eBooks are here!

I confess. I am a die-hard book lover. The feel of a book in my hands is something I always felt was integral to the reading experience. I am also a book collector, and have over a thousand volumes on my personal shelves. Perhaps it is because of this that my husband gave me an eReader for Christmas. He must have known that I would never STOP reading or buying books. However, that being said, the eReader is an exciting development.

The first book I read on my new reader was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. Once I got used to turning the pages with the mere swipe of my thumb on the eReader's screen, I became immersed in the story. I highly recommend the experience and I am confident that in the future more and more reading will be done this way.

In addition to the several internet sites that provide access to free ebooks, the Halifax Public Libraries currently holds over 2800 ebook titles!! The book, once downloaded onto your reader will expire after 14 days. At this time you can delete it from your reader. No going to the library to return books, and you can place holds and download them from home as well. I think this would be a real advantage for anyone with mobility problems. Another great feature of the eReader is that you can adjust the font size to suit yourself.

Reading the e way will never totally replace book reading for this bibliophile, but it sure makes a wonderful additional way to curb those reading cravings.

In Search of Alice

While we can’t go ask Alice the mysteries of her life, here are a couple of things that might be of interest. Alice in Wonderland, (the new Tim Burton movie) is a sequel to the famous Alice books by Lewis Carroll. In it Alice is now 17 and wishes to escape from her stuffy responsibilities in Victoria England. She slips away from a party and is lead by the White Rabbit to Wonderland, a curious world run by the wicked Queen of Hearts. There has been a lot of press and gimmicks regarding this movie, including a limited edition eyeshadow kit which pops up like a children’s novel. Given the pictures of Johnny Depp playing the Mad Hatter this may be an interesting collection. I am looking forward to seeing the film when it opens March 5th.

With the movie publicity, it is no surprise that the novel "Alice I Have Been" caught my eye. This novel by Melanie Benjamin is a fictional autobiography of Alice Liddell, the inspiration for the character of Alice in the novels "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll, nee Charles Dodgson .

The novel starts with this quote "But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? It is. Only I do get tired"

80 year old Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves is preparing for a trip to America with her son. She is tired of the public attention and disappointing looks she receives when they see an old lady instead of the young girl that has captured their imaginations. The book then proceeds through her privileged Victorian childhood, her life as a young woman and finally as an old woman. It is at Christ Church, Oxford, where her father is dean, that she is introduced to Charles Dodgson. Much has been made about young Alice’s relationship with Dodgson, much of it controversial and speculative. What happened between Dodgson and Liddell over a century ago will always be a mystery but this book might help us under cover parts of it.

Several authors have also wrote fictional accounts of Alice Liddell. Here are some of them:

Riverworld series, by Philip Jose Farmer

Mimsy were the Borogoves, by Henry Kuttner (Lewis Padgett)

The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor

Alice in Sunderland, by Bryan Talbot

Still She Haunts Me, by Katie Roiphe (the title comes from part of the acrostic poem of dedication in the original book. It could be said that the fictional character haunted Liddell all her life).

I wonder what other fictional autobiographies there may be?

~posted by Rosemary T.

In Memoriam - J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger has died at age 91. Born in New York City on January 1, 1919, Jerome David Salinger's literary output was not large, but he was to have a lasting impact on generations of teenage and readers, as well as a host of contemporary writers. He spoke to and about adolescents with genuine understanding.

His signature novel Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951 and was immediately successful. Although written for adults, its main character, Holden Caulfield, exemplified rebellion and alienation for subsequent generations of young people. It has been named time and time again in list of best and most influential books. It also has been challenged numerous times for its sexuality and profanity. Catcher in the Rye was in the news again last year as Salinger went to court to stop the publication of a novel which depicted Holden Caulfield as an older man.

Salinger was a famously private person. He became reclusive in reaction to the unwanted attention he received after the publication of The Catcher in the Rye. In recent years memoirs were written by family members and associates revealing his eccentricities, but Salinger, typically, remained silent.

Staff Picks - Barrington Street Blues by Anne Emery

Monty Collins (Barrington Street Blues by Anne Emery) is a personable yet flawed Halifax lawyer. In this third novel in the series, Collins is handling a lawsuit on behalf of the family of a man who apparently committed murder then suicide. He had been resident in a detox program and the facility was to be the focus of the lawsuit. As information began to present itself, Monty became aware that all was not as it seemed and Halifax's elite had something dastardly to hide.

Montague Collins is a multi-faceted lawyer detective. He's a blues musician, a chorister in an ecclesiastical choir, a criminal lawyer, a near-divorce broken-hearted husband, and, above all, a family man. Monty is devoted to his children and yearns for a reconciliation with his estranged wife. He works hard and plays hard. He has strong, loyal ties with his friends and a high tolerance for alcohol consumption.

