An Embarrassment of Riches

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...

Hardboiled - by Rachael Recently a fellow library employee was looking for some books to keep her company on a long plane ride. She took advantage of our “Looking for a good read?” form, requesting noir-like mysteries with “an engaging narrative, compelling characters, and an overall doesn't-insult-your-intelligence-ness”.

I was excited to answer this question because I love noir, and I love leading people to books. My first suggestion was Dashiell Hammett – his characters suffer, and his language really sings. Among his best works is Red Harvest, in which a nameless detective is called to the corporate town of Personville (the locals call it Poisonville) and becomes embroiled in byzantine back-stabbing. Our poor Continental Op always seems to think he’s one step ahead when he’s one step behind. The cast includes gangsters, union men and heartless capitalists. No one is better than Hammett at writing a sentence – every word pulls the weight of three.
 
A lesser known noir author is Chester Himes. His detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson investigate crimes in Harlem. The language isn’t quite Hammett (nothing is, in my opinion -- not even Chandler), but it’s good, some of his metaphors really make you sit up. And this is popular fiction written in the 1950s by a black man about black people – a rare bird. The first book in the series is A Rage in Harlem.
 
One author that I did not suggest to my co-worker, but I will here, is James M. Cain. Cain was originally from Maryland (where he formed a close friendship with H. L. Mencken), but did not find his voice until he came out west. Western working people were his muse, and he wrote about them with a succinct and grim humor. His best books went on to be made into some of the greatest noir movies – The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce. 

Happy Dance - A Series to get Excited About - by Sola

Our guest blogger is Sola, who is an avid reader and a library school student through the University of Washington. She is interning in the Central Branch Popular Library until the beginning of June.

I'm a sucker for a series where the characters start to feel like family members. That discovery that I can be reunited with someone I've come to appreciate (dare I say cherish?) by just reading another book is almost enough to make me do the happy dance. Usually this results in me devouring the books one after another, and then moping around until I find a new book I like, or the next one in the series gets published. If the series is something that my husband enjoys and we can chat about? Well, so much the better. A few years back, shortly after my twins were born, I stumbled on Craig Johnson's The Cold Dish. Being sleep deprived usually means that I'll forgo reading for a little shut-eye, but Sheriff Walt Longmire, of Absaroka County, Wyoming, jumped off the page and into my life, and I found myself unable, during those rare, quiet moments, to put the book down. Walt is one of those characters who is not immediately likable, and in fact, I don't really know that many mildly depressed, middle-aged, widowed, almost-alcoholic lawmen. Those questionable features were balanced out by the fact that he's also sweet, sincere, well-read, and is totally lost around women. Once I added in his friends, including a Native American named Henry Standing Bear, the former sheriff Lucian, and Walt's current deputy, the ever full-of-attitude Victoria Moretti, the scales definitely came down on the side of wanting to keep these people in my life. Walt would rather hang out in his partially built cabin, drink rainier, and obsess about a rape case that ended with suspended sentences for the four young men who were convicted, when one of those young men is found shot. Walt's sense of justice is strong enough to start looking into it, and determine that it wasn't, in fact, a hunting accident, when the second of the four is murdered in the same way, and it's clear that someone is out for revenge (a cold dish indeed). With a solid mystery, characters I found myself caring about, and a setting that I was starting to feel like I'd visited even though I've never been there, I powered through The Cold Dish.

And, in fact, I did do the happy dance when I found out it is was the first in a series of books with Sheriff Longmire. I'm up to speed at this point, but I'm always on the lookout for the next book by Craig Johnson. In the meantime, I'm hunting for a new book (or series) that I can fall in love with to fill the gap. Any suggestions?

Sinister Stories from Childhood - by Ruth When I was a kid, I loved creepy stories: the grimmer of the Brothers Grimm fairy-tales, books of ghosts and hauntings and anything that had a mystery with history. I spent a fair amount of time on visits to Grandma's big, old house back east trying to live in those stories: running up the (long gone) servants' back staircase, scouting around the gigantic attic and searching for secret doors and hidden passages ala Nancy Drew. It would have been so cool to visit the places where some of my favorite stories originated, but my grandmother's house, fascinating though it was, was not one of them. The characters in two novels for adults I read recently were luckier.  

In Carol Goodman's Arcadia Falls, Meg Rosenthal has just snagged a teaching job at Arcadia School, an art institute for high-schoolers in upstate New York.  The school was founded in the first half of the twentieth century by several women who wrote and illustrated a haunting tale entitled "The Changeling Girl", one that Meg read to her child and one whose origins she is now researching. Being the good gothic novel that it is, secrets abound, a death occurs, the past impinges upon the present, and there is, of course, a romantic element.

