Ages 18+.
Blog Post
Music in the Future
by sstonez
You may have heard about Best Buy's new partnership with independent online music source CDBaby. What else will shape the future of music and the music industry? David Kusek's new book The Future of Music explores the cluster of issues around music and the recording industry as we move into the 21st century, as does the PBS Frontline documentary The Way the Music Died. I certainly don't know where music is heading, but I bet the future will sound something like this...
Blog Post
Edgar nominess for 2006, Part 1
by sernabad
The Mystery Writers of America has released the nominees for the 2006 Edgar Awards.
Below are the nominees in the three top categories:
Best Novel Nominees
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
Red Leaves by Thomas H. Cook
Vanish by Tess Gerritsen
Drama City by George Pelecanos
Citizen Vance by Jess Walter
Best First Novel by an American Author
Die a little by Megan Abbott, UM alum and former Ann Arbor resident
Immoral by Brian Freeman
Run the Risk by Scott Frost
Hide Your Eyes by Alison Gaylin
Officer Down by Theresa Schwegel
Blog Post
Edgar nominess for 2006, part 2
by sernabad
Best Paperback Original
Homicide My Own by Anne Argula
The James Deans by Reed F. Coleman
Girl in the Glass by Jeffrey Ford
Kiss Her Goodbye by Allan Guthrie
Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston
The winners in the 16 categories will be announced on April 27, 2006.
Blog Post
Wendy Wassertein, 1950-2006
by sernabad
Wendy Wasserstein, the pioneering voice of independent single women who embraced feminism and romance, died January 30, 2006 after fierce battle with cancer.
Ms. Wasserstein, who used humor to put the sadness and loneliness that sometimes pervade the single life into perspective, soared to public awareness with her captivating 1977 play Uncommon Women and Other.
Her signature work, The Heidi Chronicles, often considered the blueprint for HBO's Sex and the City, captivated theater-goers with her piercing insights into the psyche of American career women. The Chronicles garnered Wasserstein with the trifecta of playwright honors -- a Tony, the New York Crama Critics Circle award, and the Pulitzer.
Her only novel, Elements of Style, will be published in April.
Wasserstein, who was born October 18, 1950, is survived by her young daughter Lucy Jane.
Blog Post
Patrick O'Keeffe, UM professor, wins prestigious Story Prize
by sernabad
Irish-born Patrick O'Keeffe, professor of English at the University of Michigan, was awarded the 2005 Story Prize for The Hill Road, four novellas about life in a fictional Irish village.
O'Keefe beat out 81 other writers, including the other two authors on the shortlist, Jim Harrison for The Summer He Didn't Die and Maureen F. McHugh for Mothers and Other Monsters, which will be ordered later this month.
O'Keefe, 42, arrived in the U.S. as in illegal immigrant in 1986. He won his green card in a lottery and later graduated from the University of Kentucky. He then earned an MFA from the University of Michigan, where he now teaches.
The Story Prize was established last year. Funded by a private donor, the Story Prize's first winner was Edwidge Danticat for The Dew Breaker.
Prof. O'Keeffe accepted his $20,000 prize and an engraved silver bowl in ceremony at the New School's Tishman Auditorium on Wednesday, January 25, 2006.
Blog Post
New from Belle and Sebastian next week
by EllenS
Next week, on February 7, Belle and Sebastian will be releasing their sixth album - The Life Pursuit. “Written almost entirely by frontman Stuart Murdoch, [it] is a magnificently assured and diverse pop record. With nods to such influences as Cornelius, Manfred Mann, and David Bowie, "The Life Pursuit" mingles the folky, be-sweatered pathos of the group's earliest work with joyfully satirical late 60's sunshine pop, and the sophisticated 80's-influenced work reminiscent of their prior album, 2003's "Dear Catastrophe Waitress". –Amazon.com
The library currently has four of their CD’s, so check them out!
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #5
by muffy
Two sisters, two wars, one hot summer, one thoughtless act with devastating consequences, and one achingly beautiful first novel.
Adolescent Kate, watchful and sensitive, her wild and theatrical sister Frankie, (the gwaimui White Ghost Girls, lovingly called by their Chinese nanny) were left navigating an idyllic summer in Hong Kong while their photographer father was on assignment for Time magazine, covering the Vietnam war. It was 1967. The Mao rebellion in China was spilling over the border.
