Best in Books June 2011

My Father's Tears by John Updike

During June many of us will be thinking about fathers and celebrating the occasion on the 19Th. Updike's collection of short stories is from the perspective of men reflecting on the world around them and their own lives. My Father's Tears was the 2009 Booklist Editors' Choice for Best Fiction and the New York Times Notable Books award for Fiction and Poetry. This was Updike's last completed work.

Review
Starred Review: Reflection and reconsideration abound in the late (1932-2009) great author's final finished collection of stories. The mood is unmistakably autumnal, as we encounter elderly males who explore familiar surroundings and simultaneously consolatory and troubling memories ("Personal Archaeology," "The Road Home," "My Father's Tears"); straying husbands burdened by conflicted remembrance of long-ago thrills ("Free," "The Walk with Elizanne"); and seniors dizzying multiplicity of ways ("Morocco," "Spanish Prelude to a Second Marriage"). Just as a representative Updike youngster intuits that he "can never be an ordinary, everyday boy, " so do universal and infinite. Among the more telling examples: the victim of a mugging while vacationing in Spain, who understands that-like the physically universe ultimately reducible to the prophecies of "cosmic theory"- he is simply wearing out ("The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe"); the psoriasis patient helped by an innovative treatment ("Blue Light") which reconciles him to his place as an integral part of an ever-changing world; and the near-octogenarian who relives his early years as a prelude to surrendering their continuation in his senescence ("The Full Glass"). There are missteps; stories too discursive to bear much dramatic weight, and a gathering of involved perspectives of the 9/11 catastrophe that seems a test run for Updike's' 2006 novel Terrorist. But the ache of knowing and celebrating how we've lived, what it all may mean and where we're going give this final testament a beauty and gravity that crown a brilliant, enduring life's work and legacy. A fine final act. (Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2009)

Biographical and Works Information

Classic Suggestion May 2011

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Summary:  "When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing -- though absurdly comic -- meditation on human feelings of inadequecy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the mosst widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man. -from Norton paperback version

Discussion Questions

Author Biography

BETH'S PICKS MAY 2011 MAGIC OF ORDINARY DAYS

MAGIC OF ORDINARY DAYS

BY ANN HOWARD CREEL

SUMMARY:
Set in 1944 Colorado, The Magic of Ordinary Days is the story of a young woman, Olivia Dunne, who became pregnant before marriage. Her father, Rev. Dunne, decided to deal with the situation, by arranging a marriage to a shy farmer through another preacher. The groom, Ray Singleton, lives on a remote farm and is very different than Livy. Ray focuses on what is close to him: his family, his land, today. Livy thinks on a much grander scale: the world, ancient civilizations, faraway places.

Ray's farm uses the help of Japanese Americans from a nearby Japanese American internment camp to help work the farm. Livy befriends two well-educated Japanese American women who were working the farm. She finds comfort and familiarity in their friendship. Livy is polite and civil to her new husband and his sister Martha, but she harbors feelings for the father of the baby, a World War II soldier, and feelings of guilt for the pregnancy. Ray, however, is caring, patient, and supportive of Livy, but the fact that she does not want him hurts him deeply. Slowly over time, the two come to understand and love each other...[Wikipedia]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ann Howard Creel is the author of two award-winning young adult novels, Water at the Blue Earth and A Ceiling of Stars. This is her first adult novel.

REVIEWS:

A YA author’s nicely written adult debut novel blends historical richness and a fine sense of place to tell the story of a woman’s developing love for her husband—and for his Colorado farmland—over the course of six months in 1944….

Creel does a delightful job of evoking first the dreariness of the Singleton farm and Olivia's unnerving loneliness, then the slow ripening of her affection for Ray, a simple but profoundly kind and gentle man….The author gives her heroine a satisfying emotional depth, moving Olivia through phases of affection and disappointment with assured confidence before closing with a tranquil scene after the baby is born.

A light, precisely observed novel. (Kirkus)

AUTHOR’S WEBSITE:

http://annhowardcreel.com/

Best in Books May 2011

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge was the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as receiving the American Library Association's 2009 Notable Book Award and Library Journal's 2008 Best Books Award. The book is a series of 13 short stories that take place in a small coastal Maine town. Olive Kitteridge, an unassuming, but acidic resident, is threaded throughout the stories that chronicle the changes around and to Olive.

