Memphis Reads

Fiction/Gay and Lesbian/Historical

Labels: Gay and Lesbian Fiction, Historical Fiction, Reviews by Christina Barnes

The Memphis Public Library is hosting a Friends of the Library Fall Book Sale this weekend. Stop by the Central Library this Friday & Saturday, October 28-29, to take advantage of great prices on books, music, and movies. Be sure to buy some horror novels to give away for All Hallow's Read.

Author Neil Gaiman is encouraging everyone to start a new tradition--give out scary books during the week of and the night of Halloween. Click here to learn about contests and other events surrounding All Hallow's Read. (Watch the video. The "zombies" in the background are hilarious.)

What scary books would you give away for All Hallow's Read?

Labels: News and Notes

Fiction/Young Adult

Andrea reviews SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson

Labels: Fiction, Reviews by Andrea King, Young Adult

Fiction/Historical

Labels: Historical Fiction, Reviews by Kay Due

From Shelf-awareness.com:

"The CBS daytime show The Talk has launched a book segment called "The Talk Book Buzz," focusing on new nonfiction on a variety of topics, from financial advice to parenting. Books will be announced a month in advance."

Click here to view the first book selection.

Thanks go to Beth for the information.

Labels: News and Notes

The finalists for the 2011 National Book Awards were announced last week. Visit the National Book Foundation's website to view all nominees. The winners will be announced November 16, 2011.

Galleycat has compiled book excerpts of the National Book Award finalists. Click here to browse the titles.

There has been a change in the "Young People's Literature" category. Shine by Lauren Myracle was withdrawn from the list of finalists, but the National Book Foundation is donating $5,000 to the Matthew Shepard Foundation in her honor. For more details click here to read the NYTimes.com article.

Labels: Awards, News and Notes

Join us Tuesday October 18, as Books and Beyond welcomes Don Conaway.
"Don Conaway, lifelong Memphian and writer of the weekly column, Memphasis, will share his observations and opinions on just about everything."

Tuesday, October 18, 2011
10:15 am, Meeting Room B
Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library
3030 Poplar

Labels: Library Events and Programs

Fiction/Young Adult

Andrea reviews BITTER END by Jennifer Brown (Little Brown, 2011)

Alexandra (Alex) Bradford is feeling neglected. When Alex was young, her mother died in a horrible car accident and her dad emotionally checked out when his wife died. Sure, Alex’s best friends, Bethany and Zack, have always been there for her, but she wants someone to love and call her boyfriend.

Enter new student, 18-year-old Cole Cozen. When Alex is asked to tutor him, she is curious as to why he has transferred high schools their senior year. It seems like Cole is a terrific athlete, because of his letter jacket, so why did he switch schools? Alex also notices how attractive Cole is, so his evasive answers don’t really faze her. The closer Alex and Cole become, the less Zack and Bethany are around. Her two best friends are always telling her to be careful and not trust Cole so much.

Alex doesn’t understand why they don’t like Cole. He only pushed her and called her a slut because his parents were stressing him out. He only hit her in the face because she didn’t come to his basketball practice on time. Cole is upset the basketball team lost, so it’s no wonder he threw her down so hard, chipping her tooth and bloodying her face. As frequently as he hurts Alex, Cole is always there to apologize and tell her it will never happen again.

This was a difficult book to read due to the subject of abuse, but the author’s style of writing allowed me to finish the book in two days. I have been where Alex is. Reading about her angry, jealous, abusive boyfriend was not easy, to say the least.

Like Alex, I went from victim to survivor. This young adult novel by Jennifer Brown is a tough one to swallow, but it does give the readers hope. Concluding her story with appendices of hotlines and facts about abuse was excellent because, unfortunately, someone will need that information. This is a well-written novel for teenagers and adults alike.

Andrea King, Poplar-White Station Library

Labels: Fiction, Reviews by Andrea King, Young Adult

Nonfiction/Memphis History

Wayne reviews LOST MEMPHIS by Laura Cunningham (History Press, 2010)

Have you ever wanted to know what the riverfront looked like a hundred years ago or what happened to the giant shoe that was once located on Lamar Avenue? If so, then Lost Memphis, by library assistant and local historian Laura Cunningham is the book for you. As she writes in the introduction, the book “offers on a glimpse of Memphis, from its earliest beginnings to the present. It focuses on aspects of the city’s history that no longer exist, whether due to urban renewal, advancements in technology, or changes in society.” But what a glimpse it is.

Cunningham takes us on a fascinating journey into the Bluff City’s forgotten past. In the book we see the cobblestoned riverfront piled high with cotton, the Frisco Bridge being constructed, and what the city’s first amusement park looked like. In addition we learn many fascinating tidbits about the Bluff City, such as the time a former prime minister of Australia once lost his pants in the lobby of the Admiral Benbow Inn and that the Fortune’s Ice Cream parlor on Union Avenue offered the nation’s first drive-in service. Lost Memphis provides readers the opportunity to travel back in time to see the Bluff City as it looked in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Wayne Dowdy, Business and Social Sciences Department

Note: Laura Cunningham is also the author of Haunted Memphis (previously reviewed). She was also one of many local authors at the library's first ever Bookstock event. View photos from Bookstock on the library's Facebook page.

Labels: History, Memphis History, Nonfiction, Reviews by Wayne Dowdy

Labels: Library Events and Programs, What's Your Flavor Series

Half Empty by David Rakoff was announced as the winner of the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor on October 3, 2011. More about the winner.

