One Book Bernardsville

This month Bernardsville Library and its community will be enjoying a shared reading experience called One Book Bernardsville. We will be reading "The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken" by Laura Schenone, discussing the book at three different book group meetings, and participating in an interesting and varied assortment of programs related to Italian culture, cuisine, and ethnic history.

Our first program offers insights into the Italian community in Bernardsville which provided skilled artisans for the Mountain Colony estates they helped build at the turn of the 20th century. While the stately homes are known to many, the history of this Italian community, Little Italy, is less well appreciated. Learn about Bernardsville's Little Italy at 3 p.m. on Saturday, October 10, and hear how you can connect to your own family's history through Ancestry.com, as well.

If you love Frank Sinatra standards, come back again the next day for a jazz singer's rendition of the tops hits when Maggie Worsdale sings Sinatra at 3 p.m. on Sunday, October 11. This concert is funded by the Friends of the Bernardsville Public Library. On Sunday, October 25, at 2 p.m., we offer a completely different musical program featuring world class tenor Salvatore Chiarelli. You'll find yourself entranced as Mr. Chiarelli sings a lovely selection of classical, popular, and traditional Neapolitan/Italian songs.

For a taste of Italy, attend our two free programs on cuisine and wines! Diane dePalma will teach us how to make ravioli and provide a tasting, too, on Saturday, October 24 at 2 p.m. Follow that up on Wednesday, October 28, 7 p.m. with a free Italian Wine and Cheese Pairings program presented by Gary's Wine and Marketplace.

And to tie this all together, we will host the author of our One Book Bernardsville selection when Laura Schenone comes to the library to talk about her book and her quest for that lost family recipe. She'll be here on Wednesday, October 14, at 7 p.m., so feel fee to ask her a few questions. Copies of her book will be available for purchase and signing. We hope you'll attend at least a few of these wonderful free programs and that you'll enjoy discussing this book with your neighbors, the library staff,  and your own book groups. Please refer to the website for dates when we offer library book group discussions.

"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to."

In October, Bernardsville Public Library will host a month-long community reading event known as One Book Bernardsville.  The memoir A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson has been selected as our One Book.  To become better acquainted with the author, please view the enjoyable video posted below.

Bill Bryson's 1989 book, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, begins with the words "I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to."  That opening line also kicks off this video about the author's childhood.  Aired in the United Kingdom on Melvyn Bragg's South Bank Show in 2006 (South Bank Show – Bill Bryson itv.com/southbank,) the video features Bryson's recent return visit to his hometown to discuss what it was like growing up in Iowa. Included in it are numerous charming clips from home movies his father took.  Bryson's mother appears in it as well as high school friend, "Katz," who accompanied Bryson on part of his Appalachian Trail hike. That attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail is recounted in our One Book Bernardsville selection, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, to be read and discussed by the community during the month of October. Please click here for information about A Walk in the Woods and about the One Book Bernardsville events our library has planned throughout October. Now, enjoy the video!

One Book Bernardsville

Bernardsville Public Library is pleased to announce that Bill Bryson's memoir, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, has been selected for its first "One Book Bernardsville" event to take place in October. During this month, our community of readers and area book groups are invited to participate in this shared reading experience.  The library will provide assistance for book groups wishing to participate, and copies of the book will be made available. In addition, local bookstore The Bookworm will stock extra copies of this paperback for purchase. Thematically related programs on conservation, hiking, and the Appalachian Trail itself will be offered at the library throughout October, which happens to be a great hiking month.  It's hoped that this informative, humorous memoir will appeal to young and old readers alike and that it will generate lively discussions. Scroll down through our catalog link to read reviews of  the book here.

Driving With Dead People

Monica Holloway's memoir Driving With Dead People will be discussed on May 4th at 3:30 p.m. by Bernardsville Public Library's book group, Saturday Samplers. The observation that some people ought never to become parents certainly applies here as the author reveals a childhood of parental abuse and neglect that proved shocking to the people who knew her family and later read her memoir. Some of the abuse from her parents was verbal, some psychological, some physical, some violent, yet those in her hometown claimed they were surprised to learn of this sad family history when her book was published.  Perhaps it was a result of the times, the 1970's, when neighbors didn't interfere with the sanctity of other people's families, but it is hard to believe that such obvious abuse and neglect were overlooked.  The more shattering, hidden abuse the author and some of her siblings endured is only revealed at the end of this book.  As she notes, "I almost feel like I have climbed Mount Everest. My sister and I don’t have the shame anymore. We gave the shame back in a way, not to the public, but to the people who can accept responsibility —
and that is why I wrote the book.”

