Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Booklist's "Top 10 Historical Fiction: 2011"

--by Brad Hooper
(First published in Booklist, April 15, 2011)

Imagine the difficulty of selecting the 10 best historical novels over the past year at a time when the historical novel is both good and plentiful; imagine, too, the reading pleasure presented by the outstanding selection we came up with.

Agaat (Marlene van Niekerk) - This novel, about two women — one white, one black — living on a farm in South Africa at a time when the nation is undergoing huge racial and social change, stuns with its powerful sense of the rigors of farm life and the comfort of a long and complex relationship.

Beautiful Maria of My Soul (Oscar Hijuelos) - Hijuelos returns to his 1990 Pulitzer Prize winner, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, but this time he tells the story from the point of view of Maria, the young Cuban woman with whom Nestor Castillo fell in love and about whom he wrote the Mambo Kings’ hit bolero, “Beautiful Maria of My Soul.” A novel of wondrous language and a multifaceted story line.

Clara and Mr. Tiffany (Susan Vreeland) - Welcome to the wonderfully articulated world of Clara Driscoll, whom Vreeland has brought to light from the archives of Tiffany Glass Company to establish what is most probably her rightful place in the history of American decorative arts: she conceived the famous Tiffany leaded-glass lamp shade. (on order)

The Elephant’s Journey (José Saramago) - In 1551, King Joao of Portugal makes a startling diplomatic move by giving Archduke Maximilian of Austria the elephant housed on Portuguese royal grounds. The elephant’s trek across Europe to its new home is followed in this extremely amusing, historically resonant, fablelike, and technically challenging narrative.

The Matchmaker of Kenmare (Frank Delaney) - In memoir format, narrated by a man in old age, the plot finds its provocative place in the WWII years and the immediate postwar years; in substance, it combines the charm of an Irish yarn with the excitement of a political thriller and the romance of a 1940s war movie. (on order)

Percival’s Planet (Michael Byers) - Early-twentieth-century scientist Percival Lowell’s Arizona observatory made it possible for the 1930 discovery of Pluto. This insightful, witty novel traces the painstaking search for what, in the years before Pluto’s discovery, Lowell’s astronomical heirs called Planet X.

Promises to Keep (Ann Tatlock) - Award-winning inspirational-fiction author Tatlock continues to excel in her latest coming-of-age tale, about an 11-year-old girl; even as it moves along at a comfortable pace, the story is peppered with suspense. (on order)

Revenants: A Dream of New England (Daniel Mills) - This atmospheric, even stunning, novel is set in 1689, 14 years after King Philip’s War, which pitted Native Americans against English colonists. Otherworldly fiction from a promising new talent. (on order)

Rodin’s Debutante (Ward Just) - Just extends his grand inquiry into family, honor, and injustice in his beguiling and unnerving seventeenth novel, set on the author’s home ground, northern Illinois, where a massive prairie mansion is turned into an ill-conceived boys’ school at the onset of WWI. (on order)

West of Here (Jonathan Evison) - In this audacious novel, the author creates an almost absurdly complex narrative structure, bridging more than 100 years of life in Washington State and encompassing multiple points of view, and then he grounds the sublime architectonic whole in the vividly realized daily lives of characters who exist completely in their individual moments but whose actions reverberate back and forth across time. (on order)

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With the exception of Revenants, all titles are available either at the Copper Queen Library or through Interlibrary Loan. Titles marked "(on order)" will be added to CQL's collection shortly.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Award-Winning Titles in CQL’s Collections

--by CQL Staff

The literary world announces myriad award-winning books annually – the best of the best in a wide variety of categories. And, to the best of our ability (as budget allows), the Copper Queen Library adds these titles to our collections for patrons’ reading pleasure.

The most recent awards, the 2011 Pulitzer Prizes, announced this past Monday (April 18), included:

Fiction: Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad – The novel begins in New York with kleptomaniac Sasha and her boss, rising music producer Bennie Salazar, before flashing back, with Bennie, to the glory days of Bay Area punk rock, and eventually forward, with Sasha, to a settled life. Egan's overarching concerns are about how rebellion ages, influence corrupts, habits turn to addictions, and lifelong friendships fluctuate and turn. Or as one character asks, “How did I go from being a rock star to being a fat f*** no one cares about?” Egan answers the question elegantly, though not straight on, as this powerful novel chronicles how and why we change, even as the song stays the same.

General Nonfiction: Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer - "In 2010, about six hundred thousand Americans, and more than 7 million humans around the world, will die of cancer." With this sobering statistic, physician and researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee begins his comprehensive and eloquent "biography" of one of the most virulent diseases of our time. An exhaustive account of cancer's origins, Mukherjee illustrates how modern treatments – multi-pronged chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, as well as preventative care – came into existence thanks to a century's worth of research, trials, and small, essential breakthroughs around the globe. While the book is rich with the science and history behind the fight against cancer, it is also a meditation on illness, medical ethics, and the complex, intertwining lives of doctors and patients. Mukherjee's profound compassion – for cancer patients, their families, as well as the oncologists who, all too often, can offer little hope – makes this book a very human history of an elusive and complicated disease.

