Press enter after choosing selection
Graphic for events post

Blog Post

Comic artist spotlight: Marguerite Debaie

by gulickb

Marguerite Debaie is a Palestinian-American artist who has been writing comics about the Palestinian-American experience and they are great. Her first book, in two volumes, The Hookah Girl and other Stories are humorously poignant observations from someone who has grown up as a Christian Palestinian in the US. These two volumes manage to capture what it was like for Marguerite growing up. The art is beautiful and at times it manages to capture in time a moment of great importance for us to share with the artist. So check out Volume 1 and Volume 2

Her second book A Voyage to Panjikant is a beautiful piece of historical fiction that follows a family from 7th Century Sogdiana (now known as Uzbekistan) who are in the midst of the silk road. This first volume is short, but you can see the time and care that went into making it. The coloring is by far some of the most beautiful work I’ve seen in some time, Debaie really captures the vibrancy of the culture. If you are interested in historical-fiction comics then you need to read A Voyage to Panjikant.

Graphic for events post

Blog Post

Return of the Battosai, Kenshin Himura!

by hanxanth

Ok, it's not really the return of everyone's favorite former samurai, more like a retelling of his story. But that doesn't make Rurouni Kenshin: Restoration, a 2-volume set, any less enjoyable!

Back in 2012, Japan released the first in a trilogy of live-action Rurouni Kenshin movies, an adaptation of the 28 volume manga series written by Nobuhiro Watsuki. The series is about Kenshin Himura, a former assassin who was known as the infamous Hitokiri Battosai (or Battosai the Man-Slayer) at the start of the Meiji period of Japan. After the wars are over, he devotes himself to wandering and protecting people, hoping to atone for all the blood he spilled while trying to bring about a better future for Japan. Along the way he meets Kamiya Kaoru, a swordswoman in charge of the Kamiya Dojo, as well as other friends who eventually convince him to stop being a wanderer. This reboot of Kenshin's story doesn't cover all of the material in the original series, but serves as a tie-in to the first film. That means that while some of the story is different and Kenshin is portrayed a little younger, we still see Kaoru confront the corrupt merchant Takeda Kanryu, and end with Kenshin having to take on another former assassin known as Udo Jin-E. It is in this climactic fight, present in the films, manga, and anime, that Kenshin has to make a choice: keep to his code and not kill Jin-E with his reverse-blade sword, or once again drown himself in a pool of blood in order to save the captured Kaoru.

See Kenshin in a new light with more of his feelings and emotions presented in this reboot, but still keeping the awesome action and speed of his deadly Hiten Mitsurugi fighting style, and read some of the author's thoughts on the film and reboot spread throughout the second volume! Whether your an old fan or a new fan of Rurouni Kenshin, you'll want to give this reboot a read!

You can also check out the library's volumes of the original series here (the library doesn't have all of the volumes though), or Nobuhiro Watsuki's other series Buso Renkin. And if you're in the mood for more historical samurai fiction, check out Kaze Hikaru by Taeko Watanabe!

Graphic for events post

Blog Post

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #563

by muffy

Early reviewers have called (Dublin-born and London-based) Gavin McCrea's Mrs. Engels * * *, "(r)ichly imagined. . . beautifully realized", and "the best kind of historical fiction." Here is a link to Helen Dunmore's review in The Guardian.

"No one understands men better than the women they don't marry..." observed Lizzie Burns, while very little is actually known about Lizzie herself. History remembers her as the illiterate Irishwoman and mill worker who was the longtime lover of Friedrich Engels, but in McCrea's first novel, the unsung Lizzie is finally given a voice - "earthy, affectionate, and street-smart but also sly, unabashedly mercenary, and sometimes-scheming", and utterly unforgettable.

The novel opens in 1870 with Lizzie and Friedrich moving from Manchester to London, to be closer to Karl Marx and his family, coauthor of the The Communist Manifesto. Newly installed in a grand townhouse, we watch as Lizzie learns to run a household (with servants), navigate the complex landscapes of Victorian society, and the peculiarities of the Marxes, treating readers to a backstage look at the domestic lives of the most public 19th-century revolutionaries and their families.