The Life of a Newspaperman

Bernardsville Public Library book group, Saturday Samplers, will attend author Mark Di Ionno's talk on Saturday, April 6th, in the Community Room of the library. The book group has just finished reading his new book, The Last Newspaperman, an acclaimed piece of historical fiction set entirely in New Jersey.  Mr. Di Ionno is an award-winning reporter for The Star-Ledger and has a lot to say about the newspaper business.  

The Last Newspaperman recounts the life and journalistic exploits of fictional reporter Fred Haines, now elderly, who reminisces about the years he spent working in tabloid journalism of the 1930's.  Four sensational episodes in New Jersey history serve as the framework upon which Fred comes to judge the nature of journalism and his own lack of scruples therein. Among those episodes were the Morro Castle fire and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. 

In covering these events, Fred must face a number of moral dilemmas which tear away at his reporter's distance and dispassion.  The reader is left to compare this era of celebrity and disaster-driven journalism with that of today's reporting, be it by newspaper or other medium.  Mr. Di Ionna will sign copies of his book following his talk at 2 p.m.  

Elegies for the Brokenhearted

Christie Hodgen, author of Elegies for the Brokenhearted,  is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and an award-winning writer. Her father (shown above with her daughter) is John Hodgen, a poet and college teacher.  A 2006 interview by the Worcester Telegram & Gazette with Christie and her father can be read here.  As John Hodgen notes, Christie has always been quite observant, and that quality stands out as a strength in her writing.

Certainly the characters in Elegies for the Brokenhearted are beautifully observed portraits of flawed or wounded individuals leading marginal lives, lives most of us might overlook or ignore.  Her narrator, Mary Murphy, does not overlook them, but rather speaks to the ways, large and small, each of five dead people have shaped her own life. These five people may have known her for only a brief time (a college roommate) or all her life (her mother), but each one has impacted Mary’s own course through a difficult upbringing.

While never having experienced a scatter shot life of poverty and marginalization herself, Hodgen creates such memorable, well-formed characters existing on the fringes of society that the reader might think otherwise. The voices given her characters are embued with as much depth as her descriptions of them, each character perfectly identifiable by dialogue and cadence of speech.  Perhaps it was the influence of poetry in her upbringing that gave Hodgen the ability to lift heavy topics to a lyrical, captivating sphere, a place where the reader will not want to look away, but rather savor each story, each elegy.  Elegies for the Brokenhearted was recently discussed by the library book group, Saturday Samplers .  
~Evelyn Fischel~

Trillion Dollar Shoreline, Comes With Spare Tires

Why does Manhattan turn inward onto its glittering skyscrapers and avenues of commerce when a gold coastline, a potentially magnificent waterfront, beckons from all sides?  Would its residents rush to these shorelines, partaking of promenades, water sports, and river transportation systems if accessibility were vastly improved?  New York essayist/author Phillip Lopate muses on these and many other thoughtfilled topics in his excellent 2004 publication, Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan.  Waterfront will be discussed this Saturday, May 5th, by the Saturday Samplers book group meeting at Bernardsville Library.

In Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan, Phillip Lopate employs a personal and quite New York point of view while examining his very own turf and surf.  The result is a vastly enjoyable, enlightening, and  inspiring reading experience. You may even want to get up out of your chair and take a walk, perhaps not quite reaching all the forlorn, topographically dangerous spots the author trekked to in his attempt to walk around Manhattan. For as Lopate circumambulates his revered city, struggling many times to gain access to the shoreline, it becomes obvious that one of the city's greatest features - its waterfront - is also one of its least realized treasures.

Lopate begins his walkabout at the southern tip of Manhattan, working his way up the Hudson River waterfront from Battery Park.  Advancing northward, his strolls along open walkways with clear vistas of the water eventually become treacherous hikes along footpaths in the Fort Washington Park vicinity near the George Washington Bridge. There he describes "one of the loveliest, most harmonious, and yet least-known spots on the Manhattan waterfront," but to get to it on foot necessitated "my usual bullheaded method of proceeding down the vine-scrabbled hill until the Henry Hudson Highway cut me off, then made a mad dash for it.  Actually, the highway bifurcates with the park, so that you have to risk your life twice to get to the water's edge."  After doing so, he was told that there is actually a footbridge nearby, but as New York irony would have it, there are only two footbridges, separated by three miles, crossing high-speed roads. Clearly the car supplants the foot; still, Lopate soldiered on through brambles, chainlink fences, and across high-voltage train tracks to reach northernmost Inwood Park by way of the riverfront.