Biography: Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life - In his introduction, veteran biographer Chernow is clear about his goals. Using the recent "explosion of research," he wants to render George Washington "real" and "credible," to replace "frosty respect" with "visceral appreciation." In many respects, Chernow succeeds. He gives us a Washington who starts with limited education and means and, through a remarkable combination of timely deaths, an incredible capacity for hard work, a shrewd marriage, astonishing physical hardiness and courage, a propensity for land speculation, and a gift for finding influential patrons, transforms himself into a soldier, well-to-do planter, local official, and eventually the only real choice to command the Continental army, preside over the Constitutional Convention, and serve as the first president. Chernow makes familiar scenes fresh (like the crossing of the Delaware) and expertly brings the provisional revolutionary and early Republican eras to life. (on order)


History: Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Do we need yet another book on Lincoln? ... Well, yes, we do — if the book is by so richly informed a commentator as Eric Foner, who tackles what would seem to be an obvious topic, Lincoln and slavery, and manages to cast new light on it. Because of his broad-ranging knowledge of the 19th century, Foner is able to provide the most thorough and judicious account of Lincoln's attitudes toward slavery that we have. While many thousands of books deal with Lincoln and slavery, Foner’s is the definitive account of this crucial subject, illuminating in a highly original and profound way the interactions of race, slavery, public opinion, politics, and Lincoln's own character that led to the wholly improbable uncompensated emancipation of some four million slaves. Even seasoned historians will acquire fresh and new perspectives from reading this. (on order)

Poetry: Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems - This ample but representative collection should attract new readers curious about the work of America’s current poet laureate and should also satisfy those familiar with Ryan’s conversational but tightly wrought poems. Her strength lies in creating short-lined poems that slide past the reader like notes from a journal but that, unlike many such efforts, are not merely self-indulgent anecdotes or predictable bromides. Rather, readers find surprise arising from each incident or pondering, creating an effect like that of the classical Zen haiku that starts out commonplace and rises to philosophical heights. Ryan’s observation of a spider weaving begins with a comment on how “from other / angles the / fibers look / fragile,” then embeds itself in the spider’s own viewpoint, from which those fibers are “coarse ropes” requiring “heavy work” to get in place in the web. The point of this close reading of insect life reveals itself in the last lines: “It / isn’t ever / delicate / to live.” (on order)

The 2010 National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced on March 10, 2011, with Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad taking home the prize for fiction (see above). Among the other winners:

Nonfiction: Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns - Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin was falsely accused of stealing a white man's turkeys and was almost beaten to death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling, a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem after learning of the grove owners' plans to give him a "necktie party" (a lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster made his trek from Louisiana to California in 1953, embittered by "the absurdity that he was doing surgery for the United States Army and couldn't operate in his own home town." Anchored to these three stories is Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's magnificent, extensively researched study of the "great migration," the exodus of six million black Southerners out of the terror of Jim Crow to an "uncertain existence" in the North and Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates sociological and historical studies into the novelistic narratives of Gladney, Starling, and Pershing settling in new lands, building anew, and often finding that they have not left racism behind. The drama, poignancy, and romance of a classic immigrant saga pervade this book, hold the reader in its grasp, and resonate long after the reading is done

Biography: Sarah Bakewell, How to Live - In a wide-ranging intellectual career, Michel de Montaigne found no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well. By casting her biography of the writer as 20 chapters, each focused on a different answer to the question How to live? Flexible and curious, this was a mind at home contemplating the morality of cannibals, the meaning of his own near-death experience, and the puzzlingly human behavior of animals. And though Montaigne has identified his own personality as his overarching topic, Bakewell marvels at the way Montaigne’s prose has enchanted diverse readers — Hazlitt and Sterne, Woolf and Gide — with their own reflections.

Autobiography: Darin Strauss, Half a Life - The author, in high school, is driving his father's car when a classmate swerves in front of him on her bike. He knows there is nothing he could have done, and the police confirm it (insurers call it a “no fault fatality”). But it is hard for people in his hometown to cope with the idea that this was just a senseless, meaningless accident – no one likes to think that our lives are out of our control. The girl's mother tells Darin that he is living for two now, and that he has to do everything twice as well now, placing a heavy burden on him. But perhaps the heaviest toll is taken by Darin's inability to get close to anyone he meets after the accident: "My accident was the deepest part of my life and the second deepest was hiding it....“



The 2010 Man Booker Prize was awarded to Howard Jacobson for his eleventh novel, The Finkler Question, a deeply funny exploration of identity, shame, and friendship.

The rest of the shortlist included:
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Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America - Two-time Booker Prize winner Peter Carey imagines the experiences of Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French political philosopher and author of Democracy in America. Carey brings de Tocqueville to life through the fictionalized character of Olivier de Garmont, a coddled and conceited French aristocrat who can only begin to grasp how the other half lives when forced to travel to the New World with John "Parrot" Larrit, a jaded survivor of lifelong hardship. Though their relationship begins in mutual hatred, it evolves into affectionate comradeship as they experience the alien social and cultural milieus of the New World.

