A Little Bit of Controversy

A few weeks ago I reviewed the book Welcome to Shirley by Kelly McMasters. It's a non-fiction book that I had some misgivings about, mostly because it seemed to want to be both a history and a memoir without fully exploring either form. But If you look at the comments for the blog post you'll see someone named Ken Spooner mentioning a high number of factual errors in her work.

I've spent the last couple of days checking out Spooner's site, and a number of the claims do seem to check out in other sources. I'm not an expert on the town of Shirley, NY and don't really have the time to become one, but it does seem like the book is filled with lazy scholarship. At least that's what I'm thinking it is, rather than a more purposeful glossing over of details. It's a shame this book made it to print without a real fact-check, because I still think McMasters had her heart in the right place in trying to tell the story of this town. My guess is she really wanted to write a memoir but didn't have enough for full a book; the historical sections possibly came later to give a full page count. I could be wrong, but Spooner seems to agree with comments like this on his page:

I am reasonably certain it was witnessing as a young girl, the slow and painful death from cancer of her neighborhood girlfriend Tina's father Jerry, that inspired Kelly to write this book or set her main topic up of environmental stewardship. The true neighborhood good guy with a huge heart, it is her storytelling about Jerry that resonated the strongest with me.

This section Spooner describes is easily the most powerful in the book, and if McMasters had focused on her memories and the emotions behind them she probably would have created one hell of a book.

I was intrigued by this controversy of scholarship, because when I read the book I was surprised by the lack of citations in McMasters's work. Very little of her research was cited so I came away wondering how she pulled together her information for the more factual, less memoir sections. What I had in hand was a preview copy, so I emailed the publisher and was assured that a bibliography of her sources would be published with the final version. Yesterday I found a final version at my local bookstore and it still lacks a bibliography, giving validity to Spooner's claims and, frankly, making me feel guilty about reviewing the book for a major library publication. I'm not saying Spooner is right, and I'm not saying McMasters is right. But if you do read her book read it with some level of caution and decide for yourself.

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Take Stuff From Work

One of the deep, dark, dirty secrets in libraries is how much they get rid of every year, every month, every week and every day. While some people I work with seem to relish the duty because it makes space for newer items, I always feel guilty. I'm afraid of getting rid of undiscovered literary gems or a non-fiction title that really teaches something new.

Of course a number of books are removed because they are in bad shape, but many are weeded because no one ever checked them out. The general rule of thumb where I work is to pull a book if it goes through a period of 16 months without a check out to its record. I'll often see first novels by writers who just never got lucky enough to land a review in the NY Times or the Washington Post, oddball non-fiction, and poetry. There's almost always lots of poetry going out our door and in the trash.

The worst part is we're not allowed to sell these in the annual booksale. We apparently used to do that, but people complained about their tax dollars going towards the purchase of books to only have them sold as used books a year later. So now they go right in the trash, unless someone on staff wants to take them home. These are the five I saved yesterday.

Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension. by Michio Kaku. This guy's been growing into one of the best known physicists in America. I first heard of him when this book came out in 1994. It's a great compilation of crazy sci-fi theories and how they have influenced real scientific thought. Fascinating, easy to read and fun. This one, I should note, is in pretty bad shape. It's got a pretty ugly coffee stain on the back and the front cover is barely hanging on.

Chris Ware: Monographics by Daniel Raeburn. Seeing as how the library I work at doesn't have any actual books by Ware, it was probably a strange purchase to begin with. Basically it's a celebration of Ware's work in comics, with reproducitons of pages of his work, covers of books and odd merchandising like a Jimmy Corrigan lunchbox. This one's partly my fault. While I've flipped through it, I hadn't bothered to check it out yet.

My Dad's a Punk. edited by Tony Bradman. This one's also my fault. I saw it when it first came in, meant to check it out and promptly forgot. The volume collection twelve short stories about teens with dad's who maintain a bit of good ol' punk spirit. With authors like Tim Wynne-Jones, it's probably a good collection, but unfortunately short story collections just don't check out that much.

We Saw Lincoln Shot: One Hundred Eyewitness Accounts. compiled/edited by Timothy S. Good. The title pretty much sums this one up. The book's in great shape, and it looks to be a real gem of first-person accounts. I'll be giving this one to Jim, an old friend of mine who's a big civil war buff.

