Archive | May, 2010

Biblioholic Review: The Lace Reader

31 May

Towner Whitney, a woman who returns home to Salem, MA after a long absence is no witch in a city of witches.  However, she and the other women in her family are Lace Readers. Whitney you see is our emotional focal point in The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry.

Who are Lace Readers?  Lace readers can be likened to readers of tea-leaves.  And like those who divine fortunes  in the patterns of tea, lace can also be interpreted to coax out truth.  Lace Reading is not the only odd occupation of Towner Whitney’s family.

After all, her mother runs a refuge for battered women on an island off shore, her Great Aunt was the community’s resident Emily Post; and her uncle is the town’s evangelist, complete with robed disciples.  You can imagine why Towner left town but that is only the beginning of the strange, tragic story of Towner Whitney.  It is a small town and everybody seems to know Towner Whitney’s story, including the police department’s newest detective. Everyone knows, except Towner herself.  She can only seem to remember pieces of her past.

The Lace Reader is deliciously obtuse.  As a reader, you know that there something going on, but it is between the words on the page. You don’t know what it is, at least we didn’t.  We’re not lace readers or any kind of fortune teller, obviously.  Barry is enigmatically clever and really only reveals there is more to the story near the book’s climax.

The last line of page 343 made the reader sit up in bed, ignore the early set alarm clock and plow through to the end.  It was a very fast, wonderful 40 pages.  Barry skillfully writes the end of the book as if she is slowly lifting the veil of lace she put over the reader’s eyes.

Barry received many accolades for the well-received book and for good reason.  Her second novel, The Map of True Places was released earlier this month.  It was already of Boston Book Bums ‘to be read list,’ but after finishing The Lace Reader, it is time to move it to the top of pile.  Keep an eye of The Map of True Places review in coming weeks.

THE LACE READER was borrowed from the local public library for our biblioholic enjoyment.

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B3: The Week that Was

30 May

While the Boston Book Bum crew wrestled with Book Expo America and Book Blogger Con attendance envy, we managed to churn out another full week of reviews and feature stories. We are half way through a long weekend, relaxing somewhere with our feet up, a book in one hand and icy adult beverage in the other. So here is your B3 week in review.

Monday: We opined on the book 20 Times a Lady. Currently a film project being shot here in Boston, 20 Times a Lady revolves around a young professional who tracks down her previous sexual conquests hoping one is Mr. Right. We felt like it was the equivalent to an emotional ATM with no moral overdraft fees.

Tuesday: B3 wrote about the literary map of Massachusetts. At the Massachusetts Center for the Book website, they have a comprehensive map of the Bay State featuring every conceivable connection to the literary world pinned to a town or city. A fascinating, underutilized map!

Wednesday: Our review of Angelology, the story of a nun caught up in a clandestine meta-physical war between humans and the spawn of rebellious angels. If you have a background in religious history, you might find this one fun, so long as you don’t take it and yourself too seriously. A solid summer read.

Thursday: We followed book buying and borrowing trends for travelers and commuters, from airport book kiosks to curb side book vending machines.

Friday: The team reviews More of this World or Maybe Another. This collection of New Orleans short stories is masterfully rendered in the most brutal and heart breaking way.

Saturday: Why do we let books become barriers? How can we utilize books as tools of socialization rather than isolation?

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Books as a Social Tool

29 May

Every day during the Boston Book Bums commute, we take an unofficial and unscientific poll of books being read on the MBTA. We’ve been doing this daily research for about a month now and it’s produced some interesting findings. First of all, it’s entirely anecdotal, but it appears the belief that women read more than men is completely valid (6-to-1.) Second, the men we do notice reading spend most of their time glancing at newspapers or their smart phone email queue.

With all these heads down avoiding eye contact, we got to thinking, all those readers…look up. What do you see? Fellow readers, not total strangers.

People say that alcohol (thus the bar scene as the prime 20-something method for meeting people) is the greatest ice breaker to strangers. What about a book? Could it not be said that the book, book stores and libraries immediately bring like minded or literate people together?