Emma Donoghue, Room - In many ways, Jack is a typical 5-year-old. He likes to read books, watch TV, and play games with his Ma. But Jack is different in a big way--he has lived his entire life in a single room, sharing the tiny space with only his mother and an unnerving nighttime visitor known as Old Nick. For Jack, Room is the only world he knows, but for Ma, it is a prison in which she has tried to craft a normal life for her son. When their insular world suddenly expands beyond the confines of their four walls, the consequences are piercing and extraordinary. Despite its profoundly disturbing premise, Donoghue's Room is rife with moments of hope and beauty and the dogged determination to live, even in the most desolate circumstances. A stunning and original novel of survival in captivity, readers who enter Room will leave staggered, as though, like Jack, they are seeing the world for the very first time.

Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room - In South African writer Damon Galgut's latest novel, the narrator (also named Damon) describes three different journeys he took as a younger man, one where he filled the role of the follower, one the lover, and one the guardian. Although each trip is distinct, involving different locations (Greece, Africa, and India), travel companions, and challenges, certain themes resurface throughout Damon's wanderings, including his unceasing drive to keep moving and his inability to form lasting relationships. Damon's changing character – which ranges from a powerless follower to an assertive protector, depending on the varying circumstances he confronts – suggests that a large part of human identity derives from external influences rather than from an inherent inner quality. Locating a solid core within this impermanence is what compels Damon to undertake his quests and what creates this novel's momentum.

Andrea Levy, The Long Song - British writer of Jamaican descent, Levy draws upon history to recall the island's slave rebellion of 1832. The unreliable narrator pretends to be telling the story of a woman called July, born as the result of a rape of a field slave, but it soon becomes obvious that the narrator is July herself. Taken as a house slave when she's eight years old, July is later seduced by the pretentiously moralistic English overseer after he marries the plantation's mistress; his clergyman father has assured him that a married man might do as he pleases. Related in July's lilting patois, the narrative encompasses scenes of shocking brutality and mass carnage, but also humor, sometimes verging on farce. Levy's satiric eye registers the venomous racism of the white characters and is equally candid in relating the degrees of social snobbery around skin color among the blacks themselves, July included. Slavery destroys the humanity of everyone is Levy's subtext, while the cliffhanger ending suggests (one hopes) a sequel.

Tom McCarthy, C - The enigmatic title signifies (for starters) Serge Carrefax, who grows up in early 1900s England on the grounds of the Versoie House, where his inventor-father Simeon runs a school for the deaf, using his pupils to test the copper-wire telegraphs and radio gizmos that are his obsession. There, Serge and his ill-fated sister, Sophie, enact strange experiments in chemistry and star in a school pageant depicting Ceres's journey to the underworld. More C-words follow, as an older, haunted Serge travels to a Bavarian sanitarium in search of the healing chemical cysteine and, following his enrollment in the 104th Airborne Squadron, enjoys flying reconnaissance while high on cocaine. The young century unfurls, bringing with it spiritualists, Egyptian espionage, and a fateful tryst in an ancient tomb, where Serge will at last discover the delicate wavelengths that connect him to the historical signals for which he is an ideal receiver. Each chapter of McCarthy's tour de force is a cryptic, ornate puzzle box, rich with correspondences and emphatically detailed digressions.

Nobel Prize - Mario Vargas Llosa, acclaimed author and political activist, won the Nobel Prize for Literature on October 7. He is the first South American writer to win since Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1982. Works in the library's collection include: Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, The Bad Girl, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, Conversation in the Cathedral, Death in the Andes, The Feast of the Goat, The Green House, In Praise of the Stepmother, The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, The Storyteller, The War of the End of the World, and Who killed Palomino Molero?

2010 Hugo Award Winners (World Science Fiction Society) - Two authors shared the Best Novel award: China Mieville and Paolo Bacigalupi.

China Mieville, The City and the City - Better known for New Weird fantasies (Perdido Street Station, etc.), bestseller Miéville offers an outstanding take on police procedurals with this barely speculative novel. Twin southern European cities Beszel and Ul Qoma coexist in the same physical location, separated by their citizens' determination to see only one city at a time. Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad roams through the intertwined but separate cultures as he investigates the murder of Mahalia Geary, who believed that a third city, Orciny, hides in the blind spots between Beszel and Ul Qoma. As Mahalia's friends disappear and revolution brews, Tyador is forced to consider the idea that someone in unseen Orciny is manipulating the other cities. Through this exaggerated metaphor of segregation, Miéville skillfully examines the illusions people embrace to preserve their preferred social realities.

Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl (which also won this year's Nebula Award) - Noted short story writer Bacigalupi (Pump Six and Other Stories) proves equally adept at novel length in this grim but beautifully written tale of Bangkok struggling for survival in a post-oil era of rising sea levels and out-of-control mutation. Capt. Jaidee Rojjanasukchai of the Thai Environment Ministry fights desperately to protect his beloved nation from foreign influences. Factory manager Anderson Lake covertly searches for new and useful mutations for a hated Western agribusiness. Aging Chinese immigrant Tan Hock Seng lives by his wits while looking for one last score. Emiko, the titular despised but impossibly seductive product of Japanese genetic engineering, works in a brothel until she accidentally triggers a civil war. This complex, literate and intensely felt tale recalls both William Gibson and Ian McDonald at their very best and is clearly one of the finest science fiction novels of the year.

