How Do I
Jane's Picks
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Darnton, John Black and White and Dead All Over Mystery |
| The New York Globe is a fictional big city newspaper struggling with the real problem of how a print daily can retain its place in the changing world of journalism. This is the setting for a few extremely creepy murders. When the paper’s assistant managing editor is murdered in a deliciously macabre manner, the list of suspects is long and keeps growing longer. Young and ambitious reporter Jude Hurley is covering the story for the Globe and sets out to unravel the mystery with the help of an energetic and eye-catching NYPD detective. Darnton creates a thinly veiled cast of newsroom characters (Nat Dreck, snarky internet columnist, for example), and part of the fun is trying to figure out the famous people he’s hidden on the Globe’s staff and on the ever-expanding list of suspects. Even if you can’t decipher all the characters, this whodunit is a good one. Recommended August 2009 |
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Gordon-Reed, Annette The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family Nonfiction |
| This year’s Pulitzer Prize for History was awarded to
this scholarly investigation of eighteenth and early nineteenth century
American life through the filter of American slavery. While the life
of the Hemings family is certainly bonded to the life of Thomas Jefferson,
it is the story of the African-American side of this tangled family
tree that is the centerpiece here. Beginning with the “unnamed African
woman” who became the grandmother of Sally Hemings, Jefferson’s “concubine,”
in the language of the newspapers of the day, other members of this
family are given historical importance. In addition to the Hemings
family story, Gordon-Reed gives a vivid and carefully researched vision
of daily life for both the elite and the enslaved in early America.
You won’t forget her graphic description of the first crude–yet amazingly
successful–attempts at smallpox inoculations. Recommended June 2009 |
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Faust, Drew Gilpin This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War Nonfiction |
| Until the latter half of the 19th century, most Americans
were born, married, and died in the same town or city, and sometimes
even in the same house. In fact, families rarely traveled more than
a few miles from the homestead or the town center. The Civil War changed
all that, and for the first time American families were denied the
ritual of spending last days and moments with their loved ones, and
even more traumatic, sometimes never learned where their family members
had died, how they died, or where they were buried. Drew Gilpin Faust,
President of Harvard University and a Civil War scholar, has written
an absorbing examination of how the slaughter and death during our
American Civil War forever altered how we view the process of dying,
and even changed our conception of life after death. Desperate to
know whether their sons and husbands died a Victorian “good death”
– a death marked by some sort of religious blessing at the moment
of passage – survivors began long, frustrating, and often unsuccessful
journeys to find the remains of their family members and provide a
family burial. Bodies were often buried in mass graves at the site
of the battles, and it was the mission of grieving family members
to find a way to identity and return these bodies to family cemeteries.
The Civil War also saw the beginnings of the embalming industry, military
cemeteries, and charlatans who preyed on the grief of family members
by claiming to be able to reach their loved ones through séances –
for a price, of course. Before the Civil War, most Christians defined
life-after-death as the presence of God in some sort of heavenly bliss.
Following the trauma of the Civil War, this definition was expanded
to include the reuniting of family members after death, and the promise
of heaven embraced the face-to-face reconstruction of the family.
Praised by The New York Times as one of the Ten Best Books of 2008,
this fascinating history adds an interesting dimension to our expanding
knowledge of 19th century American life. Recommended May 2009 |
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Capote, Truman The Complete Stories of Truman Capote Short Stories |
| The recent death of John Updike reminds me that there
was a time in American life when some of the most famous and admired
persons in American culture weren’t movie stars or singers or vapid
heiresses (although we did have Zsa Zsa Gabor, didn’t we?). Writers
were our rock stars, and no American writer of the 20th century embraced
and squandered his talent and popularity more than Truman Capote (1924-1984).