The Halifax setting makes this a wonderful read for us locals. It's great fun to picture him on Dresden Row, frequenting the Midtown, scurrying to the law courts and even making an appearance at the Spring Garden Road Library to read the newspapers on microfilm!

Emery won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best New Novel for her 2006 Sign of the Cross. She joined the likes of William Deverell, Carol Shields and Peter Robinson.

For more mysteries set in Nova Scotia, you might consider:

Foul Deeds: a Rosalind mystery by Linda Moore
Lucky Strike by Pat Wilson and Kris Wood
Oak Island Affair by Jane Bow
Honour Among Men: an Inspector Green mystery by Barbara Fradkin

Back Roads of Membertou County: a novel

by Alfred Silver
Unexpected Sparks by Gina L. Dartt
Murder at Mussel Cove by Hugh MacDonald
Last Resort: a Gottingen Witch mystery

by Lynn M. Turner

Speculative Mystery Fiction

What is Speculative Mystery fiction and are you a fan?

Speculative Mysteries are a blending of the mystery genre with fantasy/science fiction.

One of the earliest examples is the classic 1953 novel, The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester. This novel mixes a murder mystery with a futuristic setting where some people have psionic abilities. It won the very first Hugo award.

A high profile recent example is Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris, which is about vampires, psionics and a murder mystery. Released in 2001, this title continues to be extremely popular among our library patrons. Not surprisingly, this lighthearted romp of a novel has spawned a new series, Sookie Stackhouse mysteries.

Here are a few other reading suggestions for fans of Speculative Mystery Fiction:

Children of the Night, by Mercedes Lackey. Combining vampires, witches and other occult elements with a murder mystery, Lackey has created a strong heroine in Diana Tregarde. A reluctant romance writer by day, Tregarde has her hands, and her mind, full when the sun goes down. The first of a three part series.

Fatherland, by Robert Harris. A story of alternate history, where Germany won World War II. Detective Xavier March gets embroiled in solving a murder that implicates the highest brass of the Nazi party elite. His better judgement tells him to bury the case, but he can't stop until he knows the truth.

Thirty-three Teeth, by Colin Cotterill. A 72 year old forensic coroner must battle the natural and the supernatural to solve a bizarre murder case in Laos. Dr. Siri is nobody's fool and often rails against the communist bureaucracy hindering his progress, but he is deeply committed to achieving closure for both the living and dead.

Many more speculative mystery reading suggestions can be found in a great new readers' advisory reference book, Strange Cases: a selective guide to speculative mystery fiction, by Jill H. Vassilakos and Paul Vassilakos-Long. We have copies at the following library locations: Spring Garden Road, Alderney Gate and Keshen Goodman

Read Your Way Around the World: Modern Day Australia

On January 26th, while those of us in Canada don our hats and scarves and head out to work and school and whatever else we're up to in the latest blast of cold, wintry weather, Australians celebrate their nation's birthday with a holiday and (invariably) a trip to the beach, or the pool, or the park.

I think Canadians naturally have a curiosity about Australia - a fellow Commonwealth country - but a country which, climatically couldn't be more different from our own. While many Canadian readers may be familiar with some historical depictions of Australia - through, for example the 1980s classic family epic The Thorn Birds or Peter Carey's Booker Prize Winning novel of outback outlaw Ned Kelly, The True History of the Kelly Gang - for this post, I wanted to focus on more modern depictions.

Curious about life in current day Australia? Dip into one of these titles and discover a country that is has much in common - and much drastically different - from our own.

A book that created a lot of buzz when it was released last year is Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap. The publisher sets the scene as "At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own. This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event." The book won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and several Australian book awards. It's a thought provoking look into family and life 21st century Australian society that has many parallels to our own.

Publishers Weekly magazine describes The Good Parents by Joan London as "an excellent family drama rooted in rural Australian lives". A young woman moves to Melbourne from the country, becomes involved with her much older new boss. When her parents come to Melbourne to visit and find her missing they dig through their own memories as well as their daughter's new life for an explanation in a story that jumps between present day and the past.

I've written in another post about the possible folly involved in reading crime novels for a slice-of-life look at another country, but in addition to the thrill and suspense of the plot, crime novels do often give a good glimpse into modern societies.

Frequently compared to series' by Kathy Reichs and Patricia Cornwell, the Dr. Anya Crichton series by Kathryn Fox takes the popular phenomena of forensic thrillers and sets them down under. Booklist magazine's review of the Malicious Intent, the first in the series, proclaimed "A delicious buildup of clues and plenty of gruesome details will please genre devotees, as will the satisfying outcome, which is likely to surprise even a few seasoned thriller fans.

