An Embarrassment of Riches

The Eccentric Family Fang - by Andrea

You know how sometimes a book crosses your path and you know absolutely nothing about it, but the cover just makes you want to pick it up? This is exactly what happened to me with The Family Fang. I was instantly intrigued by the edgy cover design, which reminded me of A Series of Unfortunate Events meets The Royal Tenenbaums meets Bored to Death. A quick scan of the back cover noted a lovely blurb from Anne Patchett. A poll of my literary go-to-friends elicited the appropriate amount of cooing. “Oooh, The Family Fang. Supposed to be good. Haven’t read it yet. On my list.”

I excitedly checked it out with only a small rock in my gut, because I have to say, sometimes these key ingredients -- beautiful jacket cover plus glowing review by a fave author plus friend praise -- don’t always add up to be a win win in the incredible book department. Like any recipe you try for the first time, something can go horribly wrong, which, as a self-described heartless reader I usually know by page 15. So imagine my delight when I opened The Family Fang and was immediately hooked.

What a beautifully written, intriguing first novel from Alex Award winner Kevin Wilson. Here the author has taken the idea of performance art and turned it on its head by asking what happens when two self-obsessed artists have children. Why, they turn their children into an art project of course! Annie and Buster Fang (known only as Child A and Child B) spend their entire childhood this way. Fast forward 15 years. The Fang parents have suddenly disappeared. As their grown (and now estranged) children try to figure out what happened, all the while they ask themselves if this is just another one of their parents’ elaborate artistic events, or are the Fangs really dead? As a reader you will find yourself pleasantly on the edge of your seat until the last bizarre and wonderful moments unfold.

Fascinating Features - by Katie

Welcome to our new blogger Katie, who has lived in Portland most of her life and never thought her high school library job would evolve into a lifelong (hopefully!) career. She worked as a news writer and reporter in a previous life and especially appreciates efficient, powerful writing. She also loves music, documentaries, quirky characters, stories of triumph over adversity, dogs, and tap dancing.

Produce clear, concise copy - that was my task as a college intern in a radio news department. I spent several hours a day rewriting news wire content. Like many aspiring journalists, I dreamed of writing feature stories – genuine human interest pieces that allowed the freedom to tell a story or make a point in more than one to two paragraphs. These are the kinds of stories you will find in The Fiddler in the Subway by Gene Weingarten.

Weingarten is a Pulitzer Prize-winning feature writer and humor columnist for The Washington Post. The Fiddler in the Subway collects some of his best work into one not-to-be-missed volume. The book’s title comes from one of the pieces for which Weingarten won a Pulitzer. The idea behind the story was to conduct an experiment. Place a world-renowned violinist, Joshua Bell, in a busy Washington, D.C. subway station, with some loose change in his nearby violin case. How would passersby react? Would they recognize this top-notch musician in his jeans, t-shirt and baseball cap? More importantly, would they know and appreciate the quality and beauty of the music? The story reveals much about the power of context and the way in which people move through their busy lives, often oblivious to what is happening around them. Joshua Bell, who plays a Stradivarius violin worth more than three million dollars and fills concert halls the world over, made about $32 dollars that day. Of the 1,097 people who passed by Bell that January morning, seven of them stopped to listen for at least a minute.

Now, I suppose you could draw some doom-and-gloom conclusions about the state of humanity from this story. But Weingarten doesn’t do that at all. He doesn’t do that in any of his pieces. He simply observes the human condition in a variety of settings and circumstances, and writes about it, completely engaging and entertaining the reader along the way. Weingarten is a humor writer after all, and the way he describes many of his subjects will have you laughing out loud.  Take “The Great Zucchini,” the story of a much sought-after children’s entertainer who commands $300 per birthday party and does things like pour water on his head and eat toilet paper. What is it about this college dropout with no fancy costumes or props that has him booked solid months in advance? Weingarten is determined to find out, and he does, revealing a somewhat complicated but entirely human character who relates to children on their own level.