What if we actively promoted books as a great way to meet people, of the same or different gender? Yes, book clubs bring people together under the bibliophilic banner. But as we’ve seen recently, they are confined primarily to the female gender. We aren’t talking about diluting book clubs into pick-up parlors. We’re suggesting simply utilizing a book to interact with your fellow human being, on the subway, walking through a bookseller, etc. What if that book was the conversation starter rather than a bound barrier?

Think about the legs a story would have for a book store if a couple met and married there? Heck, just last week Whole Foods got reams of feel good local press after a guy popped the question to his lady love in the cheese aisle.

Reading in public has also been scorched by the branding iron of  “anti-social.” How is that possible? Unlike the digital music age, where you have no clue about a person based on music plugged into their head, books lay it all out there. This is who I am, this is what I am interested in (unless of course you still wrap your books in old shopping bags like some shy middle schooler.)

Talk about a better conversation starter than, “What are you drinking,” or “How about them ‘Sox?”

The B3 team has taken a book to a bar and just started reading over a pint. And its also happened that people look at you like some sort of strange primordial beast hulking over a dust jacketed tome. Or bar maids and bar flys assumed you have to read what you are reading because, who reads for fun? Books are weird in that they can be social and anti-social at the same time. And in its own weird way, that book broke down another person’s barrier of inverse curiosity, prompting them to ask…”What are you reading?”

We aren’t advocating books as a pick-up tool, we’re simply pondering how barriers can immediately be broken down by the simple question…”What are you reading?”

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Biblioholic Review: More of this World or Maybe Another

28 May

More of this World or Maybe Another is Barb Johnson’s first published collection of short stories.  Johnson took a winding road to become an author, first a carpenter, then a victim of Hurricane Katrina, and the reader feels Johnson’s experience reverberating throughout the collection.

All nine stories take place in poverty-stricken New Orleans.  These tales are gritty!  There is sadness to every movement, but there is also hope, even if sometimes it is expressed as denial.

Four of the nine tales center on Delia, who if this were a novel would be the heroine and seems at first glance the tie that binds all the other characters together.  A closer look reveals these lives intersect in many ways, not the least of by the snack machine in the laundromat.  Luis, the little boy in the last story sums up the importance of the snack machine as a holder of hopes and dreams when he says “…is dark except for the snack machine.  It glows like a nightlight for Palmyra Street.”

Beautiful and desperate at the same time.

These tales are engrossing and are tied so closely together it is a little hard to distinguish this book as a collection of short stories instead of a novel. It’s a question continually asked during the reading, ‘Why isn’t this a novel?’ Sometimes short story collections subconsciously prompt a reader to jump about. With More of this World, we read straight through like a novel, no skipping about. It’s a testament to Johnson, whose skill binds these stories to a uninterrupted sequence. We liked the stories the more we read, the more emotionally invested in the characters we became, we were committed to her arc.

Sure each individual tale can stand on its own and technically these stories can and do, but each story is really better because of the story proceeding it.

All nine stories are good, but some are great, especially the finale “St. Luis of Palmyra”.

No matter the format or structure, Johnson’s words are completely enjoyable and emotionally potent.

More of this World or Maybe Another by Barb Johnson was purchased by the Boston Book Bums.

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Have Book Will Travel?

27 May

Sure with the simmering eruption of the digital reader pretty soon vacation or travel reading will take on a while new complexion. You can load enough books to last a life time in many of the modern e-readers. Smart phones now come with screens more friendly to reading and at sizes closer to mass-market paperbacks.

Essentially you don’t need to lug a book along on vacation or during your daily commute. But what’s the fun in that? Will people connected to the web on vacation or traveling to work via e-reader immediately lapse into job mode, scrolling through emails or wasting time online (except reading wonderful blogs like ours.)

Can’t do that with a paperback.

Plus, buying a book, whether it’s a purchase at an airport kiosk or spinning rack at a grocery store, requires thought. No swiping a finger across a screen and impulsively buying up a covey of novels instantly on your iPad.

How many times have you seen airport book seller kiosks crammed with people looking for something, anything to read on the flight or help to laze away the hours poolside.

Peak sales for books at airports coincides with the summer travel season which kicks off this weekend. A good-sized airport bookstore can rake in between $1 million to $2 million in sales annually.

When it comes traveling every day, to and from work, Americans are facing increasing travel times. However, since Yanks love to drive to work it reduces many opportunities to read on the go. However, increased commuting times are become more common throughout the industrialized world, like in the UK and France.

