Westport Public Library BOOK blog

Your votes have been tallied and soon we will be talking about all the books you liked best in 2008.
Come to the Booklovers’ Bash on Friday February 13 from 6-8pm.

Can you identify the top vote getters? (scroll down for answers)

1. Hamlet in the mid-west. A mute boy and his dogs.
2. Serious times relieved by humorous letters, friendship & good literature.
3. Old-world habits give way to American lifestyles.
4. A worldwide search for both worldly distraction & spiritual purpose.
5. Ever wonder why one person succeeds and another doesn’t?
6. Education vs. terrorism with understanding & generosity the clear winners.
7. Three women entangled in the risks & rewards of friendship.
8. From dumpster diving to the society pages, an amazing memoir.
9. Dickensian tale set in 19th century New England
10. Dutch banker exiled in post 9/11 New York.

Answers:

1.Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
2.Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
3.Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
4.Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
5.Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
6.Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
7.Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos
8.Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
9.A Good Thief by Hannah Tinti
10. Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

MWA gives out the most prestigious mystery writing award, the Edgar, and the 2009 nominees were recently announced.

James Lee Burke and Sue Grafton have been named the 2009 Grand Masters.

The winners will be announced at the 63rd Annual Edgar Awards Banquet, Thursday April 30, 2009.

You can find a complete list of the nominees in all categories on the MWA website.

MWA-NY, the metropolitan area chapter, will be sponsoring the breakfasts at Murder 203.

The festival is a joint venture by the Easton and Westport Libraries for both fans and writers. Attendees will enjoy panel discussions, book signings, writing tips from the professionals, and a unique opportunity to mingle with authors and fellow crime fiction enthusiasts at the Cocktails and Crime reception on Saturday evening.

Fairstein’s outstanding soon-to-be released new novel, Lethal Legacy, involves the New York Public Library and its dazzling treasures. You can view a clip of her tour of the NYPL at Amazon.com.

Her character, Cooper, is a Manhattan Assistant District Attorney in the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit. Lethal Legacy is the eleventh title in the run, which began in 1996 with Final Jeopardy. You can get the full title list from our good friends at Stop, You’re Killing Me!

The event is $65 if you register before February 18. After February 18, registration is $75. You will get a lot for your money, including all of the panels, a Meet the Authors continental breakfast both mornings, lunch on Saturday and admission to Cocktails and Crime on Saturday night. Plus a nifty conference tote bag to fill with some of our fabulous giveaways, not to mention your freshly autographed books.

For more details and a list of our additional (30 plus!) guest authors, visit the Murder 203 website.

Not surprisingly, the number one choice of book clubs this year was Three Cups of Tea written by Greg Mortenson. Mortenson was a mountain climber who had been taken ill and was nursed back to health by the people of a small Pakistan village in the Himalayas. In return for the kindness he was shown, he vowed to construct a school for the community. The Central Asia Institute, the nonprofit group that he eventually co-founded has since constructed over 70 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. If you haven’t read this inspiring story yet, be sure to consider it this year.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen topped the list of fiction choices. This is a romantic tale of life in the circus during the great depression. Filled with interesting characters and details of the circus life, book clubs have embraced it. Khaled Hosseini’s follow up to The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns was also a big favorite this year. Hosseini’s skill for storytelling brings life to this tale of two Afghan women. The story follows Mariam and Laila over the course of three decades of civil war, jihad and Taliban rule. Their struggles are both moving and heart wrenching, and combined with the timeliness of the topic, make it a great choice for discussions.

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin was another top choice for book clubs this year. Toobin interviewed all the sitting justices and gave us a fascinating portrait of how personalities come to play when decisions are handed down.

Amy Bloom’s Away, her novel about Lillian, a young Russian immigrant, who travels across America searching for her daughter, was also popular with many of our book groups. This epic is filled with great characters, adventure, and romance.

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak was another book club favorite this year. This beautifully written and unusual story about a young girl, who steals books before they can be confiscated or burned by the Nazis, will leave a lasting impression on your group.

Rounding out the top ten choices were Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, Loving Frank by Nancy Horan, Run by Ann Patchett and The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman. If your group missed one of these favorites last year and would like to add it to your list this year, please contact me and don’t forget to ask for the discussion guide to go along with it. Based upon the feedback of our book clubs who have read these books, you can’t go wrong with any of these choices.

Have you marked your calendar for the Booklovers’ Bash? On Friday, February 13 from 6-8 pm bibliophiles are invited to come to the Library and exchange “book talk” with each other. There have been 355 suggestions for Best Book of 2008.

Which title received the greatest number of votes? Here’s a clue: starred-crossed romance and desperate danger for a beautiful young couple in damp and dreary Forks, Washington.

Some of the classics were mentioned (Ayn Rand, JD Salinger, Mary Shelley,) but the largest category is “literary fiction” with authors such as Amy Bloom, Ian McEwan,
Marilynne Robinson and Richard Ford. Popular writers such as Carl Hiaasen, Wally Lamb, Sue Monk Kidd, and Khaled Hosseini made the list among others.