2010 Edgar Award Winners (Mystery Writers of America)


Best Novel: John Hart, The Last Child - A year after 12-year-old Alyssa Merrimon disappeared on her way home from the library in an unnamed rural North Carolina town, her twin brother, Johnny, continues to search the town, street by street, even visiting the homes of known sex offenders. Detective Clyde Hunt, the lead cop on Alyssa's case, keeps a watchful eye on Johnny and his mother, who has deteriorated since Alyssa's abduction and her husband's departure soon afterward. When a second girl is snatched, Johnny is even more determined to find his sister, convinced that the perpetrator is the same person who took Alyssa. But what he unearths is more sinister than anyone imagined, sending shock waves through the community and putting Johnny's own life in danger.

Best First Novel: Stefanie Pintoff, In the Shadow of Gotham - The wreck of the steamship General Slocum in 1904 cost Detective Simon Ziele of the New York City police both his fiancée and the full use of his right arm. In response to those losses, Ziele has abandoned big-city policing for the quiet dullness of Dobson, a town in Westchester County, but a brutal murder interrupts his retreat from the world. Someone slashes and bludgeons to death Sarah Wingate, a Columbia mathematics graduate student whose brilliance evoked jealousy in her peers, in her home under circumstances that resemble the notorious murders of Lizzie Borden's parents. Ziele's investigation is soon co-opted by Alistair Sinclair, a student of criminology who's convinced he knows the culprit's identity. The period detail, characterizations and plotting are all top-notch, and Ziele has enough depth to carry a series. (on order)

Monday, April 18, 2011

It's A Wrap for Film Director Sidney Lumet

Posted by CQL Staff

(Obituary from The Guardian)

Sidney Lumet, arguably the geatest director of the American crime drama, has died at the age of 86. His stepdaughter, Leslie Gimbel, said Lumet died of lymphoma at his home in Manhattan, the New York Times reported. Lumet was nominated for the best director Oscar on four separate occasions between the late '50s and early '80s before picking up an honorary Academy Award in 2005.


Born in Philadelphia, the son of two Yiddish stage performers, Lumet served as a radar repair man in the Second World War before directing theatre productions in New York. This apprenticeship would form the basis for his later screen career.


Lumet typically corralled his actors through a lengthy rehearsal period and then shot the film at speed. He made his feature debut with the acclaimed 12 Angry Men, a claustrophobic courtroom drama that starred Henry Fonda as a rogue juror.


Lumet's preferred location was the cauldron of inner-city New York, and his favored subject matter tended to be the porous line between order and criminality. Many of his most famous pictures -- The Pawnbroker, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and The Verdict -- stand as tense, earthy morality plays.


But, the director also took the occasional detour along the way, as evidenced by his plush version of Murder on the Orient Express, his Oscar-winning media satire Network, or 1978's The Wiz, a Motown musical update of The Wizard of Oz, starring Michael Jackson and Diana Ross.


His career spanned six decades and more than 50 films. "All I want is to get better and quantity can help me solve my problems," he once admitted. "I'm thrilled by the idea that I'm not even sure how many films I've done. If I don't have a script I adore, I do the one I like. If I don't have one I like, I do one that has an actor I like or that presents some technical challenge."


Along the way, he worked with the likes of Marlon Brando, Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Sean Connery, Albert Finney, Ingrid Bergman, and Al Pacino. Lumet took a memorable final bow with Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, an acclaimed crime saga that proved its creator was still a force to be reckoned with. "The veteran director Sidney Lumet may be 84 years old," wrote Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw in January 2008. "But in this superb heist thriller, he breaks out the shocks - and the twists - with the ferocity of a hungry youngster."


Lumet's book, Making Movies, as well as Robert Aldrich's Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Robert Aldrich, George Cukor, Allan Dwan, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Chuck Jones, Fritz Lang, Joseph H. Lewis, Sidney Lumet, Leo McCarey, Otto Preminger, Don Siegel, Josef von Sternberg, Frank Tashlin, Edgar G. Ulmer, Raoul Walsh are available for check-out from the Copper Queen Library's film section (791.43).


In addition, over a dozen of his films are available for borrowing throughout the county, including several award-winners at the Copper Queen Library (Dog Day Afternoon, The Fugitive Kind, Running on Empty, 12 Angry Men, and The Verdict).


RIP, Sidney; we will miss your vision!

Friday, April 08, 2011

Friday Feature: Stewart O’Nan Tells a Widow’s Tale

--by JOANNA SMITH RAKOFF (New York Times, April 1, 2011)

Who is Stewart O’Nan? Over the past 17 years, he’s written 11 novels — we’ll turn to the 12th in a moment — as remarkable for their precise, economical language and depth of characterization as for the fact that each is as different from its predecessor, in style, tone and narrative approach, as if it had come from a different author.

