Let's Get This Party Started by Soleil Moon Frye

Reading Level: Adult Non-Fiction
(4 out of 5)

You know that this is going to be a fun book when it is written by Punky Brewster!    Soleil Moon Frye doesn't disappoint.  I think I oh'ed and ah'ed over every page.  Her party ideas are fun, affordable, and they can be adapted for library programs.  I absolutely loved all the color pictures.  Most of you know I love my picture books!

If you are looking for new ideas for party planning check this book out!

Death Benefit by Robin Cook

Reading Level: Adult

Submitted by Gerti

Robin Cook is one of my favorite authors, so it comes as not surprise that I really enjoyed one of his recent books, called Death Benefit.  It involves (briefly) several of his stock characters, New York Medical Examiners Laurie Montgomery and Jack Stapleton, who are some of my favorites.  But in this book, the protagonist is Pia Grazdani, a Colombia University medical student, who finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery while working in a lab on campus.  Both the professors running the lab die, and everyone else assumes they are killed by germs they have been working on, but Pia can't buy that.

The subplot involves a pair of Wall Street hotshots who have created a company that buys back life insurance policies from sick, elderly people, and their profits would be down if the Columbia professors work growing human organs were successful.  So they solicit some Albanian mobsters to kill the professors, and make it look like they were killed by their germ experiments, while in reality they have radiation poisoning.

Pia and the medical examiners get together while she is trying to find out whether the professors bodies are giving off alpha radiation, but her interference causes the mobsters to kidnap her and shoot another fellow from the lab.  It seems like all the loose ends have been tied ups, until the New York Albanians discover that the girl they've kidnapped is related to an Albanian mobster from New Jersey, and then they turn on the Wall Street guys.

If it seems complicated, it is, but there is enough of both medical information and spy drama to make for a rollicking read.  There are some mysteries left unresolved, especially regarding the workmen who spend days working on the air conditioning in the lab.  Are they mobsters?  One of the fellows does talk to Pia about her Albanian-sounding name, but it is never made clear that they are mobsters and that was when the radioactive material was planted in the professor's office.  Except for the question mark, I think "Death Benefit" was well written and will please any true Cook fan, just as it pleased me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

All locations of LCPL will be closed in observance of Thanksgiving.  Normal hours 10am-6pm will resume on Friday, 11/29/13.  Come say Hi if you aren't out braving the Black Friday shopping!

Catching Fire the Movie!

Sunday night I went and saw Catching Fire and I loved it.  It has been a while since I read the books so I didn't spend the whole movie analyzing what was right and what was wrong.  For the most part it seemed like they followed the book.  If they made changes I think it just enhanced the movie.  Of course since this is a trilogy the ending leaves you hanging.

But never fear we only have another year to wait to see Mockingjay part 1!  I still can't believe they are splitting the book into two movies.  They just love to torture us.

If you have seen the movie leave a comment letting us know how you thought it compared to the book.

Divergent by Veronica Roth (Movie Trailer)

I thought I would give everyone a sneak peek at the Divergent movie trailer.  Seeing the action makes me want to read the book.  I guess I better get myself on the waiting list!

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Reading Level: Adult Fiction

Submitted by Gerti

Back in the days when I taught a short story class to college freshmen, Sandra Cisneros was one of the authors the school chose for me to teach them. The story they chose of hers was called “The House on Mango Street,” and it comes from this collection of vignettes, published back in 1984. I never liked it as much as some of the other stories I had to teach, and I was amazed every semester that the students I taught at the New Hampshire technical college always responded so well to it.

Cisneros writes this story collection about the daily life, dreams and encounters of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. We see the house she lives in, and meet her family, neighbors, friends and teachers, and despite her simple “young girl” language, the characters are distinctly if not completely drawn. We meet the landlord, the crazy cat lady, and the teenaged neighbor girl who does the baby sitting who is desperate to escape that street and that life. We see the desperation and “harsh reality” of the area, symbolized by a beautiful hidden garden that gradually gets filled with junker cars after the hard-working Asian family who tended it moves away. We see the girl Esperanza’s shame at the shabbiness of her house, and her growing desire to exceed expectations and leave the area to become someone different from her own mother, someone who lives up to their dreams and is not burdened by raising children.

The critics still like this book more than do I, and they heap praise on Cisneros’ writing. “Marvelous… spare yet luminous” reads the blurb from the San Francisco Chronicle writer, although I would only agree with the word “spare.” “Deeply moving” writes the critic from the Miami Herald, and once again, I disagree. I find too much of Cisneros’s anger in the vignettes, and am uncomfortable with her obviously biographical “voice”. I find it more poignant than delightful, as spare as poetry but without a poet’s skill. I don’t find her “one of the most brilliant of today’s young writers” as Gwendolyn Brooks says, and find the pictures Cisneros’ draws as difficult to access and understand as a blue period Picasso.

