Library hours for Easter break

 

The library office and physical collections will be closing at 4:50 p.m. on Thursday, April 1st and will remain closed until 8:00 a.m. on Monday, April 5. We will resume our regular operating hours on Tuesday, April 6. 

Friday Reads: Trainspotting

Happy Friday! This week our Cataloging & Acquisitions Librarian, Adam Pellman, delves into the novel that inspired one of his favorite movies: Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. 

Irvine Welsh's cult novel Trainspotting is one that I've been wanting to read for a long time, and I finally came across a used copy in a bookstore last summer. It's the paperback edition that was published in the U.S. to coincide with the release of the book's acclaimed 1996 film adaptation, a pinnacle of 1990s British cinema that has long been a favorite of mine. The novel depicts the lives of a small group of Edinburgh junkies and their close circle of friends and acquaintances, and focuses primarily on heroin addict Mark Renton. The novel's structure is almost like a collection of short stories, jumping around in time and switching narrators from chapter to chapter, and its tone veers from grim to riotously funny without missing a beat.

The biggest challenge for me in reading this novel is a linguistic one. Much of the novel is written in Scots rather than British English, so that "didn't" becomes "didnae," "always" becomes "eywis," and slang terms like "ken" and "radge" are used in place of "know" and "crazy," respectively. The book comes with a handy glossary to help readers like me decipher the slang, but I find that if I read the text with a Scottish accent in my mind, the meanings of most of the Scots words are apparent without the need for the glossary. The language is one of many elements that lend the novel its authenticity, and it's a book that I've really enjoyed reading, despite its sometimes unrelentingly dark subject matter.

Friday Reads: Black Narcissus

Happy Friday! Today, Dr. Stanley checks out the book that inspired one of his favorite movies: Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden. 

I’m always torn about whether to read the book then see the movie or vice versa. This one was a no brainer since I’ve seen the movie more times that I can count and only decided to read the book before I watch the latest iteration. After reading the book I want to watch the original movie again! A group of Anglican nuns going to a deserted palace in the Himalayas to open a convent, school, and hospital makes for an intriguing plot. However, once they get to their destination and begin to turn it into their new home, St. Faith, they begin to experience feelings and old memories that affect not only their performing God’s work but also their relationships with each other. Added to the mix is Mr. Dean who helps the sisters with repair work around St. Faith and also assists with their accepting and being accepted by the local residents.

Each of the sisters experiences her own epiphanies. These run the gamut from a simple reexamination of their reasons for being there to massive mental collapse. It’s interesting to witness the slowly evolving changes in the sisters’ personalities which are exhibited in not only their personal reflections but in their interactions with each other as well as some of the local inhabitants but mostly with Mr. Dean.

The imagery throughout the book is impressive and at times enveloping. I could occasionally identify with some of the feelings and almost find myself on the mountaintop. As for comparing it to the 1947 movie: the movie was an enjoyable, enchanting experience; a paint-by-numbers rendering. The book: a haunting, emotion-filled rendering by an old master. Now on to the current Black Narcissus series!

March Reading Theme: Women's History Month

March is Women’s History Month, and we are returning to our downstairs fiction book displays by featuring historical fiction focused on the female experience.

Nannie Helen Burroughs. Photograph, [Between 1900 and 1920]. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparaíso, Chile, by the well-intentioned Victorian spinster Miss Rose and her more rigid brother Jeremy. Just as she meets and falls in love with the wildly inappropriate Joaquín Andieta, a lowly clerk who works for Jeremy, gold is discovered in the hills of northern California. By 1849, Chileans of every stripe have fallen prey to feverish dreams of wealth. Joaquín takes off for San Francisco to seek his fortune, and Eliza, pregnant with his child, decides to follow him.

As Eliza embarks on her perilous journey north in the hold of a ship and arrives in the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco, she must navigate a society dominated by greedy men. But Eliza soon catches on with the help of her natural spirit and a good friend, the Chinese doctor Tao Chi'en. What began as a search for love ends up as the conquest of personal freedom. (Publisher’s summary)


Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

In her bestselling novel The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood masterfully took us to a chilling world of the future. In her astonishing new novel Alias Grace, she just as convincingly takes us back 150 years and inside the life and mind of one of the most notorious women of the 1840s. Grace Marks is serving a life sentence for her part in the vicious murders of Thomas Kinnear, a wealthy landowner, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Grace herself now claims to have no memory of the murders.Simon Jordan, a young New England doctor in the field of mental health and an expert on amnesia, has been engaged to find out the truth. To do so, he must awaken that part of Grace's mind that lies dormant, using the practices of the science he has such great faith in. As Grace reveals details about Kinnear's and Nancy's unconventional domestic arrangements, Simon brings her closer and closer to the day she has so determinedly repressed.Into this rich work of the imagination--of sex, violence, immigration, spiritualism, and the brutal existence of the underprivileged--Margaret Atwood has brought her brilliant insights into the relationships between men and women and those between the society of the entitled and those without positions. Superbly evoking a century past and alive with mesmerizing storytelling, Alias Grace is vintage Atwood. (Publisher’s summary)