About the Thurber Prize:

"Started in 1997, the Thurber Prize for American Humor is the only recognition of the art of humor writing in the United States. A panel of national judges selects the three finalists from a selection of seven or eight semi-finalists. Books submitted for a prize year had to have been published the prior year.

The winner is announced at a special awards ceremony at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City where James Thurber once lived. The winner of the prize receives $5,000 and then is the guest entertainment for the annual December Thurber Birthday Gala."

Click here to view past winners.

Labels: Awards, News and Notes

Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer was announced earlier today as winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

According to a NYTimes.com article, "Mr. Transtromer, 80, has written more than 15 collections of poetry, many of which have been translated into English and 60 other languages." Click here to read the full article.

Transtromer will receive his award along with other Laureates during an award ceremony on December 10 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Click here for interesting Facts and Lists about the Nobel Prize.

Labels: Awards, News and Notes

Robert reviews the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I will always be grateful for being introduced to the literary works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1968. He, to this day, remains among my favorite fiction writers of all time. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918 - 2008), through his often-suppressed writings, tore a hole in the then Iron Curtain by raising awareness of the Soviet Union's Stalin era and particularly the forced labor camp system. This was historical fiction at its absolute best - presenting what I would later deem the important role of literature as supplement to historical survey; thereby broadening our understanding beyond the typical outline of history's important dates, important names and important places.

Solzhenitsyn, in providing for many, a first look behind the Iron Curtain, most importantly, did so with a view of the day-to-day of the common man/the common woman in the Stalin-era Soviet Union. My first Solzhenitsyn reading was The First Circle, immediately followed by One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, and subsequently The Gulag Archipeligo, The Cancer Ward, August 1914, and each of his other literary works. Awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, I give my highest recommendation (banned-books and otherwise) to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who perhaps holds the record of being the most banned-book writer to date.

Robert Bain, Randolph Branch

Labels: Reviews by Robert Bain

Nonfiction/History

Narrative nonfiction was discussed during September's "What's Your Flavor" session at the Central Library. This is a review from one of the class participants.

Becky reviews A NIGHT TO REMEMBER by Walter Lord (Holt, 1955)

The unsinkable ship Titanic sank in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912. A Night to Remember tells the story of the last hours of Titanic and her passengers, from the sighting of the iceberg to the moment she sank beneath the cold and icy waters of the North Atlantic.

Reports say that Carpathia (the first ship on the scene after the Titanic sank), picked up 705 survivors from the lifeboats. However, at 6:15 p.m. on April 15, 1912, word arrived from the ship Olympic that the Titanic sank at 2:20 a.m. and that the Carpathia was on the way to New York with 675 survivors. The actual estimate of lives lost varies to some degree, but the best seemed to come from the British Board of Trade.

An interesting fact is that the Titanic sent the first SOS, which had recently become the new international distress signal replacing “CQD.” While popular belief is that the band played “Nearer My God to Thee” as the ship sank, actual accounts say that a song called “Autumn” was being played. This song was an Episcopal hymn, but even that has been called into question.

The loss of the Titanic brought two things into focus at the time: class distinction and the uncertainty of anything. For me, as a person living in the 21st century an interesting side note is that married women were known only as Mrs. [husband's full name], and not by their own first names, or as a distinct separate entity.

Websites of interest:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61834.A_Night_to_Remember

http://historyinfilm.com/titanic/ntrplot.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/21/books/walter-lord-author-of-historical-books-including-a-night-to-remembe-dies-at-84

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~rlbroberg/Richard/NearerMyGodToThee/TheSoundOfMusic.html

Becky Graham, Central Library

Labels: History, Nonfiction, Reviews by Becky Graham

Nancy Campbell celebrates
THESEUS AND THE MINOTAUR, a story from Greek and Roman mythology

When my family lived in Colorado Springs from 1989-92, residents of a mountain town one pass over tried to ban all Greek and Roman mythology books from school libraries. (They disagreed with polytheism.) Almost-daily references to the characters in these stories have enriched my life.

Listening to my then 6-year-old read Theseus and the Minotaur was especially gratifying. His coming down the stairs on Halloween night dressed in nothing but a towel tied around his waist made me laugh out loud. "I'm going as Theseus!" he exclaimed.

Nancy Campbell, Central Library

Labels: Banned Books Week

Robert Bain celebrates
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel published in 1852 by Harriet Beecher Stowe which is said to have helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible. In the first year it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States. One million copies of the book were sold in Great Britain where the efforts to end slavery notably targeted the United States’ continued practice of slavery.

Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin international and domestic influence were best evidenced by the Duchess of Sutherland, whose anti-slavery “Address to the Christian Women of America,” creating a cross-Atlantic controversy in 1853, was signed by 576,000 English women and when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the Civil War, Lincoln declared, “So this is the little lady who started this great war.”

Robert Bain, Randolph Branch Library

Labels: Banned Books Week

Hollye Ferguson celebrates
the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling are all banned books. I love the fact that one author can capture the hearts and minds of adults and children.

These books spark imagination, teach selflessness, friendship, and teach us to stand up for a cause when we know things are wrong, even if it is not mainstream ideals. These books are a win for children and adult children alike.

--Hollye Ferguson, Parkway Village Library

Labels: Banned Books Week