J.D. Salinger (January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010)

--by Hanje Richards

How does an author who wrote (arguably) his best work two years before I was born, and who never had anything published after I was in 3rd grade, still keep me fascinated, interested, and saddened by his death last week at age 91?

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Yes, his reclusiveness and his absence of published work after the mid '60s were intriguing. His relationships and marriages were interesting. How he lived was cause for great speculation, but I don’t think that any of that would have occurred, had he not been an amazing writer to begin with.

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He has been credited with creating the "Young Adult" genre, and there are certainly plenty of us who read Catcher in the Rye and believed Holden Caulfield was a spokesman for our generation (and that went on literally for generations!)

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The Copper Queen Library's collections contain his three best-known works:

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Catcher in the Rye - Published in 1951, this influential and widely acclaimed story details the two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield after he has been expelled from prep school. Confused and disillusioned, he searches for truth and rails against the "phoniness" of the adult world. He ends up exhausted and emotionally ill, in a psychiatrist's office. After he recovers from his breakdown, Holden relates his experiences to the reader.

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Franny and Zooey - This volume contains two interrelated stories published in book form in 1961. The stories, originally published in The New Yorker magazine, concern Franny and Zooey Glass, two members of the family that was the subject of most of Salinger's short fiction. In the first story, Franny is an intellectually precocious late adolescent who tries to attain spiritual purification by obsessively reiterating the "Jesus prayer" as an antidote to the perceived superficiality and corruptness of life. She subsequently suffers a nervous breakdown.

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In the second story, her next older brother, Zooey, attempts to heal Franny by pointing out that her constant repetition of the "Jesus prayer" is as self-involved and egotistical as the egotism against which she rails.

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Nine Stories - In the J.D. Salinger benchmark "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," Seymour Glass floats his beachmate Sybil on a raft and tells her about these creatures' tragic flaw: though they seem normal, if one swims into a hole filled with bananas, it will overeat until it's too fat to escape. Meanwhile, Seymour's wife, Muriel, is back at their Florida hotel, assuring her mother not to worry -- Seymour hasn't lost control. Mention of a book he sent her from Germany and several references to his psychiatrist lead the reader to believe that World War II has undone him.

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The war hangs over these wry stories of loss and occasionally unsuppressed rage. Salinger's children are fragile, odd, hypersmart, whereas his grownups seem beaten down by circumstances -- some neurasthenic, others deeply unsympathetic.

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There has doubtless been far more written about this reclusive author than he ever had published. The Copper Queen Library owns some biographies and memoirs that tell us about parts of his intriguing life.

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These can be found in the library's "Biography" section:

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At Home In The World: A Memoir (Joyce Maynard) - In the spring of 1972, Joyce Maynard, a freshman at Yale, published a cover story in The New York Times Magazine about life in the sixties. Among the many letters of praise, offers for writing assignments, and requests for interviews was a one-page letter from the famously reclusive author J.D. Salinger.

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A crucial turning point in Joyce Maynard's life occurred when her own daughter turned eighteen -- the age Maynard was when Salinger first approached her. Breaking a twenty-five year silence, Joyce Maynard addresses her relationship with 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.

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Dream Catcher: A Memoir (Margaret Ann Salinger) - In her much-anticipated memoir, Margaret A. Salinger writes about life with her famously reclusive father, 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.

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With generosity and insight, Ms. Salinger has written a book that is eloquent, spellbinding, and wise, yet which 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.

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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.

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The story of being a Salinger is unique; the story of being a daughter is universal. This book appeals to anyone, J.D. Salinger fan or no, who has ever had to struggle to sort out who she really is from whom her parents dreamed she might be.

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In Search of J.D. Salinger (Ian Hamilton) - When Ian Hamilton set out in 1983 to write a biography of Salinger, he knew that there would be difficulties. Just how great those difficulties would be, what implacable hostility he would meet from Salinger, and what astonishing finds he would stumble upon, he could not have guessed.

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This text is the story of that quest, a literary detective story which ended in court as Hamilton forced the writer out of his reclusive hideaway to challenge his discoveries in a bitter and protracted lawsuit in which Salinger sought to restrict the use Hamilton could make of his letters.

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If these titles, or other materials you are interested in borrowing from The Copper Queen Library are checked out, you can put them on hold and you will be notified when they are available again.

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Check it out!