The author's sojourns along the East River - not a river, but an estuary - provide him many opportunities for fascinating digressions about housing projects, maritime history, and immigrant life.  Thoroughly versed in the history and literature of New York City, Lopate cites Hart Crane, Joseph Mitchell, and Herman Melville among other writers who felt the pull of the waterfront.  Of course, murderers and despairing souls also felt that pull, and over the centuries the waterfront has given up many bodies.  Medical advancements in the last century or so are visually apparent, too, as Lopate passes Roosevelt Island, home to the old Smallpox Hospital and the ruins of a lunatic asylum.  Directly opposite Roosevelt Island, one of the city's foremost hospitals,  New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, now stretches itself out along the waterfront of the Upper East Side.  Typhoid Mary, the Fulton Fish Market, Robert Moses, the city's bridges and islands, so many interesting items are touched on here.

But let us not overlook the city's utter lack of regard in places for its riverfront landscape, strewn as it is with automobile tires, clots of debris, and remnants of old industry.  Falling economies, busted budgets, and political squabbles all have taken their toll.  Lack of a cohesive and sustaining vision for the waterfront plays a part, too.  Manhattan continues to transform itself, but we are left to wonder whether the city and its inhabitants will collectively recognize the potential bounty surrounding them at their watery borders.

~Review by Evelyn Fischel~

Cleopatra

Cleopatra: a Life, by Stacy Schiff, will be the subject of Saturday Samplers next book discussion to be held this Saturday, April 14th, at 3:30 p.m.  Saturday Samplers is a Bernardsville Library book group which meets once a month in the library on a Saturday afternoon.  For more information about the book group, link to the Saturday Samplers blog.

Stacy Schiff is an award-winning biographer who met with literary success early in her career.  Born in 1961, Ms. Schiff attended Williams College.  She subsequently worked for Simon & Schuster as a writer and editor until 1990, at which point she settled into steady work as an acclaimed biographer. Her first publication in 1994, the biography of aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupery, was selected as a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and her biography of Vera Nabokov won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000.  A well-received biography of Benjamin Franklin preceded her latest publication, Cleopatra: a Life.  Learn more about Stacy Schiff or Cleopatra: a Life on the author's Web site.

Dr. Seuss's Naked Dames and Horses, Too!

During the final week of the library's Dr. Seuss display, I thought it would be interesting to "flesh out" our appreciation of this author a bit.  We've learned that Dr. Seuss wrote and illustrated many books for children, but he also produced cartoons for adults which have been collected in Dr. Seuss Goes to War and The Tough Coughs as He Ploughs the Dough. Additionally, Theodor Seuss Geisel authored the humorous storybook You're Only Old Once! which was aimed at the aging adult audience.  

Perhaps his most unexpected adult book is the strange story of  The Seven Lady Godivas, one of his earliest publications.  In this book Dr. Seuss concocted a highly imaginative legend to explain the origins of seven well-known proverbs.  These are the proverbs having to do with horses and what he called horse truths, an example of which would be "Never change horses in the middle of the stream." 

So here's where it gets strange: Dr. Seuss utilized the legend of Lady Godiva and her horse, but converted this individual into a family of seven Godiva sisters who must uncover these horse truths/proverbs.  As he stated tongue in cheek in his foreword, "History has treated no name so shabbily as it has the name Godiva.  Today Lady Godiva brings to mind a shameful picture-a big blond nude trotting around town on a horse.....There was not one; there were Seven Lady Godivas, and their nakedness actually was not a thing of shame." And so the seven stalwart sisters fulfill their Seussian destiny to discover horse sense (and true love, too!) all while unflinchingly wearing their birthday suits.  Dr. Seuss must have had fun coming up with this one.  

- Evelyn Fischel -

Seriously, Dr. Seuss

Did you know that Dr. Seuss drew political cartoons during World War II?
From 1941-1943, Theodor Seuss Geisel composed over 400 wartime editorial cartoons for the New York journal PM.  While he targeted Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and the Japanese, his cartoons also ridiculed any notions of appeasement or American isolationism. Dr. Seuss derided Charles Lindbergh and the America First movement and often used an ostrich as a stand-in for these isolationists.  The University of California, San Diego, now owns the originals of his political cartoons, two of which are shown here courtesy of UCSD.

