How to use this Page

In typical Jeannette Walls style, The Silver Star is hilarious, sweet, and sad at the same time. Walls' books are often populated with flaky, irresponsible adults and kids who have to fend for themselves, and this is no exception. The two Holladay sisters, after struggling with their mostly absent mother, try to find themselves a real [...]

Add a Comment

In an age when everyone and their niece has written a tell-all book, when even fictional characters like Ron Burgundy are penning the stories of their lives, how does a memoir stand out among its peers? What qualities make it like nothing we've seen before? Sometimes truly extraordinary experiences can launch a memoir into uncharted [...]

Add a Comment

The American Library Association (ALA) has released its annual list of the most frequently challenged library books of the year. We’ve linked to free samples of all the books on the list–follow the links below to read these controversial books yourself.

The list was part of the ALA’s 2013 State of America’s Libraries Report. During the past year, the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom received 464 reports of challenged books. Here’s more from the report:

In California, a school committee voted to remove the Stephen King novella “Different Seasons” from Rocklin High School library shelves. The lone dissenter on that committee was 17-year-old student Amanda Wong, who continued to fight the ban and spoke against the decision at a later school board meeting. After hearing Wong’s concerns that the removal “opens a door to censoring other materials,” the district superintendent overturned the committee’s decision and returned the book to the Rocklin High School library’s collection.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Add a Comment

So of course I'd read The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls) and of course, therefore, I expected so much from Half Broke Horses, the "true-life novel" that serves as prequel (of sorts) to Walls' bestselling memoir. It's the story of Walls' maternal grandmother, Lily Casey Smith—a plain speaking (oh, is she plain speaking) woman of hardscrabble beginnings who is breaking horses by the age of six and riding 500 miles, alone, across the desert, by the age of 15, and sleeping on the floor of the schoolhouse where she teaches before she's even turned 20. Lily's best friend is killed in gruesome fashion during her Chicago years. The first man she marries is a two-timing fraud. She bootlegs to make ends meet, she races horses, she learns to fly a plane. She whips her daughter, Rosemary, when she has a lesson to teach.

It's the stuff of a very good story. But it not, sadly, a story well made. Walls writes the book in her grandmother's voice—a voice she describes, in her author's note, as "distinctive." But I did not find distinction in the way the voice is rendered here; I found (and perhaps I am the only one?) a simple one-thing-after-another voice, a now-I'll-tell-you-this-thing voice, a voice unmeasured, unlifted. One expects to hear, in a woman who had lived so wildly, so bravely, something idiosyncratic about the speech, some oddly tied-on metaphors, some regionalized expressions; they aren't here. One expects to find momentum and drive; the book is instead matter of fact—designed to prove, it seems, that all the strange events Walls captures so masterfully in The Glass Castle could never have been anything but. Consider this final paragraph:

"With the way Rex and Rosemary's life together was shaping up, those kids were in for some wild times. But they came from hardy stock, and I figured they'd be able to play with the cards they'd been dealt. Plus, I'd be hovering around. No way in hell were Rex and Rosemary cutting me out of the action when it came to my own grandchildren. I had a few things to teach those kids, and there wasn't a soul alive who could stop me."

Every author needs to know where she or he is headed, in general fashion, when starting out. I wondered, as I read Half Broke Horses, whether the book would have benefited from being far less purposeful, so that it might be more fully felt. I stand, I know, in a minority here, as I also stood with The Help. I'm eager to hear from those of you who have also read the book.

Display Comments Add a Comment

by Jim

Oh, jeez. The New York Times has released their list of 100 Notable Books of 2009.  As is always the case when this comes out, I feel a touch overwhelmed. It’s exciting to know that there are always more great books out there to be read, but at times it gets a bit daunting that you can never even hope to catch up. Or is that just me?

I already have Let the Great World Spin and The Year of the Flood set aside for my holiday break reading. And I want to read Half-Broke Horses and Wolf Hall. And Follow Me sounds fascinating. Ack!

