I Just Read…

…The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British by Sarah Lyall

I was looking for something a little different. Perhaps some travel writing. Perhaps something in the way of humorous essays. I found this charming book, which is something in between.

When Sarah Lyall moved to London in the mid-1990s, she became what cultural anthropologists strive to be: She was an outsider, looking at the British culture from the inside.

A young reporter for the New York Times, Lyall soon became known for amusing and sharp dispatches on her adopted country. Confronted by the eccentricities of these island people (the English husband who never turned on the lights, the legislators who behaved like drunken frat boys, the hedgehog lovers...), she set about trying to figure out the British.

Part anthropological field study and part memoir, The Anglo Files has already received great acclaim and recognition for the astuteness, humor, and sensitivity with which the author wields her pen.

Author Malcom Gladwell says: “The Anglo Files should be handed out, as a public service, at the immigration line at Heathrow.”

Just in case you aren't at Heathrow any time soon, you can find The Anglo Files in the Copper Queen Library's collection of materials on Britain (at 941.086 LYALL).

--by Hanje Richards

Friday Fiction: Margaret Atwood

--by Hanje Richards

Over the years, I have had an on-again-off-again thing about Margaret Atwood, but I notice today, as I prepare this blog post, that in addition to the books I haven’t gotten to yet (including her new novel, The Year of the Flood), I may want to re-read some of her work a second time around.

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian author, poet, critic, essayist, feminist and social campaigner. She is among the most-honored authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award seven times, winning twice. While she may be best known for her work as a novelist, she is also an award-winning poet, having published 15 books of poetry to date.

The Copper Queen Library owns Atwood’s most recent novel: The Year of the Flood. This book is a sequel to Oryx and Crake, Atwood’s 2003 dystopian novel. In Year..., the times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners — a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life — has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God's Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible.

Alias Grace: Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders.

Dr. Simon Jordan, an up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness, is engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace. He listens to her story while bringing her closer and closer to the day she cannot remember. What will he find in attempting to unlock her memories? Is Grace a female fiend? A bloodthirsty femme fatale? Or the victim of circumstances?

Blind Assassin: The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist. Brilliantly weaving together such seemingly disparate elements, Atwood creates a world of astonishing vision and unforgettable impact.

Bluebeard’s Eggs and Other Stories: Glows with childhood memories, the reality of parents growing old, and the casual cruelty men and women inflict on each other. Here is the familiar outer world of family summers at remote lakes, winters of political activism, and seasons of exotic friends, mundane lives, and unexpected loves. But here, too, is the inner world of hidden places and all that emerges from them — the intimately personal, the fantastic, the shockingly real...whether it's what lives in a mysterious locked room or the secret feelings we all conceal.

Bodily Harm: The story of Rennie Wilford, a young journalist whose life has begun to shatter around the edges. Rennie flies to the Caribbean to recuperate, and on the tiny island of St. Antoine, she is confronted by a world where her rules for survival no longer apply. By turns comic, satiric, relentless, and terrifying, Bodily Harm is ultimately an exploration of the lust for power, both sexual and political, and the need for compassion that goes beyond what we ordinarily mean by love.

Handmaid’s Tale: A gripping vision of our society radically overturned by a theocratic revolution, this novel has become one of the most powerful and most widely read of our time.

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife. She may go out once a day to markets whose signs are now pictures because women are not allowed to read. She must pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, for in a time of declining birthrates, her value lies in her fertility, and failure means exile to the dangerously polluted Colonies. Offred can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Now she navigates the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules.

Lady Oracle: Joan Foster is the bored wife of a myopic ban-the-bomber. She takes off overnight as Canada's new superpoet, pens lurid gothics on the sly, attracts a blackmailing reporter, skids cheerfully in and out of menacing plots, hair-raising traps, and passionate trysts, and lands dead and well in Terremoto, Italy. In this remarkable, poetic, and magical novel, Atwood proves yet again why she is considered to be one of the most important and accomplished writers of our time.

Moral Disorder: Stories: This collection of short stories follows the life of a single character, seen as a girl growing up the 1930s, a young woman in the '50s and '60s, and, in the present day, half of a couple, no longer young, reflecting on the new state of the world. Each story focuses on the ways relationships transform a character’s life: a woman’s complex love for a married man, the grief upon the death of parents and the joy with the birth of children, the realization of what growing old with someone you love really means. By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, earthy, shocking, and deeply personal.

