Summer Reading: Literary Novels Served Up With Werewolves And Robots

Better stockpile some silver bullets and wolfsbane; this summer could get hairy!

Supernatural fiction has elbowed its way to the forefront, but this year you'll find an even greater intermixing of genres such as science fiction or occult with literary fiction according to The Wall Street Journal article of today entitled "The Season of the Supernatural."  Novelists are taking a stab at writing crossover books which bridge literary fiction with the popular genres of fantasy and the supernatural.

Successful publications such as Justin Cronin's The Passage have encouraged writers to utilize vampires, werewolves and robots as devices in their new literary novels.  Well-known author Michael Chabon comments in this article on the similarity between writing a literary novel and writing science fiction, "Your job is exactly the same - to persuade the reader that it is all true. That's the same if you are writing about suburban New Jersey, as well as suburban Jupiter."

A number of new crossover fiction books are suggested for your summer reading in this interesting article. Perhaps Glen Duncan's upcoming book, The Last Werewolf, will grip you by the throat with heartfelt feeling  for the melancholy werewolf protagonist. And now that the recent interest in Doomsday predictions has surfaced, Tom Perrotta's book The Leftovers ought to take readers away, just as a Doomsday event described in the book has taken away a mass of people. Perrotta states, "I thought I could write a comic novel about the apocalypse, but I quickly realized it would be a book about grief."  Click on the link to read more.

Anorexia Starves the Family, Too

Brave Girl Eating: a family's struggle with anorexia by Harriet Brown will be discussed at the next meeting of Memoirs and Coffee, one of Bernardsville Public Library's monthly book groups.  The meeting will take place in the Community Room on Tuesday, May 24th, at 10:30 a.m..  This book group is open to the public; please feel free to attend.  The discussion will be led by staff member Pat Kennedy-Grant.

Harriet Brown is an assistant professor of magazine journalism at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and has contributed articles to Health, Redbook, The New York Times Magazine and to the Science section of The New York Times. She is the author of other books as well as a blog entitled "Feed Me!" which discusses eating disorders.  Brave Girl Eating chronicles her own family's efforts to help her teenage daughter combat anorexia nervosa.  

Elephants and Crocs, as Seen by the Doc

Tales of an African Vet by Dr. Roy Aronson brings the reader up close and quite personal with the kinds of wild animals that tourists dream about but may never see on safari.  Each of the 19 stories chronicles an interesting medical case handled by this highly-skilled South African veterinarian.  Some of the cases
seemed hopeless at the time; others appeared almost impossible to treat.  How do you track and treat in the wild a lionness with entropion of the eyelid, a condition which could eventually blind her?   How safe is it to anesthetize a 2-ton rhinoceros? Can an elephant survive a plundered meal of 220 pounds of canned pickles and jars of jam, glass and all?  Who wouldn't want to know the answer to that one!

The intriguing medical crises of large and small wild animals are explained in this book with humility, good humor, and a loving dedication to the author's patients.  Yes, even a deadly Cape cobra which has killed a small pet dog (the dog went into the bushes after the snake and broke the snake's spine) is treated by the doctor with the same earnest hope of saving its life.  Although this story ended sadly for both animals, Dr. Aronson made the effort to find the wild snake, restrain it, perform an examination on it, mercifully euthanize it, and then safely desposit the snake's body out in the countryside.  He did this out of respect for life and nature's ways.

Each of these medical cases has broadened the author's knowledge of the animal kingdom and its precarious standing in a world ever encroached upon by man.  In turn, this African veterinarian has educated many game wardens, animal handlers, and the public about the unique and serious conditions that can affect these animals.  The issues of Apartheid, poaching, and the introduction of human disease into wildlife species are discussed in an  informative way that puts mankind on alert without harsh scolding. I thoroughly enjoyed these true and amazing stories demonstrating one very beneficial and vital way man can connect with the wildest of lifeforms.
~Evelyn Fischel~

Authors from the Indian Subcontintent Featured

Bernardsville Public Library is currently featuring a colorful display of books by authors from the Indian Subcontinent.  Please stop by this new display in the lobby to browse from these wonderful works of fiction. Authors included in the display hail from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh.  The display offers an interesting variety of fiction including thrillers (Six Suspects), relational stories (Sister of My Heart and Secret Daughter), epic novels (The Moor's Last Sigh and A Suitable Boy), short stories (In the Convent of Little Flowers: stories), as well as contemporary, thought-provoking works (The Reluctant Fundamentalist.)  Let your eye be drawn to the gold and blue sari draping this book display and find yourself drawn into other worlds, other lives.

Rework Your Business Thinking

Thomas Alva Edison said, "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."  Rework, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson's new book, supplies 271 pages of sheer inspiration to get you motivated about work and your career dreams. And the good news is that this is a very quick and easy book to read.  Rework is filled with bold illustrations and short, punchy topics of one or two pages each, such as "Long Lists Don't Get Done" and "Start at the Epicenter." After reading it, you might just feel the "can do" spirit to lift yourself out of your work or business rut. The last page does admonish you, however, that "Inspiration is Perishable."  As the authors note, "Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator, But it won't wait for you. Inspiration is a now thing. If it grabs you, grab it right back and put it to work."