The Way to Rainy Mountain. by N. Scott Momaday. Seeing this one on the discard pile almost made me cry. Momaday's a fantastic writer and I love mythology of any kind. This title collects a number of short-short tales based on myths of the Kiowa tribe. I'm really looking forward to reading this one.

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Time for fresh air and sunshine

Today's the first day in what feels like several in the DC area that the sky's not filled with a canopy of gray clouds and rain sprinkling down. I never quite know what to do with myself when sunshine returns. It's almost like I've forgotten what it is, this big giant blazing ball up in the sky. I go outside not to run, not to hike, not to work in the yard but to get reacquainted with how everything feels. The warm sun on the skin, fresh air going in and out of lungs....it almost feel real that first time you step out into it.

This kind of echoes my life for the past year and a half. With school I've been caught up in a gray downpour of projects, papers and academic essays. But now it's finally over and I really don't know what to do with myself. Oh, I've got plenty to do looking for a full time job. Helping pull a fall wedding together. Preparing to move. Catching up on some reading and writing.

One thing I really let slide in life was hitting all the cultural things DC has to offer. I celebrated the end of school last Friday night by taking in the Cure's local stop on their US tour. Even though I've seen them before---this would make the fifth time---it was still fantastic. Even the opening act, 65DaysofStatic, was really good, and the Cure is notorious in having weak opening acts. This past Sunday I hit some museum exhibits downtown and tonight I'm going to see the Gamer Symphony Orchestra perform at the University of Maryland. Needless to say, I'm kind of making up for lost time.

I don't know what I'll be doing with the blog here. I know it will continue to include reviews, but It's likely to change as I figure out the next pieces of my life. But for the moment I plan on going outside and enjoying the weather, before the rain comes back.

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Me and Mr. Miller

This past week I had a rather unique experience. One of my childhood friends works as a sound engineer at main studios for NPR in downtown D.C. and he invited me to a mini-concert with bassist/composer Marcus Miller. It was something going out over the airwaves and NPR wanted to stack the house with people they knew would applaud at the right moments and laugh at the right jokes.

I worked on radio talk shows when I was in undergrad, both for the college station and the local NPR affiliate. But the setups I worked with was nothing like NPR has. The main recording room is a rather large area, about the size of a small classroom, and a second room just to the side for the drums. A third room acted as control central for the engineers, large mixing board and computer audio equipment used to mix everything on the fly as it went out over the air.

It ended being a live broadcast for the NPR show Talk of the Nation. The host Neal Conan sat at a small desk in front of the audience, a laptop open so he could read files and ask Miller questions between musical numbers. The also had a phone line setup so fans from around the country could call in and ask questions, and a man in a suit kept running back and forth bringing listener emails for Conan to read.

Seeing Miller play was amazing. He did things on his bass I barely understood and he did them so effortlessly. It was probably as easy for him as walking across the room is for the average able-bodied person. In between bits when they took a break for local station id's, MIller lightheartedly jammed to the 1980's smooth jazz NPR pumped out. This is a guy who loves, lives and breathes music. Miller was also a great interview; his responses to questions were thoughtful and often funny. Inevitably, one caller asked how to improve his speed and technique in his own bass playing. The question led to another from Conan, who asked about his three stages of being a musician. These are, btw, paraphrased and should not be taken as verbatim quotes from Miller.

Level One: This is the learning stage, where the musician is learning the foundations of technique and theory. Fingering, scales, how to play with other musicians.

Level Two: In the stage, the musician has mastered many, if not all, of the techniques of his/her instrument. The musician can churn out complicated solos and impress everyone with how well they play their instrument, but the overall reaction will be "I bet he practices a lot".

Level Three: This final stage, the musician internalizes everything learned and uses it intuitively to express a feeling or tell a story. While they can play complicated solos, they may also choose to play things simply when it's called for. Instead of thinking about the . Miller used Miles Davis as a prime example, saying a Miles solo will make people step back and say, "Yeah, I had a girlfriend like that once." You don't think about the notes but what's behind them.

It certainly works for writers, too. Who gets to that third stage, though, can be a bit subjective. While I might be powerfully moved by Pynchon, other readers might fight him inaccessible. I still think it's a cool model, though.

If you're interested, you can hear the whole show onlinehere. Just remember when the applause come, one of those pairs of hands was mine.