Spotlight On Biography: Visual Artists

--by Hanje Richards
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Every time I browse the Copper Queen Library's "Biography" section, I find all sorts of people I want to learn more about. This time, I was looking specifically for visual artists, and I found some great books. The following list is just sample. In addition to these titles, you'll also find books about Aubrey Beardsley, Henri Matisse, Grandma Moses, Diego Rivera, and Frida Kahlo.
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It is a fascinating section of the library, and you might be surprised by what you find!
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Marc Chagall
Chagall : A Biography (Jackie Wullschlager) - Born into near poverty in Russia in 1887, the son of a Jewish herring merchant, Chagall fled the repressive “potato-colored” tsarist empire in 1911 for Paris. There he worked alongside Modigliani and Léger in the tumbledown tenement called La Ruche, where “one either died or came out famous.” Wullschlager makes plain in this groundbreaking biography that he never ceased giving form on canvas to his dreams, longings, and memories..
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His subject, more often than not, was the shtetl life of his childhood -- the wooden huts and synagogues, the goatherds, rabbis, and violinists — the whole lost world of Eastern European Jewry.
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Wullschlager brilliantly describes this world and evokes the characters who peopled it: Chagall’s passionate, energetic mother, Feiga-Ita; his eccentric fellow painter and teacher, Bakst; his clever, intense first wife, Bella; their glamorous daughter, Ida; his tough-minded final companion and wife, Vava; and the colorful, tragic array of artist, actor, and writer friends who perished under the Stalinist regime.
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Wullschlager explores in detail Chagall’s complex relationship with Russia and makes clear the Russian dimension he brought to Western modernism. Wullschlager provides a breadth of knowledge on Chagall’s work, and at the same time she brings Chagall the man fully to life —ambitious, charming, suspicious, funny, contradictory, dependent, but above all obsessively determined to produce art of singular beauty and emotional depth.
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Judy Chicago
Beyond The Flower : The Autobiography Of A Feminist Artist (Judy Chicago) - Twenty years after the publication of her autobiography, Through the Flower, the renowned artist and feminist continues the story of her life and takes a provocative look at late twentieth-century American culture and the allocation of our resources..
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Summing up her career, she evokes the collaborative energies that went into such projects as The Dinner Party, a multimedia, symbolic history of women, and Birth Project, an installation that portrays the childbirth experience as a heroic struggle. She and her husband, photographer Donald Woodman, rediscovered their Jewish roots in working on Holocaust Project, a touring exhibition that uses the Nazi genocide as a prism to probe the global structure of abusive power and powerlessness.
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Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin: A Biography (David Sweetman) - Explores the often contradictory history of artist Paul Gauguin, considering the scandalous rumors that surrounded him, the inspirations for his work, the influences of his contemporaries, and his painful death.
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As he patiently reconstructs the intricate puzzle of Gauguin's multifaceted life, David Sweetman dismantles the cherished legend about the artist's transformation from Euro-businessman to Tahitian noble savage, an alluring myth attributable in great part to Gauguin himself. Sweetman also emphasizes the importance of Gauguin's early childhood, which was spent in Peru under the protection of his great-uncle, the last Spanish viceroy.
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It was this interlude, Sweetman convincingly argues, that shaped Gauguin's sense of self, non-European aesthetics, and obsession with regaining a lost paradise. Another curious aspect of Gauguin's life was his relationships with unconventional women, from his famous socialist-feminist grandmother to his resilient mother and mannish wife.
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Writings of a Savage (Paul Gauguin) - Autobiography. Familiarity with Gauguin the writer is essential for a complete understanding of the artist. The Writings of a Savage collects the very best of his letters, articles, books, and journals, many of which are unavailable elsewhere. In brilliantly lucid discussions of life and art, Gauguin paints a triumphant self-portrait of a volcanic artist and the tormented man within.
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Robert Mapplethorpe
Mapplethorpe: A Biography (Patricia Morrisroe) - With Robert Mapplethorpe's full endorsement and encouragement, Morrisroe interviewed more than 300 friends, lovers, family members, and critics to form this definitive biography of America's most censored and celebrated photographer and discover how a middle-class Catholic boy from Queens became one of the world's most controversial artists.
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Morrisroe, who met Mapplethorpe at the pinnacle of his fame and the beginning of his rapid descent toward death from AIDS, provides as cogent an explanation as possible in an excellent biography notable for its dramatic structure and candor. She tracks Mapplethorpe's brief and excessive life from his awkward boyhood, through his miasmic college and ROTC years, to his abrupt sexual and artistic liberation when he discovered drugs and gay S & M bars, habits in which he overindulged right up to his death at age 43. Mapplethorpe's story is tied inextricably to the life story of his closest friend, sometime lover, and most important muse, Patti Smith, who Morrisroe also portrays with skill and ardor.
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Georgia O’Keeffe
Portrait Of An Artist: A Biography Of Georgia O'Keeffe (Laurie Lisle) - Georgia O'Keeffe, one of the most original painters America has ever produced, left behind a remarkable legacy when she died at the age of ninety-eight. Her vivid visual vocabulary -- sensuous flowers, bleached bones against red sky and earth -- had a stunning, profound, and lasting influence on American art in this century.

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O'Keeffe's personal mystique is as intriguing and enduring as her bold, brilliant canvases. Here is the first full account of her exceptional life -- from her girlhood and early days as a controversial art teacher... to her discovery by the pioneering photographer of the New York avant-garde, Alfred Stieglitz... to her seclusion in the New Mexico desert, where she lived until her death.
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And here is the story of a great romance -- between the extraordinary painter and her much older mentor, lover, and husband, Alfred Stieglitz. ..