The Fiddler in the Subway offers many other gems, including the story of the ghost writer of the Hardy Boys novels, a profile of the intensely private cartoonist Garry Trudeau, and the search for the city most deserving of the official “Armpit of America” title. Weingarten’s diverse collection of well-written stories proves that truth can indeed be stranger than fiction, and just as entertaining.

You can listen to Joshua Bell playing Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” one of the pieces he played in the subway station, on his Voice of the Violin CD.  You can also download Joshua Bell’s music through Freegal, a free music service available to library card holders.  

Hero with a Side of Angst - by Joanna Welcome to Joanna, a new blogger for EOR. She has this to say about herself: After a tropical childhood, I stumbled upon Portland and decided to sit for a spell; nearly twenty years later, it appears that I'm here to stay. I am an enthusiastically geeky Library Assistant, which means that I sometimes approach strangers in coffee shops to gush about library databases. When it comes to my media intake, I am omnivorous: I will read or watch anything if the characters grab me and don't let go. I don't leave the house without a book. I still think A Bargain for Frances by Russell and Lillian Hoban is one of the smartest books ever written.

When I can't sleep at night, I am sometimes haunted by cringe-worthy embarrassments I suffered in high school. Maybe I'm just a little too in touch with my inner 14-year-old, but I love books that capture teen angst and the way our adolescent mortification reverberates into adulthood. I couldn't help but fall in love with Celia West, the 20-something protagonist of After the Golden Age by Carrie Vaughn.

Celia has just been kidnapped. Again. It’s the worst thing about being the child of the world’s greatest superheroes; well, that and knowing that you will never, ever, live up to your parents’ expectations. The crushing sense that she was a disappointment led Celia to a teenage rebellion that was a shocking betrayal to her parents; she joined up with their archival, ubervillain Destructor. Seven years later and she’s still dealing with the repercussions; meanwhile, she's trying to use her skills as an accountant to solve Commerce City’s latest crime wave. Also, she might be falling in love with the mayor’s son. And she’s broke. Oh, and she’s trying to avoid being kidnapped. Again.

After the Golden Age is a snappy mystery about family, identity, forgiveness, and what it means to be a hero. Now if I could just stop thinking about that time in the cafeteria...

It's Comical by Jen The other night during dinner Child the Younger excused himself from the table, walked over to the cat minding her own business by the front door and proceeded to make large and dramatic conjuring motions in her direction (think Mickey the Wizard in Fantasia.) This was accompanied by those weapon sound effects that all small boys seem to perfect. When he was finished he walked calmly back to his chair, sat down and resumed eating with no explanation. I couldn't resist asking.

"What was that you just did?"

"I needed to give the kitty her laser so she can shoot fire out of her fingernails."

"Oh. Okay."

I managed to keep it together during this exchange, but my husband was trying not to look like he was howling with laughter while snorting iced tea through his nose. It's an admirable parenting skill. Why the cat needed her fire-shooting powers at that very moment remains a mystery to all but one of us.

I've read some great graphic novels lately and one of the best is directly from the mind of a five-year-old boy. Axe Cop is the imagined universe of Malachai Nicolle as drawn by his older brother, Ethan. The title character is a policeman who picks up a fireman's axe and never looks back. He uses his weapon of choice and his somewhat violent tendencies on any number of bad guys, but the best parts involve the crazy sidekick characters including a dinosaur soldier who transforms into an avocado with a unicorn horn, a dog named Ralph Wrinkles, and The Best Fairy Ever. If you would like a direct window into the imagination of a five-year-old, here's your ticket. If you are hoping it will explain why you must NEVER MOVE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES the plastic fireman's axe that currently resides in the drawer with your brushes and combs, you will be sorely disappointed. Not recommended for reading on public transportation or while drinking iced tea, and especially not both at the same time. And remember: only cowboys and warriors can control the magic riding spider.

Smile is Raina Telgemeier's biographical saga about losing her permanent front teeth to an accident in sixth grade and the drama that ensues for the next five years as she simultaneously experiences the horrors of dental reconstruction and adolescence. The combination of compelling story and detailed drawing make it more than the sum of its parts and you will be transported back to middle school (whether you want to go back there or not. And I'm guessing not. But go anyway.)