The only story that sings for me (with the clever line “Today we are Cinderella”) is the one where Esperanza and her sisters are given second-hand shoes to wear. The young girls run up and around the neighborhood wearing the fashionable footware, until they realize that the high heels have turned them into sexual objects to the men in the neighborhood, and then they hide the shoes away until they are thrown out. Only in this story do I hear the shrill note of the neighborhood, and feel the fear and sobriety that is the undercurrent of living there.

I don’t like it, and I wouldn’t want to read more by Cisneros in this style. But at least I can say now that I’ve read the whole book, and “it’s not her, it’s me.”

Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman

Reading Level: Adult Non-Fiction

Submitted by Gerti

As you might expect from an author whose name means “holy man” in German, Deborah Heiligman has written an account of what religion meant in the life of a very famous man - Charles Darwin. For those who don’t know, he was the British naturalist who came up with the “survival of the fittest” concept of evolution, and hence butted heads with those who were more comfortable with the creation story in the Bible, where God created everything that ever lived. This book spends most of its time dealing with that dilemma in Darwin’s life.

But the method this book uses to examine the gulf between Darwin’s theories and commonly held religious beliefs in the 1800s is to examine the relationship between Darwin and his wife Emma, who was far more religious than her husband. Heiligman’s book details the Darwin’s many children and their happy family life. And it shows how the death of the couple’s favorite child, Annie, challenged Emma’s belief in heaven and killed Charles’ entirely. More important in regards to his scientific contributions, it details what influenced Darwin to make his great leap of thought – including his voyage on the HMS Beagle and the Thomas Robert Malthus’ essay on human population growth and decline that Darwin thought might explain the growth and decline of plant and animal species as well. The book even shows the influence Darwin had on popular culture – from the cartoons that lampoon the relationship between monkeys and humans, to the novel “Wives and Daughters” by Elizabeth Gaskell where the hero was modeled after Darwin.

I found the book interesting, as it humanizes the iconic figure, showing how worried Darwin was about releasing “The Origin of Species” before it was perfect, and how he dealt with public and private opposition to his theory, as well as to closely-related rival theories. The text delves into his many fascinations – with bugs, birds, for example, and explains what might seem a mystery for modern people - why he was able to spend so much time being a naturalist (his family was related to the rich and famous Wedgwoods.) It also lists Darwin’s many illnesses, and shows how hard he had to work to overcome his frequent bouts with headaches and intestinal distress in order to research and write his many books (and journals).

So the book taught me more about Darwin the man than a simple biography would have. But my criticism is that, at times, the author’s need to link religion to a particular moment in Darwin’s life felt forced, although I understand that she wanted to make this more than an “ordinary” biography. Yet, even with that issue, the book is worth reading if you have any interest in the life of this ordinary man with an extraordinary mind.

Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan

Reading Level: Adult Non-Fiction

Submitted by Gerti

Dad is not only fat, he is FUNNY, which is no surprise given that the author is Chesterton native Jim Gaffigan. In this comic look at parenthood, the LaLumiere graduate writes with wit and humor about how a child from northern Indiana ends up living in a two-bedroom New York apartment with a wife and five children.

I requested the book after seeing Gaffigan during his latest appearance at the Radisson theater in Merrillville. During his lengthy show, I could barely catch my breath for laughing, especially as some of his humor deals with what it’s like to live here in the region. While not as funny as seeing him in person (tone of voice, and let’s face it, his unique look, add a lot to the jokes), I thoroughly enjoyed his riffs on what it’s like taking care of pale children, going to restaurants with kids, and trying to get the kids to sleep. My kids are already teenagers, so those crazy sleep-deprived days of infants and cribs are far behind me, but his writing was evocative enough to remind me of what I wasn’t really missing. He has some sharp commentary on family gatherings, and on how the enthusiasm among his friends for his growing family has dimmed with each addition. The drawings and photographs that accompany the text are also exceptionally funny.

While I can’t relate to living in NY, anyone with kids will be able to sympathize with Gaffigan as he tries to survive the hurdles of having kids in different schools, different parenting styles, and trying to get through family vacations and holiday gatherings. I love his self-deprecating humor, and while not as funny as seeing him live, “Dad is Fat” was a welcome, well-paced diversion while I was waiting for my own kids to finish their sporting practice and music lessons.