It’s said the French are the most literate nation (with the typical French citizen buying eight books annually.) That belief is proven by the fact that 51% of French annual household spending on entertainment is devoted to books. And as the French see their commutes grow, especially those around metro-Paris who utilize mass transit, it gives them more time to read and spend money on books.

The French publishing industry responded by making books easier to find, placing them at rest stops and shops not normally associated with book buying. Airports and commuter hubs are now hot spots for French book buying.

However, it was 2005 when Americans were tickled by the notion of the book vending machines making a splash in Paris. The curbside machines sold everything from cookbooks to fiction, starting at prices under $2.50 five years ago.

The idea of putting books into machines for easy purchase has since spread to the UK and down to Brazil.

Recently a German publishing house decided to convert old cigarette vending machines to sell books on the street.

From butts to books, not a bad idea.

In case buying a book isn’t your thing, and you crave something from the library, but don’t have time to make their budget contracted hours- try the Library-A-Go-Go (right.)

Out in California, the Contra Costa County Library system has invested in an automated book dispenser/return drop affectionately called Library-A-Go-Go. Four hundred books are available for CCCL card holders after a card swipe and touch screen selection.

Another appeal of the Library-A-Go-Go for the busy commuter, two of the three vending machines are located at BART stations; with a pair of Go-Go machines accessible 24/7 and the third active into the wee hours.

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Biblioholic Review: Angelology

26 May

“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”

Genesis 6:4

If you are familiar with the Book of Enoch, angel lore and the Nephilim; as well as the Book of Genesis and a number of apocryphal works, Angelology will seem a bit familiar. It’s because Author Danielle Trussoni relies on these works to bulwark her new story of angels, brave nuns, secret expeditions and lost, inexplicable and miraculous treasures.

Angelology is the story of Sister Evangeline, a young nun living a devout life at a convent outside of New York City. A request seeking information regarding possible connections between the convent and Abigail Rockefeller, pique her natural curiosity. From there we travel around metropolitan New York, back to pre-World War II Paris and into the caverns of Bulgaria, searching for angels and their gauzy fingerprints on humanity.

Evangeline is a level headed, smart young nun. She is sketched out in details throughout the first half of Angelology, appreciating her  pious efforts, without becoming bored by superfluous personal details that exercise the author but not the character.

And while we liked Evangeline, we were reminded of another fictional nun thrown into a meta-physical thriller, Sister Ottavia Salina in the Spanish thriller, The Last Cato by Matilde Asensi. We warmed to Sister Salina a bit more because she was in WAY over her head unraveling a mystery involving Dante’s Inferno. A bit more of a rebel, willing to listen to her heart even when it conflicted with her vows. Was it cliched? Sure. But her transformation was character evolution, compared to Evangeline’s eventual metamorphosis. All around, both very enjoyable nuns as heroines.

When you start reading Angelology you wonder if you’ll be sucked into a strict reality, interrupted by some jolting grotesque antagonist. Quickly you realize its a parallel reality, similar and overlapping to ours, but different. It is our history, our world, but it’s written by different masters with a will outside of God. It can be called meta-physical thriller, but its devotion to Biblical and pagan mythic sources make it a tad more interesting than pedestrian occult-thriller- fantasy.

Angelology becomes interesting pretty fast because it is “real.” It embraces the reality that religion has to some in today’s society, but was copious a generation ago and omnipresent a millennium before. The world of Christianity at its birth was magical, borrowing from ancient traditions, updated and turned modern by each successive generation. A reality, given creative twists, appealing to the changing user.

Both God and the Devil are absentee players in this tale. They are a sort of producer and director of the picture. The Nephilim are the prime movers in Angelology. They replace vampires, demons or Satan’s minions as evil-doers. In case you don’t know Nephilim are the spawn of angels and humans (referenced at the top with the Genesis passage,) or the fallen angels themselves.

Trussoni had a few thousand years of material to seek inspiration from, cherry picking  ideas and spinning off new concepts. It is supremely easy to get buried in your research, lose the focal point of your tale only to find it buried under a millenia of fascinating, but extraneous, back story. Trussoni creates set pieces, dropping in nice details that flesh out the broader story.