Approximately half of the editorial cartoons were selected for the 1999 publication, Dr. Seuss Goes to War, by Richard H. Minear. The book contains full page images of the cartoons arranged by the author based on topics such as "The Home Front" and "Winning the War." Minear also addresses the crass insensitivity shown to Asian-Americans, specifically Japanese-Americans, in several of these cartoons.  By means of explanation rather than excuse, Minear elucidates the historical background and wartime context which drove Dr. Seuss's editorial commentary.  You'll find a copy of Dr. Seuss Goes to War among the featured books in the current "Dr. Seuss!" display in our lobby.  

-Evelyn Fischel

Dr. Seuss!

During this month of March we are celebrating Dr. Seuss. His joyful, creative output is on full view in the lobby for all to enjoy. Entitled "Dr. Seuss!," this display combines many wonderful Seuss favorites along with lesser known books for adults and additional biographies. Audiobooks and film versions of his stories are also included.

Theodor Seuss Geisel was born on March 2, 1904, and this year marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of his first children's book, "And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street."  Dr. Seuss's beloved cast of characters can be found here - Horton, Yertle the Turtle, Gerald McBoing Boing, the Sneetches, and of course, the Grinch as well as the Cat in the Hat.  Why let the kids have all the fun? Look for your favorite books from childhood and take a few home to read all over again.  And while you're at it, both old and young are invited to draw their favorite Dr. Seuss characters on our easel. Every day we get new and wonderful sketches.

The Kind of Pop-Ups You Welcome

Robert Sabuda is a very talented man with a pair of scissors and an X-Acto knife!  Just ask your children; no doubt they have enjoyed looking at some of his beautiful, 3-D pop-up books. Bernardsville Library currently has 15 Sabuda books which are popular with parents as well as children.

In the October 1st edition of The Wall Street Journal there is an interesting article about how this paper artist ("illusionist" as he calls himself) transforms stories into 3-dimensional formats that will work consistently.  As Sabuda notes, the hardest part of his job is designing the pop-up to collapse back down properly.  If that doesn't happen, the paper construction will be further damaged with each closing of the book cover.

Perhaps the most surprising thing to learn from this article is that the pop-ups in every book have been individually handcut by 1,000 workers in Thailand!  The next time you're in the library, ask one of the children's librarians to show you our terrific collection of Sabuda pop-up books.

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.

Stieg Larsson and the Millenium Series

Bernardsville Public Library finds the published works of Stieg Larsson to be wildly popular beginning with his first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  In fact, Larsson's books are international sensations.  By one estimation of worldwide sales in 2008, Larsson ranked only second behind Kahled Hosseini (The Kite Runner.)  The library book group, Saturday Samplers, will discuss The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at its meeting this Saturday, March 6th, 3:30 p.m., and I initially wrote the following author profile for them, but I think others might be interested in learning a bit about this once promising, but now deceased writer.

Swedish author Stieg Larsson poured a lifetime of causes and interests into the few pieces of fiction, collectively known as the Millenium series, which he wrote before his untimely death at the age of 50 in 2004. Issues such as feminism, fascism, corporate crime and the role of media in Sweden propelled his life as an activist and as a writer. These same issues fall front and center in his books.

Professionally, Larsson was a graphic designer for Tidningarnas Telegrambyra, a Swedish news agency, but he devoted much of his time to investigative journalism, political activism, ethics causes and (to throw a curveball here) the promotion of science fiction. A member of the Communist Workers League and editor of a Trotskyist journal, Fjarde internationalen, Stieg Larsson put his political beliefs into action by founding the Expo Foundation, a Swedish organization formed to counteract racist and extreme right-wing Swedish groups. He was the editor for this foundation’s magazine, entitled Expo, which is more than a coincidence as the character, Mikael Blomkvist, also publishes a magazine, Millenium, in Larsson’s books.

Karl Stig-Erland Larsson was born in the northern town of Skelleftea, Vasterbotten, Sweden in 1954, but changed the spelling of his name to Stieg as an adult. He was intimately familiar with the culture, landscape and “personality” of the north, having been raised in the country by his grandparents. This knowledge is apparent in his descriptions of the towns and countryside in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. As a young man he pursued interests in photography, and he enjoyed reading science fiction and mysteries.