Review
*Starred Review* The abrasive, vulnerable title character sometimes stands center state, sometimes plays a supporting role in these 13 sharply observed dramas of small-town live from Strout (Abide with Me, 2006, etc.) Olive Kitteridge certainly makes a formidable contrast with her gentle, quietly cheerful husband Henry from the moment we meet them both in "Pharmacy," which introduces us to several other denizens of Crosby, Maine. Though she was a math teacher before she and Henry retired, she's not exactly patient with shy young people -- or anyone else. Yet she brusquely comforts suicidal Kevin Coulson in "Incoming Tide" with the news that her father, like Kevins's mother, killed himself. And she does her best to help anorexic Nina in "Starving," though Olive knows that the troubled girl is not the only person in Crosby hungry for love. Children disappoint, spouses are unfaithful and almost everyone is lonely at least some of the time in Strout's rueful tales. The Kitteridges' son Christopher marries, moves to California and divorces, but he doesn't come home to the house his parents built for him, causing deep resentments to fester around the borders of Olive's carefully tended garden. Tensions simmer in all the families here; even the genuinely loving couple in "Winter Concert" has a painful betrayal in its past. References to Iraq and 9/11 provide a somber context, but the real dangers here are personal; aging, the loss of love, the imminence of death. Nonetheless, Strout's sensitive insights and luminous prose affirm life's pleasures, as elderly, widowed Olive thinks, "It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet." A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition, encompassing plenty of anger, cruelty and loss without ever losing sight of the equally powerful presences of tenderness, shared pursuits and lifelong loyalty. (Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2008)

Book Discusion Questions

Elizabeth Strout Website

BETH'S PICK APRIL'S AUTHOR: COLIN COTTERILL

Colin Cotterill Colin Cotterill brings a welcome spin to mysteries featuring a sleuthing medical examiner in his Siri Paiboun novels. Rather than rely upon a familiar Western setting, Cotterill transplants the genre to 1970s Asia, mixing mystery with politics, mysticism, and themes such as international relations, government bureaucracy and racism. Cotterill’s witty and fast paced narratives are not only filled with cultural insight, but also feature compelling characters, particularly his clever protagonist, Laotian National Coroner Siri Paiboun. He is a reluctant communist and (even more reluctant) national coroner. The 72 year-old uses forensic deduction, spirit intuition, and old-fashioned sleuthing to figure out any suspicious deaths that come his way. Finding his charming characters and crisply plotted narratives in these mysteries with an educational undercurrent, readers will enjoy Cotterill’s works. (Novelist)

About the Author: Colin Cotterill was born in London in 1952 and taught and trained teachers around the world before settling in Thailand. He spent several years in Laos, initially with UNESCO, before he moved on to become involved in child protection in the region and set up a non-governmental organization in Phuket. He later moved on to ECPAT, an international organization combating child prostitution and pornography. Colin writes and illustrates full time, and lives in Chumphon on the Gulf of Thailand with his wife, Jessi, and a bunch of dogs. He is a Dilys Award winner.

Colin Cotterill’s home page: http://www.colincotterill.com/home.html

Listen to NPR audio interview: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93590413

Wikipedia link on the author: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Cotterill

There are seven so far in the series including:

The Coroner’s Lunch Seventy-two-year-old Dr. Siri Paiboun, a coroner in Laos, confronts shamans, dreams, conversations with the dead, and an international cover-up, in his attempts to solve a series of murders of Vietnamese soldiers and the wife of a party leader.