Renowned for her fierce independence, iron determination, and unique artistic vision, Georgia O'Keeffe is a twentieth-century legend. Her dazzling career spans virtually the entire history modern art in America.
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Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887-1986: Flowers In The Desert (Britta Benke) - If you enjoy the works of Georgia O'Keeffe, this is a book you'll want to savor. The reproductions of her paintings are marvelously printed, and the accompanying essays on O'Keeffe's life and work are erudite and lucid.
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There are also pictures of O'Keeffe at various stages of her life and career, ranging from her time as a young student at the University of Virginia, into her weathered, mature age, the last one featuring her at 90 at Ghost Ranch in the desert.
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N.C. Wyeth
N.C. Wyeth: A Biography (David Michaelis) - N.C. Wyeth was hailed as the greatest American illustrator of his day. For forty-three years, starting in 1902, he painted landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and murals, as well as illustrations for a long shelf of world literature. Yet he proclaimed "the uselessness of clinging to illustration and hoping to make it a great art." He judged himself a failure, believing that illustration was of no importance.
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A family saga that begins and ends with the accidental deaths of small boys, a gothic tale that shows how N.C., while learning to live a safe and familiar domestic life, endangered himself and his children by concealing part of the family legacy--depression, suicide, incest.
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According to David Michaelis, Wyeth’s mother's emotional instability and his father's strictness set the stage for his profoundly divided personality. He found in fatherhood the foremost expression of his character -- trying to create in the Wyeth homestead his dream of childhood at its most enchanting. He held his children enthralled throughout their adult lives. He persuaded his inventor son, Nat, to live at home, shepherded his daughter Ann's career as a composer, and taught his three other children -- Henriette, Carolyn, and Andrew (N.C. was Andrew's only teacher) -- to paint.

I Just Read…Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes

--by Hanje Richards

Microtrends, by Mark J. Penn with E. Kinney Zafesne, is a fascinating look at how relatively small patterns of behavior are wielding great influence on business, politics, and our personal lives. Penn’s thesis is that it only takes one percent of the public -- three million people -- to launch a business or a social movement.

Mark Penn is the man who identified “Soccer Moms” as a crucial constituency in President Clinton’s reelection campaign. Using his polling expertise, he has identified over 70 "microtrends" that have the potential to rock the world, or at least a significant portion of it.

Some of the trends Penn identifies and discusses are: Commuter Couples, Working Retired, Protestant Hispanics, Southpaws Unbound, Video Game Grown-Ups, Shy Millionaires, and Vegan Children. Penn examines the actual and potential possibilities that are created by each of these microtrends.

"Stuffed with smart, offbeat tidbits....Penn and his co-author, E. Kinney Zalesne, deserve credit for leavening their facts and figures with humor and pop-culture asides." -- Bloomberg

Friday Fiction: Amy Tan

--by Hanje Richards

I became aware of Amy Tan about 20 years ago when I read her first novel The Joy Luck Club. I became reacquainted with her work when I read more recent novels The Bonesetter’s Daughter and Saving Fish from Drowning. I have not yet read, but look forward to reading, her memoir/autobiography The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings. Tan weaves beautiful stories which include elements of what, for lack of a better term, I will call Chinese-American Magical Realism.

Bonesetter’s Daughter - Ruth Young and her widowed mother, LuLing, have always had a tumultuous relationship. Now, before she succumbs to forgetfulness, LuLing gives Ruth some of her writings, which reveal a side of LuLing that Ruth has never known.

In a remote mountain village where ghosts and tradition rule, LuLing grows up in the care of her mute Precious Auntie as the family endures a curse laid upon a relative known as the Bonesetter. When headstrong LuLing rejects the marriage proposal of the coffinmaker, a shocking series of events are set in motion — all of which lead back to Ruth and LuLing in modern San Francisco. The truth that Ruth learns from her mother’s past will forever change her perception of family, love, and forgiveness.

Hundred Secret Senses - This is an exultant novel about China and America, love and loyalty, the identities we invent and the true selves we discover along the way. Olivia Laguni is half-Chinese, but typically American in her uneasiness with her patchwork family. And no one in Olivia's family is more embarrassing to her than her half-sister, Kwan Li. For Kwan speaks mangled English, is cheerfully deaf to Olivia's sarcasm, and sees the dead with her "yin eyes."

Even as Olivia details the particulars of her decades-long grudge against her sister (who, among other things, is a source of infuriatingly good advice), Kwan Li is telling her own story, one that sweeps us into the splendor, squalor, and violence of Manchu China. And out of the friction between her narrators, Tan creates a work that illuminates both the present and the past — sweetly, sadly, and hilariously -- with searing and vivid prose.

Joy Luck Club - A stunning literary achievement, The Joy Luck Club explores the tender and tenacious bond between four daughters and their mothers. The daughters know one side of their mothers, but they don't know about their earlier never-spoken-of lives in China. The mothers want love and obedience from their daughters, but they don't know the gifts that the daughters keep to themselves. Heartwarming and bittersweet, this is a novel for mothers, daughters, and those who love them.

