An Embarrassment of Riches

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. 

Bill Nighy Rocks my DVD world - by Ruth After two months of reading exclusively teen books for a training I was presenting, I finally took a well-deserved rest and fired up the dvd player. The only DVD I had at home was The Girl in the Café starring Bill Nighy and Kelly Macdonald, and I was reminded again of what a fab actor Bill is. There's just something about him that appeals. Maybe it's his slightly disheveled look, his subtle wit, or the way he quirks his head every so often, but all of it is fantastically engaging. In Girl, he plays an overworked civil servant working on papers for an upcoming G8 summit in Iceland. On a short, but well-deserved tea break, he sits down across from a young woman and starts a halting conversation. They end up going to Reykjavik together and interesting things happen. State of Play is a gripping mini-series in which Nighy plays an important role. Politics and murder intersect, and Nighy's character is a newspaper editor overseeing several journalists who are covering the story. I wanted to watch episode after episode, but sleep necessitated a multiple-day viewing. I haven't seen everything Nighy's been in, but I've enjoyed everything I've seen.

What We're Reading Now

Shane is reading Star Wars. Republic Command, Order 66, by Karen Traviss, about an average day in the life of a clone trooper.

Shane is a page at the Hollywood Library.

Air Conditioning for the Brain - by Rachael

Welcome to Rachael, a new blogger for EOR. She says this about her reading interests: "I’m always reading something, usually a few too many things. My special love is science fiction written with a literary hand. I have worked for the Multnomah County Library for fifteen years, in a variety of roles. Once I was convinced that I had touched every book in Central Library, but now I see that is beyond my reach."

I am not a fan of the heat. I have a few tried and true cool-down tactics: frozen berries, lots of fans, the occasional coupe colonel. And for a chilling of the mind, books and movies that are ‘cold’. Even penguins huddled together in a blizzard (as in March of the Penguins) are an object of envy to me when the temperature is above 90.

Right now I am reading a very cold book: The Terror by Dan Simmons. It is a nautical adventure where the ships never move. They are trapped in the arctic, frozen in place in their search for the Northwest Passage. And there is something on the ice with them, a malevolent creature shaped like a polar bear but much larger and much more intelligent.

I’m a fan of Dan Simmons’ Hugo-winning Hyperion and of Patrick O’Brian’s tales of the Royal Navy, so The Terror appeals to me on many fronts. But on a hot day, its greatest appeal is the ice that is groaning around the ships. Brrrrr!

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
 

Good Goth! - by Ruth

I love a good gothic novel, but new ones have been scarce since the genre went out of fashion a couple of decades ago.  What's a girl to do when she's read all of Daphne Du Maurier, Mary Stewart and Barbara Michaels?  So I was incredibly pleased to find a brand spanking new AND excellent book that matched my idea of a gothic: The Séance by John Harwood.  It all begins with the death of a young girl, the mother's overwhelming grief and the elder, surviving daughter's need to alleviate that grief.  But, of course, there's a back story and, of course, it involves a sinister man, a decrepit mansion, a romance, a woman (possibly) in peril, and a supernatural element.  It's convoluted and told from multiple points of view and just oh so delicious!