years afterwards.

Next Sunday, October 19th, at 2, the Usual Suspects Mystery Reading Group will discuss the first of Charles Todd’s Ian Rutledge mysteries, A Test of Wills.

Set in 1919, Rutledge has returned from France with a medal of honor and a serious case of shell shock, which often manifests itself in the form of a nagging specter – Hamish MacLeod, a corporal whose only return from the war has been inside Rutledge's head.

Rutledge returns to his pre-war job at Scotland Yard and, despite his tenuous condition, is assigned a case involving the murder of a decorated war hero.

He travels to Upper Streetham, a town where, Kirkus says, “The 20th century hasn't happened ... which seems to have been cast out of Rebecca,” adding that Todd's prose is “a feast for the like-minded” fans of du Maurier.

Last month we discussed Maisie Dobbs, who was a World War I battlefield nurse. The stories are set much later in time, but we experience the horrors that Maisie witnessed through her recurring flashbacks and nightmares.

Likewise, Suzanne Arruda’s Jade del Cameron has moved on with her life by becoming an adventurer in colonial East Africa after her traumatic experiences as an ambulance driver in the same conflict.

If you want your action set during the war years, try the espionage mysteries featuring Anne Perry’s Matthew Reavley or Manning Coles’ Tommy Hambledon.

Manning Coles is the pseudonym of two British writers, Adelaide Frances Oke Manning and Cyril Henry Coles.

Many of Hambledon’s exploits were based on the real-life experiences of Coles, who lied about his age and enlisted under an assumed name during World War I while still a teenager, eventually becoming the youngest officer in British intelligence, often working behind German lines because of his extraordinary ability to master languages.

Charles Todd, by the way, is the joint pseudonym for the mother/son writing team of Charles and Caroline Todd, whose actual names are David Todd Watjen and Carolyn L.T. Watjen.

Hope you can join us on Sunday. New faces are always welcome. To reserve a copy of the book, call 291-4821.

Everyone expects to find the latest best sellers at the Library, but anyone might be surprised by some of the new books to be found here. Even after 25 years as a librarian, I often find myself thinking, “How did someone decide to write about that?” Of course, I usually cannot wait to skim these “odd” books. If you share my keen (and wide-ranging) curiosity, you may want to take a look at a few books recently added to the Library collection.

Jetpack Dreams: One Man’s Up and Down (But Mostly Down) Search for the Invention that Never Was by Mac Montandon. Remember Buck Rogers? James Bond? The Jetsons? Apparently, there is a jet pack subculture. Humorous pop-cultural history from this Brooklyn author.

13 Things that Don’t Make Sense: the Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of our Time by Michael Brooks. All about phenomena that challenge accepted scientific theory. Homeopathy works. Ninety-six per cent of the universe is unobservable. Intelligent signals from space cannot be explained. And placebos, which may or may not exist, nevertheless work! You get the idea. Lots of questions; not so many answers from this PhD in quantum physics.

Lilacs: a Gardener’s Encyclopedia by John L. Fiala. A love affair with the fragrant flower from the founder of the International Lilac Society. Feast your eyes!

Batman and His Philosophy: the Dark Knight of the Soul by Mark D. White The revered super hero is unmasked by the use of ethical questions about personal identity, responsibility, free will, social obligation and political commitment to name a few. Seventy years of superhero worship are subjected to the insights of well-known philosophers to arrive at some entertaining answers.

Broadway Tails: Heartfelt Stories of Rescued Dogs who Became Showbiz Superstars by William Berloni. Thirty years on Broadway with canine co-stars you will recognize: the original Sandy – in Annie for seven years and Pi- the first dog to dance with the New York City Ballet are two “rags-to riches” clients of animal trainer Berloni.

Fat: an Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes by Jennifer McLagan
Duck fat. Caul fat. Leaf lard. Bacon. Ghee. Suet. Schmaltz. Cracklings. Still with me here? McLagan’s 25 years in the food world lend authority to this mixture of science, cultural exploration and culinary imagination.

The Ancient World at War: a Global History edited by Philip De Souza. Military history that surveys the evolution of armies, tactics and equipment as well as strategies throughout the ancient world. Key battles are covered and 351 color illustrations include maps and 3-D battle reconstructions.

Flora’s latest book, The Angel of Knowlton Park, received a starred review in Booklist, which said “Flora excels at portraying the police as real people with strengths and weaknesses who unite to bring some measure of justice to the dead and living alike. Flora's thought-provoking second police procedural marks her as one of the best in the genre.”

Burgess abandons his summer vacation plans when the body of Timothy Watts, an eight-year-old boy from an abusive family, is found wrapped in a blue blanket in a Portland park.

Although everyone in the neighborhood loved Timmy, people are unwilling to talk. Even Iris, Timmy's deaf sister, isn’t talking and soon disappears.

Burgess first appeared in Playing God, set in a wintry Portland. An oncologist who had a habit of picking up prostitutes is found dead in his car. It appears that his family and his colleagues knew about his sordid predilection, and yet – surprise, surprise – no one wants to talk to the police.

This book was called “a triumph in the police procedural genre.”

Professional detectives – not to mention male detectives – are rare in crime fiction in the “The Pine Tree State”.

Linda Greenlaw’s new mystery series features Jane Bunker, a former Miami homicide detective who has given up the big city for Green Haven, Maine.

But the state is more commonly thought of as the home of several popular female amateur sleuths including J.S. Borthwick’s Sarah Deane, Kaitlyn Dunnett’s Liss MacCrimmon, Sarah Graves’ Jacobia Tiptree, Karen MacInerney’s Natalie Barnes, Leslie Meier’s Lucy Stone, and Lea Wait’s Maggie Summer.

Not to mention Jessica Fletcher!

If true crime stories and/or the paranormal interest you, I found an interesting website that covers paranormal investigations into Maine’s most intriguing crimes, which include a decapitation and dismemberment with a hammer and a triple homicide barn burning.

For “cold case” fans, there is also an interesting page about Albert DeSalvo, who went to grade school in Searsport, Maine. On March 18, 1965, at the height of the Boston Strangler Murders, a chambermaid for the famous Bangor House was brutally raped and strangled to death with her nylons. A description of a man seen in the area, about 5’10 with brown eyes and short brown hair, fit DeSalvo to a tee. Bangor Detectives informed the Bangor Daily that a hundred witnesses were questioned, but they did not have enough evidence to proceed.

Every year the American Library Association and library world remind us that books are being challenged and banned by people offended by the content. This year, our display of Banned Books includes examples of the concepts that have led to challenges in 2007-2008. In his blog, L.A. Times writer David Ulin captures some of the ambivalence, which I share, about this annual celebration of Freedom of the Press. Governor Palin’s rumored attempt to censor some titles in her local library has piqued interest. What do you think? Do you need to be reminded how important it is to eliminate censorship? Do you think there are some books that should be banned? How many Banned Books have you read?

Most frequently challenged books in 2007.