Kitchen God’s Wife - Focusing on the life of one woman, this book spans the years from pre-Revolutionary China to present day America. It covers the themes of cultural differences, the problems of exile, the generation gap and, above all, the special relationship between mothers and daughters. With the same narrative skills and evocative powers that made her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, a national bestseller, Tan now tells the story of Winnie Louie, an aging Chinese woman unfolding a life's worth of secrets to her suspicious, Americanized daughter.

Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings - Amy Tan has touched millions of readers with haunting and sympathetic novels of cultural complexity and profound empathy. With the same spirit and humor that characterize her acclaimed novels, she now 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 — a refreshing antidote to the world-weariness and uncertainties we all face today.

Saving Fish From Drowning - San Francisco art patron Bibi Chen has planned a journey of the senses along the famed Burma Road for eleven lucky friends. But after her mysterious death, Bibi watches aghast from her ghostly perch as the travelers veer off her itinerary and embark on a trail paved with cultural gaffes and tribal curses, Buddhist illusions and romantic desires. On Christmas morning, the tourists cruise across a misty lake and disappear.

With picaresque characters and mesmerizing imagery, Saving Fish from Drowning gives us a voice as idiosyncratic, sharp, and affectionate as the mothers of The Joy Luck Club. Bibi is the observant eye of human nature — the witness of good intentions and bad outcomes, of desperate souls and those who wish to save them. In the end, Tan takes her readers to that place in their own heart where hope is found.

Visual Art for Young People: "ArtVenture"

--by Hanje Richards

While researching artists’ biographies for a blog post, I came across this wonderful series of art books, geared toward 9-12 year olds, called the ArtVenture Series.

Inspired by the method used in galleries and museums in talking about art with children, readers are invited to look at the works and think about what the artists have done and why. Details in the works are pointed out and questions are posed for readers to think about. Outline information about the artists and the works (including a graphic representation of the works' relative sizes) are provided at the back of the book. A glossary and index are included.

Great for teachers, home schoolers, kids who are curious about all sorts of things, including art, and even for adults!

ArtVenture Series (all shelved in Juvenile Non-Fiction)

Action: Movement in Art - Artists use many different tricks and techniques to capture movement in their paintings or sculptures. This wonderfully attractive book explores these by looking at a wide variety of art, including works by Seurat, Delacroix, van Gogh, Monet, Hokusai, Turner, Pollock, Escher, Vasarely, Delauney, and Munch.

Families: Relationships in Art - In making images of families, artists choose to depict them in particular colors, settings, groups, and poses to show something special about their relationships. This title explores these choices by looking at a wide variety of art, including works by Rubens, David Hockney, Henry Moore, Stanley Spencer, Cranach the Elder, Mary Cassatt, Renoir, Peale, Gaugin, Matisse, Munch, Ford Maddox Brown, and Jan Steen.

Look At Me: Self-Portraits - Artists create self-portraits to show themselves as they want to be seen. Self-Portraits explores the various ways they have done this by looking at a wide variety of art, including works by Norman Rockwell, Rembrandt, van Gogh, Hogarth, Stanley Spencer, Rosalba Carriera, Durer, Frida Kahlo, Rousseau, Chagall, Peter Blake, Mignard, Andy Warhol, Wanda Wulz, and Paolozzi.

Sculpture: Three Dimensions in Art - Sculptors use all sorts of materials, such as clay, plaster, wood, metals, and plastics to create three-dimensional art. Author Thompson explores sculpture by looking at works by George Segal, Henry Moore, Bernini, Barbara Hepworth, Niki de Saint Phalle, Claes Oldenburg, Medardo Rosso, Deborah Butterfield, and Andy Goldsworthy.

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Sense of Place: Landscapes - Artists have pictured landscapes all over the world, at various times of day, in all weathers, and in every season. This book explores what they have seen, thought, and felt in landscapes by looking at works by O'Keeffe, Magritte, Rubens, Martin, Hobbema, Altdorfer, Delauney, David Hockney, Hokusai, Turner, Seurat, van Gogh, Homer, Nash, Stella, and Crali.

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Telling Tales: Stories in Art - Artists who want to tell a story in their works have to solve a problem: how to get the storyline across through still images. Thompson illustrates how they have done this by looking at a wide variety of works by Giordano, Gentileschi, Martineau, Wright of Derby, Grant Wood, Dorothea Lange, Ousmane Sow, and Rousseau.

Sound interesting? Check it out!

Friday Fiction: J.G. Ballard’s Empire

--by Hanje Richards & Peg White

James Graham Ballard (November 15, 1930 – April 19, 2009) was an English novelist and short story writer. He was a prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction, but his best-known books are the controversial Crash (1973) and the autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun (1984). The latter was based on his boyhood in Shanghai, where he was born in the International Settlement, and on his internment by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II.