The Distant Hours, Kate Morton's latest, takes place during WWII and in 1992. Driving back from a business trip, Edith comes across Milderhurst Castle, the place where the author of her favorite childhood story, "The True History of the Mud Man", lived and, coincidentally, the place where Edith's mother was evacuated to during WWII.  Now it's occupied by the author's three spinster daughters, all well beyond seventy years of age. Edith is dying to find out more about the family and her mother's stay there, but Mum isn't talking and something's being hushed up. Secrets, death, romance yada yada yada and 500 plus pages later, we know the whole story including the true "True History of the Mud Man." So pull your chair close to the fire, get your goth on, and read some slightly sinister stories the are definitely for adults during these cold and rainy March nights.

The Scottish Mystery - by Ruth Last spring, I finally got to visit Scotland, Land of the Tartan and black slugs, which I dubbed the MacSlug. Part of that trip included a 73 mile trek on The Great Glen Way, one of the many long-distance paths in Britain. Most of the walk was through or alongside beautiful scenery including placid lochs, rolling pastures filled with cute little lambs and a few shaggy Highland cows, and forests (although I was shocked to see some pretty darn ugly clear-cuts as well). Shortly after coming home, a mystery passed my desk entitled A Small Death in the Great Glen.  I knew I had to read it, and although I couldn't figure out if the fictional village was based on one that I had passed through, I was pleased to revisit the landscape if only in literature. The small death is that of a young boy who has been found in a canal (the Caledonian Canal that along which I had walked miles?). Turns out that he had been murdered and dumped in the water. Who would do such a thing? Several young girls might know, but they're not telling. Employees of the local newspaper are the amateur detectives in this debut novel and they're a pretty interesting bunch. I'm looking forward to the second in this series. I just polished off another new debut mystery from Scotland, this time set in 1860s Edinburgh. In The Unbelievers, our middle-aged detective, Inspector Allardyce, is trying to figure out who has bumped off the Duke of Dornach. What was, at first, a missing persons case, turns into a murder investigation when the Duke is found shot. We travel with Allardyce through the dirty underbelly of Victorian Edinburgh society and politics as we visit the Duke's questionable haunts and hope that we get to the murderer before he or she strikes again. If you're still hankering for Scotland after these two, read Raven Black by Ann Cleeves, set in the Shetland Islands. But don't blame me if you feel the need for a shot of whiskey after all this death!

The Gift of Sight - by Helen Suzanne Jauchius and Jeanne Boylan, collaborators and friends, have both been asked,"Why can't you just be normal?"

Both Suzanne Jauchius, a modern day psychic, who sees things about people, and Jeanne, who works with crime victims to draw pictures of assailants, have written books about their search for authenticity.

Suzanne was only eight when her mother declared,"You can only go to the party if you promise not to bring home all the prizes…It's not normal."

But even with a blindfold, Suzanne could see where to pin the tail on the donkey or who had the thimble. She thought she was just clever and smart. Shamed for who she was, Suzanne began the lifelong quest to find her place - to find where she fit in - to find her way home. It took eight years of intense therapy, supportive friends and constant work to gain a new awareness of who she is and how she can use her gift.

Suzanne read excerpts from her new book, You Know Your Way Home, at a recent Brown Bag Lunch and Learn at the Central Library. She detailed how she overcame a lifetime of criticism and skepticism from those closest to her to follow her passion. Listen to the podcast here.

Now an intuitive consultant with an office in West Linn, Suzanne uses her ability to help others discover some truths about their lives. She and Jeanne Boylan first became acquainted when working together on a case in England. Jeanne was able to produce a sketch that is the precise face of the last person seen with the victim. Over the years, the two women became friends and have worked on many cases together including the Polly Klaas kidnapping.

Early in her career when Jeanne was still trying to leave the business of interviewing victims and drawing police sketches in order to have a normal life, Suzanne sees Jeanne "doing a lot of work for the FBI, writing a script or manuscript and working with a man named Ron or Rod… this work will never let you go..." All of this comes true.

Jeanne did work with the FBI, wrote a script and continues to work with police. She worked with law enforcement on the Susan Smith case and the Oklahoma City bombing and was the one to produce an accurate sketch of the Unabomber. Read about her interview techniques and details of the cases (as well as Suzanne's predictions) in Portraits of Guilt: The Woman Who Profiles the Faces of America's Deadliest Criminals.

Pickett Rides Again - by Helen Joe Pickett, game warden in the Big Horn Mountain region of Wyoming, has now been featured in 10 novels beginning with Open Season.