Kampung Boy by Lat is the luminous story of a boy from birth to boarding school growing up in rural Malaysia on a rubber plantation. The love and humor surrounding this family make the story rise off the page as the tropical environment and Muslim customs and rituals are explored and explained in a down-to-earth manner.

The sunshine is finally here, so park it in a lawn chair and read some comics before Axe Cop comes after you on his transformed Tyrannosaurus Rex-turned-dragon with rocket wings and machine gun arms. Awesome.

Boudu Saved From Drowning - by Rachael It is a rare and wonderful thing when something makes me laugh so hard that I cry.

Recently it happened while watching the Colbert Report. Mr. Colbert was ostensibly getting etiquette lessons from a fellow who is apparently a Professional Proper Englishman. Colbert is utterly unconstrained: he has no rules to follow. He eats sugar by the spoonful, lets a cupful of cream slide down his chin. The Englishman is defined by rules. He is outraged, perhaps even angry, but he can hardly show it. He can only murmur ‘No, you musn’t’. And the more he protests, the more outrageous Colbert’s behavior becomes, spurned on by his foil.

The scene very much reminded me of the Jean Renoir movie that made me laugh just as hard, Boudu Saved from Drowning (Boudu sauvé des eaux). A homeless man is ‘saved’ by a middle class family, and what ensues is a great deal like Colbert and the Professional Proper. Boudu spits out his beer, he wipes chocolate on the duvet. He does not follow the rules, and it is enormously funny.

If you think that a movie made in 1932 is too darn old, or you're not a fan of subtitles, check out this YouTube trailer and reconsider. The Criterion print is lovely, and the film is a true treat.

Preston Sturges! (Sung maniacally, to the tune of “Western Union”.) - by Rachael

Preston Sturges is the absolute King of the Romantic Comedy, in my opinion, and though I am a chronic equivocator, this is one area where I hold steadfast. Sure, there’s Lubitsch. Sure, there’s Capra. Yes, there’s also Wilder. Those are all great points. But Sturges is King. (As I imagine is obvious, if it’s post-1965 I’m agin' it. ‘Romantic Comedy-wise’ as Jack Lemmon’s character in The Apartment would say.)

It’s a tough choice, but at the top of my ranked-Sturges list is The Palm Beach Story. It stars the iridescent Claudette Colbert – she also starred in The Smiling Lieutenant (Lubitsch) and It Happened One Night (Capra), and it’s no accident that those are my favorites in their respective oeuvres. Recounting the plot would only provide a pale reflection, so I’ll just say this: "You have no idea what a long-legged woman can do without doing anything”.

The Onion’s AV Club did a fantastic ‘primer’on Sturges a few months ago. The writer describes Veronica Lake’s introduction in Sullivan’s Travels as “machine-gun screwball flirtation at its finest, conversation as half blood-sport, half seduction”. Yes, that’s Sturges.

Cat Bites and Clatterford by Jen After a day of work, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to sit on the sofa and have obedient and loving children welcome me with my slippers and a cup of tea while a well-trained dog fetches the newspaper (which has not been torn asunder and scattered to the winds in the required-by-law daily comics raid.) This imagined scene gives me a hopeless little chuckle as I enter what I affectionately call "The Battle Zone of Wars Eternally Lost", also known as "My House." For the sake of brevity (the soul of witless parenting) my dear husband and I call this place, simply, "The Zone."