In her more private moments, Lizzie is haunted by her first love, burdened by a sense of duty to right past mistakes, and torn between a desire for independence and practical financial security.

"But the heart of the novel is the beautifully realized romance between Lizzie and Friedrich: a mismatch of values and temperaments, yet also a tender and complex bond."

For readers who enjoy stories of strong women like Nora Webster, Frances Wray in Sarah Waters' The Paying Guests; and those who often lived in the shadow of their significant others - The Paris Wife, The Aviators Wife and Z: a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald.

* * * = 3 starred reviews

Graphic for events post

Blog Post

The final installment in Jane Smiley's Last Hundred Years trilogy is here!

by eapearce

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley has gifted readers with numerous stories of the American heartland over the years. Her most recent endeavor has been the Last Hundred Years trilogy: three volumes following the same family over the course of a century. Beginning with Some Luck and continuing with Early Warning, the series concludes with the recently published Golden Age.

The deftness with which Smiley has managed to tell the stories of the family members is truly amazing. Some Luck begins in 1920 and each chapter represents one year, continuing through 1952. Early Warning picks up in 1953 and continues through the late 1980s, while Golden Age will carry us through 2019. The cast of characters is ever-expanding, but Smiley manages to keep the story coherent and detailed through all of the novels. One would think that it would be difficult to develop characters when the story is moving so quickly and the cast is so large, but Smiley shares the exact right amount of emotions and events so that readers feel truly immersed in the story and in the lives of the family members. The trilogy is more than just the story of a family, however. It's really a portrait of America over the course of the past century: the successes, the failures, the memorable events, the changing landscape, the cultural revolution, the technological invasion. Smiley uses her characters to comment on historical events and to offer unique perspectives and representations.

I'm still on the waitlist for Golden Age, but can't wait to see how the series concludes, and to read Smiley's interpretation of the past few decades, which contain events that I will personally remember. If you haven't read any of this trilogy yet, get started with Some Luck--and get on the hold list for Golden Age!

Graphic for events post

Blog Post

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #562 - “I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I’ve lost.” ~ Nan Goldin

by muffy

A finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, The Trench Angel by Michael Keenan Gutierrez is a "vivid and engaging novel and it carries a doomed, bloody and wondrous vision of the World War I trenches and the American West in the years after World War I".

Colorado, 1919. Photographer Neal Stephens returns home to New Sligo after the war to take on a job with the Eagle, the local paper. As with much of everything in town, it belongs to Neal's uncle, Seamus Rahill, owner of Rahill Coal & Electric who takes a hard line against his workers organizing. When Sheriff Clyde O'Leary, who has been blackmailing Neal over his secret marriage to a black woman in France, is murdered, Jesse Stephens (Neal's father and Rahill's brother-in-law) comes under suspicion. Neal's investigation calls up memories of the trenches and his search for his dead wife, as he untangles the connections among the murder, the coalminers' strike, and his mysterious anarchist father.

"While Gutierrez draws Paris, the Belgian war-front, and the rough-hewn frontier town with a good eye..., the novel's unfiltered lens reveals war's cost to the human psyche, the amorality of concentrated wealth, the cancer of racial and ethnic hatred, and the nearly unresolvable conflict between familial loyalty and moral responsibility."

Moonshadows, Julie W. Weston's debut novel is set in early 1920s Idaho. Photographer Nellie Burns leaves the monotonous portrait work in her Chicago studio with sight set on photographing nocturnal snowscape in the remote Idaho backcountry. Unfamiliar with the terrain, she hires a drunken old miner, Rosy Kipling as guide.

Among the many images Nellie captures on film of the deserted Last Chance Ranch, is one of a dead man. Then the negative disappears along with the body. When she finally finds the body, it is the wrong one, only making herself more of a suspect, and putting her in danger.