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YA Horror Novels

One of the projects for my Young Adult (YA) literature class was to develop an annotated bibliography highlighting titles within one specific area or genre of YA lit. I picked supernatural horror; I picked it for a variety of reasons, but mostly because one of the more common requests I get from teens is for a "scary book".

Surprisingly, there's not a lot out there. There are lots of thrillers featuring serial killers or drug dealers gone mad. And there are a good number of books using tropes of supernatural horror to tell a different kind of story, like the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyers that uses Vampires to tell a gothic-style romance. But there aren't that many books that have elements of the supernatural and are also scary. Here are some of the better ones I came across in pulling my list together.

Bradbury, Ray. Something Wicked This Way Comes.

This classic by award-winning author Ray Bradbury tells the tale of two Midwestern teenaged boys, James Nightshade and William Halloway, who battle against the dark carnival that comes to their small town one fall night. Carnival owner Mr. Dark is a horrifying villain as he twists and corrupts the adults of the town to his dark ways. Nightshade and Halloway are the only ones who realize his intent to steal the souls of everyone in the town, making the story a powerful parable of standing up to evil in all its forms. This literary-minded tale is creepy without being overly violent or gory.

Carmody, Isobelle. The Gathering.

This one was probably my favorite, partly because I've never heard of Carmody before. Nathaniel and his mother move to Cheshunt expecting a peaceful community and instead find a town twisted by a dark evil. While crime rates are low, Nathaniel quickly discovers they are kept down through fear and manipulation. Mr. Karle, the P.E. teacher at Nathaniel’s school, is running the town from behind the scenes through intimidation and psychological warfare. Even worse, Karle uses the Gathering, the school’s youth club, as his own personal Gestapo to stamp down any who might resist his will. Most of the town is willing to hand over control to the devil-tongued Karle, but Nathaniel befriends a group of fellow teens who want to fight against the tyranny. They learn Karle’s power comes from an old curse that fell on Cheshunt generations ago; to stop Karle they must face their own personal fears and purge the evil before Karle can spread his power beyond Cheshunt. In a style that meshes Robert Cormier with Ray Bradbury, this is a literary-minded tale of horror that can be read on many levels.

Chandler, Elizabeth. Dark Secrets: Legacy of Lies.

Sixteen year old Megan visits the grandmother she never met with the hopes of rebuilding the torn ties between her mother and grandmother. Megan finds it a bigger job than she first thought when she finds her grandmother to be a spiteful old woman filled with little but hatred and anger for the world around her. It doesn’t take long for Megan to hear the rumors and ghost stories about the generations-old estate her grandmother lives on. At the core of both her grandmother’s anger and the ghost story is Avril, sister to Megan’s grandmother who died as a teenager. To heal both the spirits and her grandmother Megan must learn the horrifying truth behind it all.

Partridge, Norman. Dark Harvest.

It’s Halloween 1963, and every teenaged boy in the unnamed, small Midwestern town is hunting for the October Boy, an evil spirit with a Jack-o-lantern for a head and twisted vines for a body that appears every year. Whoever kills the October Boy wins money and freedom from the hard life offered by the small farming town. Pete McCormack swears to wins this year’s hunt so he can escape the life he’s grown to hate. What starts as a fairly predictable shock-horror tale takes a sharp turn when we learn the real evil runs through the sheriff and mayor, who use the October Boy to control the town. This fast paced thrill ride develops into a meaningful metaphor on escaping the ills of the previous generation.


Shan, Darren. Demonata Number 1: Lord Loss.

Sly teen Grubbs Grady’s life is transformed when he sees his mother, father and older sister fall victim to the power of Lord Loss, a maniacal demon whose only love greater than dishing out pain is the game of chess. With everyone thinking he’s crazy, Grubbs is shuttled off from relative to relative until he finally finds one who believes him: his crazy, reclusive uncle Dervish. His uncle teaches him about the generations-old curse on his family and Grubbs decides he will be the one to end the curse by challenging Lord Loss to a dramatic game of multi-board chess. Winning will free his family from the curse; losing will give his body and soul over to the demon for eternity. Although it owes many of its bloodier ideas to H.P. Lovecraft and Clive Barker, this is a fast read that works as a nice transition for fans of younger series like Goosebumps who want something a little more grown up.

Westerfield, Scott. Midnighters #1: The Secret Hour.