Life At A Snail's Pace

Elisabeth Tova Bailey's 2010 book, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, describes life truly lived at a snail's pace. Victim of a virulent virus which attacked her autonomic nervous system and caused mitochondrial disease, Elisabeth Tova Bailey faced a depressing prognosis of extreme fatigue and the inability to maintain adequate blood pressure in an upright position.  In short, she would have to live life reclining because her body was unable to function in an upright manner. Although she had periods of improvement, serious health reversals repeatedly sent her back to bed.  Dependent on caregivers and friends for her needs, she found that she had all the time in the world, but no capability to use it in the ways she would like.

Enter the snail.

One day a visiting friend brought her a small snail she had found in the woods, simply because it struck her fancy.  This friend deposited the snail in a pot of field violets which she placed on Bailey's bedside table.  The author quickly found herself mesmerized by the seeming poise and adaptability of this wild creature suddenly placed in an alien environment.  As she observed the snail's tentative exploration of its pot, Bailey fancifully noted, "Pondering its circumstances with a regal air, as if from the turret of a castle, it waved its tentacles this way and then that, as though responding to a distant melody."  So began the author's enchantment with the snail and her identification with its slow, but purposeful progress through each day.  She enjoyed its nocturnal activity, glad to have the presence of another living thing close by on sleepless nights.

On one such night she first heard the sound of the tiny snail eating a flower petal. With this, the snail captured both Elisabeth Tova Bailey and me. I couldn't wait to learn more about how the snail and the author might fare. In this short and endearing book, I learned much of fascinating interest about snails, their life cycles and languorous "love lives," their unique and paradoxical physical aspects. Interspersed throughout the story are wonderful excerpts from poets and scientists who have long appreciated this miniscule, but marvelous organism. Bailey aptly quotes the haiku of Kobayashi Issa here, "Climb Mount Fuji/ O Snail/ but slowly, slowly."  What insights the author gleaned from her coexistence with this fellow slow-mover enabled her to examine and accept her own state of being.  The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating tells her story and that of the snail with beautiful prose and fluid style.

~Evelyn Fischel~

The Brains Are On The Move

Don't worry...you haven't lost your mind!  The "Mind: Your Brain" book display has picked up roots and moved into the library rotunda at Bernardsville Public Library for an extended stay.  It seems that the brain is one organ that everybody gives a second thought to, and many of the books in this display have captured people's interest.  You'll be able to find most of the selections that were featured in the earlier lobby display and there is now an original Bernardsville Library bookmark with reading suggestions for this topic as well. Be kind to your mind - give it some thought.

April is Autism Awareness Month

"April is Autism Awareness Month," and Bernardsville Public Library has marked this observance with a special display.  Our Youth Services librarians have assembled a book display offering an informative collection of reading material. This display is located in the Parenting Corner at the entrance to the fiction wing.

There you will find resources for adults and children which may help to identify, understand, and manage the range of behavior involved with autistic and Asperger's disorders.  There are picture books for the very young as well as literature for teens and adults, along with medical and educational resources.  Please stop by for a look.

Have You Had Your "Date" Yet?

"Go on a Blind Date with a Book"  is an on-going display at Bernardsville Public Library celebrating National Library Week.   It is designed to entice you, just like the concept behind a blind date, to take a chance on a book you might have overlooked before.  The display features beautifully wrapped packages tied up with red bows- all mysterious, all with the potential to excite and please you.  These "packages" are new fiction and nonfiction books, but they are truly anonymous "suitors."  You won't know a book's title until you have checked one out, taken it home and pulled on that red ribbon.  If you don't like what you see, simply return the book.  If you are pleased with your "blind date," use the enclosed sheet to write a brief comment or review about it.  Go ahead and flirt; it can't hurt!

Library Book Group to Read The Good Soldiers

The Good Soldiers by Pulitizer Prize-winning reporter David Finkel tells the true and harrowing story of a U.S. battalion's deployment to an Iraqi town during the "surge."  The author was embedded for eight months with the 2-16 soldiers out of Fort Riley and recounts their experiences in the dusty, but dangerous town of Rustamiya, outside the relative safety of Baghdad's Green Zone.

David Finkel is a Washington Post writer and knows how to report what he sees.  What he saw in Iraq was the daily assault upon these good soldiers of boredom, outrage, hope, fear, substance abuse, despair and grave bodily injury. Finkel places quotes by President G.W. Bush at the beginning of each chapter to remind us of  the administration's mindset about the war's progress, letting these statements stand in contrast to what the soldiers actually experienced and endured.

Fiction author Geraldine Brooks comments that The Good Soldiers is "an incandescent and profoundly moving book: powerful, intense, enraging.  This may be the best book on war since the Iliad."  Bernardsville Public Library's book group, Memoirs & Coffee, will discuss The Good Soldiers next Tuesday, April 26th, at 10:30 a.m. in the Community Room.  Copies of the book are now available at the library. New members are welcome to attend.