Both novels were adapted into films, Crash by David Cronenberg and Empire of the Sun by Steven Spielberg. Both are available in the Copper Queen Library's film collection.

The literary distinctiveness of Ballard's work has given rise to the adjective "Ballardian," defined by the Collins English Dictionary as “resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard’s novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.”

With the exception of his autobiographical novels, Ballard most commonly wrote in the post-apocalyptic dystopian genre. His most celebrated novel in this regard is Crash, in which cars symbolize the mechanization of the world and man's capacity to destroy himself with the technology he creates.

In addition to his novels, Ballard made extensive use of the short story form. Many of his earliest published works in the 1950s and 1960s were short stories.

Particularly revered among Ballard's admirers is his short story collection Vermilion Sands, set in a desert resort town inhabited by forgotten starlets, insane heirs, very eccentric artists, and the merchants and bizarre servants who provide for them. Each story features peculiarly exotic technology -- poetry-composing computers, orchids with operatic voices and egos to match, phototropic self-painting canvasses, etc. -- and in his introduction to Vermilion Sands, Ballard cites this as his favorite collection.

Ballard's fiction is literary, sophisticated, and profoundly concerned with creating cognitive and aesthetic dissonance in his readers. Because of his tendency to upset readers to enlighten them, Ballard does not enjoy a strong mass market following, but he is recognized by critics as one of Britain's most prominent writers.

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[With thanks and acknowledgement to Wikipedia; for a more in-depth treatment, consult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._G._Ballard]

Here is a sampling of the library's Ballard holdings:

Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard - With 98 pulse-quickening stories, this volume helps restore the very art form that Ballard feared was comatose. Ballard’s inimitable style was already present in his early stories, most of them published in science fiction magazines. These stories are surreal, richly atmospheric, and splendidly elliptical, featuring an assortment of psychotropic houses, time-traveling assassins, and cities without clocks.

Over the next fifty years, his fierce imaginative energy propelled him to explore new topics, including the dehumanization of technology, the brutality of the corporation, and nuclear Armageddon. Depicting the human soul as “being enervated and corrupted by the modern world” (New York Times), Ballard began to examine themes like overpopulation, as in “Billenium,” a claustrophobic imagining of a world of 20 billion people crammed into four-square-meter rooms, or the false realities of modern media -- as in the classic “Why I Want to F[***] Ronald Reagan,” a faux-psychological study of the sexual and violent reactions elicited by viewing Reagan’s face on television, in which Ballard predicted the unholy fusion of pop culture and sound-bite politics thirteen years before Reagan became president. Stories from Vermilion Sands are included in this collection.

Day of Creation - At Port-la-Nouvelle, on the parched terrain of central Africa, Dr. Mallory watches his clinic fail and dreams of discovering a third Nile that will make the Sahara bloom. When there is a trickle on the local airstrip, and soon a river, the obsessed Mallory claims it as his own creation and sets out for the river’s source.
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Empire of the Sun - The classic, award-winning novel, made famous by Steven Spielberg's film, tells of a young boy's struggle to survive World War II in China.

1941 Shanghai is a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki as the bomb bellows the end of the war -- and the dawn of a blighted world.

Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint.

Rushing to Paradise - Led by a charismatic and slightly unhinged woman, a group of environmentalists wins control over a small atoll in the Pacific and sets up a utopian community. Breeding other threatened species and among themselves, these homesteaders slowly transform an Eden of their own into a much darker place. A savage send-up of environmentalism, feminism, and extremism of all sorts.

R.I.P. Robert B. Parker

--by Hanje Richards

Prolific author of Spenser mystery novels and a host of other fiction, Robert B. Parker died suddenly on January 18, 2010, of a heart attack while sitting at his desk in Cambridge, MA.

He was 77.

Parker was best known for his Spenser novels (the wise-cracking, street-smart Boston private-eye Spenser earned him a devoted following and reams of critical acclaim), and the TV Show based on this character. However, Parker also wrote several other series as well as stand-alone novels, including Jesse Stone novels, Sunny Randall novels, Philip Marlowe novels, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch westerns.

Parker received three nominations and two Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America. He received the first award, the "Best Novel Award" in 1977, for the fourth novel in the Spenser series.

In 2002, he received the Grand Master Award Edgar for his collective oeuvre. In 2008, he was awarded the Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award.

Robert B. Parker will be missed, but his books can still be enjoyed. If you haven't already, check out our large selection of Parker titles at the Copper Queen Library in the Mystery section.

Friends' 19th Annual Chocolate Tasting Set for February 13

BISBEE, AZ – Looking for something delightfully, deliciously different to do that will also help support a wonderful cause?

If so, the Friends of the Copper Queen Library cordially invite you to attend their “19th Annual Chocolate Tasting” on Saturday, February 13, from 6-9pm at the Copper Queen Library, 6 Main Street, in Bisbee’s Downtown Historic District.

For those who are already booked on this very busy weekend or who wish to indulge privately, “To Go” boxes, which can be picked up from 4-6pm at the Friends Bookstore on the first floor, will also be available.

