GREAT LINE:
The socialists loved ideas, but Churchill, the unrepentant Victorian Tory, loved life.
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When a German-educated Oxford professor of physics was asked who was the smartest person he had ever met, he replied without hesitation, “Winston Churchill.” Churchill was undoubtedly also one of the most complex, and probably had more influence on world history than any other democratically elected leader in the last 100 years. He was born into privilege at the height of Victorian imperialism, educated in its best and worst ideals, and then tried to uphold and preserve those ideals (and that empire) against the terrible tragedies and absolute monsters of the 20th Century. Manchester was both an historian and a novelist and so does a wonderful job exploring Churchill’s psychology, how great strengths were the sources of both brilliant success and perplexing failure. This is a long two-volume work, but the first two chapters of Volume One summarize Churchill’s career and explain what it must have felt like to be a part of the British Empire in all its glory so these two chapters can be read as a stand-alone work. But readers wanting to know more have both volumes of Manchester’s work to educate them.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: The Last Lion
GREAT LINE:
When I was carrying him, I had the constant sensation that I was a kind of radio tower, within which Adam sat broadcasting some kind of signal to the world around me – not a verbal message but an unnamed energy, a sort of goodness, that drew out people’s best selves and helped them connect with each other.
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Expecting Adam is Martha Beck’s memoir documenting the days leading up to the birth of her second child. During the pregnancy she discovers that her baby has Down’s syndrome. Both she and her husband are in their graduate studies at Harvard and on their way to academic and career success when their lives are turned upside down. Through these tumultuous days, Beck experiences a spiritual awakening that she describes in an honest, straightforward way. She experiences magical moments that stun her skeptical mind. This isn’t about conversion to religion or a New Age spirituality. It is about learning what matters in life.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Expecting Adam
GREAT LINES:
Open the shoe-store door
and a bell rings:
two shoehorns on a shoelace
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Purely as an image it’s a homely one, a handcrafted welcome/alert that the door activates as a customer enters, or exits; the customer hears the bell and looks up, the tongue-shaped shoehorns ringing against each other, the stout shoelace knotting them loosely in place. We are accustomed to hearing a door chime in a retail store, but rarely notice the bell. Among fourteen words chosen for the poem “shoe” appears three times, each time part of a compound: shoe-store, shoehorn, shoelace. Although the word doesn’t hit the ear with a bell-like sound, it recurs in a bell-like fashion, the ringing of repetition. The sh-sh-sh hints at a shoe-like shuffle, perhaps, not out of place in a shoe-store. Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser wrote the poems of Braided Creek in a collaboration not quite spelled out. Let’s reject the “continuing cult of personality,” they say, telling readers it doesn’t matter which of us wrote what. If you know their work already (both Harrison and Kooser have many books of their own) you may be able to tease out one style from the other. Harrison writes novels and to me some of the pieces suggest prosier habits, for example. But, never mind. Braided Creek is a pleasing meditation on a quieter life, often nature-surrounded, wisdom in crafted, palm-sized bits, some fleeting thoughts, many amusing observations, a series of small events, haiku-like in their simplicity and precision. “The butterfly / jots a note on the wind / to remind itself of something.”
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Braided Creek
GREAT LINES:
Our songs travel the earth. We sing to one another. Not a single note is ever lost and no song is original.
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At the end of World War I German sniper Fidelis Waldvogel returns to the village where he grew up. He marries Eva, the pregnant girlfriend of his best friend who had been killed in the war. But he wants to start a new life in America so he sets out for Seattle. When his money runs out in Argus, North Dakota Fidelis gets a job working for the local butcher. Soon he has earned enough money to send for Eva and her baby and then to open his own butcher shop. Argus where they live is a town filled with a cast of quirky characters. Roy is the town drunk and Delphine was raised by him but does not know her own family. Then there is Step-and-a-Half, one of the town’s homeless who is constantly walking across the vast prairie. The Master Butchers Singing Club is a story about the good and bad in people and how they play out in the characters lives.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: The Master Butchers Singing Club
OPENING LINE:
The final dying sounds of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless, blinking out over the footlights of an empty auditorium.
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Revolutionary Road is the story hidden behind the 1950′s American dream. Frank and April Wheeler struggle with reality which clashes in the face of their imagined-perfect, suburban life. In a way, this story echos what all relationships must go through, and the characters show us how dangerous their (and our own) crises can be. This is good tragedy that gives the reader or viewer a warning about decisions they make about their personal lives and has a great message about American culture in general! The book was adapted into a screenplay by Justin Haythe and the resulting movie was directed by Sam Mendes and stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. It was thoroughly enjoyable and very faithful to the spirit of the book. Though, the book gives the reader more detail into Frank’s mind and develops the secondary characters more fully. Because of that I found it particularly enjoyable to read the book after watching the movie first.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Revolutionary Road
OPENING LINES:
A little square of ravioli is like a secret. You look at the outside and see the neatly crimped dough, puffed up in the center with a lovely pillow of something mysterious inside…Before you bite into it, all is unknown and much is still possible.
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Schenone’s previous title (A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove) no doubt had something to do with her quest for her own family’s history through an iconic food. What elevates this memoir is the lyrical writing and honest accounts of family estrangements. Without blaming anyone, Schenone describes the various schisms that have occurred in her extended family, and seeks to bridge them through immersion in the fine art of ravioli making. It’s fascinating to see how her great-grandmother coped with the lack of indigenous Genovese foods in Hoboken, New Jersey, using Philadelphia brand cream cheese in the silver foil package instead of the fresh tangy prescinseua of her Italian village, and Gold Medal flour instead the more finely ground Italian pasta flour (or chestnut flour). As Schenone tries again and again to discover and replicate her family’s ravioli recipes, she travels to Italy for research, eventually bringing her husband and two young sons to experience the very different pace of life, vales and mores of Liguria. Schenone realizes early on that it’s not just ravioli she’s making (or trying to make), and an especially interesting discussion with a pair of evolutionary biologists looks into the idea that perhaps certain foods are genetically tied to us because of our ancestry. There are recipes in the back, though after reading about what hard work it is to make these delicious filled pasta squares, I doubt many readers are going to try them! Not just for foodies, this thoughtful and well-researched title will also appeal to those interested in genealogy and American history.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken
OPENING LINE:
We tend to think of mental hospitals as snake pits, hells of chaos and misery, squalor and brutality.
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I was gobsmacked by this book! This volume is filled with beautiful photographs of crumbling asylums. It is a form of photojournalism that tells of the majesty of asylums: their architecture, interiors, landscaping and purpose. And it also tells the story of their decline and decay: the shattered windows, peeling paint, abandoned suitcases and trees growing up through cement. The pictures themselves are stunning and the story they paint is equally moving. Coupled with an introductory essay by Oliver Sacks who clearly loves these facilities and what they represent for our society, the result is a marvelous book.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Asylum