His efforts to expose racism, neo-Nazism and extremist groups active in Sweden garnered him numerous death threats. For self-protection, he and Eva Gabrielsson, his partner of 32 years, sought to hide their personal information and address as much as possible, and this is why they never married because under Swedish law a married couple must publish their address. The fact that they were not married became a legal issue after Larsson died of a sudden, massive heart attack. Swedish law did not recognize Gabrielsson as his wife, and Larsson’s estate went to his father and brother, neither of whom were close to him nor had the intimate understanding of Larsson’s writings as did Eva Gabrielsson. The Guardian Observer just published an interesting interview with Gabrielsson which provides further insight into Larsson’s life and literary pursuits through Eva's eyes.

Stieg Larsson died having completed three books which he had hoped to turn into an exended series. Known as the Millenium series, they are The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Swedish title being Men Who Hate Women), The Girl Who Played with Fire, and finally The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Swedish title being The Aircastle that Blew Up.) The first book has been released in film form by Swedish and English companies and the next two books are to be turned into television productions. The poster for the Swedish film illustrated above gives you some sense of how the book's characters have been portrayed on film.

Iranian Authors On Iran

Published in 2008, The Ayatollah Begs To Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran was written by Hooman Majd who, as coincidence would have it, is the grandson of a noted ayatollah. Born in Tehran but now living in the United States, Majd tries to explain the multi-faceted, conflicting nature of Persian life to westerners. In a review, The Financial Times states, "Hooman Majd offers a more conversational way into the history of Iran in The Ayatollah Begs to Differ, with anecdote, colour and paradox splashed over a contemporary canvas. His is a genial and companionable book." Yet Majd's book jacket also proclaims, "He points to the importance of the Persian view of privacy, arguing that the stability of the current regime owes much to the freedom Iranians have to behave as they wish behind “Persian walls.”
Well, I haven't read the book, but that is an interesting statement in light of the current political situation in post-election Iran.

Censoring An Iranian Love Story: A Novel is fiction from a contemporary Iranian author, Shahriar Mandanipour, born in Shiraz in 1956. He has written numerous articles, short stories and several novels; this is his first book in English translation. Using the premise of a Persian author who edits and crosses out the very love story he is writing, Mandanipour illuminates the repressive forces working against literary expression in Iran. The young lovers in his book are hounded by the Campaign Against Social Corruption, and the writer character believes he must cross out much of what he has written about their love story because he knows that heavy-handed government censorship will ultimately make it impossible for his story to be printed.

Two new memoirs recount their authors' upbringing and family lives in Iran during the downfall of the shah and the rise of the Iranian Revolution. Afschineh Latifi's Even After All This Time: A Story of Love, Revolution and Leaving Iran tells the story of her family's survival after her father, a colonel in the shah's army, was killed following the shah's overthrow. The family apparently had been a happy one, mother and father loved each other, and they all enjoyed a cultured, comfortable lifestyle until things changed so dramatically. Latifi was sent abroad once her mother realized what kind of danger her daughter could face under the repressive dictates of the Islamic Cultural Revolution. The author credits her mother with a remarkable show of courage and strength in saving all her children and reuniting them as a family outside of Iran.

In contrast, Azar Nafisi's memoir, Things I've Been Silent About: Memories, shows the author of Reading Lolita inTehran grappling with unpleasant memories of her mother, her own childhood, and of her parent's unhappy marriage. Like Afschineh Latifi, Azar Nafisi also grew up in a well-to-do, highly educated family in pre-revolutionary Iran, but family life was crippled by detrimental silences she says are too often nurtured in her home country. Her relationship with her difficult mother dominates the story as does her admiration for her father even though he had his failings, too. Collateral damage such as sexual abuse by trusted friends of the family, disillusionment with the revolution, and a dreadful first marriage all add a serious tone to this memoir of her early life in Iran.
~ Evelyn Fischel

These four books may be found in the collection of Bernardsville Public Library.

When You're Hungry For More Than Just Words

M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, and Ruth Reichl are some of the people who come to mind when I think about those who have described their love of food and cooking in noteworthy books.