This fundraiser, the Friends’ largest volunteer effort of the year, helps purchase children’s books for the library and sponsor many educational and informational programs and presentations for the entire community throughout the year. Now, more than ever, your support is crucial!

How does the “Taste” work? Local dessert makers, both commercial and domestic, will donate a delectable selection of their own specialty chocolates, which will be showcased and served on both the second and third floors of the historic library building (floors are accessible by elevator).

The Bisbee Coffee Company will donate locally roasted coffee for the occasion, and a special Valentine’s punch will also be served. “Cool Jazz,” a local trio featuring singer Nancy Weaver, will provide music for listening, dancing, and visiting with friends and, as an added bonus, raffle tickets will be drawn for a wide variety of prizes donated through the generosity of Bisbee’s merchants.

For $10 per person ($12 at the door), you will receive a packet of six tickets to trade for tempting treats of your choice (“chits for chocolates”). Volunteer waiters and servers will offer a delectable selection while you visit with friends, queue up for beverages, marvel at the library’s architecture and contents, enjoy the swinging sounds of jazz, and browse the chocolates at tables on the second and third floors to mix, match, and make your own selections.

Or, those interested in the “To Go” box option may reserve one or more boxes in advance by calling the “To Go” Coordinator at (520) 432-3259 and providing your ticket number(s).

“Taste” tickets are available for advance purchase in Bisbee at the Copper Queen Library, the Friends Bookstore, the Bisbee Visitors’ Center, and Atalanta’s Music & Books. Tickets may also be purchased in advance by mail (checks must be received no later than Wednesday, February 10) and will be held in “Will Call” at the door.

Any remaining tickets will be sold at the door starting at 6pm, but advance purchase is suggested, because tickets go fast!

For more information about the “Taste,” or to volunteer as a baker, server, runner, decorator, or for set-up/take-down crews, please contact Friends President Pamela Hay at (520) 432-3259 or the Library Circulation Desk at (520) 432-4232.

Come join in and celebrate the Valentine’s Day weekend, have some delicious fun, and support a wonderful cause! Hope to see you there!

Insider’s Guide to the Library: Putting Items "On Hold"

--by Hanje Richards

If you are searching the Copper Queen Library’s online catalog and find a book, movie or audiobook that you would like to check out but which is not currently available because someone else has it checked out, you can put it "On Hold." All you need is 1) your account number (the barcode on the back of your library card); and, 2) your PIN (Personal Identification Number), which you should have received when you got your library card. (If you’ve forgotten your PIN or would like it changed to another four-digit number that’s easier to remember, we'll be happy to take care of that for you at the Circulation Desk.)

Whether you’re searching the catalog here at the library or from a remote location (home, work, school, etc.) you can put items on Hold by selecting the item’s “Details” view, then clicking the “Place Hold” link on the left-hand side of the page.

If the item belongs to the Copper Queen Library’s collection, we will contact you when the item is returned. If the item is coming to us from another library, we will contact you when the courier, UPS, FedEx, or USPS delivers it to us. In either case, we’ll need a way to contact you, so be sure your current phone number or email address is on file with us!

I Just Listened To ..."The Accidental Billionaires:"

...The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal

--by Hanje Richards

I remember the horror in my 22 year old son’s voice the day I signed up for Facebook. I was a middle-aged invader into the land of the young and hip.

“You’re kidding….Right?”

But I was not kidding and, like so many others, I was reconnecting with faces and voices right out of my past.

There were days when I felt like I was walking into a bookstore I'd worked in over 20 years ago. And days when I engaged in pure silliness with good friends I only see very occasionally due to geographical constraints. I found it was a way to share my political causes and my personal pleasures. And, I found that I was meeting up with lots of middle-aged and older folks on Facebook. I probably check my Facebook pages more often than my son does.

Accidental Billionaires, written by Ben Mezrich, was fun to listen to and explains some of how Facebook got to be the way it is.

It's the high-energy tale of how two socially awkward Ivy Leaguers, trying to increase their chances with the opposite sex, ended up creating Facebook. Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best friends – outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and long-time legacies. They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women.

Mark happened to be a computer genius of the first order. Which he used to find a more direct route to social stardom: one lonely night, Mark hacked into the university's computer system, creating a ratable database of all the female students on campus – and subsequently crashing the university's servers and nearly getting himself kicked out of school.

In that moment, in his Harvard dorm room, the framework for Facebook was born. What followed – a real-life adventure filled with slick venture capitalists, stunning women, and six-foot-five-inch identical-twin Olympic rowers – makes for one of the most entertaining and compelling books of the year.

Before long, Eduardo’s and Mark’s different ideas about Facebook created faint cracks in their relationship, which soon spiraled into out-and-out warfare. The collegiate exuberance that marked their collaboration fell prey to the adult world of lawyers and money.

Sound like a good read or good listen? Then check out The Accidental Billionaires at your Copper Queen Library!

