11 Birthdays by Wendy Mass

Imagine living the same day over and over (and over) again. I know what some of you are thinking: “But this already describes my existence to a T! My life is completely banal, and most days are completely filled with mundane tasks such as folding laundry, bill paying, determining why the garbage disposal doesn’t work, and pretending to pay attention at PTA meetings. Would some please help me??!!” If this is you, please see our travel section in Central Express. But for those of you who do not need an intervention, imagine the confusion of having to repeat the same day again and again…

Now imagine you’re only 11 years old.

How confusing is that?

Amanda and Leo used to be close friends who always shared their birthdays together. But after a falling out at their tenth birthday party, the two haven’t spoken, let alone planned another joint venture. Amanda had accepted they would be celebrating their birthdays separately from now on. What she wasn’t prepared for was repeatedly living the day (and having to see her sister wearing the same stupid shirt over and over!) Will Amanda ever see her 12th birthday? 11 Birthdays by Wendy Mass is a good book for children and for adults who need a cute and quick read.

Time Travelers

The movie made from Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife will be in theaters this week. This is one of the very few books I've read that I can truly and without hyperbole say is 'mind-bending'. Right now, because of the movie, there are many holds on it. However, there are LOTS of other time-travel titles in the library for both kids and adults! If the topic intrigues you, I can recommend Charles Dickinson's A Shortcut in Time, which has similar themes, and also Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. See you whenever!

Book Review: "Little Brother"

"Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow. Tor Teen, 2008.

I don't remember how I heard about this title, but I'm sure glad I found it! My husband read it first, and called it a "page turner" and "required reading for every teen." My teen daughter also read it and called it "good." I read it and have decided to become a LOT more proactive and thoughtful about how I spread traces of my life and activities online.

Marcus (aka W1n5t0n) and friends have skipped school to play an online scavenger hunt-type computer game near San Francisco. Just about that time, terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge. Marcus and friends are "detained" for questioning for several days, and then released. However, in those few days, California has been transformed into a police state by the Department of Homeland Security as they search for the terrorists. Marcus uses his knowledge of computer networking and security systems to take on the DHS single-handedly and attempts to end their lock on people's civil rights.

Doctorow is a digital rights activist and works with the Electronic Freedom Foundation. He also blogs and has a respectable list of published books, some of which are available at Sacramento Public Library.

What I'm Reading: The Next Thing On My List

"The Next Thing On My List" by Jill Smolinski. New York : Shaye Areheart Books, 2007.

I just finished this charming novel and found it grew on me slowly, but touchingly. The premise was very different: June feels responsible for the accidental death of her passenger, Marissa, and decides to complete the "20 things to do before my 25th birthday" list Marissa leaves behind. However, as the plot and characters developed, I grew genuinely fond of them all, and found myself relating to them as real people.

The unexpected aspect, for me, was the thoughtfulness June evokes in the reader as she works hard to complete the list before Marissa's birthday. That thoughtfulness spilled out of the pages and into my life, as I reflected on some of the questions June raises about the meaning of life, of death, of family, of friends, - and most importantly, of self.

Sacramento Public has only a few copies of this title, but it is also available through our Link+ partner libraries, should ours be all checked out. Jill Smolinski is also the author of a previous novel, "Flip flopped".

Book Review : "The Color of the Sea"

"Color of the Sea" by John Hamamura. New York : Anchor Books, c2007

Hamamura has written an intensely personal - and autobiographical - exploration of the times bracketing the Second World War. In short vignettes, we see Isamu "Sam" growing from a young boy in Hawaii to a young man in Lodi, fulfilling his obligation to get a college education so as to become the "winning lottery ticket" for his family. We experience the disruption as his family is transported to camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and we share his unwavering devotion to Keiko. He is tapped by the Army to teach the Japanese language to interpreters.

The author continually explores the border between what I want and what others expect of me in themes related to immigrant labor, racial discrimination, family separation, "belonging", loyalty, personal integrity, love, and the horrors of war. It offers an insider's view of the events - a much different perspective than the one experienced by most other Americans living in California and Hawaii.

This novel is one of the 2007 winners of the Alex Awards for fiction written for adults, but with a special interest for teens.