"Garry Disher is a veteran Australian mystery writer of several series and standalone titles, including the well received Inspector Hal Challis series of police procedural novels. The lead character investigates crime in a region outside of Melbourne called the Mornington Penisula - known more for its beach towns and summer respite from the big city than its high crime. Comparisons between Disher and Scottish writer Ian Rankin are common and Booklist Magazine also praised Disher's novels saying "Tell procedural devotees to take a break from the familiar American and British mean streets and sample a little noir under the Australian sun."

And if you're looking for a little real life adventure, you may enjoy Thumbs Up Australia: Hitchhiking the Outback by Tom Parry. Here in Canada, the cross-country journey is a bit of a rite of passage, in Australia it's the round-Australia journey. Parry, a British journalist wrote this memoir of a trip he took with his girlfriend. The Daily Mirror (which is admittedly the paper that Parry works for) describes the books as a"gripping, funny and enlightening account of an 8,000-mile hitchhike around Oz".

For other books by Australians and featuring Australian settings (including some historical titles) visit the library's website Read Your Way Around the World section on our website and click on the list for Australia.

National Book Critics Circle Awards - fiction finalists

Shortlists for the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced on January 23rd at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in New York city.

The NBCC, which has been around since 1974, is a non-profit organization comprised of 600+ book reviewers in the United States.

Seems like a good place to pick up a few reading suggestions...

Fiction finalists:

American Salvage: stories, by Bonnie Jo Campbell

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel

Lark and Termite, by Jayne Anne Phillips

The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James

Blame, by Michelle Huneven

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Last year's winner was 2666, by Roberto Bolano

Apocalyptic Fiction - its the end of the world as we know it

and I feel fine

There is nothing new about Doomsday theories. We've been predicting the end of the world for centuries. Could it be because we have a hard time imaging the human race going on without us (meaning us here right now) indefinitely? I put this question to someone wise who said, "The world will end because everything ends." But does it, I ask? How do you know? I was informed that this was too deep a question for 9 am and she scurried off to get coffee.

So rather than the why, let's focus on the how: viruses, reversal of the magnetic poles, the ultimate battle between good and evil spiritual forces, a supervolcano, alien invasion, nuclear war, black hole, collision with a comet.....

The list is nigh endless.

The 2012 phenomenon has made this a popular theme in film and print. Interpretation of the Mesoamerican calendar has something catastrophic or ultimately transforming happening in December 2012. Excellent fodder for fiction. How have we imagined the end of mankind in fiction?

In Children of Men by P.D. James we've have slowly died out with barely a pitiful whimper. Maternity hospitals have suddenly noticed that they have no one in the books due to deliver. What will happen to mankind with no young people? Who will care for the last remaining elders?

Indiana Jones-style, a relic contains the secret to save the world from its impending doom in 2012. The Crystal Skull by Manda Scott has Stella Cody in possession of a skull which both signals the end of the world and contains to code for its redemption.

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams has stories of ultimate annihilation by numerous well-known authors. In Octavia Butler's Speech Sounds human beings, almost stroke-like, find themselves unable to to basic things to communicate (talking, reading) and society begins to disintegrate.

Roswell, New Mexico is the place (perhaps once again) for a UFO landing, this time containing a creature intent on the destruction of the human race. Event by David Lynn Coleman brings to mind a cross between Predator and the X-Files.

It is 2100 and a plague is slowly killing until there is only one man left. Mary Shelley's little known The Last Man was re-discovered in the 1960's and contains biographical sketches of her contemporaries and explores the theme of isolation.

On a lighter note there is Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch: A Novel by Neil Gaiman. When its predicted that the world will end next Saturday after tea, an angel and a demon must battle the Anti-Christ to prevent Armageddon.

And so many more containing the zombies, lots of zombies.

Staff Picks - The Lightning Thief

When I see an interesting trailer for a new movie that’s based on a book, I always prefer to read the book before I see the movie. I’m sure I’m not alone in this.

When it was announced that the first installment of Rick Riordan’s popular YA series, Percy Jackson & the Olympians, The Lightning Thief would be made into a movie, I immediately bumped the title up my reading queue. I’m so glad I did! (I think my husband is too: he started the book by reading over my shoulder, which he knows I *love*; now he just steals it from my side of the bed to continue after I’ve fallen asleep. I know this because the last few mornings I’ve needed to retrieve it from his side.)