David Foster Wallace

The Pale King, an unfinished novel by the late, laureled American author David Foster Wallace, will be released in bookstores next week.  Because the premise of the story deals with the routine (or not) of work in an IRS center, the publisher set the release date to coincide with the normal deadline for tax filing, April 15th.  Well, there are always those creative types who know their way around deadlines, and in this case, both Amazon and Barnes & Noble are selling the book online at this very moment.  Bernardsville Public Library will have a copy of the book available after the release date.

Book News and More posted a piece about David Foster Wallace at the time of his suicide in 2008.  As is often the case, interest in this talented, but tormented writer increased posthumously.  Just today a very extensive and unusual article was posted online at The Awl entitled, "Inside David Foster Wallace's Self-Help Library."  Some of the self-help books Wallace heavily read and reread were highlighted here and interesting references were made to his mother, grammarian Sally Foster Wallace, as well.  These books are among the  collection of the author's papers at the University of Texas at Austin.

As this article states, "David Wallace was a person who dwelt in darkness either by nature or compulsion, or maybe even by mere habit, or maybe just because he'd been given the wrong medication. Depression is a very inward-turned and self-loathing thing: he trapped himself in this sort of interior abattoir.  But like all depressed persons, Wallace loathed himself in error.  He had a real value that others could see, but he could not." 

Tom Rob Smith

London-born writer Tom Rob Smith just may be the go-to author for people who are ready to move on from Stieg Larsson's Millenium series. Smith's first book, Child 44, bears all the hallmarks of a great crime thriller - enduring suspense, characters who grow with the well-plotted storyline, and a relevant setting of historical authenticity, in this case, post-Stalinist Russia. His subsequent novel, The Secret Speech, and an upcoming publication, Agent 6, carry forward the story of Leo Stepanovich Demidov, former member of the MGB, as he and his family adapt to his new position in the Soviet State security system.

At the heart of Child 44 is the mystery behind a seemingly inexplicable and horrible series of child murders occurring across a wide area of the Soviet Union. A secretive, paranoid regime is unable to acknowledge that such crimes are possible, let alone that they may be connected. Innocent victims face torture, character assassination, gulags and misery, all so that the myth of a perfect political state might be perpetuated. Meanwhile the vicious child slaughters continue unabated.

One man, Leo Demidov, develops the conscience and courage to investigate these murders as crimes of a serial killer. As the author notes on his Web site, "How a crime is investigated is a very useful litmus test for larger forces within a society, the priorities and prejudices of that world. I guess with CHILD 44 I wanted to combine both those elements, the puzzle and the period in which this puzzle is unraveling." Although the novel's child murders are based on the true crimes of Ukrainian serial killer Andre Chikatilo, Tom Rob Smith fits them into his own web of cause and effect, and once again it is Leo Demidov who is at the center of it all.

Smith shares that he was always a reader, loved adventure stories and took them in whatever form they came - mythology, history, science fiction, television, drama or film. Perhaps the author's work as a storyliner for various British television shows following his graduation from Cambridge helped shape Child 44 into a story that would translate well cinematographically. Apparently Ridley Scott, director of "Alien" and "Blade Runner," thinks so too, as he has bought the rights to the book for a future film production.

~Evelyn Fischel~

The library book group Saturday Samplers will discuss Child 44 on April 2nd at 3:30 p.m. in the small meeting room.

Child 44

Bernardsville Library book group, Saturday Samplers, will be discussing Tom Rob Smith's exciting crime thriller Child 44 at its next meeting this Saturday, April 2, at 3:30 p.m.  Look here for a new posting coming shortly about the author and the book.

Saturday Samplers is an open-invitation book group which reads a varied selection of works, including nonfiction, fiction, short fiction and teen novels.  Library staff member Evelyn Fischel leads the group and writes a blog, Saturday Samplers, on which you can access more information about the group and its reading list.

Mind Your Brain

Mind your brain. Stop by the new book display "Mind: Your Brain" at Bernardsville Public Library to browse the latest information on the brain, the mind.  Find books on neuroscience, brain disease and disorder, brain health and associated literature.  Read what it's like to have a stroke in My Stroke of Insight, learn about bipolar and depressive conditions in The Unquiet Mind, key into what happens to your brain when you listen to music in the books This is Your Brain on Music and Musicophilia.  There are many other interesting selections, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Left Neglected. This display is located in the center area of the library.

You're Never Too Old To Recall Your Past

Harry Bernstein, now 100 years old, wrote his first memoir in 1997 entitled The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers.  Describing his impoverished youth in a working class English mill town, Bernstein recalled with vivid and painful memories the religious prejudice on his street and within his family which kept Jews and Christians apart. Not everyone was so closed-minded; however, and so a tender love story emerges from this personal history.  How this love grew and what happened to those involved makes for a wonderful story, but it is counterbalanced by the cruelty and oppressive presence of Harry's father and his damaging influence on the family.  The Invisible Wall will be discussed by the library book group Memoirs and Coffee on Tuesday, February 22, at 10:30 a.m. in the Community Room.  If you have read this book and would like to join the discussion, please feel free to attend.