Book Review: Flyboys: A True Story of Courage

The story of War - its impact - is not so much about what happens during a given conflict or even after. Rather, what of life before the storm? Taken in perspective, this is where the essential tragedy of war-making lay. James Bradley's Flyboys: A True Story of Courage excels at exploring this question. 9 U.S. Naval airmen during the latter stages of the Second World War are shot down over the Japanese island of Ichi Jima, one a future President of the United States. Their fates vary, but taking one from being a soda jerk in rural Missouri to a desolate, sulphur-ladened, rock in the North Pacific makes for the thickest of ironies. Bradley tells the story well.

The author is also adept at setting the stage of the early War in terms of colonial aggression. Colonialism, back to its genesis has been the province of the white European: the English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italians, Portuguese, Germans...heck, even the Vikings and their predecessing Normans were adept imperialists. However, when it came time for Japan to step forward and acquire its piece of the colonial pie, they were met with resistance. He acknowledges the West's hypocrisy, but never comes anywhere close to becoming a Tokyo apologist. This is, however, a refreshing view of the East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere (Imperialese for Japan's occupation of East Asia), and one that this librarian's not read before. Let's just look at this as a fuller view of history and certainly nothing more.

There's a lot going on in Flyboys, but if ever one were able to take that Missouri soda jerk and place him not more than a few degrees from Hideki Tojo, Bradley does. He pulls it off.

Also take note of the closing pages of the book. The sentimentality of the books final passage will leave you with a thoughtful smile.

Review: Cathy's Book

"Cathy's Book : if found call (650)266-8233" by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman. Running Press, 2006.

Cathy, a senior in a Bay Area high school, journals about events that happen to her after she starts dating Victor. He suddenly dumps her, and she and her best friend, Emma, do their detective thing to find out why. They become involved in murders, burglary, kidnapping, and laboratory experiments, reminiscent of edgy, alternate reality internet gaming. Cathy's book is illustrated copiously with her sketches and doodles.

The jacket blurb indicates that the authors are, in fact, PC Game creators (MechWarrior, I Love Bees), and invites readers to "Read. Explore. Investigate. Examine the Clues. Call the phone numbers. Access the websites. And when you're done, you'll know that the teen novel will never be the same again."

I didn't explore, investigate, or call the phone numbers, but if anyone does, I invite you to post what you find out in a comment.

(Original post at "Bibliog"; used with permission.)

Review: "The Devil in the White City"

"The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson. Crown Publishers, 2003.

Sick fascination - this meticulously documented narrative of the creation of the "White City" for Chicago's Columbian expo in the early 1890s is told in tandem with the gruesome story of H. Holmes, a serial killer that managed to dispatch as many as 20 women and children in the span of a couple of years within a few blocks of the fair without detection! He cremated them, then hired someone to clean the bones and reassemble the skeletons, which he sold to medical schools. Not until years later, when a distraught mom hired the Pinkerton detective agency (now operating as Securitas) to find her missing children, did the full story emerge and become sensationalized in the press.

The story of the fair and the depraved sociopath is so compellingly told that I couldn't put the book down until I reached the very last words. The parallel stories progress relentlessly and with graphic description. We come to know the major players, both good and evil, perpetrators and victims, as if they were alive today. No forensic TV series could have told it any better!

An unexpected side entertainment was discovering the luminaries associated with the fair: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Frank Lloyd Wright, Pullman and others; as well as the number of products still available today that debuted then: shredded wheat, the Ferris wheel, neoclassical public buildings, alternating current.

Book Review: Gold Rush Capitalists: Greed and Growth in Early Sacramento:

It all started on an early spring day in 1851 in Sacramento with a game of Monte, a classic game of the Old West. What resulted was the death of two men, Charles Myers, a wheelwright from Ohio, and Frederick Roe, a career thug and gambler from England.

As it turned out, accusations of cheating were discharged toward Roe; he protested, a fight broke out, and when model citizen Myers tried to break up the row, Roe leveled a pistol at his head and pulled the trigger. The results were mayhem and an eventual lynching of the Englishman from a massive oak at the Horse Market, or what would today be where 6th Street rests between “K” and “L” Streets.

Although a simple vignette within Mark Eifler’s larger text, Gold Rush Capitalists: Greed and Growth in Sacramento, the Roe lynching typified the growing pangs of the new American West, a place where few civil institutions existed. Eifler gives careful discussion to the young city’s behavior in the wake of the shooting, where Harvard-educated, landed merchants were driven by blood lust against the will of underpaid and undermanned policemen who implored due process. There is further value in Eifler’s look at one of the American West’s first class wars, known more commonly as the “Squatters Riot.” Child Sacramento was the domain of the wealthy speculator until migrants arrived from far and wide seeking cheap, workable land. The result was revolution on a miniature scale.