Murder in the Dark: Short Fictions and Prose Poems: These short fictions and prose poems are beautifully bizarre: bread can no longer be thought of as wholesome comforting loaves; a poisonous brew is concocted by cynical five year olds; and knowing when to stop is of deadly importance in a game of Murder in the Dark.

Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer on Writing: What do we mean when we say that someone is a writer? Is he or she an entertainer? A high priest of the god Art? An improver of readers’ minds and morals? And who, for that matter, are these mysterious readers? In this wise and irresistibly quotable book, one of the most intelligent writers now working in English addresses the riddle of her art: why people pursue it, how they view their calling, and what bargains they make with their audience, both real and imagined.

To these fascinating issues, Atwood brings a candid appraisal of her own experience as well as a breadth of reading that encompasses everything from Dante to Elmore Leonard. An ambitious artistic inquiry conducted with unpretentiousness and charm, Negotiating with the Dead is an unprecedented insider’s view of the writer’s universe.

Robber Bride: Inspired by "The Robber Bridegroom," a wonderfully grisly tale from the Brothers Grimm in which an evil groom lures three maidens into his lair and devours them, one by one. In her version, Atwood recasts the monster as Zenia, a villainess of demonic proportions, and sets her loose in the lives of three friends, Tony, Charis, and Roz. All three "have lost men, spirit, money, and time to their old college acquaintance, Zenia. At various times, and in various emotional disguises, Zenia has insinuated her way into their lives and practically demolished them.

Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New 1976-1986: Celebrated as a major novelist throughout the English-speaking world, Atwood has also written several volumes of poetry. This book features her poetry from 1976 through 1986.

Surfacing: Part detective novel, part psychological thriller, Surfacing is the story of a talented woman artist who goes in search of her missing father on a remote island in northern Quebec. Setting out with her lover and another young couple, she soon finds herself captivated by the isolated setting, where a marriage begins to fall apart, violence and death lurk just beneath the surface, and sex becomes a catalyst for conflict and dangerous choices.

The Tent: Here, Atwood pushes form once again, with meditations on warlords, pet heaven, and aging homemakers. She gives a sly pep talk to the ambitious young; writes about the disconcerting experience of looking at old photos of ourselves; and examines the boons and banes of orphanhood. Accompanied by her own playful illustrations, Atwood’s droll humor and keen insight make each piece full of clarity and grace. Prescient and personal, delectable and tart, The Tent reflects one of our wittiest authors at her best.

Wilderness Tips: In each of these tales, Atwood deftly illuminates the single instant that shapes a whole life: in a few brief pages, we watch as characters progress from the vulnerabilities of adolescence through the passions of youth into the precarious complexities of middle age. By superimposing the past on the present, Atwood paints interior landscapes shaped by time, regret, and life's lost chances, endowing even the banal with a sense of mystery. Richly layered and disturbing, poignant at times and scathingly witty at others, the stories in Wilderness Tips take us into the strange and secret places of the heart and inform the familiar world in which we live with truths that cut to the bone.

As always, if the book you are looking for is currently checked out, you can put a hold on it so when it does become available, you will be notified.

Enjoy!

The Talented Mr. Sis

--by Hanje Richards

I did something rather out of character this morning. I am generally not very interested in children’s picture books, but I became a fan of an illustrator and author of children’s books on Facebook. Who is this illustrator and author? His name is Peter Sis, and we have some wonderful examples of his work at the Copper Queen Library.




I first became aware of Peter Sis while doing some repair work on the cover of Tibet Through the Red Box (J 951.5 SIS).

Later the same week, we received a copy of The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain (J B SIS), which actually coincided with the anniversary of the demise of the Berlin Wall. Color me blown away. I remember wondering as a child what an “iron curtain” could possibly look like, feel like, be like. And now, years later, Peter Sis, with his amazing illustrations, is showing me what it looked like from the other side.

Peter Sís has won The New York Times Book Review's "Best Illustrated Book of the Year" award seven times.