Anyone else excited or frustrated by year end lists? See any titles that for sure should be skipped?

Display Comments Add a Comment

First things first, HT to Bookshelves of Doom.

You may want to preorder your copy NOW of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance+Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! How can you resist?!

Y'all saw the results of this morning's ALA Youth Media Awards, right? For me, it provided the perfect excuse not to work out. Ok, the cuteness of the dog would have worked this morning, but obviously, a good children's librarian should watch the awards webcast instead of working out, right? RIGHT!

I have very strong opinions in some of these categories, but they're the same categories that I'm sitting on non-ALA awards committees for (Cybils and Blue Crab) so I'll keep my trap shut until I'm allowed to discuss such things.

In other news, The New Classics Challenge ends on the 31st. This started in AUGUST, but I forgot about it until this month. Whoops. So far, I've read 2.5 of my 6. Also, I was supposed to read The Bonfire of the Vanities: A Novel but I couldn't find our copy, so given I was checking a book out of the library, I figured it should be The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes.

Anyway, the two I finished are both nonfiction! Yay!

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down Anne Fadiman

I have long wanted to read this book because of the fact it deals with Hmong culture. Growing up in the 80s and 90s in Northeast Wisconsin, the Hmong made up the vast majority of the non-white population, but this isn't an ethnic group that you hear a lot about, which has always surprised me.

One of the reasons I love the Jackson Friends series so much is because there is a Hmong character.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a heartbreaking tale of a young Hmong girl in Merced, California, who has severe epilepsy. Due to the language and cultural barriers between her family and the medical community, the system fails her utterly.

Fadiman's account explains how each side tried its hardest to help Lia Lee and how each side completely failed her. Mostly, she does this without judgment and anger, but once and awhile, she can't, and I can't really fault her for that.

Fadiman does an excellent job of explaining the medical issues surrounding Lia's condition and treatment, as well as the cultural issues surrounding her life, and the history of the Hmong people and their life in America.

My only fault with the book is that it tends to treat Hmong culture as completely homogeneous, without the usual disclaimers or sentence weakeners you see in other cultural books, such as "traditionally X culture does... " or "many member of Y ethnic group feel..."

My other wish is for an updated version, as many of the troubles facing the community Lia and her family lived in had to deal with immigration and welfare status--both contentious issues that have undergone drastic changes since this book first came out in 1997. Luckily, the book's website does offer updates on how the people we meet in these pages are doing since publication.

Oh, and when discussing China, it uses the Wade-Giles instead of Pinyin system of romanization, but that's a China-geek complaint, and the book isn't about China, so I'll let it slide.

The Glass Castle: A Memoir Jeannette Walls

I picked this one because it's on the scary list.

Jeannette Walls grew up unbelievably poor. Her father was a dreamer and drunk, her mother an artist who didn't want to be tied down with a regular job. As a result, they moved a lot, lived in places with no water or electricity and often went hungry. Despite this Jeannette managed to attend Barnard and is now a gossip columnist for MSNBC.

While Walls life was unbelievably hard, the plot is the only driving factor in this book. The events make it readable, but the characters are flat--there's little insight, or feeling. (Except for Walls embarrassment when she feels people are laughing at her, or staring. So it's odd that she became a gossip columnist, right?) Many times when writing about something horrible, survivors tell their tale in a detached manner--as if truly engaging in the subject matter again would inflict great physiological damage, which it might. While this is quality I will forget in stories that we would otherwise might not hear, such as This is Paradise!: My North Korean Childhood, I'm less forgiving in instances such as these. First this happened, then this, then this, then this. No analysis, just plot.

While engaging, I'm not entirely sure why it won so many awards because the literary merit isn't as there as it could be.

Overall, I give it a resounding "meh"

Nonfiction Round up is here.

New Classics Round up is here.

Display Comments Add a Comment