Friday Fiction: Anne Tyler, Accidental Tourist Into Ordinary Lives

--by Hanje Richards

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, was published in 1964 and her most recent, Noah’s Compass, in 2010. In 1994, Tyler was nominated “the greatest living novelist writing in English” by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Like many readers of Anne Tyler, I first discovered her when Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant was published. Since that time, I have read most of her earlier novels and all of them published since, except her very latest novel, Noah’s Compass, which came out this week.

Noah’s Compass - A wise, gently humorous, and deeply compassionate novel about a schoolteacher, who has been forced to retire at sixty-one, coming to terms with the final phase of his life.

Liam Pennywell, who set out to be a philosopher and ended up teaching fifth grade, never much liked the job at that run-down private school, so early retirement doesn’t bother him. But he is troubled by his inability to remember anything about the first night that he moved into his new, spare, and efficient condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. All he knows when he wakes up the next day in the hospital is that his head is sore and bandaged.His effort to recover the moments of his life that have been stolen from him leads him on an unexpected detour. What he needs is someone who can do the remembering for him. What he gets is – well, something quite different.

Accidental Tourist - The story of a travel-hating writer of travel books, Macon Leafy, who systematically avoids adventure...until he meets the frizzy-haired, stiletto-heeled, astonishing Muriel (she's trying to train his unmanageable Welsh corgi, Edward), who up-ends Macon's world and thrusts him into engagement with life. Anne Tyler's most famous bestseller, Accidental Tourist was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1985 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1986.

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Amateur Marriage - They seemed like the perfect couple – young, good-looking, made for each other. Pauline, impulsive, impractical, tumbles hit-or-miss through life; Michael, plodding, cautious, judgmental, proceeds deliberately. But, while other young marrieds, seemed to grow more seasoned, Pauline and Michael remain amateurs. In time, their foolish quarrels take their toll. Even when they find themselves loving, instant parents to a little grandson named Pagan, whom they rescue from Haight-Ashbury, they still cannot bridge their deep-rooted differences.

Back When We Were Grownups - The woman is Rebecca Davitch, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother. On the surface, Beck is outgoing, joyous, a natural celebrator. Giving parties is, after all, her vocation – something she slipped into even before finishing college, when Joe Davitch spotted her at an engagement party in his family’s crumbling nineteenth-century Baltimore row house, where giving parties was the family business. Soon this large-spirited older man, a divorced father with three little girls, swept her into his orbit, and before she knew it, she was embracing his extended family plus a child of their own and hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms of “The Open Arms.” Now, some thirty years later, after presiding over a disastrous family picnic, Rebecca is caught unawares by the question of who she really is.

Breathing Lessons - Maggie and Ira Moran have been married for twenty-eight years – and it shows: in their quarrels, in their routines, in their ability to tolerate with affection each other’s eccentricities. Maggie, a kooky, lovable meddler and an irrepressible optimist, wants nothing more than to fix her son’s broken marriage. Ira is infuriatingly practical, a man “who should have married Ann Landers.” And what begins as a day trip to a funeral becomes an adventure in the unexpected. Received the Pulitzer Prize in 1989.

Digging to America - Two families who would otherwise never have come together meet by chance at the Baltimore airport – the Donaldsons, a very American couple, and the Yazdans, Maryam’s fully assimilated son and his attractive Iranian wife. Each couple is awaiting the arrival of an adopted infant daughter from Korea. After the babies from Asia are delivered, Bitsy Donaldson impulsively invites the Yazdans to celebrate: an “arrival party” that from then on is repeated every year as the two families become more and more deeply intertwined.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Through every family run memories which bind it together – despite everything. The Tulls of Baltimore were no exception. Abandoned by her salesman husband, Pearl is left to bring up her three children alone – Cody, a flawed devil; Ezra, a flawed saint; and Jenny, errant and passionate. Now as Pearl lies dying, stiffly encased in her pride and solitude, the past is unlocked along with its secrets. A finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1983.

If Morning Ever Comes - Ben Joe Hawkes is a worrier. Raised by his mother, grandmother, and a flock of busy sisters, he's always felt the outsider. When he learns that one of his sisters has left her husband, he heads for home and back into the confusion of childhood memories and love.

Ladder of Years – “Baltimore Woman Disappears During Family Vacation,” declares the headline. Forty-year-old Delia Grinstead is last seen strolling down the Delaware shore, wearing nothing more than a bathing suit and carrying a beach tote with five hundred dollars tucked inside. To her husband and three almost-grown children, she has vanished without trace or reason. But for Delia, who feels like a tiny gnat buzzing around her family's edges, "walking away from it all" is not a premeditated act but an impulse that will lead her into a new, exciting, and unimagined life.

Morgan’s Passing - Morgan Gower works at Cullen's hardware store in north Baltimore. He has seven daughters and a warmhearted wife, but as he journeys into the gray area of middle age, he finds his household growing tedious. Then Morgan meets two lovely young newlyweds under some rather extreme circumstances – and all three discover that no one's heart is safe.