He was also awarded the American Library Association's Caldecott Honor for the illustrations of his 1996 book, Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei (J B GALILEO), 1998 book, Tibet Through The Red Box, as well as his 2007 work, The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain. The latter book also received the ALA's 2008 Robert Silbert Medal for the most distinguished informational book for young readers, and he won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for Tibet Through the Red Box.

Peter Sis began his professional life as a filmmaker. In 1983, he collaborated with Bob Dylan on an animated music video for the song "You Got to Serve Somebody." His film work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2003, he was a MacArthur Fellow, an honor bestowed by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recognizing “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.”

In addition to the books mentioned above, the Copper Queen Library has several other books that are illustrated by Peter Sis, as well as several that are both written and illustrated by this extraordinarily talented man.

Alphabet Soup (E BANKS) A fantasy-adventure takes place at the lunch table when a disgruntled boy refuses to eat his soup and daydreams instead. His reverie is shaped by the letters he pulls out of his soup, forming words that come alive.

Dinosaur (E SIS) It starts in the tub, with a dinosaur bath toy. But then another dinosaur pops out of the water. And look out - here comes another - and another - and ANOTHER. Soon there is a Hall of Dinosaurs in the bathroom.

Fire Truck (E SIS) Matt loves fire trucks, and one morning when he wakes up, he is a fire truck--right down to his hoses, hooks, and ladders! His wheels and sirens couldn't be handier for performing many important duties around the house, especially rescuing teetering teddy bears or precariously placed pets.

Follow the Dream: The Story of Christopher Columbus ( J B COL) The 15th century comes vividly alive in this splendidly original picture book about Christopher Columbus. The straightforward text combines documented fact and legend, while the pictures show Columbus' gradual emergence from a fortress of medieval belief as he begins to realize his dream of finding a new route to the Orient.

Gargoyle On the Roof (J 811.54 PRE) The terrifyingly talented Jack Prelutsky and Peter Sís have captured some of the most unforgettable creatures between book covers (where, we hope, they will stay). So, go ahead. Open the book. After all, it's not you they're after. Probably.

Madelenka (E SIS) Peeking out through a die-cut window on the jacket, Madlenka invites the reader to enter her world. And what a world it is! On the surface, it looks like an ordinary city block, but as we meet Madlenka's neighbors -- the French baker, the Indian news vendor, the Italian ice-cream man, the Latin American grocer, a retired opera singer from Germany, an African American school friend, and the Asian shopkeeper -- and look through die-cut windows to the images and memories they have carried from old country to new, we can see that Madlenka's block is as richly varied as its inhabitants. And why is Madlenka going around the block, jumping for joy? Her tooth is loose, and she wants everyone to know!

Scarebird (E FLEISCHMAN) Lonesome John lives on a farm in the country, so deep in the country that the "crows pack a lunch before setting out." When he places a scarecrow in one of his fields, he quickly grows attached to the figure. It is his only company. Then, a homeless, young farmhand happens along and asks for a job. Soon, the farmer has something much more precious than any scarecrow: He has a friend.

Small, Tall Tale From the Far, Far North (E SIS) One hundred years ago, a young man named Jan Welzl left his home in Europe and headed for the Far North. He rode off in a horse-drawn cart, traded the cart for a sled pulled by reindeer, and was gone for thirty years. Like Robinson Crusoe, he turned adversity into adventure and the wilderness into a dream, where anything could happen and anyone could be a hero.

Tale of the Unknown Island (FIC SAR) “A man went to knock at the king's door and said, ‘Give me a boat.’ Whenever the king heard someone knocking at the door for petitions, he would pretend not to hear." Why the petitioner required a boat, where he was bound for, and who volunteered to crew for him, the reader will discover in this delightful fable, a philosophic love story worthy of Swift or Voltaire.

Trucks, Trucks, Trucks (E SIS) Plowing! Digging! Hauling! Scooping! Is there anything that Matt and his battalion of big rigs can't do? Of course not! Young viewers will be enchanted by nine brightly colored earth-shaking machines, including a dump truck, a plow, a bulldozer, and a foldout spread of a crane that takes counting to exciting new heights. It's time to feel the rumble of trucks, trucks, trucks!

13th Floor: A Ghost Story (J FIC FLE) When newly orphaned Buddy and his lawyer-sister Liz receive a strange message from an ancestor, they travel back in time to save her from being hanged as a witch.

