An Embarrassment of Riches

Lawyers and Solicitors and Barristers, Oh My! - by Ruth All of my siblings are attorneys which means that the conversation at family gatherings can be a bit contentious and peppered with legalese. This talk, coupled with the law classes I took as an undergraduate in political science, has at least given me a decent grounding in the American legal system. Most everything I know about the English judicial system, however, has come from mystery novels and television.  A patron recently introduced me to a great but, alas, short mystery series starring some young London legal eagles and an Oxford professor. I am sometimes baffled by all of the lawyerly terminology, but that hasn't prevented me from enjoying the banter that goes on amongst the five principal players including Cantrip who has an "inferior" education (Cambridge rather than Oxford) and Julia, who gets her knickers in a twist on a fairly regular basis. The Shortest Way to Hades finds them investigating the death of a young woman who has turned greedy and demanded 100,000 pounds in exchange for her signature on a document that will allow an heiress to avoid massive taxes on a multiple million pound inheritance. Was the girl pushed over the balcony or was it suicide?  As Hilary Tamar (the Oxford professor) points out, if it was murder, then the wrong girl died. For more judicial antics, try the Rumpole of the Bailey series by John Mortimer. While not the first in the series, Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders provides the back-story on Horace Rumpole's early years. For a wonderful television show about an English law firm and some courtroom drama, watch Kavanagh Q.C. starring the fabulous John Thaw. Any other great stuff out there to amuse me while also increasing my knowledge of law in Great Britain?

Our Best Idea by guest blogger Martha

Our guest blogger is Martha, who is the Reference Coordinator for the library.

The summer after my freshman year of college I followed a cute boy West to Yellowstone National Park where we had jobs waiting tables. That summer I fell madly in love, not with the boy, but with the park. I was floored by the majesty of the wilderness. Watching Ken Burns' recent series The National Parks: America's Best Idea rekindled that passion and my desire to learn more about our National Parks.

As luck would have it Timothy Egan has a new book out called The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America. It’s a beautifully written account of the formation of the national forest service, the American conservation movement, Roosevelt and Pinchot’s passion for the wilderness, and a heartbreaking account of the fire of 1910. Growing up in the Midwest I didn't know very much about the fire of 1910 and was surprised to lean it was the largest wildfire in American history. Egan says in less than two days, it torched more than three million acres, burned five towns to the ground, and killed nearly one hundred people. To give some perspective, he explains, it’s like having the entire state of Connecticut burn in one weekend.
Egan has a delightful writing style; it’s as if he’s flopped on your living room couch regaling you with a tale filled with passion, drama, and politics. As a presidential history fan I loved reading about Roosevelt’s relationship with Gifford Pinchot; it was something I hadn't read about in other Roosevelt biographies.
Mr. Egan was recently interviewed by NPR and I expect that explains the large hold list on this book. If you need a national park fix while waiting for The Big Burn you can try the book version of the series (The National Parks: An Illustrated History), Norman MacLean's Young Men & Fire or Gifford Pinchot’s autobiography Breaking New Ground.

I Love L.A. - by Markrid

A few things about Los Angeles.

The ocean is always cold and rough and full of riptides.

The backbone of L.A. County is made of steep wild mountains covered with sweet combustible chaparral, and sometimes also with snow, and within 20 minutes you can be right in among them from most of the 626 and 818 area codes.

Most of the movie-and-TV stuff happens in a very small part of the west side. “Everyone on the West Side is ‘on location’!” a friend said, describing the showbiz self-importance which tilts into the ridiculous.

In most of the county, though, there's a huge and vital kind of human plate tectonics going on: Latin America's cultures grinding against the Pacific Rim's. An excellent place to see this in action is at the Costco in Alhambra on a weekend afternoon.

No place else changes as fast. “I think I get it,” another friend said thoughtfully. We were sitting outside the Melrose Avenue Johnny Rocket’s, watching the highly embellished human parade. “You might as well have your art on the hoof.”

You are free to invent and re-invent yourself endlessly there, and people will mostly take you for whoever you say you are.

Poinsettias will grow into fair-sized trees, given the chance. If you spit a date pit over the side of the porch, a little palm tree might pop up. There are black widows in the garage, and in bad drought years tarantulas come out in the daytime. A flock of feral parrots can screech loud enough to blot out thought.