Nowhere to Run is the newest Pickett mystery by C.J. Box.
    
    Wyoming setting
    Camps looted
    Tents slashed
    Elk butchered
    Do the right thing
   
    Runner missing
    Brothers hiding
    Suspense building
    Pickett searching
    Shootout ending
    Storm coming

Is this the harbinger of things to come in the next Joe Pickett novel?
 

A Literary Slurpee - by Ross Summer! Finally! Do you have more time on your hands than you have books lined up to read? I envy you. And you should be sure to check out our webpage where we have assembled links to summer read picks by a variety of sources (including, among others, Oprah!)

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney would be a great choice for your summer reading. In language as stark and beautiful as the snowy Canadian forests that it describes, Penney tells a story of a murder in 1867 and the intrigue and adventure that ensues. I wanted to read it as fast as I could to find out what happens next (it's definitely a page-turner), but at the same time I wanted to read it slowly and deeply, to savor the characters and place. And did I mention that there's lots of snow? A literary slurpee for the hot days ahead.

New Year's Reading Resolutions: More Murder! - by Ruth 2009 was not a banner year for me, reading-wise. I didn't even average one book a week and I didn't really enjoy a majority of the forty-five that I did read. This year I've made the following reading resolutions:

1.  Read more.
2.  Read more of what I like.
3.  Read new (to me) authors and series.

To make sure I got in the spirit of things early (and to maybe actually keep my resolutions), I've started out with a bang. One of my favorite genres is British mystery, and I've read three in the past 15 days. I was looking forward to The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill not only because I liked the dark and brooding cover (yes, I DO judge a book in part by it's cover), but it is the first in what looked like a character-driven mystery series.  I was hoping that it might be a good read-alike for Elizabeth George fans. Oddly, DCI Simon Serrailler, the detective after which the series is named, isn't featured much in the first book; rather it's Freya Graffham, a detective in his department, who takes the lead in trying to solve a series of disappearances in the fictional English cathedral town of Lafferton. There are many, many characters to keep track of, and if I hadn't just gulped it down in a few days, I might have had some trouble keeping all the threads straight. On the whole, it was a satisfying mystery (although I'm a bit peeved at the author for one particular part which I'll not mention here to avoid spoiling the plot) and I plan to read the other three books in the series later this year.  

I generally like to read mystery series in order, but I made an exception for Dark Mirror, the latest Brock and Kolla police procedural by Barry Maitland, because it's about murder in the library - how very Clue™-ish!  A beautiful young woman who looks much like the Pre-Raphaelite women she is studying, is poisoned with arsenic and keels over in the London Library. Per usual, plenty of suspects appear, all with good reasons for wanting her dead. I really enjoyed this book with the exception of the way the librarians at various libraries in London seemed to hand over patrons' reading records willy-nilly! If you like to read mysteries in order, the first in this series is The Marx Sisters.  I plan to now go back to the beginning and read from there.

The third in my January mystery triumvirate is Fear of Drowning by Peter Turnbull, the first title in the Chief Inspector Hennessey series. Hennessey is with the North Yorkshire Police, and as I've been to York several times, it was fun to recognize some of the places mentioned. The banter between Hennessey and his sergeant, Yellich, is witty, but other than that, I wasn't all that keen on this mystery. Maybe it was because all of the other characters in the book, including the victims, were not very likeable.  I think fans of British police procedurals will like it, but I'm not sure yet whether I'll go any further with the series.

So far, I am well on my way to achieving my reading goals for 2010, but if anyone has good suggestions for what I should read in this genre, please let me know!

What We're Reading Now

Wife murdered,
Complex spiderweb plot;
Husband speaks not.

Helen is reading Old City Hall, by Robert Rotenberg. Helen is a library assistant at the Central Library.

Double Pleasure - by Helen I seem to be at a crossroads in my life now and two books that I read recently have sparked me to do some deep examining. The first is a mystery by James Sallis called Salt River. His main character, John Turner is an ex-policeman, ex-con, war veteran and former therapist who wonders, "how much a man can lose and how much music he can make with what he has left."   

One of the characters talking about the troubles of a young man says that the boy had a hard life, "Not making apologies, and I know he brought a lot of it on himself. But there wasn't much that was easy for him, such that you had to wonder what kept him going." Turner then muses, "I had been wondering that, ever since I could remember, about all of us."

One thing that keeps me going is the pleasure I find in good writing, like this sentence spoken by Doc Oldham in Salt River, "Got more wrong with me than a hospital full of leftovers. Asthma, diabetes, heart trouble. Enough metal in me to sink a good-size fishing boat."

