Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies

New Moon, the second movie in the Twilight Saga, based on the books by Stephenie Meyer, opens 11/20/09.

If you like books about vampires and werewolves, try the titles on my booklists now on Readers Place

• Vampire Fiction
• Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies

The First Tycoon wins National Book Award for Nonfiction

The First Tycoon : the epic life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles Wednesday evening was awarded the National Book Award for Nonfiction. (Find this book in our catalog)

This is what it says in our catalog about this outstanding biography of the man said to be the creator of modern capitalism: "A gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism. Founder of a dynasty, builder of the original Grand Central, creator of an impossibly vast fortune, Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt is an American icon. Humbly born on Staten Island during George Washington’s presidency, he rose from boatman to builder of the nation’s largest fleet of steamships to lord of a railroad empire. Lincoln consulted him on steamship strategy during the Civil War; Jay Gould was first his uneasy ally and then sworn enemy; and Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president of the United States, was his spiritual counselor. We see Vanderbilt help to launch the transportation revolution, propel the Gold Rush, reshape Manhattan, and invent the modern corporation—in fact, as T. J. Stiles elegantly argues, Vanderbilt did more than perhaps any other individual to create the economic world we live in today. InThe First Tycoon, Stiles offers the first complete, authoritative biography of this titan, and the first comprehensive account of the Commodore’s personal life. It is a sweeping, fast-moving epic, and a complex portrait of the great man. Vanderbilt, Stiles shows, embraced the philosophy of the Jacksonian Democrats and withstood attacks by his conservative enemies for being too competitive. He was a visionary who pioneered business models. He was an unschooled fistfighter who came to command the respect of New York’s social elite. And he was a father who struggled with a gambling-addicted son, a husband who was loving yet abusive, and, finally, an old man who was obsessed with contacting the dead. The First Tycoon is the exhilarating story of a man and a nation maturing together: the powerful account of a man whose life was as epic and complex as American history itself."

If you like reading about powerful and visionary businessmen, you might like to read the books in my booklist, "Captains of Industry" now on Readers Place. Click here.

National Book Awards

Last night, Wednesday, November 18, the National Book Awards
were presented at a black-tie dinner at Cipriani Wall Street in Manhattan. Read more...

The winners:
* Fiction: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (Find this book in our catalog)

* Nonfiction: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T. J. Stiles (Find this book in our catalog)
* Young people's literature: Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose (Find this book in our catalog)
* Poetry: Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy by Keith Waldrop

Gore Vidal was awarded the medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Dave Eggers accepted the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall: a novel by Hilary Mantel (Find this book in our catalog)

I blogged about this book when it won the Man Booker Prize this year (Read more...). Now I have read the book and I think it is even better than the reviews!

With Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel (read more about the author) engages the reader with this familiar story of Henry VIII's divorce in a completely new and fresh way. To me the voice of Thomas Cromwell with which this story is told this is the most appealing aspect of an absorbing and fascinating and intellectually challenging book.

Thomas Cromwell is the narrator, and yet the story is not told in the first person but in the third, by a "he." "He" is in all the conversations and speaks Cromwells' words. It is as though the reader and Cromwell too are there as spectators receiving blow-by-blow commentary, and also both there looking out through Cromwell's eyes.

The story is about the Court of Henry VIII in the 1530's at the time of his courtship of Anne Boleyn and his seeking a divorce from Katherine of Aragon. The book is a powerful, fascinating, and detailed retelling of the court intrigue and politics of those times, the fall of Wolsey, and the rise of the Boleyns. It is also about the early attempts at religious reform, the controversy over the vernacular Bible, and the persecution, imprisonment, torture and death that was meted out to people of all persuasions from all sides.

Nothing is as it seems. Men and women rise and fall on the apparent whim of the monarch and yet everything is ruled by the urgent need to produce a male heir to the throne and ensure the stability of the realm. Hilary mantel's depiction of the universal panic at the thought of an invasion of England, which was thought to be inevitable if Henry died without a male heir, brings a fresh view to this well-known story.

Cromwell is there at every council, taking advantage of the instability to acquire more offices and more power. Mantel's portrait of Cromwell is a very nuanced one and a much more sympathic one than we are used to. "He" is a caring man and loves small dogs, he is a loving husband and father, a generous benefactor, neighbor, and employer. He is loyal and yet vengeful. He is principled and yet single-mindedly ambitious and ruthless. He is a polymath and a student of the scriptures. He is a great deal more intelligent than his opponents, and understands human nature only too well. And yet he does not seem to understand himself. He is "he" who speaks his lines and yet he stands away from himself. He is action and yet does not seem to allow himself feelings.

I am sure you will have a great deal of pleasure in trying to work out what drives Cromwell, and also in seeing the other familiar actors in this drama through Hilary Mantel's fresh eyes: Anne Boleyn, Thomas More, the Duke of Norfolk.