If you only know his name from his non-fiction masterpiece In
Cold Blood or from Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar-winning performance
in Capote or from the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s,
then prepare to be dazzled. The stories in this collection are about
many things, some personal, some universal. But it’s Capote’s prose
style that is the reason to read and reread these stories. I can’t
begin to guess how many books I’ve read during my lifetime, but I
can tell you that there are only a handful that make me read just
to savor the poetry of the language. The poignancy of his unhappy
life and early death lends an eerie quality to the prose. It's the
dissonance that makes the reading so bittersweet – to know that his
luscious writing style and heartbreaking observations came from such
a sad, troubled soul. Fellow Capote lovers (and there are many of
us here at CLP) have their favorite Capote stories. My favorite is
“A Christmas Memory,” a childhood remembrance of baking fruitcakes
with an elderly cousin in the backwoods of Louisiana, and it is included
in this collection. To learn more about Capote, Gerald Clarke’s Capote:
A Biography, is regarded as the best history of the author. Used
as source material for the film Capote, it is diligently
researched and beautifully written. Enjoy. Recommended April 2009 |
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McCaig, Donald Rhett Butler’s People Fiction |
| As many times as I’ve watched Gone with the Wind,
there’s a part of me that always hopes Rhett Butler will change his
mind, put down his bag, and sweep Scarlett O’Hara back up that staircase.
McCaig’s story doesn’t change the outcome of Margaret Mitchell’s book,
but it does fill in the back-story of Butler’s misspent youth in Charleston,
highlights his troubled relationship with his father, and follows
the circuitous path that leads him back to Tara. While GWTW
purists may balk at the irreverent suggestion of a happy ending for
these two characters, McCaig makes a convincing argument that they
do, indeed, deserve each other. Filled with rich historical details,
the question is, frankly, will you give a damn? I think so. Recommended February 2009 |
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Allende, Isabel Daughter of Fortune Fiction |
| I’ve loved Isabel Allende's writing since The House
of the Spirits, and her mixture of South American history, romance,
adventure, and fantasy continues here. Set in Chile and San Francisco,
the daughter of the title is Eliza Sommers, abandoned on a doorstep
and then adopted by a brother and sister in nineteenth century Valparaiso.
Eliza travels from Chile to America as a stowaway to find her lover
who has abandoned her and her unborn child. Along the way, she rekindles
a friendship with Tao Chi’en, a Chinese doctor whose devotion and
love take her on another sort of unexpected journey. Allende mixes
the temporal and the sensual with the fantastic and we often wonder
where the narrative ends and the fantasy begins. No matter, really
– what‘s important here is the tale and it’s a lovely one. Recommended January 2009 |
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| Icaza, Jorge The Villagers (Huasipungo) Fiction |
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| Arguably Ecuador’s most famous literary lion, Jorge Icaza
shines a light on the horrific living and working conditions of Ecuador’s
most vulnerable citizens, its indigenous Indian population. Reviled
upon its publishing and the subject of an attempted ban within Ecuador,
The Villagers (Huasipungo) is as illustrative of the horrors
of workers, who never will be able to make a living, in the same way
that Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was in our own country
(both books were published in the 1930s). Icaza places the blame on
many shoulders – the wealthy landowners, government officials, the
police, and the Catholic Church, all part of the larger social problem
of racism. Icaza follows the story of ruthless businessman Don Alfonso
who makes a deal with wealthy foreign investors to build a road through
a forest which contains the hovels of his native workers. By supplying
the workers with alcohol during a religious celebration, Don Alfonso
assures that the workers won’t be paying attention as rising flood
waters force them out of their homes. When workers, women, and children
drown, it’s all in a day’s work. Yet there is great beauty in this
land, and the novel shows us this beauty as well. Recommended December 2008 |
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Stein, Garth The Art of Racing in the Rain Fiction |
| First of all, let me say that (with the glowing exception
of Bugs Bunny, lapin magnifique) I don’t appreciate anthropomorphism
in film or literature. Secondly, I am not a dog lover, but a dog liker
under only the most well-controlled circumstances. Well, now I’ve
found another exception to my no-talking-animals rule – Enzo, the
wonder lab, the narrator of this quirky story about love, death, auto
racing, and what we all might learn from those who never speak to
us in words. As Enzo ponders his life on the eve of his final trip
to the vet’s, we see how he has learned more about living as a human
than most of the humans in his world. Fully prepared to be reincarnated
as homo sapiens the next time around, Enzo convinces us that he deserves
to be a real live boy. Of course, perhaps life as a dog will always
be superior to that of a person, but he knows that part of the joy
of life is to love so well that you are guaranteed to have your heart
broken. He also knows that promises are meant to be kept, and he is
a faithful friend to Denny, Denny's doomed wife Eve, and their daughter
Zoe. Hilarious, poignant, and chock full of inside information about
how to handle a race car, you’ll be recommending this book, too. Recommended November 2008 |
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