Would it be simple to say that angels are the new vampire? In a way, they are on the verge of breaking really big. Anne Rice left vampires and Jesus behind recently to pen Angel Time (a generally uninspiring book.) Last year we saw the movie Legion (based on a comic book) chronicle a struggle between armies of angels over a prophetical birth. And in the upcoming Garry Kilworth novel, Angel, San Francisco burns because of war in heaven spilling over to Earth.

Angelology can stake a legitimate claim as the standard for angel-centric thrillers. Not as scholarly deep as it could be, but still intelligent. Trussoni smartly relies on a wealth of ancient source material to knit together a pretty interesting plot with rewarding multiple climaxes.

Angelology by Danielle Trussoni was bought for our biblioholic enjoyment by the Boston Book Bums

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Literary Cartography: Massachusetts

25 May

When prowling around the Massachusetts Center for the Book website recently, we came upon the very minimalist but intriguing web page. The online map breaks down the Commonwealth by its regions and locations of literary note. This dawned on us as a very cool, but little known bibliophilic road map for our beloved state. Town to city and everyplace in between, this is a fascinating resource right under our noses.

One could plan an entire literary grand tour based on this website (and we just might!)

The literary tour of the Bay State isn’t confined to just authors of note, but even smaller scribes, as well as editors and even paper makers. Right, no paper production, no books. Smart! It also demarcates where authors are laid to rest as well.

Sure when you click through the myriad of towns and locales, you’ll see the literary heavy weights, best exemplified by Henry David Thoreau at Concord’s Walden Pond. You’ll come upon Beacon Hill’s Louisburg Square as home to Louisa May Alcott. The Omni Parker House will register as the locale for Charles Dickens first American recitation of A Christmas Carol. Motor out to the tip of the Cape, Atlantic House in Provincetown was the place where Eugene O’Neill wrote four plays.

But what about the city of Lawrence, did you know it was the boyhood home of Robert Frost and his foundation can still be found there? And did you realize the obscure town of Cummington is the homestead of poet and editor William Cullen Bryant. And if we haul out to Dalton, in the Berkshires you will be reminded of the Crane Museum of Papermaking (opened in 1930 it is the museum of the Crane & Co. paper manufacturer which has been in business since 1801.)

More people should know about this one stop literary tour just a few mouse clicks away.

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Biblioholic Review: 20 Times a Lady

24 May

Boston has been a-buzz these last couple of weeks with the filming of What’s Your Number?, starring Anna Faris, Zachary Quinto and Chris Evans.  There have been Anna sightings here and there, street closures in the North End and there is more movie magic to come since filming continues all over Greater Boston.

With filming in our backyard, we at Boston Book Bums decided to read the source material for What’s Your Number?, Karyn Bosnak’s 20 Times a Lady.  The main character, Deliah, to be played by Faris, has just read a survey that states the average number sexual partners people have is 10.5. Her number is well above that.

Deliah decides at 19 partners, she will stop there until she finds Mr. Right and he will be number 20. Her final number. Umm yeah…you know what’s coming next.

Then Deliah’s employer sacks her, then she gets drunk, then ends up in the sack with Number 20.  Oops.  Number 20 is not Mr. Right.  What now?  She backtracks.  She looks up all her old boyfriends and decides to revisit all of them to see if perhaps Mr. Right is someone she’s already had sex with, then there would be no need to alter her number or live a celibate life.

She drives to Philadelphia to stalk a guy who wasn’t really a boyfriend but a serial hook-up.  He, of course, is a total loser.  So is the next guy, and the next.  You see how the story goes.  Of course, there is a little irony here.  Deliah judging all these men as losers but yet she is the one is blowing her severance check on traveling around the country, stalking ex-sex partners.  If there is ever an occasion to turn your thumb and index finger into the shape of L and stick it your forehead…

Of course, this is a romantic comedy so everything works out in the end.  And why shouldn’t it? Deliah doesn’t look for a new job, she spends all of her money on an ego-driven, obsessive quest. How deep does Bosnak plunge Deliah, without any true emotional repercussion? Well, she has her lead fake a drug addiction to stalk an ex-bf inside a rehab facility.