Based on the idea that the figures of Greek myths are real and still move among us today, The Lightning Thief introduces us to the children of Olympians, including Percy, son of … well, it’s kind of a secret until he figures it out; and Annabeth, daughter of Athena; as well as a young satyr, Grover. As the illegitimate children of gods, Percy, Annabeth, Grover, and the others are known as heroes (a title which they all feel compelled to live up to) and doomed to lives of tragedy, caught between the worlds of humans and half-bloods, and used as pawns in the gods’ battles.

This first installment is a fun introduction to Greek mythology and is a really nice blend of real-life issues with fantastical elements. Percy struggles with self doubt, he’s been diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, and he’s unhappy with his step-father. As the three heroes go on their obligatory quest, there are also elements of environmentalism and animal rights, as they all mourn the ongoing destruction of the planet and the mistreatment of animals; these elements are smoothly and appropriately incorporated into the storytelling, especially as Grover, the satyr, is a companion of Pan, the god who essentially protects the earth.

The Lightning Thief is a great adventure story, with lots of humour. It’s also a great coming-of-age type of story as Percy discovers his strengths, his courage, new friendships, and what it means to be a hero, a son, and a friend.

In Memoriam - Paul Quarrington

Sad news for the Canadian Literary world this week with the death of author Paul Quarrington.

Quarrington, 56, was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in 2009. In a September 2009 CBC news piece, Quarrington spoke openly about his terminal illness and about his decision to return to his love of recording and performing music in the months before his death. His band, The Pork Belly Futures, performed at the Keshen Goodman Library in 2008.

Quarrington was an award-winning author of primarily humourous fiction. His 1989 novel Whale Music was awarded a Governor General's Award and was made into a film in 1994 (Quarrington had a cameo in the film).

In CBC radio's 2008 Canada Reads competition, Quarrington's comic hockey novel King Leary was championed all the way to the winners circle by musician Dave Bidini who said of the novel: "Finally, humour and wit has won the day, proving that Canadian writing is about more than just dark places and poetry."

The complete list of materials by Paul Quarrington held by Halifax Public Libraries can be found here.

Late Night TV Wars - the print edition

Although I don't normally consider myself much of a pop culture junkie, I've found myself oddly fascinated by the Late Night TV debacle that has been unfolding on NBC this week and last. Come on - admit it - you have been too. I guess we shouldn't feel too guilty - I mean it is the entertainment world and I, for one, have been highly entertained by all the drama and resulting comedy.

But, enough of that - I need to draw in a book connection (and there is one!). The TV industry does make for great reading sometimes - and there are a surprising number of books by and about late night TV hosts and their industry. Whether you're on Team Conan or Team Leno - you may find one of these titles interesting:

The Late Shift : Letterman, Leno, and the network battle for the night by Bill Carter. I've actually heard this book talked about more than once in the last week. It's an account of what happened the last time a big late night TV war broke out - back in the mid-1990s when Johnny Carson was retiring.

Although there isn't currently a Conan O'Brien biography or memoir - there is one for Jay Leno. The Leno Wit: his life and humor is a 1997 biography of Jay Leno written a few years after his takeover of the Tonight Show desk. I'd hazard a guess that both hosts will have new books in the next year, but in the meantime you can enjoy these other books, from late night personalities who aren't directly involved in the current events.

We'll Be Here for the Rest of Our Lives : a swingin' show-biz saga is Canadian musician Paul Shaffer's memoir of

his years as band leader and side kick of David Letterman.

In American on Purpose : the improbable adventures of an unlikely patriot Scottish comedian Craig Ferguson tells his tale of moving to America and role as current host of CBS' Late Late Show . For fans of classic late night TV there's Here's Johnny, memories of the Johnny Carson Tonight Show years by Carson's late night sidekick Ed McMahon.

It's not surprising in the world of late night that we can even find comedic takes on the memoir: Confessions of a Late Night Talk Show Host : the autobiography of Larry Sanders by Garry Shandling is the memoir of a fictional talk show host - the character played by Shandling in the cult comedy The Larry Sanders Show. And speaking of fiction, I was surprised to stumble upon Eddie Krumble is the Clapper by Dito Montiel, a 2007 satirical novel about a professional paid audience member: the book features Jay Leno and his Tonight Show in a few major plot points.

If you're tired of frivolity of the late night game, but interested in the current exchange in terms of the changing face of TV in the 21st century, you may find Reality Show - inside the last great television news war by Howard Kurtz of interest. It looks at how some of the larger issues that have come into play in this particular late night TV war (the internet, the rise of cable, etc.) have also impacted news broadcasting. And if you really want to try and sort out the big picture of media - entertainment and otherwise - you could go back to theory and investigate the classic of media studies, Marshall McLuhan's 1964 title Understanding Media: the extensions of man.