To Eifler, both of these events had meaning for a city slowly slouching toward stable economic and political institutions. It’s almost as if life in the antebellum west reflected a social experiment; an academic took a cross-section of America, threw it into a cultural, political and legal vacuum and simply stood back to see what happened. Eifler tells the story well in addition to providing a full history of the early city.

Review: The Ghost Writer

The Ghost Writer by John Harwood. Harcourt, 2004.

The suspense builds slowly in this gothic thriller. As a shy teen living in Australia, Gerard discovers a ghost story written by his grandmother, and he establishes an intense and passionate correspondence with Alice, a pen friend in England. Both seemingly unrelated events inexplicably upset his mother, who suddenly stops talking about her home and childhood in England, declaring that one of her mother's ghost stories came true. She becomes more and more paranoid, fearful, and controlling until her death several years later.

Gerard, now an adult and employed as a librarian, determines to find out about his mother's life and family in England - and to meet the elusive Alice, with whom he has continued to correspond. Horrifyingly, past and present begin to fuse, blurring the border between normal and paranormal. Murder and madness are revealed, and spirits and ghostlike voices drive this author's first novel to its satisfying and unexpected conclusion.

It's "One Book" Night!

Tonight, from 6-8 p.m., local mystery author John Lescroart will discuss his latest book, "The Suspect". The program will be held at Central Library in the Library Galleria. Doors open at 5:15 p.m. You can find program details in the Event Calendar and in Library News on page 6, or call Telephone Reference at 916-264-2920 after 10 a.m.

The Sacramento Bee published an interview with Lescroart last week that makes it sound like tonight's program will be very interesting. Local bookstores are offering a 30% discount on the title - a list is available in the Bee article - and copies will be available for sale at the program this evening .

Sacramento Public owns copies in print, large print, CD audiobook, and downloadable e-audiobook formats. Add your name to the wait list by clicking the "request" button on the screen that pops up when you click your preferred format.

Book Review: Where They Lay: Searching for America's Lost Soldiers

Where They Lay: Searching for America's Lost Soldiers, Earl Swift, Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

I've not seen a single episode of television's CSI (Crime Scene Investigation), but I'd guess that if one took the show out of its sexy LA and/or Miami confines and mixed in a Texas-sized mud pie, poisonous reptile, unbearable humidity, and a million or so fire ants, you might come close to understanding the worldwide quest of the U.S. Military's Central Identification Laboratory (CILHI), an organization tasked to find and identify the nation's lost soldiers. Telling the tale is Earl Swift, a Virginia journalist, who journied to Laos in 2001 to surveil the group and their hunt for a crew of missing Army aviators, whose helicopter went down near the Vietnam/Laos border in 1971.

The engine of Swift's story is human interest. In not much time, you know the crew. From the spitshined complexion of the chopper commander to the muscle car-loving door gunner, the author brings you into their quirky, homey, chain-smoking world. Then he rips them from you; Their steel machine crashes and they are gone. But, at this point, you're in, part of the search team, walking just behind Swift down some dusty Degar hunting trail, and you'll accept even the slightest form of proof: a helmet, a manufacturing i.d., bullet casing.

At the beginning of the account, Swift asks us if it's worth it: spending $100 million a year to find our fallen sons and fathers. By the time the collective fate of Jack Barker, Johnny Chub, Johnny Dugan (see photo above) and Will Dillender is decided, you have your answer.

Book Review: Disgrace

reviewed by V. K. Ehrenreich

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee

The hero of Disgrace is a real “b_ _ _ _ _ _.” The Booker Prize winner, J. M. Coetzee provides us with a portrait of the new Afrikaner who is forced to interact with blacks on an equal often humiliating basis. The balance of power is in flux in the new South Africa. What galls Communications Professor David Lurie is the knowledge that a black man (actually 3 blacks) can rape his daughter and get away with it. What escapes Lurie is the similarity between his alleged rape of his young female student and the violent act of the black youths.

The dynamics of the rapes differ in the “how”. On a rainy day in Cape Town, Lurie invites his young student into his house. Under the spell of Eros, the professor partakes of his dessert from a limp, passive student. When the girl’s boyfriend threatens Lurie and tells the girl’s prominent family, the prof loses his job and seeks refuge in his disgrace at his lesbian daughter’s Eastern Cape flower farm/ dog kennel. On a Wednesday morning, three black youths ask to use Lucy’s phone; once inside they lock Lurie in the loo (bathroom) and partake of Lucy’s desserts. Under the spell of hatred, the three blacks plunge their violent disturbing revenge for centuries of abuse into the limp, passive Lucy. Is passion out of lust more acceptable than passion out of hatred?