What unites these disparate books are their themes — the fragmented and solitary nature of contemporary American life, the degradation of Rust Belt cities and towns, the slippery line between the working and middle class — and a distinct ability to turn toward the dark places from which other writers might avert their gaze. This is, perhaps, a fancy way of saying that O’Nan often veers into the bloody territory traditionally ascribed to genre fiction (thrillers, mysteries, horror, even procedurals), revolving around murders, abductions, mysterious plagues or gruesome accidental deaths, with forays into the supernatural, as in The Night Country, narrated by three teenagers killed in a car crash. This is a writer who, like Dickens, you can count on to kill off the little girl — a writer who looks at cars warming in suburban driveways and sees “enough white smoke for a million suicides.”

So it’s funny, and unexpected, that O’Nan’s most terrifying novel, Wish You Were Here (2002), relegated such violence to the sidelines, centering instead on the familiar psychological torture a family wreaks upon itself. Sprawling and virtuosic, that novel follows Emily Maxwell (70-ish and newly widowed) and her family over a final week at their Chautauqua lake house, which Emily has decided to sell despite the family’s objections, turning the gathering into “politics on a dangerously heartfelt level, where the smallest disagreement could be taken as a betrayal.”

Now Emily has returned. Set seven years later, in 2007, Emily, Alone — O’Nan’s best novel yet — finds his difficult heroine rattling around her Pittsburgh house, “her life no longer an urgent or necessary business,” redistributing Kleenex boxes (the fullest on her nightstand, the least full in the office), cleaning her stove in preparation for the cleaning lady’s arrival, noting “the usual troop of jays and nuthatches and titmice in her bird journal,” scanning the obituaries for familiar names and, mostly, planning for the annual visits of her children, Margaret and Kenneth.

So quiet and orderly is Emily’s life that a phone call followed by a ringing doorbell constitutes a “madhouse,” a walk in the snow “an adventure” and the purchase of a new car a life-changing event. The novel, in a way, hinges on that car — a bright blue Subaru Outback that she (hilariously) worries is too flashy — which, both literally and metaphorically, allows her greater agency over her own life and, in the months that follow, sends her into something of an emotional tailspin. Suddenly, she finds herself open to the world anew, no longer derisive of her neighbors’ garish Christmas decorations but “grateful for the sheer silly exuberance,” and increasingly aware of both her culpability in her children’s struggles and her own shortcomings, her restless desire for something larger, for perfection, for the impossible fulfillment of her ideals. “Why did she always want more,” she asks herself, “when this was all there was?”

Emily’s frenetic activity and endless lists are, of course, a way of fending off such questions, as well as the overwhelming surges of memory that serve only to further her constant sense of loss. “She could not stop these visitations, even if she wanted to,” she laments. “They plagued her like migraines, left her helpless and dissatisfied, as if her life and the lives of all those she’d loved had come to nothing, merely because that time was gone, receding even in her own memory, to be replaced by this diminished present.”

It’s heartbreaking stuff — I will confess that I found myself sobbing at certain, often unexpected, points, as when Emily donates a set of monogrammed luggage, feeling like “an executioner” — and yet the novel’s brilliance lies just as much in O’Nan’s innate comic timing, which often stems from Emily’s self-imposed isolation from, and disgust with, the modern world. At a Van Gogh exhibit, she thinks the people listening to the audio tour look like “the subjects of some mind-control experiment, pressing buttons on a small black box wired to their heads.” Underlying the humor is an incisive investigation of the ways cultural forces shape private lives: the constant clash between Emily and her children has as much to do with generational differences as with questions of temperament and personal inclination. A child of the Depression and the Great War, raised in privation, Emily prizes thrift and industry. Her children — products of the 1960s and, of course, their parents’ financial stability — prize self-expression over all.

If O’Nan’s earlier novels were influenced by Poe, the spectre of Henry James hovers delicately above Emily’s Grafton Street home, insinuating itself into O’Nan’s spiraling, exact sentences and the beautiful, subtle symbolism that permeates the novel. James, of course, wrote ghost stories, too, and viewed the supernatural forces at play in stories like “The Turn of the Screw” as an embodiment of the anxiety that underlies the stuff of daily life, “the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy.” If O’Nan makes one thing clear in “Emily, Alone,” it’s that these days the normal — for an 80-year-old woman living alone, far from her children — might be just as sinister as it is easy.

[Joanna Smith Rakoff is the author of the novel A Fortunate Age; a version of this review appeared in print on April 3, 2011, on page BR9 of the New York Times Sunday Book Review]

Thursday, April 07, 2011

Spotlight On... All That Jazz!

--by CQL Staff

April is "Jazz Appreciation Month" so, in appreciation, we are highlighting footage from our film collection featuring jazz greats. The first section showcases the Jazz Icons series, while the second section focuses on jazz biography and history. The third section mentions two full-length fiction films related to jazz and jazz musicians.