If you get off the freeway, you’ll find the most anonymous-looking suburbs have little time-warp Main Streets that will just break your heart.

A little more about LA:

Chavez Ravine is the area north of downtown where whole neighborhoods of Mexican-Americans were uprooted to make room for Dodger Stadium. It’s also the name of two great related works, the reissued 1949 album of Don Normark’s photographs documenting the vanished community, and Ry Cooder’s 2005 music CD on the same theme.

Nobody gets LA’s smudgy pink air and belief in magical possibilities as well as Francesca Lia Block. Her Weetzie Bat books for young adults, and Quakeland for grownups, have equal parts glitter, loneliness, hope, and strong female characters.

The electrifying documentary Rize shows African-American kids in South Central making beautiful community art - the dance form known as krumping - out of nothing but passion.

Follow the rise of the Crips in Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member.

Carolyn See is one of those authors who immediately seems like a favorite friend.

Her look at family weirdness in her memoir Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America is so recognizable that we all might have grown up next door to her; yet her blue-collar 1950s Eagle Rock - little stucco bungalows, cracked sidewalks, brown grass - is pure LA.

She also gives us a terrific, racy fable about art, survival, and finding one’s vocation in The Handyman, which may be the perfect LA novel: funny, breezy, and wise.

Bones - by guest blogger Chelsea Cain (watch)

 Our guest blogger is bestselling author Chelsea Cain (www.chelseacain.com/). She writes dark grisly thrillers set in Portland. Hear her speak at the Central Library on Saturday February 21st, 1-2:30 p.m. More details here.

I resisted Bones for a long time.  It goes back to my love-hate relationship with David Boreanaz. I loved Buffy and I loved Angel (though I only started watching it when Buffy ended and desperation kicked in – I mean, at that point I would have watched a spin-off about Dawn). 

Don't get me wrong.  I totally had a crush on him in Buffy. I mean, damaged, soulful vampire – what's not to like, right ladies?  But there was also something – how to say this? – a bit dim about him, like he was one incisor short of a full set of teeth.  Take away the black togs, the Byronic back-story, and he was mighty like your average high school jock.  

In Bones David Boreanaz plays an FBI agent named Seely Booth who wears snazzy belt buckles and shoots people a lot.  His partner, Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan is a forensic scientist.  She's played by Emily Deschanel who is the sister of Zooey Deschanel – the quirky indie actress with the fantastic bangs.  Dr. Brennan is serious and smart and a little nerdy.  Booth is cocky and funny and defensive. 

It's a familiar set-up.  Male/Female investigative team -- opposites in every way -- solve crimes while resisting the unexpected urge to do the horizontal mamba. 

But Bones is elevated by its cast and writing.  At least that's what I'd been hearing all that time I was resisting watching it.  And finally, since I write thrillers for a living – and do most of my research by watching cop shows on TV -- I gave Bones a shot. 

And you know what?  

(I love it.)

I don't care how much my husband makes fun of me. 

I don't even care that I'm so late jumping on the bandwagon.

You know that great feeling when you discover a show that you love and there are like thirty episodes on DVD?  It's like having a whole bag of M&Ms or a whole bottle of Vicodin. 

You can enjoy it all the more, because you know there's more. 

Chelsea Cain was born in 1972 and lived the first few years of her life on a hippie commune in Iowa.
Her first novel featuring Detective Archie Sheridan and serial killer Gretchen Lowell, Heartsick, was a New York Times bestseller. The follow-up in the series – Sweetheart -- also a NYT bestseller, is available in stores now.  The third installment, Evil At Heart, hits bookstores in September 2009.
Chelsea is also the author of:
Dharma Girl: A Road Trip Across the American Generations
The Hippie Handbook
Confessions of a Teen Sleuth
Does This Cape Make Me Look Fat? Pop Psychology for Superheroes
She also edited the anthology Wild Child: Girlhoods in the Counterculture, was a former columnist for The Oregonian and The Portland Mercury, and has published work in British Elle, The New York Times Book Review, and Ms. Magazine.
Chelsea lives in Portland, Oregon, with her family.