Lurie nearly manages to redeem himself in his determination to protect his daughter from the “bywoner” (tenant farmer) Petrus. Having knowledge of the planned rape/theft and the rapists, one of whom is his nephew, Petrus is eager to annex Lucy’s property to his small farm. Although not overtly stated, Petrus believes the land belongs to the blacks and he is reclaiming what belonged to his people before the invasion of the whites. Again the dynamics are in the “how”. Petrus is very polite with his long pipe and smile but his deeds are those of the greedy white man. Symbolically, the lives of the two races are inextricably linked in the child Lucy now carries. While seeking to dissuade Lucy from accepting Petrus’ offer of protection and marriage, Lurie is helpless to protect his daughter in the new South Africa. The only explanation/redemption for Lurie’s initial act of disgrace lies in his belief that, “Every woman I have been close to has taught me something about myself (p 70).” Lucy complains to her egocentric father that everything is about “you”. She is right on.

Coetzee, J. M., Disgrace, 1999, New York:Viking.

Veronica Ehrenreich holds a MFA in Film and a MLIS. She taught Film Studies at California State University, Sacramento, and is an on-call librarian at Sacramento Public Library and California State University, Sacramento.

J. M. Coetzee has won several literary awards for his fiction and non-fiction works. Coetzee is the only writer to have won the Booker Award twice.

Book Review: Sacramento : Indomitable City

"Sacramento: Indomitable City" by Steven Avella. Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, S.C., 2003.

Whether you're new to Sacramento or a long-time resident, a look at Steven Avella's effort is worth your time. This history of the city, from its Native American roots to its current-day challenge with affordable housing, is presented in a highly readable form; it's also laced with a number of great photos.

A large portion of Avella's research interests dwell in the early history of the Catholic Church in the American Midwest and California. In this regard, his treatment of the development of institutions of worship in the city is particularly strong. An additional strength rests in his discussion of the city's early growth in the context of disasters, both natural and manmade. Fire, flood, and famine are all integral features of the city's heritage and Avella's ability to deliver the essence of this history without burdening the reader with needless verbage is refreshing and effective.

Avella is a professor of history at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and is currently working on a biography of Sacramento Bee newspaper editor C.K. McClatchy (1883-1936).

Book Review: "The Suspect"

"The Suspect" by John T. Lescroart. New York, Dutton 2007.
The entire story takes place between the time Stuart returns home from Lake Tahoe to discover his wife has drowned in their hot tub, and the grand jury hearing at which he is accused of her murder. With exquisite detail, Lescroart draws a bead on first one character then another, as the attorneys battle it out before the judge.

This is the One Book title that will be discussed in October as part of the Sacramento Public Library's sesquicentennial celebration. I thought I'd get a head start on this year's book because I fell in love after the fact with a previous One Book title, "Epitaph for a Peach." I really regretted missing the author talks, and wanted to be ready for this year's events.

Book Review: The Hobgoblin of the Good, Bad and Ugly: Jack London's John Barleycorn

Jack London's John Barleycorn: or Alcoholic Memoirs (R.Bentley: Cambridge, MA, 1978).

The Bay Area's iconic working-class scribe, Jack London, proved all too human in his autobiographical John Barleycorn. London was a life-long slave to alcoholism, an afflication whose roots go back to his early years as a "Oyster Pirate" in the San Francisco Bay, where his trips to saloon after saloon and close affiliation with any number of free-drinking immigrants sold the young writer on the "fruit of the vine." The significance of the saloon for London is paramount; cool in the summer, warm in the winter, and a temple whose altar London was more than ready to kneel at. Although it's seldom that he ever comes close to calling it a problem, London's ruminations are enough for us to understand the subtle concern he carries for his well-being. In this regard, the reader gains a unique window into London's troubled, traveled soul.

It bears mention that London, on more than one occassion, and under the spell of booze, seriously considered suicide; perhaps the most notable was his swim in the Carquinez Strait when a final decision to live only came after drifting by Crocket. How different American Literature would have been had London opted to do himself in. Overall, the complexity and paradox of the Socialist-Spendthrift, Racist-Humanist is revealed in a lucid prose that only the short-lived London could deliver...