Patchwork Planet - Barnaby Gaitlin has been in trouble ever since adolescence. He had this habit of breaking into other people's houses. It wasn't the big loot he was after, like his teenage cohorts. It was just that he liked to read other people's mail, pore over their family photo albums, and appropriate a few of their precious mementos.

But for eleven years now, he's been working steadily for Rent-a-Back, renting his back to old folks and shut-ins who can't move their own porch furniture or bring the Christmas tree down from the attic. At last, his life seems to be on an even keel.

Still, his family cannot forget the price they paid for buying off Barnaby's former victims. And his ex-wife would just as soon he didn't ever show up to visit their little girl, Opal. Even the nice, steady woman who seems to have designs on him doesn't fully trust him, it develops when the chips are down, and it looks as though his world may fall apart again.

Saint Maybe - In 1965, the Bedloe family is living an ideal, apple-pie existence in Baltimore. Then, in the blink of an eye, a single tragic event occurs that will transform their lives forever – particularly that of seventeen-year-old Ian Bedloe, the youngest son, who blames himself for the sudden “accidental” death of his older brother.Depressed and depleted, Ian is almost crushed under the weight of an unbearable, secret guilt. Then one crisp January evening, he catches sight of a window with glowing yellow neon, the CHURCH OF THE SECOND CHANCE. He enters and soon discovers that forgiveness must be earned, through a bit of sacrifice and a lot of love.

Tin Can Tree - In the small town of Larksville, the Pike family is hopelessly out of step with the daily rhythms of life after the tragic, accidental death of six-year-old Janie Rose. Mrs. Pike seldom speaks, blaming herself, while Mr. Pike is forced to come out of his long, comfortable silence. Then there is ten-year-old Simon, who is suddenly without a baby sister – and without understanding why she's gone.

Those closest to this shattered family must learn to comfort them – and confront their own private shadows of hidden grief. If time cannot draw them out of the dark, then love may be their only hope.

I Just Read... And Here’s The Kicker:

Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers On Their Craft

--by Hanje Richards

If you are interested in comedy, writing, and/or listening to artists (writers, in this case) talk about how they do what they do and why they do what they do, And Here’s The Kicker: Conversations With 21 Top Humor Writers On Their Craft might be a book for you. It confirmed some things I thought about writers of comedy, and it dispelled some myths about writers of comedy. (I can assure you right now, that they are not necessarily funny when they are talking about what they do, but they are interesting!)

This book includes a great selection of humor writers; some I was already familiar with like David Sedaris, Dave Barry and Buck Henry and some I had never heard of (who I will not mention, so as not to embarrass them.).

The book includes humor writers from all sorts of different markets. There is someone who has been with Mad Magazine for years, there are people who have written jokes and monologues for some of the greats of late night, there are stand-ups and newspaper columnists and essayists and the list goes on.

In addition to the great conversations with all these interesting folks, there are various tidbits of advice for budding humor writers about getting jobs, self- promoting, and actual skills required.

In the order the conversations appear in the book, author Mike Sacks talks with: Buck Henry, Stephen Merchant, Harold Ramis, Dan Mazer, Merrill Markoe, Paul Fieg, Irving Brecher, Bob Odenkirk, Todd Hanson, Marshall Brickman, Mitch Hurwitz, David Sedaris, George Meyer, Al Jaffee, Allison Silverman, Robert Smigel, Dave Barry, Dick Cavett, Larry Wilmore, Jack Handey, and Larry Gelbart.

Check it out: And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on Their Craft by Mike Sacks (808.7 SACKS)

And, if you are interested in these writers and want to see more of their work, some of it is available here at the Copper Queen Library.
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Dave Barry
Big Trouble (FIC BARRY BIG)
Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up (AV 814 BAR)
Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States (973 BAR)
Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys: A Fairly Short Book (818.54 BAR)
Dave Barry’s Guide to Marriage and/or Sex (646.77 BAR)
Tricky Business (FIC BARRY)

Buck Henry
The Graduate (VID FIC GRADUATE) (co-author of the screenplay)
Grumpy Old Men (DVD FIC GRUMPY) (member of the cast)



Al Jaffee
Mad Magazine (designer and creator of the Mad Fold-In)
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Dan Mazer
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (DVD FIC BORAT) (co-author of the screenplay)

Harold Ramis
Analyze This (DVD FIC ANALYZE) (director)
Caddyshack (DVD FIC CADDYSHACK) (co-author)
Groundhog Day (VID FIC GRO) (DVD FIC GROUNDHOG) (producer, director and co-author)
Ice Harvest (DVD FIC ICE HARVEST) (director)

David Sedaris
Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays (814.54 SEDAR)
David Sedaris Live at Carnegie Hall (CD 818.5402 SED)
Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim (818.54 SEDARIS) (CD 818.54 SED)
Holidays On Ice (FIC SED)
Me Talk Pretty One Day (814.54 SED)
Naked (814.54 SEDARIS)
When You Are Engulfed In Flames (814.54 SEDARIS)