In the tradition of Hollywood endings, she gets the guy, the job and even improved familial relations.  The Hollywood ending is not the only cliche in the book, in fact, I’m hard pressed to find the non-cliched moments. We’re pretty sure it was Bosnak’s intention to be this cliched, it couldn’t have possibly happened by accident.  It seems Bosnak was energized by watching reruns of Sex and the City, imagining John Cusak from his Say Anything days while drawing inspiration from her personal experience.  After all, Bosnak found her fame by asking the public for a dollar each to pay off her $20,000 debt.  Seriously, it is chronicled in her first book, Saving Karyn. Yeah, the digital age pan-handler. But we guess it’s OK, because she is a bubbly Manhattanite. Right?

Bosnak shows us she can construct a story and write it in an engaging fashion. However, will she fashion something deeper in the future. And should she? Is this the perfect escapist genre book for today’s 20-something reader? Sort of like an emotional ATM with no moral overdraft fees?

I think Faris and cast will do a fine job and this could be entertaining film but given the choice to spend $7 on a 2 hour matinee or  $14 and decidedly more than 2 hours of reading, we’ll choose the movie.  This is one, big old predictable, morally questionable book that will not likely suffer from translation to the big screen.  If anything, it might be improved.

20 Times a Lady was purchased by the Boston Book Bums for our biblioholic enjoyment.

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B3: The Week That Was

23 May

Quite a week for the B3 crew. We saw our readership explode, became more deeply intertwined with fellow book bloggers, as well as get to know some kindly publishers and even a solidly talented scribe or two via Twitter. Really, the tone for the week was set by our review on Monday of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane.

Monday: As we said before, unabashed and lovingly, we think Katherine Howe, first time author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, suffers from no literary novice maladies. This new writer, a fellow New Englander, executed something simple but ended up with something special. By far the Lead Boston Book Bum’s favorite book read this year. No farcical gimmicks or albino bad-guys needed.

Tuesday: The team tackled the thorny question of what happened to YA reading that alienated boys so much? We also pondered is there hope and are there books already out there that could satiated a young man’s biblioholic cravings. And perchance will we get books that a gender neutral, appealing to a broader base.

Wednesday: The review of Seeds of Terror, Gretchen Peters book on the links between the booming opium and heroin marketing flowing from Afghanistan; and those profits ending up in the coffers of terrorist organization and sympathizers.

Thursday: We rewound the review clock to feature American Wife, the fictional tale of a First Lady that was reportedly modeled heavily on Laura Bush. Bush has expressed in recent weeks, while promoting her book Spoken from the Heart, some social policy positions distinctly different than her husband.

Friday: Wrapped the work week with a review of The Fiddler’s Gun, a Revolutionary period tale of a young woman who leaves the orphanage behind to find adventure on the high seas as a privateer.

Saturday: Recapped the 10th annual Massachusetts Book Award winners in fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s/YA lit.

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Massachusetts Book Awards: Recap

22 May

Late last month the 10th Annual Massachusetts Book Awards were announced, covering the depth and variety of talents that call Massachusetts their home or have utilized the Bay State as a setting or subject. Broken down to four categories- fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s/YA- the MBA bestows honors upon authors who created books of note in the previous year.

Leading the winners list was John Pipkin for his book Woods Burner, set in the aftermath of a real-life fire accidentally set off by naturalist Henry David Thoreau. The blaze consumes 300 acres and served as inspiration for Pipkin who weaves in Thoreau, a pencil maker, Norwegian immigrant and a drug addicted minister into the story set in the Concord Woods conflagration.

The non-fiction award for 2009 was taken by UMass Boston history professor Vincent Cannato for his work on Ellis Island entitled American Passage. The work chronicles the history of the speck of soil in New York City harbor that became the first American land millions of immigrants would touch in their quest for freedom and prosperity.

The prize for poetry was awarded to James R. Whitley for his collection of poetry This Is The Red Door. Whitley utilizes food to flow readers through his work on loss, love, pain and endurance.

While the Children’s/YA prize for 2009 was bestowed upon Somerville resident Grace Lin for Where the Mountain meets the Moon. The book watches a young girl embark on a fantastic journey to visit the Old Man of the Moon to find out how to reverse her family’s ill fortune.

The Massachusetts Book Awards are presented by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

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