Fifteen year old Jessica Day thinks life will be boring when she moves from the big city of Chicago to the small town of Bixby, Oklahoma. But odd things begin to happen at midnight. Everyone except her freezes, seemingly stuck in time, and the town is plagued by ancient monsters that look like flying snakes and giant panthers. Jessica finds some others who aren’t affected and learns the story of a secret hour the monsters use to hide themselves from the human world. The monsters, though, are gearing up for a great offensive against the real world and Jessica alone my hold the power to fight back. This smartly written horror mixes elements of the Twilight Zone and superhero comics, making it a powerfully addictive read.

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Comps, Comps, Comps

My last three weeks have been almost entirely focused on one thing: comps. Comps, or comprehensive exams, are essentially the last barrier, the final gate keeper to keep students out of the clubhouse of being official librarians. Two days of testing sessions, three hours each. They ask five questions each day, and you have to answer two in a academic-style essay, complete with references to appropriate literature. The questions can be about any topic related to librarianship, and that perhaps is the worst part: not really knowing what will be asked. So you study everything, soaking up as much as you can and trying to focus on what you think the faculty will want you to focus on.

I felt nervous as hell when I got there the first day. My heart was jam-jam-jammering in my chest and my stomach felt like it wanted to separate from my body and walk away. I wasn't alone. People were cramming until the last minute and everyone seemed to have their own personal nervous tic (finger-tapping, pencil twirling, hair twisting) on full display. A woman in the row behind was chatting with someone and talking about how much she needed to pass. She already had a job starting in June on the condition she passed all her tests. But to top it off, her husband had just lost his job. As bad as my nerves were, I'm sure hers were a lot worse.

Once the computers were on and I had the questions in hand, I felt better. It took away the mystique of the whole affair and, once made real, took away some of its power of me. I think I did ok overall----two of the four questions I answered I feel like I did pretty well on. The other two I probably did well enough. But now the waiting game begins. It'll take about a month before we get the results. In the meantime I have classwork, reviews, and real life to catch up on. Until next time....

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Review: Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

Inspired by The Aeneid, Ursula K. Le Guin’s newest novel Lavinia takes the smallest character from Vergil’s epic poem and creates a thoughtful, moving tale of prophecy, myth and self-fulfillment. Lavinia is the teenaged princess of Latium, a small but important kingdom in pre-Roman Italy. As she moves into womanhood Lavinia feels pressure from her mother and father to choose one of her many suitors as both her husband and the future ruler of the kingdom. Being a princess and having a kingdom as her dowry, Lavinia's definitely a popular girl around the Mediterranean. The most ideal suitor is Turnus, young ruler of a neighboring kingdom who performs brilliant on the field of battle and makes all the women swoon. All the women, that is, except Lavinia. She finds him pompous, and lacking any shred of true piety. Torn by the desires of her parents and her own Lavinia travels to the oracles of the sacred springs, hoping they will lead her a proper path.

The oracles of the sacred springs say she will marry an unknown foreigner. This stranger ends up being none other than Vergil’s Aeneus, proud hero, king without a country and the man who will lay down the foundations of the Roman Empire. Their marriage sparks a war to control the region, and while we don’t see the glorious battles of Aeneus we do get the surprisingly moving perspective of the home front through Lavinia’s eyes.

Although best known for her works of fantasy Le Guin takes a more historical approach by toning down the magical elements; gods and prophecies play a vital role in Lavinia’s life but they are presented as concepts and rituals, not as deities playing petty games with the lives of mortals. This shifts the focus of Vergil’s plot from action to character, allowing Le Guin to breathe life into a character that never utters a word in the original story.

I'll be curious to see what the Feminist SF folks will make of this work. While I couldn't help but think of what Marion Zimmer Bradley did for the women of Arthurian legends in her Mists of Avalon, Lavinia is a very different book. It's been several years since I've read The Aeneid, but she's kept the basic plot the same. It's just with this we get a view backstage and discover that other factors besides the glorious battles played a major part in shaping one of the greatest Empires the world has ever seen. She doesn't go to unbelievable lengths to establish how important Lavinia's role was, but she does make it feel like Lavinia played an important part in this mythical story.

Lavinia herself is quite compelling as she transforms from a spirited princess into a queen full of wisdom who makes a profound impact on the lives of her people. While I think readers looking for action or plot oriented fantasy will not know what to make of this novel, anyone who appreciates deep layers of character development will be awed by what Le Guin does here.

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