"This debut mystery... authentically portrays the gritty mining towns and the wild beauty of Idaho while presenting a challenging puzzle."

Readers might also enjoy The Cartographer of No Man's Land by P.S. Duffy, and The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak, both also notable debut novels.

Graphic for events post

Blog Post

New by the author of The Art Forger: The Muralist

by eapearce

The Muralist is a brand-new book by Barbara Shapiro, author of the bestselling The Art Forger. As in her previous novel, in The Muralist, Shapiro’s interest in and deep understanding of art is again used to create the background for the compelling story. The book features two main characters, living in different time periods. Alizee Benoit is a talented abstract painter who works for the Works Progress Administration in late 1930s New York City. Her great-niece, Dani Abrams, is a present-day employee at an auction house who receives in the mail one day several squares of an abstract painting. Believing that these squares may have something to do with her great-aunt’s never-explained disappearance in 1940, Dani dives into researching where the squares of painting came from, against her boss's wishes. The Muralist is combination historical fiction and mystery, and “is sure to be a crowning touch in an already celebrated career” (BookPage).

Fans of The Goldfinch in particular should make sure to check The Muralist out.

Graphic for events post

Blog Post

The Marvels by Brian Selznick

by manz

Brian Selznick has done it again. The Marvels is a beautiful book and the third in what the author is calling a trilogy, following the Caldecott Medal winning The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck. The books are all stand-alone novels in words in pictures. Not just pictures – gorgeous, amazing illustrations done by the author.

The first 400 pages of The Marvels are all pictures and the tale begins in 1766 as we follow the story of a fantastical theater family from generation to generation, starting with Billy Marvel, survivor of a shipwreck. The last section of the book is told in words and takes place in 1990 and centers on a runaway youth named Joseph with map in hand searching for an uncle he’s never met.

The two stories seem unrelated but converge in the most beautiful way and it is up to the reader to connect the dots. I loved that it was loosely based on real people and a real house! If you enjoyed the first two books in this words and pictures format, this one should be a treat as well. To quote a theme in the book, Aut Visum Aut Non. You either see it or you don't.

Graphic for events post

Blog Post

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #555 - “All cannot be lost when there is still so much being found” ~ Lemony Snicket

by muffy

The Book of Lost and Found by Lucy Foley. Art student Kate Darling does not know much about her mother, June. As an orphan, she was adopted by the childless heiress Evelyn Darling who nurtured and coached her to become a world renowned ballerina. A year after June's untimely death in a plane crash, Evelyn (Evie) unburdened herself of a guilty secret to Kate and bequest her with an exquisite drawing of a young woman who looked very much like a young June. This sent a grief-stricken Kate on a quest for the true identity of the woman in the portrait and her connection to her mother.

Her search takes Kate from London to Corsica, to Paris, and eventually to New York, revealing a love story that began in the wild 1920s and was disrupted by war, derailed by circumstances.

"Foley deftly handles narratives by multiple voices that move seamlessly back and forth from the 1920s to 1986, with a vivid section set in Nazi-occupied France, as (the star-crossed lovers) are separated by happenstance, war, and deceptions as painful as they are well meant. A lovely and moving debut."

Inspired by true events, The Girl Who Wrote in Silk, Kelli Estes' "brilliant and atmospheric" debut serves as a poignant tale of two women determined to do the right thing, and the power of our own stories.

While exploring her beloved aunt's Orcas Island estate, Inara Erickson comes across an elaborately stitched piece of fabric hidden in the house. Working with Daniel Chin, a local professor of Asian studies, Inara learns the story of the sleeve's creator, Mei Lein, a survivor of the Chinese Exclusion Act, in the late 1800s to rid Seattle of its Chinese community.

Through the stories Mei Lein tells in silk, Inara uncovers a tragic truth and the connection to her own ancestor, one who would soon be commemorated in a city park, forcing her to make an impossible choice.