Jazz Icons (Series 1-3)

Jazz Icons is an ongoing DVD series featuring full-length concerts and in-studio performances by the greatest legends of jazz, filmed all over the world from the 1950s to the 1970s. Transferred from the original masters, each of these DVDs features rare performances that have never been officially released (on home video) and in many cases, were never broadcast. Each DVD is produced with the full support and cooperation of the artists or their estates. The Copper Queen Library's collection includes Series 1-3, and the newly-released Series 4 is now on order.


Information about each film includes the location(s) of performances as well as the name of each piece played.


Cannonball Adderley: Live in '63 - Switzerland 1963: Jessica’s Birthday, Angel Eyes, Jive Samba, Bohemia After Dark, Dizzy’s Business, Trouble In Mind, Work Song, Unit 7; Germany 1963: Jessica’s Birthday, Brother John, Jive Samba (Series 3)



Louis Armstrong: Live in '59 - Belgium 1959: When It’s Sleepy Time Down South, (Back Home Again In) Indiana, Basin Street Blues, Tiger Rag, Now You Has Jazz, Love Is Just Around The Corner, C’Est Si Bon, Mack The Knife, Stompin’ At The Savoy, St. Louis Blues, Ko-Ko-Mo (I Love You So), When The Saints Go Marching In, La Vie En Rose (Series 1)



Chet Baker: Live in '64 & '79 - Belgium 1964: Bye Bye Blackbird, Isn’t It Romantic, Airegin, Time After Time, So What; Norway 1979: Interview, Blue Train, Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise, Five Years Ago, Love For Sale (Series 1)




Count Basie: Live in '62 - Sweden 1962: Easin’ It, You’re Too Beautiful, Corner Pocket, Stella By Starlight, Back To The Apple, I Needs To Be Bee’d With, I Got Rhythm, Back Water Blues, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, Old Man River, One O’Clock Jump (Series 1)




Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers: Live in '58 - Belgium 1958: Just By Myself, Moanin’, I Remember Clifford, It’s You Or No One, Whisper Not, A Night In Tunisia, NY Theme (Series 1)



Bonus Disc (Series 2) - John Coltrane (Sweden 1962): I Want To Talk About You; Dexter Gordon (Norway 1964): I Want More; Dave Brubeck (Finland 1964): Unisphere; Sarah Vaughan (Sweden 1967): The Shadow Of Your Smile, What Now My Love, I Had A Ball

Bonus Disc (Series 3) - Sonny Rollins (Sweden 1959): Interview, It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing), Paul’s Pal, Love Letters; (Holland 1959): I’ve Told Every Little Star, I Want To Be Happy, A Weaver Of Dreams; Rashaan Roland Kirk (Belgium 1963): Stolen Moments, Everything Happens To Me, Domino, Three For The Festival; Nina Simone (Sweden 1963): Love Me Or Leave Me, Interview, Mississippi Goddam



Dave Brubeck: Live in '64 & '66 - Belgium 1964: St. Louis Blues, Koto Song, Three To Get Ready, In Your Own Sweet Way, Take Five; Germany 1966: Take The ‘A’ Train, Forty Days, I’m In A Dancing Mood, Koto Song, Take Five (Series 2)




John Coltrane: Live in '60, '61 & '65 - Germany 1960: On Green Dolphin Street, Walkin’, The Theme, Autumn Leaves, What’s New, Autumn In NY, Hackensack; Germany 1961: My Favorite Things, Ev’rytime We Say Goodbye, Impressions; Belgium 1965: Vigil, Naima, My Favorite Things (Series 2)



Duke Ellington: Live in '58 - Holland 1958: Black And Tan Fantasy, Creole Love Call, The Mooch, Harlem Air Shaft, My Funny Valentine, Kinda Dukish/Rockin’ In Rhythm, Mr. Gentle And Mr. Cool, Jack The Bear, All Of Me, Things Ain’t What They Used To Be, Hi-Fi-Fo-Fum, Sophisticated Lady, Don’t Get Around Much Anymore, Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me, Don’t You Know I Care, In A Sentimental Mood, Mood Indigo, I’m Beginning To See The Light, Caravan, I Got It Bad And That Ain’t Good, It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing), Solitude, I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart, Don’t Get Around Much Anymore, Diminuendo And Crescendo In Blue (Series 2)


Bill Evans: Live '64 -'75 - Sweden 1964: My Foolish Heart, Israel; Belgium 1965: Detour Ahead, My Melancholy Baby; Denmark 1970: Emily, Alfie, Someday My Prince Will Come; Sweden 1970: f You Could See Me Now, ’Round Midnight, Someday My Prince Will Come, Sleepin’ Bee, You’re Gonna Hear From Me, Re: Person I Knew; Denmark 1975: Sareen Jurer, Blue Serge, Up With The Lark, But Beautiful, Twelve Tone Tune Two (Series 3)


Ella Fitzgerald: Live in '57 & '63 - Belgium 1957: Angel Eyes, Lullaby Of Birdland, Love For Sale, Tenderly, April In Paris, Just One Of Those Things, Roll ‘Em Pete, I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing); Sweden 1963: No Moon At All, Just One Of Those Things, Runnin’ Wild, Georgia On My Mind, Desafinado, Hallelujah, I Love Her So, Mack The Knife (Series 1)



Dizzy Gillespie: Live in '58 & '70 - Belgium 1958: Blues After Dark, On The Sunny Side Of The Street, Loverman, Cocktails For Two, Blues Walk; Denmark 1970: Con Alma, The Brother K, Now Hear My Meanin’, Manteca, Let Me Outta Here, Things Are Here (Series 1)


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.. . Dexter Gordon: Live in '63 & '64 - Switzerland 1963: Second Balcony Jump, You’ve Changed; Holland 1964: A Night In Tunisia, What’s New, Blues Walk; Belgium 1964: Lady Bird, Body And Soul (Series 2) .