Reviews: "This series kickoff is an embarrassment of riches: Holmesian sleuthing, political satire, and [a] droll comic study of a prickly late bloomer."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"The sights, smells, and colors of Laos practically jump of the pages of this inspired, often wryly witty first novel."-"Denver Post

"A wonderfully fresh and exotic mystery. . . . If Cotterill . . . had done nothing more than treat us to Siri's views on the dramatic, even comic crises that mark periods of government upheaval, his debut mystery would still be fascinating. But the multiple cases spread out on Siri's examining table . . . are not cozy entertainments, but substantial crimes that take us into the thick of political intrigue."-"The New York Times Book Review”

"In Siri, Cotterill has created a detective as distinctive as Maigret or Poirot."-"Orlando Sentinel"

"The author gives us exotic locations; a world that few of us know well; crisp, intelligent, and often-witty writing; and, most of all, a hero unlike any other." -"The Philadelphia Inquirer"

Thirty-three Teeth Dr Siri Paiboun has rather enjoyed his first five months in office. Now, as hot-season nights close in, Siri is spirited away from Laos' steamy capital on a Matter of National Security. Arriving in Luang Prabang, he's a busy man, examining carbonized corpses, dining with the deposed king and being rescued by the ghost of an elephant.

Disco for the Departed Coroner Siri Paiboun must identify a corpse found near the mansion of the new Laotian president, an investigation which includes communication with the dead, sacrificial rituals, a marriage proposal, and strange disco music that only the doctor can hear.

Anarchy and Old Dogs When a blind, retired dentist is run down by a logging truck as he crosses the road to post a letter, Dr Siri Paiboun, official and only coroner of Laos, finds himself faced with his most explosive case yet. The dentist's mortal remains aren't nearly as intriguing as the letter in his pocket.

Curse of the Pogo Stick National Coroner Dr. Siri is kidnapped by Hmong villagers who want him to lift a curse from the headman's daughter.

The Merry Misogynist In peaceful Buddhist Laos, Dr. Siri confronts a deadly Casanova targeting lovely young women.

Love Songs from a Shallow Grave When a female security officer is discovered stabbed through the heart with a fencing sword, Dr. Siri's instincts tell him there is more to the mystery than anyone can imagine.

Best in Books April 2011

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

 Freedom, an epic family story, garnered several awards in 2010 including Library Journal's Top Ten and the New York Times Notable Books for Fiction and Poetry. The story revolves around Patty and Walter Berglund's family relationships, while Franzen weaves the ethical, theological and psychological cost of freedom into the book. See the links below for questions that will guide a robust discussion.

Library Journal Review "Use Well Thy Freedom": this motto, etched in stone on a college campus, hints at the moral of Franzen's sprawling, darkly comic new novel. The nature of personal freedom, the fluidity of good and evil, the moral relativism of nearly everything-Franzen takes on these thorny issues via the lives of Walter and Patty Berglund of St. Paul. With two kids, a Volvo in the garage, and a strong social conscience, the Berglunds allow their good deeds to be tinged with just a hint of smugness (which eventually comes back to haunt them). Weaving in and out of their lives is old college friend Richard Katz, low-level rock star and ultra-hip antihero. Time goes by, the kids grow up, betrayals occur, and the thin line between right and wrong blurs. Fully utilizing their freedom-to make mistakes, confuse love with lust, and mix up goodness and greed-the Berglunds give Franzen the opportunity to limn the absurdities of our modern culture. Granola moms, raging Republicans, war profiteers, crooked environmentalists, privileged offspring, and poverty-bred rednecks each enjoy the uniquely American freedom to make disastrous choices and continually reinvent themselves. Verdict As in his National Book Award winner, The Corrections, Franzen reveals a penchant for smart, deceptively simple, and culturally astute writing. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/10.]-Susanne Wells, P.L. of Cincinnati & Hamilton Cty. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Discussion Questions
Jonathan Franzen Biographical information and Discussion Questions
Oprah Book Club Discussion Questions

Classic Suggestion April 2011

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Born into a poor family and raised by an oppressive aunt, young Jane Eyre becomes the governess at Thornfield Manor to escape the confines of her life. There her fiery independence clashes with the brooding and mysterious nature of her employer, Mr. Rochester. But what begins as outright loathing slowly evolves into a passionate romance. When a terrible secret from Rochester's past threatens to tear the two apart, Jane must make an impossible choice: Should she follow her heart or walk away and lose her love forever?

Unabashedly romantic and utterly enthralling, Jane Eyre endures as one of the greatest love stories of all time. -product description

Disucssion Questions, About the Author, Related Titles