Clotel, or, The President’s Daughter by William Wells Brown

First published in December 1853, Clotel was written amid then unconfirmed rumors that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with one of his slaves. The story begins with the auction of his mistress, here called Currer, and their two daughters, Clotel and Althesa. The Virginian who buys Clotel falls in love with her, gets her pregnant, seems to promise marriage—then sells her. Escaping from the slave dealer, Clotel returns to Virginia disguised as a white man in order to rescue her daughter, Mary, a slave in her father’s house. A fast-paced and harrowing tale of slavery and freedom, of the hypocrisies of a nation founded on democratic principles, Clotel is more than a sensationalist novel. It is a founding text of the African American novelistic tradition, a brilliantly composed and richly detailed exploration of human relations in a new world in which race is a cultural construct. (Goodreads.com summary - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/247960.Clotel?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=k286WKbLlU&rank=1)


The Dragon’s Village by Yuan-tsung Chen

Shanghai, 1949: we look through the eyes of Guan Ling-ling, a headstrong, idealistic seventeen-year-old. As her family departs for Hong Kong, Ling-ling boldly chooses to stay, and joins a revolutionary theater group which soon leaves the city to carry out the new reforms in the Chinese countryside. After a scant few weeks' preparation, this city-bred schoolgirl suddenly finds herself in one of China's most remote and impoverished areas, a world so far from her own experience that she can barely understand the lives she has been sent to change. (Publisher’s summary)

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons.

Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood-the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers-Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah-the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that are to sustain her through a damaged youth, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah's story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate, immediate connection. (Publisher’s summary)


S.: A Novel About the Balkans by Slavenka Drakulić

Set in 1992, during the height of the Bosnian war, S. reveals one of the most horrifying aspects of any war: the rape and torture of civilian women by occupying forces. S. is the story of a Bosnian woman in exile who has just given birth to an unwanted child—one without a country, a name, a father, or a language. Its birth only reminds her of an even more grueling experience: being repeatedly raped by Serbian soldiers in the "women's room" of a prison camp. Through a series of flashbacks, S. relives the unspeakable crimes she has endured, and in telling her story—timely, strangely compelling, and ultimately about survival—depicts the darkest side of human nature during wartime. (Goodreads.com summary - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/278232.S_?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=4sjnwSY7fN&rank=1)


Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th-century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising half-caste children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath Effia in the Castle's women's dungeon, and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, where she will be sold into slavery. Stretching from the tribal wars of Ghana to slavery and Civil War in America, from the coal mines in the south to the Great Migration to the streets of 20th century Harlem, Yaa Gyasi has written a modern masterpiece, a novel that moves through histories and geographies and--with outstanding economy and force--captures the troubled spirit of our own nation. (Publisher’s summary)


Sappho’s Leap by Erica Jong

Sappho's Leap is a journey back 2,600 years to inhabit the mind of the greatest love poet the world has ever known. At the age of fourteen, Sappho is seduced by the beautiful poet Alcaeus, plots with him to overthrow the dictator of their island, and is caught and married off to a repellent older man in hopes that matrimony will keep her out of trouble. Instead, it starts her off on a series of amorous adventures with both men and women, taking her from Delphi to Egypt, and even to the Land of the Amazons and the shadowy realm of Hades. (Goodreads.com summary - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/857713.Sappho_s_Leap?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=W88WuY5AaB&rank=1)


The House of Eliott by Jean Marsh

Beatrice, a ``spinster'' at 30, and her sister, Evangeline, just 20, suddenly find themselves independent and without many financial resources following the death of their widower father. Though a successful physician, Father apparently squandered much of his income on a secret life. Inheriting the house as their only tangible asset, Bea and Evie set out to establish their financial and social independence. And how they succeed! Their fashion house is a big success with the 1920s social elite of London. It is a pleasure to see the business and the sisters flourish as their story intertwines with other characters and causes representative of the decade. (Library Journal review)


Here’s to You, Jesusa! by Elena Poniatowska

Jesusa is a tough, fiery character based on a real working-class Mexican woman whose life spanned some of the seminal events of early twentieth-century Mexican history. Having joined a cavalry unit during the Mexican Revolution, she finds herself at the Revolution's end in Mexico City, far from her native Oaxaca, abandoned by her husband and working menial jobs. So begins Jesusa's long history of encounters with the police and struggles against authority. Mystical yet practical, undaunted by hardship, Jesusa faces the obstacles in her path with gritty determination. (Goodreads.com summary - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59200.Here_s_to_You_Jesusa_?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=qhiSLNEr4U&rank=1)