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Lionel Hampton: Live in '58 - Belgium 1958: The High & The Mighty, Hamp’s Piano Blues, History Of Jazz, Hot Club Blues, I Found A New Baby, The Chase (Part I & II), Brussels Sprouts, Sticks Ahoy, Gladys (Series 3)





Quincy Jones: Live in '60 - Belgium 1960: Birth Of A Band, Moanin’, Lester Leaps In, The Gypsy, Tickle Toe, Everybody’s Blues, Big Red; Switzerland 1960: Birth Of A Band, I Remember Clifford, Walkin’, Parisian Thoroughfare, The Midnight Sun Will Never Set, Everybody’s Blues, Stockholm Sweetnin’, My Reverie, Ghana, Big Red (Series 1)


Rahsaan Roland Kirk: Live in '63 & '67 - Belgium 1963: Moon Song, Lover, Three For The Festival, Yesterdays, Milestones; Holland 1963: Bags' Groove, Lover Man, There Will Never Be Another You, Three For The Festival; Norway 1967: Blues For Alice, Blue Rol, The Shadow Of Your Smile (Theme from The Sandpiper), Making Love After Hours, NY Theme (Series 3)



Charles Mingus: Live in '64 - Belgium 1964: So Long Eric, Peggy’s Blue Skylight, Meditations On Integration; Norway 1964: So Long Eric, Orange Was The Color Of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk, Parkeriana, Take The “A” Train; Sweden 1964: So Long Eric, Meditations On Integration (Series 2)



Thelonious Monk: Live in '66 - Norway 1966: Lulu’s Back In Town, Blue Monk, ‘Round Midnight; Denmark 1966: Lulu’s Back In Town, Don’t Blame Me, Epistrophy (Series 1)

.. ... .. Wes Montgomery: Live in '65 - Holland 1965: I Love Blues, Nica’s Dream, "Love Affair" Rehearsal, The End Of A Love Affair; Belgium 1965: Impressions, Twisted Blues, Here’s That Rainy Day, Jingles, Boy Next Door; England 1965: Four On Six, Full House, Here’s That Rainy Day, Twisted Blues, West Coast Blues (Series 2)

. .Oscar Peterson: Live in '63, '64, & '65 - Sweden 1963: Reunion Blues, Satin Doll, But Not For Me, It Ain’t Necessarily So, Chicago (That Toddling Town); Denmark 1964: Soon, On Green Dolphin Street, Bags' Groove, Tonight, C-Jam Blues, Hymn To Freedom; Finland 1965: Yours Is My Heart Alone, (Mack The Knife) Moritat, Blues For Smedley, Misty, Mumbles (Series 3)

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Buddy Rich: Live in '78 - Holland 1978: Ya Gotta Try, Little Train, Best Coast, Grand Concourse, ‘Round Midnight, Birdland, Channel One Suite, Big Swing Face (Series 1)

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Sonny Rollins: Live in '65 & '68 - Denmark 1965: There Will Never Be Another You, St. Thomas Oleo/Sonnymoon For Two, Darn That Dream, Three Little Words; Denmark 1968: On Green Dolphin Street, St. Thomas, Four (Series 3)

. . . Nina Simone: Live in '65 & '68 - Holland 1965: Brown Baby, Four Women, The Ballad Of Hollis Brown, Tomorrow Is My Turn, Images, Go Limp, Mississippi Goddam; England 1968: Go To Hell, Ain't Got No/I Got Life, Backlash Blues, I Put A Spell On You, Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, Why? (The King Of Love Is Dead) (Series 3)


Sarah Vaughan: Live in '58 & '64 - Sweden 1958: Sometimes I’m Happy, Lover Man, September In The Rain, Mean To Me, Tenderly, If This Isn’t Love; Holland 1958: Over The Rainbow, They All Laughed, Lover Man, Cherokee, Sometimes I’m Happy; Sweden 1964: I Feel Pretty, The More I See You, Baubles, Bangles And Beads, I Got Rhythm, Misty, Honeysuckle Rose, Maria, Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home (Series 2)



Other Jazz Non-Fiction Films

Blue Note: A Story of Modern Jazz - This is the story of Blue Note Records, the jazz record company founded in 1939 by German refugees Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff. The history of the company has been intimately linked with the evolution of jazz music and the development of jazz musicians ever since. Includes many recordings of live performances by Blue Note artists as well as interviews of staff, performers and critics. Illustrated with photos by Francis Wolff. Guests and players include Albert Ammons & Pete Johnson (1939); Bud Powell, Copenhagen (1962); John Coltrane, Baden-Baden (1962); Dexter Gordon, Copehagen (1965); Freddie Hubbard, Copehagen (1965); Horace Silver, Copehagen (1965); Sonny Rollins, Copehagen (1965); Thelonious Monk, Copehagen (1966); Art Blakey, Copehagen (1968); Elvin Jones, Copehagen (1968); Town Hall concert, New York City (1985); Cassandra Wilson, Stuttgart (1996); Junko Onishi, Stuttgart (1996); and The Blue Note All Stars, Stuttgart (1996).