The story was set against the backdrop of the insular colonial American/English society of tea parties, cricket games and private schools and the awakening Chinese nationalism.
Newcomer Alice Greenway gave us one of the most memorable debut novels in a long while. Starred review from Booklist. Don’t miss this one.
Blog Post
Women Writing
by Van
Journalistas: 100 Years of the Best Writing and Reporting by Women Journalists, edited by Eleanor Mills and Kira Cochrane. Jill Abramson, in her review in The New York Times Book Review (January 8, 2006), hated the title and was doubtful of the concept but she was won over, “most of the pieces…are so marvelous I quickly cast aside my doubts. Their choice of writers, including Martha Gellhorn, Rebecca West, Susan Sontag and Mary McCarthy, as well as a number of British writers who were less familiar to me, is superb.”
This Day in the Life: Diaries from Women Across America created, compiled, and edited by Joni B. Cole, Rebecca Joffrey, and B. K. Rakhra. On June 29, 2004, a diverse group of women wrote down their thoughts. “The results are fantastically complex: an entertaining, heartwarming, and empathetic glimpse into many lives” (Library Journal, November 2005).
Women’s Letters: America from the Revolutionary War to the Present, edited by Stephen J. Adler. Chronologically arranged letters from the famous and the unknown with biographical information on the writers, contextual information about the letter or topic, and many period illustrations.
The Aunt Lute Anthology of U. S. Women Writers, edited by Lisa Maria Hogeland and Mary Klages. The editors have “gathered a startling variety of female texts, from a report of Anne Hutchinson's 1638 heresy trial to Emily Dickinson's poetry and an anti-lynching essay by Ida B. Wells” (Choice Reviews, June 2005).
Blog Post
Wickett's Remedy by Myla Goldberg
by Maxine
In a story eeriely relevant for our time, Myla Goldberg, acclaimed author of Bee Season, creates in Wickett's Remedy a tale that chronicles the Spanish Influenza epidemic
of 1918 through the travails of the main character, Lydia Wickett, who creates a medicinal tasting mixture that her husband tries to market. Lydia loses her husband to influenza and is exploited by a shady businessman who converts the remedy into QD Soda which becomes a nationwide sensation and makes him millions. Returning to South Boston, Lydia begins nursing victims of the disease and then naively volunteers for an unethical research project on Gallups Island using prisoners as subjects to be exposed to the virus. Along with the narrative are bulletins describing the 75th anniversary of QD Soda and articles on the ravages of the influenza. Sidebars in the margins are written from "the other side," i.e. the dead, commenting on the story. Wickett's Remedy is an ambitious undertaking that vividly depicts the tragedy that took so many lives.
If interested in the history of pandemics, check out the upcoming talk by Dr. Matthew Boulton, Associate Dean of UM School of Public Health on Thursday, February 9 at 7 p.m. at the Downtown Branch. Read more about it on our events page.
Blog Post
2006 Michigan Notable Books, part 1 -- Non-fiction winners
by sernabad
The Library of Michigan announced the winners of the 2006 Michigan Notable Books. These twenty titles, all published last year, highlight “…Michigan people, places and events.” They must be written by a Michigan native or resident and are wide-reaching in coverage.
On the list this year are 14 non-fiction titles, four novels, and two children’s books. The winners in alphabetical order are:
Non-fiction
Beast of Never, Cat of God: The Search for the Eastern Puma by Bob Butz
Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink by David Margolick
Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans by Thomas Lynch
The Dodge Brothers: The Men, the Motor Cars, and the Legacy by Charles K. Hyde
Grit, Noise, and Revolution: The Birth of Detroit Rock 'n' Roll by David A. Carson
Legends of Light: A Michigan Lighthouse Portfolio photographs by Ed Wargin
Made in Detroit: A South of 8 Mile Memoir by Paul Clemens
Michigan Agricultural College: The Evolution of a Land-grant Philosophy, 1855-1925 by Keith R. Widder
Michigan Shadow Towns: A Study of Vanishing and Vibrant Villages by Gene Scott
Mighty Fitz: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Michael Schumacher
Singing in a Strange Land: C.L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America by Nick Salvatore
Soapy: A Biography of G. Mennen Williams by Thomas J. Noer
Under Michigan: The Story of Michigan's Rocks and Fossils by Charles Ferguson Barker
Vintage Views of the Charlevoix-Petoskey Region by M. Christine Byron and Thomas R. Wilson