Our Best Books list includes non-fiction favorites, too. Malcolm Gladwell, Irene Pepperberg, David McCullough, Nathaniel Philbrick are a few of the authors mentioned.

Teens are reading Stephenie Meyer, Christopher Paolini and Markus Zusak. And younger readers had their say, also.

The Best of the Best Books 2008 will be posted on the Library website soon and the entire list will be available at the Booklovers’ Bash. Thanks to everyone who shared their favorites.

See you at the Booklovers’ Bash!

Applying this critical method, explains Bayard, allows him to be "more rigorous” than detectives and writers, “and thus to work out solutions that are more satisfying to the soul."

Arguing that Sherlock Holmes often drew false conclusions, Bayard offers an alternative solution to that reached by Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Probably the most infamous story in the Sherlock Holmes canon is Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem” which relates the events at Reichenbach Falls. On May 4, 1891, the detective met his archenemy Professor Moriarty on a ledge above the falls. The two became locked in a titanic hand-to-hand struggle before both tumbled over the precipice, presumably to their deaths, witnessed by Dr. Watson.

The outcry was so great that in 1901 Conan Doyle was forced to give in and he resurrected his detective by claiming that Holmes had managed to survive after all.

In King's book, another detective of the Victorian era — Carnacki the Ghost Finder — also witnesses the event.

Thomas Carnacki is a fictional occult detective created by English fantasy writer William Hope Hodgson who appeared in six short stories published between 1910 and 1912.

Carnacki rescues one of the men and whisks him away to Switzerland to treat his amnesia only to find that the survivor's nemesis has preceded them there.

Once Holmes recovers his memory with boosts from the electrical machine Carnacki has stolen from a sanatorium, the game is once again afoot, with all of its prerequisite disguises and deductions.

It includes Barbara Roden's story, The Things That Shall Come Upon Them which involves Holmes with yet another fictional occult detective mystery, Flaxman Low.

Flaxman Low was created by E. and H. Heron, the pseudonym of Hesketh V. Prichard and Kate O'Brien Ryall Prichard, a mother-son writing team.

Appearing in Pearson's Magazine in 1898 and 1899, Flaxman Low was the original occult detective.

The Occult Detective genre was very popular on into the 1920s, and in addition to Carnacki and Low included Saxe Rohmer's "Dream Detective" and "Doctor Thirteen" as well as various creations of novelist Dion Fortune.

Waugh's 1952 novel Last Seen Wearing was listed by the Mystery Writers of America as one of the top 100 mysteries of all time and in 1989 he was named a Grand Master by the MWA.

He used Connecticut as the setting for many of his stories, and had an eleven title series which featured Fred Fellows, chief of police in Stockford, a fictional small town.

Michael Crichton, whose main body of writing epitomized the techno-thriller genre, died on November 4th at the age of 66. He won an Edgar Award in 1969 for the mystery novel A Case of Need which he wrote under the pseudonym of Jeffery Hudson. Crichton also wrote eight mysteries as John Lange.

Crichton considered his thrillers cautionary science tales. His book The Andromeda Strain, published in 1969 while he was still a medical student at Harvard Medical School.

The mystery world also lost award-winning author Tony Hillerman on October 26th at the age of 83. Hillerman was .best known for his Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels, some of which were made into big-screen and television movies.

His mysteries, set in the Four Corners area of New Mexico and Arizona, explore the interaction of traditional Navajo culture with the belagaana, or white man.

Hillerman was named a Grand Master in 1991.

The creator of the humorous Fletch mysteries, Gregory Mcdonald, died on September 7th at the age of 71. Irwin Maurice Fletcher, an investigative reporter turned beach bum, appears in nine novels and Fletch was later played by Chevy Chase in the movie of the same name.

Two of the Fletch books were Edgar winners. The first book, Fletch, was named Best First Novel in 1975, and Confess, Fletch won for Best Paperback Original in 1977, the only time a novel and its sequel won back-to-back Edgars.

Best-selling author Phyllis A. Whitney, dubbed "The Queen of the American Gothics" by the New York Times, died on February 8th at the age of 104.

She wrote mysteries for both adults and children, often set in exotic locales, and won an Edgar for Best Juvenile Novel in 1961 for The Mystery of the Haunted Pool and again in 1988 for The Mystery of the Hidden Hand.

The prolific Whitney wrote 76 books and more than 50 million copies of her books are in print in paperback alone. Whitney was named a Grand Master in 1988.

Margaret Truman, who died on January 29th at the age of 83, wrote a critically acclaimed full length biography of her father, Harry S. Truman in 1972 as well as twenty four critically successful murder mysteries set in various locations in and around Washington, D.C. -- although there have been assertions that these were ghost-written.

I once heard her address the American Library Association after the first few books were in print and when someone in the audience asked when she was going to set one of her mysteries at the Library of Congress -- ever the politician’s daughter -- she replied that she could never, ever, kill off a librarian.

There was, eventually, Murder at the Library of Congress in 1999, but if memory serves me correctly, it was a free-lance researcher who was murdered, not a member of the staff. Thank you, Margaret!