Throughout the book we hear of Wolf Hall where the Seymours, whose downtrodden daughter Jane is at court, are living in digrace. At the close of the book Cromwell is about to travel to Wolf Hall. Does he even understand his own motives? Have the political winds begun to shift again?

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: a novel by Alan Bradley (Find this book in our catalog)

The books I like the best are the books where I find myself relating to the main character, where for a time I find myself, as it were, inside the character's own skin. This was very true with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. This is what it says in our catalog: "In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950 and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia's family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw."

Perhaps I was able to relate to Flavia because she is eleven years old in 1950, a girl trying to have adventures in a cotton frock. She is constantly getting her dress filthy and ripping the soles half off her shoes. I grew up in the fifties in England and remember painfully how hard it was to ride a bike fast and yet modestly in a dress. I thought the author's depiction of the era was right on. Flavia is feisty, brave and resourceful, and yet everything conspires against her success, including the weight and age of her bike, her distant father, and her bullying older sisters. Flavia is the classic child on her own against the world much beloved of children's authors. She is Harry Potter, she is the Little Princess, and she suffers A Series of Unfortunate Events.

And yet this is a book for adults. It will remind you of books you read as a child; and yet you will admire the sophisticated wit, the understatement and the irony. Flavia is a brilliant child and adroitly manipulates all the people she meets to her own ends. She is quite cynical and understands people's motives only too well. The reader enjoys Alan Bradley's larger-than-life and yet somehow authentic characters, especially as they are revealed by Flavia in her own snippy voice.

I liked the wit and I enjoyed the gothic style mystery and the bizarre details such as the decaying Rolls Royce in the barn and the decaying auto repair shed at the village library. All is decay, but no detail is unimportant: the reader needs to keep awake.

The pacing is very appealing. You are drawn in straight away by the opening: "It was as black in the closet as old blood. They had shoved me in and locked the door." You know straight away that you are in for an embattled protagonist, dark secrets, violence and domestic misery.

Sure enough, Flavia's father is soon arrested for the murder and Flavia takes it upon herself to prove he did not do it. Her quest brings her face to face with some very adult issues involving love, loyalty, guilt, revenge, despair, vanity, and misunderstanding. At one time I thought I understood what the sweetness at the bottom of the pie was, but now I am not so sure. Perhaps when you have read the book you will understand.

2012: books to movie

Last Friday the movie 2012 opened, starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Woody Harrelson and Danny Glover. This apocalyptic movie has a really cool viral website that tells more about the movie but which should be taken with a large pinch of salt! In fact, it has been severely criticised for scaremongering, and for blurring the lines between fact and fiction, science and pseodo-science. It's fun to visit, though! See what you think.

The year 2012 is a year cloaked in controversy among scientists, researchers, and new age philosophers. If you want to find out more about the 2012 phenomenom, you could check out a couple of items available at Harford County Public Library. The movie 2012 is based on the work of the following authors:

Journalist Daniel Pinchbeck, author of both the anthology Toward 2012 (Find this book in our catalog), and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl,
and -

John Major Jenkins, a pioneer of the 2012 movement and author of The 2012 Story : the myths, fallacies, and truth behind the most intriguing date in history (Find this book in our catalog).

Read what it says in our catalog about Toward 2012: "An informed, challenging, and engaging collection of essays on the new choices in lifestyles and community as we begin the countdown toward the year 2012. This fresh and thought-provoking anthology draws together some of today’s most celebrated visionaries, thinkers, and pioneers in the field of evolving consciousness— exploring topics from shamanism to urban homesteading, the legacy of Carlos Castaneda to Mayan predictions for the year 2012, and new paths in direct political action and human sexuality. Toward 2012 highlights some of the most challenging, intelligent pieces published on the acclaimed website Reality Sandwich. It is coedited by Daniel Pinchbeck, the preeminent voice on 2012, and online pioneer Ken Jordan, and features original works from Stanislav Grof, John Major Jenkins, and Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky); interviews with Abbie Hoffman and artist Alex Grey; and a new introduction by Pinchbeck. Here are ideas that trace the arc of our evolution in consciousness, lifestyles, and communities as we draw closer to a moment in time that portends ways of living that are different from anything we have expected or experienced."

We also own Pinchbeck's DVD 2012 : science or superstition (Find the DVD in our catalog)

National Outdoor Book Awards

The winners of the 2009 National Outdoor Book Awards, sponsored by the National Outdoor Book Awards Foundation, Idaho State University and the Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education, include these books available at Harford County Public Library:
* History-Biography: Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley (Find this book in our catalog).

* Nature and the Environment: Our Living Earth by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (Find this book in our catalog)

* Outdoor Literature: Halfway to Heaven by Mark Obmascik (Find this book in our catalog)

* Natural History Literature: Every Living Thing: Man's Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys by Rob Dunn (Find this book in our catalog)

* Nature: Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America by Roger Tory Peterson (Find this book in our catalog)

If you like outdoor adventure, see also my booklist on Readers Place: "Travelers' Tales."