"Carefully crafted and perfectly paced, the novel takes readers on a deeply satisfying, memorable journey. Part mystery and part romance, the novel is also a fascinating look at an often forgotten period of Pacific Northwest history and a moving reminder of the stories we all share."

Graphic for events post

Blog Post

Euphoria: a slim novel jam-packed with action and feeling

by eapearce

Many of us have heard of the fascinating 2014 Kirkus Prize winning novel Euphoria, by Lily King. The bright cover caught my eye almost a year ago, but I finally found the chance to read it just this past week. King’s novel is told from several perspectives, and tells the story of three young and gifted anthropologists studying the tribes of New Guinea in the early 1930s. Husband and wife team Nell and Fen have just finished studying the violent and superstitious Mumbanyo tribe, and their relationship and sanity are both on thin ice. When they encounter fellow anthropologist Bankson, he leads them to the peaceful, female-dominated Tam tribe to study and recover. However, an ensuing love triangle, and the misdeed’s of Nell’s husband Fen threaten their careers, their friendship, and their lives. This book is both a fascinating portrait of intimate relationships, and an accurate and shocking tale of what some of the first anthropologists encountered when they ventured out into the field.

It’s particularly interesting to note that King based the character of Nell Stone on real events in the life of revolutionary anthropologist Margaret Mead. Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa is her psychological study of tribal youth, and documents her travels to Samoa at age twenty-three, where she conducted her first fieldwork. It has been compared to Darwin's Origin of Species for its scientific relevance as well as its readability. You can also read Jane Howard’s biography of Margaret Mead, titled Margaret Mead: A Life, to find out even more about the amazing woman that inspired King to write Euphoria.

Graphic for events post

Blog Post

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #552 - “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” ~ Martin Buber

by muffy

Winner of the 2012 Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize, Imperium: a fiction of the South Seas * * by Swiss novelist/screenwriter Christian Kracht is "an outrageous, fantastical, uncategorizable novel of obsession, adventure, and coconuts."

In this fictionalized tale about August Engelhardt (1870-1919), a German citizen who founded a sun-worshipping, coconut-eating cult, who purchased a small island in Dutch New Guinea, where he lived as a nudist. Madness eventually took hold and further isolated him from the few people on the island who cared about him. "Comparable to the adventure stories of Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, and Daniel Defoe, albeit with a definite philosophical inclination."

Come Away With Me by Karma Brown. A patch of black ice on Christmas Eve will change Tegan Lawson's life in ways she never could have imagined. Almost consumed by grief (of losing her baby) and anger (at her husband Gabe who was driving) until she is reminded of their Jar of Spontaneity, a collection of their dream destinations and experiences, and thus, begins an adventure of a lifetime and a search for forgiveness.

"A warmly compelling love story, with flashbacks that start with the couple's meeting as freshmen at Northwestern eight years earlier, this becomes a wrenching account of dealing with unbearable loss. Have tissues at hand for Brown's deeply moving debut."

Wishful Thinking by Kamy Wicoff is the answer to every single parent's dream. Jennifer Sharpe is barely able to keep her head above water as she juggles a demanding boss and even more demanding children and their schedules... that is until a brilliant physicist secretly installs a miraculous time-travel app on her phone that allows her to be in more than one place at the same time. Jennifer is almost literally, beside herself with glee, and is hopefully hooked... until the inventor threatens to remove the app from her phone for breaking the rules.

"(A) modern-day fairy tale in which one woman learns to overcome the challenges and appreciate the joys of living life in real time."

In The Canterbury Sisters by Kim Wright, Philadelphia wine critic Che Milan is dumped by her longtime lover on the same day that her mother's ashes arrive on her doorstep, with a note reminding Che of a half-forgotten promise to take her mother to Canterbury. So she joins a group of eight women to walk the sixty miles from London to Canterbury Cathedral. In the best Chaucer tradition, the women swap stories as they walk, each vying to see who can best describe true love.

Through her adventures along the trail, Che finds herself opening up to new possibilities in life and discovers that the miracles of Canterbury can take surprising forms.

* * = 2 starred reviews