Whipping Boy (J FIC FLE) Jemmy, once a poor boy living on the streets, now lives in a castle. As the whipping boy, he bears the punishment when Prince Brat misbehaves, for it is forbidden to spank, thrash, or whack the heir to the throne. The two boys have nothing in common and even less reason to like one another. But when they find themselves taken hostage after running away, they are left with no choice but to trust each other.

Friday Fiction: Tucson Author Kingsolver's New Novel

--by Hanje Richards

I have been a Barbara Kingsolver fan for a long time. Long before I moved to the Southwest, I was reading and enjoying her fiction, including Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven, and Animal Dreams. The Copper Queen Library just received Kingsolver’s new novel, The Lacuna. I am looking forward to reading it, and it reminded me of all of the great fiction she has written before!

From the publisher comes this description of The Lacuna:

“Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover.

The Lacuna is the story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities. Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico – from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City – Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend.

Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach – the lacuna – between truth and public presumption.

With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist – and of art itself. The Lacuna is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.”

Bean Trees: Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, she has acquired a completely unexpected child – a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle – and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity for putting down roots.

Animal Dreams: Dreamless and at the end of her rope, Codi comes back to Grace, Arizona to confront her past and face her ailing, distant father. What she finds is a town threatened by a silent environmental catastrophe, some startling clues to her own identity, and a man whose view of the world could change the course of her life.




Pigs in Heaven: The main characters in Bean Trees - Taylor Greer and her adopted daughter, Turtle - flee their home when a Cherokee attorney questions the legality of Turtle's adoption.




..Homeland and Other Stories: In this collection of 12 stories, Kingsolver spreads her memorable characters over landscapes ranging from northern California to the hills of eastern Kentucky and the Caribbean island of St. Lucia and tells stories of hope, momentary joy, and powerful endurance. In every setting, Kingsolver's distinctive voice – at times comic, but often heartrending – rings true as she explores the twin themes of family ties and the life choices one must ultimately make alone.


Poisonwood Bible: Intense family drama set in an Africa on the verge of independence and upheaval. In 1959, evangelical preacher Nathan Price moves his wife and four daughters from Georgia to a village in the Belgian Congo, later Zaire. Their dysfunction and cultural arrogance proves disastrous as the family is nearly destroyed by war, Nathan's tyranny, and Africa itself. Told in the voices of the mother and daughters, the novel spans 30 years as the women seek to understand each other and the continent that tore them apart.




Prodigal Summer: This novel weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, Summer's intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place.



Since Kingsolver is also well-known for her non-fiction work, you can also find Small Wonder: Essays; Animal Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life; and High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never in the Copper Queen Library's collection.

As always, if the book you are looking for is checked out, the staff will be happy to put a hold on it so when it does become available, you will be notified. Enjoy!

Spotlight on Biographies: Writers

--by Hanje Richards & Peg White

If anything fascinates readers more than reading the latest novel by a favorite writer, it is reading about that writer’s life. Whether shedding light on the meaning of a novel or illuminating the darker corners of a writer’s creative process, literary biography is one of any library’s most popular genres.

This week, to highlight some of the Copper Queen’s holdings in literary biography, our Circulation Desk Display Area is populated with biographies, autobiographies and memoirs of writers. And, there are lots more of them up in the Biography Section, which is the area closest to the public computers on the third floor. Some highlights of our collection:

Isabelle Allende
..My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile: Isabel Allende evokes the magnificent landscapes of her country; a charming, idiosyncratic Chilean people with a violent history and an indomitable spirit, and the politics, religion, myth, and magic of her homeland that she carries with her even today.

..Paula: When Isabel Allende's daughter, Paula, became gravely ill and fell into a coma, the author began to write the story of her family for her unconscious child. In the telling, bizarre ancestors appear before our eyes; we hear both delightful and bitter childhood memories, amazing anecdotes of youthful years, the most intimate secrets passed along in whispers.

Maya Angelou
..The Heart Of A Woman: Maya Angelou leaves California with her son, Guy, to move to New York. There she enters the society and world of black artists and writers, reads her work at the Harlem Writers Guild, and begins to take part in the struggle of black Americans for their rightful place in the world.

..I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings: In the first volume of an extraordinary autobiographical series, one of the most inspiring authors of our time recalls--with candor, humor, poignancy and grace--how her journey began....

..Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas: Maya struggles to support herself and her son through a series of odd jobs and weathers a failed marriage to a white man before landing a gig singing in one of the most popular nightclubs on the San Francisco coast. From there, she is called to New York to join the cast of Porgy and Bess. Maya soon finds herself on a joyous and dramatic adventure, touring abroad through Italy, France, Greece, Yugoslavia, and Egypt with spirited cast members, and performing for large, enthusiastic audiences.

..A Song Flung Up To Heaven: Following the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and the riots in Watts, Maya Angelou completely withdraws from the world. Finally, James Baldwin forces her out of isolation and insists that she accompany him to a dinner party—where the idea for writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is born. In fact, A Song Flung Up to Heaven ends as Maya Angelou begins to write the first sentences of Caged Bird.

Margaret Atwood

..Margaret Atwood: A Biography (by Nathalie Cooke): This is the first biography of the celebrated author, poet, critic, and social activist. The Atwood who emerges in these pages is an intense and driven woman, struggling daily to balance the demands of her own artistic perfectionism with her commitment to enjoying a rich and varied private life.



Samuel Beckett
..Damned To Fame: The Life Of Samuel Beckett (by James Knowlson): Portrait of Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett, mysterious and reclusive master of twentieth-century literature. Professor James Knowlson, Beckett's chosen biographer and a leading authority on Beckett, vividly re-creates Beckett's life from his birth in a rural suburb of Dublin in 1906 to his death in Paris in 1989, revealing the real man behind the literary giant.

Augusten Burroughs
..Running With Scissors: A Memoir: The true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. So at the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor living with the doctor’s bizarre family, and befriending a pedophile who resided in the backyard shed.

..A Wolf At The Table: A Memoir Of My Father: When Augusten Burroughs was small, his father was a shadowy presence in his life: a form on the stairs, a cough from the basement, a silent figure smoking a cigarette in the dark. As Augusten grew older, something sinister within his father began to unfurl. Something dark and secretive that could not be named. It’s a memoir of stunning psychological cruelty and the redemptive power of hope.

Lewis Carroll
..Lewis Carroll: A Biography (by Morton N. Cohen): Under the pen name Lewis Carroll, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson became a legend for his children's books, which broke the constraints of Victorian moralism. Thirty years in the writing and drawn from a voluminous fund of letters and diaries, this exemplary biography conveys both the imaginative fancy and human complexity of the creator of Alice in Wonderland. Photos.

Allen Ginsberg
..Ginsberg: A Biography (by Barry Miles): Authoritative and immensely readable account of the life of one of the twentieth-century's most extraordinary poets. Drawing on his long friendship and literary association with Ginsberg, as well as on the poet's journals and correspondence, Barry Miles presents a compelling account of a controversial life. Miles also offers a sensitive and illuminating critical appreciation of Ginsberg's poetry, ultimately painting an exhaustive and intimate portrait of this colorful man, whose experiences reflect the developments and changes in larger society.

John Irving
..The Imaginary Girlfriend: A Memoir: A miniature autobiography detailing Irving’s parallel careers of writing and wrestling. Tales of encounters with writers (John Cheever, Nelson Algren, Kurt Vonnegut) are intertwined with those about his wrestling teammates and coaches. With humor and compassion, Irving details the few truly important lessons he learned about writing.
John Keats

..Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography (by Stanley Plumly): An ode to an unsuspecting young poet — a man who, against the odds of his culture and critics, managed to achieve the unthinkable: the elevation of the lyric poem to sublime and tragic status.


Bobbie Ann Mason
..Clear Springs: A Memoir: This dazzling memoir is the saga of three generations. Spanning decades, Clear Springs gracefully weaves together the stories of Mason's grandparents, parents, and her own generation. The narrative moves from the sober industriousness of a Kentucky farm to the lifestyle of the countercultural 1960s; from a New York fan magazine to the shock-therapy ward of a mental institution; from a county poorhouse to the set of a Hollywood movie; from a small rustic schoolhouse to glittering pop music concerts. In the process of recounting her own odyssey Mason depicts the changes that have come to family, to women, and to heartland America in the twentieth century. Clear Springs is a heartfelt portrait of an extended family, and a profound affirmation of the importance of family love.