. Jazz (Ken Burns) - Although it has its detractors, Ken Burns' documentary explores the history of jazz from its beginnings through the 1990s, including the stories of many of its creators and performers. Includes archival video, still photographs, historical performances, and newly recorded interviews and musical performances. Episode 1. Gumbo -- Episode 2. The gift -- Episode 3. Our language -- Episode 4. The true welcome -- Episode 5. Swing: pure pleasure -- Episode 6. Swing: the velocity of celebration -- Episode 7. Dedicated to chaos -- Episode 8. Risk -- Episode 9. The adventure -- Episode 10. A masterpiece by midnight

One Night with Blue Note: The Historic All-Star Reunion Concert - An evening of jazz music performed by several major artists in celebration of the spirit of Blue Note Records. Includes performances by Bobby Hutcherson, Kenny Burrell, Herbie Hancock, Walter Davis, Jr., Ron Carter, Reggie Workman, Cecil McBee, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Johnny Griffin, Jack DeJohnette, Art Blakey, Stanley Jordan, Curtis Fuller, James Newton, Charles Lloyd, Jackie McLean, Michel Petrucciani, Woody Shaw, Jimmy Smith, Grady Tate, Cecil Taylor, Stanley Turrentine, McCoy Tyner, Grover Washington, Jr., and Tony Williams.

Thelonious Monk, Straight No Chaser - Filmmaker Bruce Ricker couldn't believe his luck. Michael and Christian Blackwood's extensive 1968 footage of the groundbreaking modern jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk, including the only footage of the very private Monk off stage, was in excellent condition. The reels were, in Ricker's words, "just sitting there like the Dead Sea Scrolls of jazz." Ricker, as co-producer, joins director and fellow producer Charlotte Zwerin (Gimme Shelter), executive producer Clint Eastwood and others to bring these scrolls to astonishing life, combining the Blackwoods' rare footage of Monk in studio on tour and behind the scenes with new interviews, archival photos and more to create a landmark aural and visual treat.Tunes in order of appearance: Evidence; Rhythm-a-ning; On the Bean; Round Midnight; Well, You Needn't; Bright Mississippi; Blue Monk; Trinkle, Tinkle; Rhythm-a-ning; Ugly Beauty; Ask Me Now; Just a Gigolo; Crepuscule with Nellie; I Should Care; We See; Osaka T.; Evidence; Epistrophy, Don't Blame Me; Ruby, My Dear; I Mean You; Lulu's Back in Town; Off Minor; Pannonica; Boo Boo's Birthday; Misterioso; Monk's Mood; Sweetheart of All My Dreams; Round Midnight. (VHS)

'Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris - In 1991, filmmaker Raymond De Felitta heard a singer named Jackie Paris on a Los Angeles radio station and began a search that first yielded the fact that Paris had died in 1977. In 2004, De Felitta discovered Paris was alive and making a comeback in a New York City nightclub. This biographical film explores the life of the jazz singer, along with an exploration into what it is to live the life of an artist in its least glamorous aspects. Includes interviews with jazz legends including Billy Taylor, James Moody, Anne Marie Moss, Mark Murphy, George Wein, and others; featuring the musical performances of Jackie Paris.

Jazz Fiction Films



Bird - Forest Whitaker portrays the life of legendary jazz musician Charlie "Yardbird" Parker, as directed and produced by jazz fan Clint Eastwood. The film uses actual recordings by Parker (with the backgrounds removed) and accompaniment by modern musicians attuned to the Yardbird's improvisations.



'Round Midnight - Inside the Blue Note nightclub one night in 1959 Paris, an aged ailing jazzman coaxes an eloquent wail from his tenor sax. Outside, a young Parisian too broke to buy a glass of wine strains to hear those notes. Soon, they form a friendship that sparks a final burst of genius in the fading musician. Inspired by the real-life friendship between jazz pianist Bud Powell and Francis Paudras, the cast includes Dexter Gordon, François Cluzet, Gabrielle Haker, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, John McLaughlin, Wayner Shorter, and Pierre Michelot, Sandra Reaves-Phillips, Lonette McKee, and Martin Scorsese; music by Herbie Hancock.


In addition to our jazz film collection, the library's juvenile and adult collections contain 50+ books about jazz, including history and biography. The music collection also contains nearly 50 jazz CDs. To search the jazz music collection, use the online catalog to do a search for "jazz" as the subject and "music on CD" as the material type (do not use quotation marks). As always, if you can't find what you're looking for, just ask; staff will be happy to help!