My homecoming assessment of "The Zone" begins on the street as I monitor the noise level from outside the front gate. Silence does not guarantee détente, but screaming, yelling, and whining do almost certainly guarantee impending misery. The sound of a child practicing piano is a good sign, but the sound of, say, deafeningly determined Rachmaninoff means that my co-parent is waving the white flag of surrender and is completely ignoring the children in a last-ditch attempt to save any scraps of sanity he might have left after a day of endless screeching demands. There is no sitting on the sofa (unless my spouse has gone beyond Rachmaninoff and is huddled in the far corner of the couch with a blanket over his head.) There is no tea if I do not prepare it, and instead of a dog we have a cat with a personality disorder who bites only me, routinely and somewhat enigmatically, with no provocation or warning. Whatever The Zone holds, the objective is always the same: survive through Bedtime. If I live to tell the tale, my reward is a little television. I am sorry to say there are only three existing seasons of my latest favorite BBC show, Clatterford.On British soil it goes by the title Jam and Jerusalem, but they changed it for the American audience. Don't ask me why--trading reference to a familiar food and a known geographical place for the name of an obscure English town is the sort of sensible exchange that goes through my cat's brain just before she sinks her fangs into my flesh.

The show is a kinder, gentler comedy from the brilliant mind of Jennifer Saunders, creator and star of the searingly hilarious Absolutely Fabulous. The show centers around the life of Sal Vine (Sue Johnston), a nurse and recent widow in the small town of Clatterford St. Mary. Sal's efforts to reorder her life after her husband's death orbit around her grown children and the town Women's Guild, which is populated with fascinating minor characters. Outrageous comedic bits--Rosie (Dawn French) nursing a lamb in the pub; accidental vacuuming of church displays of the Nativity/Palm Sunday/Resurrection in which the primary players have been carefully crafted using stalky roadside weeds with googly eyes; Caroline's (Jennifer Saunders) constant misuse of pornographic sexual terms--are balanced with sincere drama. Loneliness washes in and out of lives as the characters struggle with relationships lost and found. Clatterford is complicated and messy. It's funny and familiar and at the end of the day you can't wait to go there. Just like home. Without the cat bites.

The Samurai and the Fruitarian - by Jen

I'll start with this: I don't hate to cook. I just hate to cook for my current captive demographic, which includes a child who begs for sushi in his wretched school lunch every day and a child who maintains a firm company policy of automatically rejecting anything that is not a fruit. Which kids in America scorn spaghetti and meatballs for dinner? Mine. Or homemade macaroni and cheese? Mine again. In all honesty, we would do best to just cut out the middleman and throw the children's portions of most any given meal directly into the garbage.

What We're Reading Now

Zoe is reading the laugh-out-loud funny 52 Loaves, about a man who sets out to bake the perfect loaf of bread from scratch. This entails traveling around the world to see how bread is baked in other countries, planting the wheat, harvesting, winnowing and on....

Zoe is a delivery driver for the library system.

Laugh out Loud Funny - by Shandra

Our guest blogger is Shandra, who works at the Holgate library. Shandra has been a voracious reader since childhood, with a penchant for giving up sleep in favor of finishing those last... few... chapters. She is a fan of mysteries, fantasy, sci-fi, graphic novels, comic books, manga, humor, vampire books even before they were cool, non-fiction that reads like fiction and anything interesting that crosses her path.

Me Talk Pretty One Day is my favorite David Sedaris book, a collection of essays about himself and his family. He has a unique way of looking at things, and even when the subject is painful, it’s still wickedly funny. Another fun and soon to be timely collection is his Holidays on Ice, featuring four short stories and two essays, including the hilarious "SantaLand Diaries", Sedaris's chronicle of his time working as an elf at Macy's.

We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier: Confessions of a Tarnished Southern Belle’ by Celia Rivenbark is another fun read-aloud, and also a bit of an education if you happen to be a Northerner like me. You’ll soon be able to add all sorts of "Southern-isms" to your vocabulary! Says author Haven Kimmel, "I laughed so hard reading this book, I began snorting in an unbecoming fashion. I loved it nonetheless. I'll be sending copies to everyone, especially my baby's daddy."

Speaking of Haven Kimmel, next on my list of books to read aloud is A Girl Named Zippy: Growing up Small in Moreland, Indiana’. Somewhat sweeter than the two above, Kimmel’s memoir is insightful and humorous, full of vignettes from her childhood. She does a great job of telling her story from a kid’s perspective, without sounding childish. I enjoyed reading it for our Pageturners group, even though I’m not usually a memoir fan, and I’m looking forward to sharing it aloud very soon!