Joyce Maynard

..At Home In The World: A Memoir: Breaking a twenty-five year silence, Joyce Maynard addresses her relationship with J.D. Salinger for the first time, as well as the complicated , troubled and yet creative nature of her youth and family. She vividly describes the details of the times and her life with the finesse of a natural storyteller.


Mary McCarthy
..Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World: Winner of the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award in biography, this sparklingly written, exhaustively researched, and richly detailed biography of America's feisty, free-thinking "first lady of letters" is an engrossing portrait of the American Left from the 1930s through the 1980s.



Joyce Carol Oates
..The Journal Of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982: Offers a rare glimpse into the private thoughts of this extraordinary writer, focusing on excerpts written during one of the most productive decades of Oates' long career. Far more than just a daily account of a writer's writing life, these intimate, unrevised pages candidly explore her friendships with other writers, including John Updike, Donald Barthelme, Susan Sontag, Gail Godwin, and Philip Roth. It presents a fascinating portrait of the artist as a young woman, fully engaged with her world and her culture, on her way to becoming one of the most respected, honored, discussed, and controversial figures in American letters.

J.D. Salinger
..Dreamcatcher: A Memoir (by Margaret A. Salinger): Margaret Salinger writes about life with her famously reclusive father, J.D. Salinger -- offering a rare look into the man and the myth, what it is like to be his daughter, and the effect of such a charismatic figure on the girls and women closest to him.

With generosity and insight, Ms. Salinger has written a book that is eloquent, spellbinding, and wise, yet at the same time retains the intimacy of a novel. Her story chronicles an almost cult-like environment of extreme isolation and early neglect interwoven with times of laughter, joy, and dazzling beauty.

Ms. Salinger compassionately explores the complex dynamics of family relationships. Her story is one that seeks to come to terms with the dark parts of her life that, quite literally, nearly killed her, and to pass on a life-affirming heritage to her own child.

..In Search of J.D. Salinger (by Ian Hamilton): In trying to research the details of J.D. Salinger's life for this book, Ian Hamilton forced the writer out of his reclusive hideaway to challenge his discoveries in an American court of law. This text is the story of that quest, a literary detective story which ends in court with a bitter and protracted lawsuit in which Salinger sought to restrict the use Hamilton could make of his letters.

William Shakespeare
..Will In The World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (by Stephen Greenblatt): A biography that enables us to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life; full of drama and pageantry, and also cruelty and danger, could have become the world's greatest playwright. Bringing together little-known historical facts and little-noticed elements of Shakespeare's plays, Greenblatt makes inspired connections between the life and the works and delivers "a dazzling and subtle biography."

Amy Tan
..The Opposite Of Fate: A Book Of Musings: Amy Tan shares her insight into her own life and how she escaped the curses of her past to make a future of her own. She takes us on a journey from her childhood of tragedy and comedy to the present day and her arrival as one of the world’s best-loved novelists. Whether recalling arguments with her mother in suburban California or introducing us to the ghosts that inhabit her computer, The Opposite of Fate offers vivid portraits of choices, attitudes, charms, and luck in action.

Comic and tragic, serious and scandalous, present and past... this is just a sample of the literary biographies at the Copper Queen Library. If any of these titles pique your interest, come browse our Biography Section and check out the Circulation Desk display for wonderful words about writers of all genres and eras.

Friday Fiction: Jess Walter...

... An Author I Just Rediscovered In The Fiction Section



--by Hanje Richards




I was first exposed to Jess Walter several years ago when I read his non-fiction book on the incident at Ruby Ridge. Every Knee Shall Bow: The Truth and Tragedy of Ruby Ridge and the Randy Weaver Family (979.6 WALTER). This was a serious, well written, journalistic book about an American tragedy.




So, I was very surprised to open a box of books by this author which were all in the fiction and mystery genres. Jess Walter, who lives with his family in Spokane, Washington has used his true crime background to write some pretty entertaining and interesting fiction.

The Financial Lives of Poets (FIC WALTER FINANCIAL), Walter’s most recent novel, offers a story as real as our own lives: a tale of overstretched accounts, misbegotten schemes, and domestic dreams deferred.