Hope Leslie, or, Early times in the Massachusetts by Catharine Maria Sedgwick

Set in seventeenth-century New England in the aftermath of the Pequod War, Hope Leslie not only chronicles the role of women in building the republic but also refocuses the emergent national literature on the lives, domestic mores, and values of American women. (Goodreads.com summary - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/887338.Hope_Leslie?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=eBFMFgheuf&rank=1) A novel that forced readers to confront the consequences of the Puritans' subjugation and displacement of the indigenous Indian population at a time when contemporaries were demanding still more land from the Cherokees, the Chickasaws, and the Choctaws. (Publisher’s summary)


The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley

Lidie Harkness marries Thomas Newton and moves with him to Kansas in an effort to keep it a Free State in the years before the Civil War. She is an earnest convert to the abolitionist cause and events lead her to disguise herself as a boy in her search for justice. (Publisher’s summary) At the start of the novel, Lidie simply adopts her husband's abolitionist views; eventually, the young Lidie becomes a fervent believer, with the courage to challenge her husband and the social skill to damn the Kansas abolitionists in public. She presumptuously dons men's clothing and sets out alone to search for her husband's killers, but lets herself be tricked and encouraged by a slave woman looking only for escape. (Library Journal review)


Jubilee by Margaret Walker

Here is the classic--and true--story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress, a Southern Civil War heroine to rival Scarlett O'Hara. Vyry bears witness to the South's prewar opulence and its brutality, to its wartime ruin and the subsequent promise of Reconstruction. It is a story that Margaret Walker heard as a child from her grandmother, the real Vyry's daughter. The author spent thirty years researching the novel so that the world might know the intelligent, strong, and brave black woman called Vyry. The phenomenal acclaim this best-selling book has achieved from readers black and white, young and old, attests to her success. (Publisher’s summary)


Dessa Rose by Sherley A. Williams

Imaginatively written by Sherley A. Williams, this book is the fictional confluence of two disparate real-life events: first, a slave revolt in Kentucky in 1829 led by a pregnant woman and, second, a white woman in North Carolina in 1830 who harbored runaway slaves. Thanks to the author's poetic license in writing this novel, these two women meet in the pages of this book. And what a meeting it is. (Review on Goodreads.com by Cathryn Conroy - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3570641337?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1)


The Chronicles of Noah and Her Sisters by Miriam Therese Winter

Winter reimagines the central narratives of Genesis and Exodus as read through the eyes of women in these stories. Noah, one of the Hebrew wives of Solomon, is the narrator and organizer of these tales. We not only hear the voices of Sarah, Rachel, and Rebekah but also encounter the stories of Keturah, who bore six sons for Abraham after Sarah's death, and Asenath, the Egyptian wife of Joseph. These women's recollections give us insights into a little-known side of biblical history. (Publisher’s summary)

March DVD Display: New Hollywood

This month's library DVD display will focus on "New Hollywood," a period from the mid-1960s through the end of the 1970s when the classical Hollywood studio system was upended by a new generation of filmmakers and actors whose style and methods would bring American cinema to new artistic and commercial heights.  This was the era when influential directors like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, and Brian De Palma launched their careers, and when actors and actresses like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton, and Jack Nicholson became the new class of Hollywood stars.  From generation-defining touchstones like The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde to beloved classics like The Exorcist and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, we've got a wide selection of films from this hugely important era in American cinema.

Other featured titles include:

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

Ellen Burstyn shines in her Oscar-winning performance as the titular Alice, a single mother who begins to reassess her relationships as she pursues her dream of becoming a singer.

Apocalypse Now (1979)
Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War opus, about an Army officer sent deep into the jungle to terminate a rogue colonel, remains the ultimate cinematic statement about the madness of war.

The Godfather (1972)
Far more than just a simple gangster film, Francis Ford Coppola's great mafia epic is both a sweeping family saga and an incisive examination of the corrupting influence of power.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
This offbeat, melancholy western follows a charismatic gambler and businessman who partners with a professional madam to establish a brothel in a burgeoning Pacific Northwest town, only to run afoul of a greedy mining corporation.

The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)

Jack Nicholson gives a superbly understated performance as a radio personality who gets sucked into his lowlife brother's get-rich-quick scheme in Atlantic City.

Point Blank (1967)

In this stylish, underseen late-60s classic, Lee Marvin plays a career criminal out for revenge (and his share of the loot) after being gunned down and left for dead following an underworld heist.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

In this brash, gritty masterpiece, Walter Matthau plays a wisecracking New York City transit cop who works to stop a gang of armed men who have hijacked a subway train.  Featuring a super-groovy, all-timer of a musical score by David Shire.

Stop by the library and check one out today!