M.F.K. Fisher is still considered one of the 20th century's standard bearers of elegant prose about food, travel and life. Readers have long savored the detail and precision of her observations in such books as Consider the Oyster and The Art of Eating.
As for The French Chef, Julia Child's posthumous 2006 biography My Life in France, co-authored by Alex Prud'homme, recounts her culinary education in Paris with lively detail. It also seamlessly blends in loving memories of her husband and their time in France.
And Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone is a wonderful recollection of how she came to be an ardent epicure despite having a diffident mother who couldn't cook.
Today's rash of cooking memoirs may not demonstrate the same depth of experience and writing wizardry as those of Fisher, Reichl or Child, but they are nonetheless enjoyable to read. Among the newest food memoirs are two books written with wit and loaded with recipes. In both cases, these recipes accompany chapters of the books and tend to signify "chapters" in the authors' lives.
A Homemade Life, by food blogger Molly Wizenberg, mingles family stories and vignettes with a good assortment of recipes. She writes in an engaging manner about life, its little victories, big sorrows, and how her love of food and cooking drew her future husband to her like a moth to the flame. Actually, it was her blog, Orangette, that lured her husband to her, which goes to show the power of blogging. Unfortunately, Orangette is at present in suspension because Wizenberg apparently has too many irons in the fire or too many pots on the stove. In any case, there are plenty of nice recipes included in this book.

Giulia Melucci, author of I loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, certainly believes that the fastest way to the altar is through a man's stomach. This Brooklyn author has been repeatedly disappointed in affairs of the heart and bed. Yet she finds that cooking and laughter have healed her broken heart, enabling her to try all over again! Her book is full of recipes reflecting her Italian-American heritage, and she shares how these recipes may have attracted a suitor or made up for a failed love affair afterwards. ~ Evelyn Fischel

Newbery Medal Awarded to Neil Gaiman

The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) has awarded the 2009 John Newbery Medal for outstanding children's literature to Neil Gaiman, versatile British author of fantasy, science fiction, graphic novels and children's books, for The Graveyard Book. On its Web site, the ALSC, a chapter of the American Library Association, states the following about The Graveyard Book, "A delicious mix of murder, fantasy, humor and human longing, the tale of Nobody Owens is told in magical, haunting prose."

Furthermore, the Web site for The Graveyard Book offers this opening summary for the book, "Hear this tragic tale: a sleeping family, a talented murderer, and an adventurous toddler—orphaned, but not assassinated. Small and alone, by accident and luck he escapes the scene of the crime and climbs a grassy hill to safety. At the top of the hill the boy finds a fence, and on the other side, a dark, quiet place. "

The dark, quiet place, of course, is the graveyard, where the boy is raised by the spirits within. Although the Newbery Medal is targeted to children's books, The Graveyard Book can be enjoyed by adults, too. Coraline, another children's book by Neil Gaiman, has successfully crossed age lines as well and is currently being made into a film for popular release.

About Neil Gaiman

photo source - Kimberly Butler, 2005

Neil Gaiman will be the featured author at this month's meeting of Saturday Samplers, a Bernardsville Public Library book discussion group, taking place today at 3:30 p.m. The book group will be discussing Neverwhere, which the author turned into a novel after first writing the story as a screenplay for the BBC. Gaiman started his writing career in England as a comic book writer who developed a world-renowned graphic novel series, The Sandman, based on the earlier D.C. comics character of the 1930's and 40's. He collaborated with Terry Pratchett to write the wildly hilarious apocolyptic book, Good Omens, and he has branched out to write both adult and children's books which have been critically acclaimed. Among these publications are Coraline, a frightening children's story, as well as American Gods, Stardust, and Anansi Boys. Neil moved from England with his wife and children to settle in Minneapolis where he said he wanted to live in a Charles Addams-style house. He found one complete with turret and possible ghostly history!

The Passing of Michael Crichton and Studs Terkel Noted

Bestselling author Michael Crichton died yesterday at the age of 66 after a long illness. Famous for such clever fictional works as Jurassic Park, Congo, and The Andromeda Strain, Crichton had a talent for great storytelling which could turn implausible themes into vibrant, frightening reality. Bernardsville Public Library has set up a display of Michael Crichton books alongside those of Tony Hillerman, also recently deceased. You'll find this display just inside the lobby on the right.

To remember Studs Terkel, who died October 31st at the age of 96, we have included several of his works in this same display. A man of many talents - interviewer, tv and radio personality, chronicler of 20th century life, and Chicago's number one fan - Studs Terkel carved a special niche for himself in American culture. He requested that his epitaph read, "Curiosity did not kill this cat."