Farewell Patricia Neal - by Rachael

The actress Patricia Neal died on August 8. She starred in one of my all-time favorite movies, A Face in the Crowd.

In any opportunity to wax on about A Face in the Crowd I tend to emphasize Neal’s co-star, Andy Griffith, who plays a lecherous, greedy, manipulative television star. Griffith’s charisma is incredible, and as we all know him so well as Sherriff Taylor it is mind-blowing to see him as Taylor’s evil twin, "Lonesome" Rhodes.

That topic exhausted, I will enthusiastically move on to the movie’s intelligent and hilarious take on television. 1957 seems awful early for such a biting and accurate indictment. Keep your eye on that rating!

But Neal’s character is the soul of the movie. She is the one who discovers and promotes "Lonesome" Rhodes, and who must destroy him. Because Rhodes is not simply crass. He is a fascist, and he plans to use his popularity to do real evil. Neal’s character is no raft borne by the tide; she is a moral creature and a true adult. And that makes A Face in the Crowd an all-too-rare treat: a movie in which a woman has world-changing power and responsibility.

Corn Right off the Cob - by Rachael The veil of preconceptions has been removed from my eyes and I see the light: Frank Capra made some very funny movies.
Best known for heavy-on-the-syrup fare such as It’s a Wonderful Life or Meet John Doe, Capra also made some sharp, occasionally acerbic comedies -- Platinum Blonde and It Happened One Night are right up there with the best of Ernst Lubitsch or Preston Sturges.
But the Capra movie that has really caught my imagination may be the most sentimental of all, You Can’t Take it With You.
The plot centers around the love affair between the wealthy Jimmy Stewart and the poor Jean Arthur, but the show is stolen by Arthur’s chaotic household: the perpetually pirouetting sister, the mother who happily writes plays that have no chance of being produced (the stack of completed pages held down by a kitten), the father setting off fireworks in the basement. And the soul of the movie, her Grandpa (Lionel Barrymore), providing the philosophy that guides them all. Grandpa is the antithesis of Mr. Potter (the character Barrymore played in It’s a Wonderful Life). The thing you can’t take with you is money, of course, so what’s the good of it: just do what makes you happy.
The movie ends with a rousing, anarchic rendition of ‘Polly Wolly Doodle’ played while the whole darn neighborhood watches the family dance wildly in a living room decorated only with a ‘Home Sweet Home’ sign. Corn? To quote another great, Howard Hawk’s Ball of Fire, “Right off the cob”.

It's Never too Late (or too Early) to do your Holiday Reading - by Ruby

Yes, I know it's the middle of February, but I just can't wait till December to tell you about the U. K.'s poet-laureate, Carol Ann Duffy's Christmas poem, Mrs. Scrooge.  Duffy and her illustrator Beth Adams serve us a mashup of Dickens' classic story with a contemporary twist: Mrs.S., in modern dress, is a practicing environmentalist of the 21st century. But she's still a bit of a Scrooge - with a green stripe.    

She hated waste, consumerism, Mrs. Scrooge, foraged                                                                                 in the London parks for chestnuts, mushrooms,                                                                           blackberries,                                                                                                                                             ate leftovers, recycled, mended, passed on, purchased                                                                 secondhand,                                                                                                                                         turned the heating down and put on layers, walked
everywhere
drank tap-water, used public libraries, possessed a wind-
up radio,
switched off lights, lit candles (darkness is cheap and
Mrs. Scrooge
liked it) and would not spend one penny on a plastic bag.

The story opens with Mr. S. (who was beloved) described as "doornail-dead" and Mrs. S. living all alone in a building scheduled for imminent demolition. She's begun to lose heart about her belief in the possibility for great change. As night falls, she, as Ebenezer before her, visits the Christmases past, present and future and experiences a similar renewal of hope. Duffy's language is light and crisp, the narration reminiscent of Alan Bennett. Don't miss it, even if you decide to read it in summer. I had a great experience once reading A Christmas Carol in the middle of July! Oh, and by the way, in this story the word humbug refers to the lovely striped candy.