Part of the great pleasure of the second book, The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry, was listening to Wanda McCaddon read it on CD as I read it.  I sometimes read ahead of the recording; sometimes listened to fresh parts that I hadn't read, told in the narrator's rich Irish accent. What a nice way to enhance the reading!

The story reveals two very different versions of an Irish girl's life. Roseanne McNulty, once the most beautiful girl in all of Sligo, is incarcerated in the Roscommon Mental hospital. Now 100-years old, she is writing her life story and hides it beneath the floorboards in her bedroom. Meanwhile the hospital is preparing to close and her caregiver, Dr. Grene is evaluating the patients to decide which ones can be returned to society.  He begins to visit Roseanne and to listen to her story. He also discovers a document written by a local priest whose story of Roseanne is very different from her own tale. As they come to know each other, they uncover long buried secrets about themselves.

Roseanne says, "My father's curious happiness was most clearly evident in the retelling of this story. It was as if such an event were a reward to him for being alive, a little gift of narrative that pleased him so much it conferred on himself, in dreams and waking, a sense of privilege, as if such little scraps of stories and events composed for him a ragged gospel." 

I think that this is also true of Roseanne and the telling of her own story and how she coped with the events of her life. Along with her story, we are given glimpses of life in a small community in Ireland from the early part of the 20th century to the present time.

Roseanne and Dr. Grene come to respect each other. He says, "There has never been a person in an old people's home that hasn't looked around dubiously at the other inhabitants. They are the old ones, they are the club that no one wants to join. But we are never old to ourselves. That is because at close of day the ship we sail in is the soul, not the body."
   
Dr. Grene is also grieving the recent death of his wife."Too much thinking on death. Yet it is the music of our time. As the millennium passed fools like myself thought we were about to taste a century of peace." Roseanne observes him with compassionate eyes, "he was looking into that strange place, the middle distance, the most mysterious, human, and rich of all distances. And from his eyes came slowly tears, immaculate human tears, before the world touches them."

How can you go wrong with such lovely language!

What We're Reading Now

Karen is reading Fatal Remedies by Donna Leon, one of an incredible series of mysteries set in Venice, Italy.

Karen is a librarian at the Central library.

What We're Reading Now

Ross is reading The Road to Ruin by Donald Westlake. It's about hangdog, blue-collar, schlepper criminals, and he avoids reading it in public for fear of breaking out in maniacal laughter.

Ross works at the Central library. 

What We're Reading Now

One day, a normal day, three friends went into the woods to play...

...and only one came out.

Mary is reading In the Woods, by Tana French.

Mary is a librarian at both the Hollywood and Central libraries.

All In the Family - by Tama

I’ve been in a bit of a book funk lately. Just can’t seem to find a really good one--you know, the kind that makes you excited to get back to it when you’ve had to put it down. The kind where all you want to do it sit and read for a few gloriously uninterrupted hours. The kind that you’re bummed to finish because there’s no way the next one will live up to it and only disappointment lies ahead. I want a book like that.

I can’t recall how the Spellmans came into my life--probably a review in some library journal. It doesn’t matter because they’ve saved me. In The Spellman Files, by Lisa Lutz, we meet Izzy Spellman, age 28. Izzy has a much younger sister, Rae, and a chronically perfect, type-A older brother, David. The kids have been brought up in the family business of private investigation, to either their benefit or detriment, depending on the kid. David is an overachiever who ran far and fast from the family business as soon as he could to become a high-powered attorney. Rae, age 14, is chronically addicted to recreational surveillance and sugary food items. Izzy, the middle child, has attended multiple colleges and universities without completing a degree, can’t seem to hold down a “normal” job, has a past littered with romantic mistakes and slightly excessive drinking, and prefers to enter and exit the family home via windows rather than doors. Mom and Dad just try to maintain some sense of sanity and keep the business afloat as they squeeze in the occasional “disappearance” of their own, family code for a weekend away by themselves.
 
Curse of the Spellmans has been nominated both for an Edgar Award and a Macavity Award, and those of you who read mysteries know what a big deal that is. And honestly, I liked the other two in the series better, so that tells you how good they really are.

One reviewer called the series “Harriet the Spy for grownups” another says “part Columbo, part nightmarish Nancy Drew.” Whatever. It’s always a starred review no matter who's doing the reviewing, which in the book biz means you need to pay attention because people are gonna be asking for it. And for good reason.

There’s talk that a Spellman movie is in the works but we all know that the books are always better.

www.lisalutz.com