A few years ago, small-time finance journalist Matthew Prior quit his day job to gamble everything on a quixotic notion: a Web site devoted to financial journalism in the form of blank verse. When his big idea — and his wife's eBay resale business — ends with a whimper (and a garage full of unwanted figurines), they borrow and borrow, whistling past the graveyard of their uncertain dreams. One morning, Matt wakes up to find himself jobless, hobbled with debt, spying on his wife's online flirtation, and six days away from losing his home.


Following Matt in his weeklong quest to save his marriage, his sanity, and his dreams, The Financial Lives of the Poets is a hysterical, heartfelt novel about how we can reach the edge of ruin — and how we can begin to make our way back.
..
Citizen Vince (MYS FIC WALTER CITIZEN): At 1:59 a.m. in Spokane, Washington — eight days before the 1980 presidential election — Vince Camden pockets his stash of stolen credit cards and drops by an all-night poker game before heading to his witness-protection job dusting crullers at "Donut Make You Hungry." Along with a neurotic hooker girlfriend, this is the total sum of Vince's new life. But when a familiar face shows up in town, Vince realizes his sordid past is still too close behind him. During the next unforgettable week, he'll negotiate a coast-to-coast maze of obsessive cops, eager politicians, and assorted mobsters — only to find that redemption might exist, of all places, in the voting booth.
..
Land of the Blind (MYS FIC WALTER LAND): While working the weekend night shift, Caroline Mabry, a weary Spokane police detective, encounters a seemingly unstable but charming derelict who tells her, "I'd like to confess." But he insists on writing out his statement in longhand. In the forty-eight hours that follow, the stranger confesses to not just a crime but an entire life — spinning a wry and haunting tale of youth and adulthood, of obsession and revenge, and of two men's intertwined lives.



..
Over Tumbled Graves (MYS FIC WALTER OVER): During a routine drug bust, on a narrow bridge over white-water falls in the center of town, Spokane detective Caroline Mabry finds herself face-to-face with a brutal murderer. Within hours, the body of a young prostitute is found on the riverbank nearby. What follows confronts our fascination with pathology and murder and stares it down, as Caroline and her cynical partner, Alan Dupree — thrown headlong into the search for a serial murderer who communicates by killing women — uncover some hard truths about their profession . . . and each other.


..
The Zero (FIC WALTER ZERO): From its opening pages — when hero cop Brian Remy wakes up to find he's shot himself in the head — novelist Jess Walter takes us on a harrowing tour of a city and a country shuddering through the aftershocks of a devastating terrorist attack.

As the smoke slowly clears, Remy finds that his memory is skipping, lurching between moments of lucidity and days when he doesn't seem to be living his own life at all. The landscape around him is at once fractured and oddly familiar: a world dominated by a Machiavellian mayor known as "The Boss" and peopled by gawking celebrities, anguished policemen peddling "First Responder" cereal, and pink real estate divas hyping the spoils of tragedy. Remy himself has a new girlfriend he doesn't know, a son who pretends he's dead, and an unsettling new job chasing a trail of paper scraps for a shadowy intelligence agency known as the Department of Documentation.


Whether that trail will lead Remy to an elusive terror cell — or send him circling back to himself — is only one of the questions posed by this provocative yet deeply human novel.


Check our Adult New Fiction section for these books and other newly-acquired fiction. And be sure to check our fiction stacks on the third floor for fiction from many other great authors.


As always, if the book you are looking for is checked out, the staff will be happy to put a hold on it so when it does become available, you will be notified.

Enjoy!

I Just Listened To…

...Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich.

Are you a Facebook fan or completely befuddled by social networking? Either way, the story of how Facebook started is pretty fascinating. I love to listen to audiobooks in my car. This one kept me interested from beginning to end. Relatively short, as audiobooks go (it runs 7 hours and 19 minutes, unabridged), it starts with a couple of Harvard undergraduates of the somewhat geeky variety, one of whom is now (less than 5 years later) a billionaire many times over.

Some other recently acquired audiobooks now available at Copper Queen Library on CD are The Somnambulist*by Jonathan Barnes (10 hours 30 minutes), Neon Rain* by James Lee Burke (8 hours 30 minutes) and Life Sentences* by Laura Lippman (10 hours).

As always, if the audio book you are looking for is checked out, the staff will be happy to put a hold on it so when it does become available you will be notified.

* The Copper Queen Library has these titles available in book format as well.

--by Hanje Richards