No One Writes Like James Herriot - by Nicola

No one writes like James Herriot...
…except, of course, James Herriot himself, who passed away in 1995. If you're looking for more good animal stories, there are some recent ones out there that you may enjoy reading.

Nick Trout’s Tell Me Where it Hurts:  A Day of Humor, Healing and Hope in my Life as an Animal Surgeon will leave you alternately laughing and crying until you begin to wonder if you have lost your mind. (For more on this title see our previous review here.)  In a similar vein, you may want to try All My Patients Have Tales:  Favorite Stories from a Vet’s Practice, by Jeff Wells. Fresh out of veterinary school, Wells settled in South Dakota where he treated a variety of problems.  Several animals were not as cautious as they should have been around porcupines. The quills became embedded in their flesh and were difficult for Wells to remove, causing a great deal of anxiety for both him and his patients. Then he had a male cat with the classic symptoms of pregnancy!  If that didn’t make him question his career choice, the pet owners were always advising him on their animals treatment. They always thought they knew better.
 
If you like cats, try Dewey: The Small-town Library Cat who Touched the World, by Vicki Myron. It was 1988 and the coldest night of the year in Spencer, Iowa. Dewey was dropped into the book drop of the Spencer Public Library by some unknown miscreant. Iowa has cruel winters and Dewey developed frostbite while trapped in the book drop.  He was only four weeks old and his eyes hadn’t opened yet. Luckily, the next morning he was found by the author who was also the director of the library. Dewey recovered from his ordeal and charmed the patrons and staff of Spencer Public Library. He seemed to sense when one of the patrons needed special attention and went directly to that person to offer comfort. Not surprisingly, Dewey soon became the official mascot of the library.

If you have a soft spot for animals rescued from rather sad conditions, you may want to read Chosen by a Horse: A Memoir, by Susan Richards. Richards went to adopt a horse rescued from an owner who took very poor care of him. When she opened the door of her horse trailer at the adoption center, she was quite surprised to see one of the horses stride into the trailer before she had even had time to blink. That horse was the one who went home with her. Their relationship flourished and became mutually beneficial and nurturing.

Whether you like owls or not, you may enjoy Stacey O’Brien’s Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and his Girl. O’Brien was a student researcher at Caltech when an injured baby owl was brought in. The owl could not be rehabilitated and sent back into the wild again so O’Brien decided to adopt him. She provides insight into the human-animal bond and many interesting facts about owls.  However, if you think the book sounds dry, you may be pleasantly surprised to find yourself wanting to laugh out loud. As Wesley reached sexual maturity he was like a young human teenager who did not know how to handle the changes in his body. Stacey became the object of his affection in a new and different way. 

No one writes quite like James Herriot, but perhaps you'll find some good reading here.
 

The Butler Did It - by Steve I wasn't having a very good evening. I was tired from work, and dinner was mediocre. The entertainment I had lined up was an old black and white movie that I had checked out ages ago, but never managed to watch. Now it was on hold and I just HAD to watch it before it was overdue. I couldn't even remember why I had chosen it in the first place. I was actually kinda dreading the film.

My Man Godfrey starts out in Depression-era New York City with a group of Upper Crusters hectically racing around the city to track down items from a scavenger hunt. A pair of sisters, Cornelia and Irene, end up in the city dump. They whisk away a curious "tramp" to claim the top prize of the contest. Dressed in a tattered coat, Godfrey goes with the girls, but ends up schooling the top hat and tails crowd at their swanky hotel. A portly gentleman, Irene's father, likes what he hears and agrees to give Godfrey a job as the crazy family's butler. They could use a bit of common sense from a common man.

While the family constantly tries to wear him down, Godfrey takes no guff from anyone. Hilarious antics ensue. Will they just fire him and start over with someone new or will he become as zany as they are? You'll have to watch and see. By the end of the movie, my frown had turned upside down, and I knew I just had to find a butler of my very own.