Staff Picks

Dodger is a tosher, a cheeky, enterprising young man who knows the sewers of London like the back of his hand.  He searches in tunnels below ground to find lost treasures like coins or rings, always hoping to find the mystical Tosharoon—a  conglomeration of treasures wrapped up in mud, and worse.

One night while toshing Dodger hears the screams of a young lady in distress from the street above and rushes to her rescue, rising up from the tunnel and defeating the thugs who were beating her.  As he ministers to this well-dressed girl with a mysterious accent he meets the reformer Henry Mayhew and a writer named Charlie Dickens.   The new hero’s decision to investigate the mystery of the girl’s background so he can keep her safe leads him to become involved in the world of aristocrats, Fleet Street journalism, and the Peelers.

Terry Pratchett includes his usual satire of government, news reporting, and life at various levels of society, as well as his typical humor.  The parallels between Ankh-Morpork and Queen Victoria’s London become clearer as the story progresses.  While the characters are not as fully developed as those in the series (difficult to do in one book) it’s easy to see a connection between Sir Robert Peel (head of the Metropolitan Police) and Sam Vimes, for example. 

Fans of Charles Dickens or Terry Pratchett will enjoy this alternate history, as will those interested in English literature and Victorian London.   While listed as a teen book, adults will definitely enjoy it as well.

I listened to the audio, where Stephen Briggs did his usual outstanding job narrating the story.

Maria Semple relates the tale of where Bernadette went and why using emails, letters, reports, articles, and other short pieces created by or relating to the characters. Interspersed are passages of Bernadette's daughter Bee's narration. With all the variation in modes of writing, I was surprised at how smoothly this story read.

Bernadette lives with Bee and her husband, Elgie, in Seattle. Bernadette hates Seattle, almost as much as she hates the mothers of other students at Bee's school who pester her like gnats and talk about her behind her back via email. Bernadette clashes repeatedly with one gnat in particular who happens to live next door. In comic style reminiscent of Arrested Development, a show Semple wrote on, events escalate to the point where Elgie loses confidence in Bernadette, and she disappears.

Even with an unfortunate plot hole later in the story (evidence of a letter written in one location was actually written later in another), I loved this hilarious tale of modern suburban life populated with quirky, yet realistically complex characters. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good story.

Also available as downloadable audiobook in WMA format.

I first read this book when it was hot off the press in 1977.   I finished it one morning right before going in to work at an Owensboro, KY department store. It was hard to get my mind on work after experiencing the traumatic events at the Overlook Hotel.

For those who may not know the story of the Shining, it is about a troubled family looking to find a geographical cure to their problems (including dad’s drinking) by moving to a isolated hotel where they will be caretakers over the winter.  The hotel is haunted. But the story isn’t about the ghosts; it’s about   how the evil of the hotel exaggerates and takes over the family’s emotional and psychological states.

The mom tries to hold it together, but she does not understand where her son is coming from (he is psychic, i.e.-“shines”). Dad is basically a good man, but struggles with anger. He wants to drink, but is on the wagon. The hotel bar beckons, complete with a friendly ghostly crowd. He tries to be strong, but cannot hold out. This causes him to neglect his family. Guilt (and psychosis) causes him to turn on them. But when it comes to actually killing his son, he destroys himself to save the child.  

If you have only seen the movie, well, you saw a good movie with great acting and a classic scene (even though there is no hatchet in the book).But the book delivers on a deeper level.  I highly recommend reading (or re-reading) The Shining and just ENJOYING being held captive by a master story teller.

Bergstein explains why women, in particular, absolutely love shoes. Even more than our clothing, shoes offers us a means to communicate who we are as individuals. But Bergstein goes beyond the stories of various cobblers who became famous for their footwear. She also describes the behind the scenes machinations that brought about the famous Ruby Slippers in The Wizard of Oz. They were actually silver in L. Frank Baum’s book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz but red would be more of a contrast against the yellow brick road filmed in Technicolor. Bergstein combines history with popular culture. For example, we’re informed that Judy Garland was subjected to a starvation diet at a time when she and her mother were unaware diet pills contained amphetamines. As a result, she was given barbiturates so she could sleep at night and did you know that The Wizard of Oz went through four directors? How did the rationing of rubber and steel during World War II affect the shoe industry? Bergstein covers that question and describes Nancy Sinatra’s boots (that were made for walkin’). John Travolta strutted on stage while wearing those famous black boots in Saturday Night Fever. So whether you own as many pairs of shoes as Imelda Marcos (1,060 according to Imelda but other people say 3,000) or you were a huge fan of Sex in the City, you will not only enjoy this book, you will never look at a pair of shoes in the same way.

The Age of Miracles is the story of Julia as she comes of age in suburban California, featuring bullies, young love, cliques, loneliness, parental troubles, bra shopping, soccer practice, grandpa, and reading in the library during lunch at school.

I forgot to mention that while Julia suffers the above, the rotation of the Earth is drastically slowing. Circadian rhythms are thrown off by the changing pattern of light and dark, affecting humans as well as birds and other animals. Weather and tidal patterns are altered, and there are other ecological tragedies seen through the eyes of the young narrator. The global problems are enough, but social problems arise from the changes as well--the definition of a day turns very political when you consider that financial markets must close some time, and normalcy in the economy is a requirement to prevent total chaos.

And there's so much more. The narrator is small, but this story is huge, yet somehow the author tells it in fewer than three hundred pages. I am amazed by this book, and it is easily my favorite of this year.

But a warning--this is not an adventure story. This is a coming of age story, told from the perspective of a middle-school student. I've seen criticism that the author could have spent more time and effort on documenting the changes that affect the planet were it to slow, but our narrator is not the scientist played by Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day.

I would, however, love to know what research the author did in constructing her setting. Did she talk to scientists or read reports projecting the outcome of such a situation? Or did she come up with this on her own? Either way, it's very imaginative and I would recommend it to anyone, especially to fans of Cormac McCarthy's The Road on account of the skillful writing and the similarity in placing something normal (a father/son road trip, a girl coming of age) in an apocalyptic setting.

The short version: You like doing things outdoors--hiking, hunting, cross country skiing, etc.--and read up on those hobbies. You've had a close relationship with a pet. You don't mind reading about the end of the world as we know it. If that's you, you'll like this story.

The details: The world in Peter Heller's The Dog Stars is a lonely place. A virus has decimated the US population. In a small airport in Colorado, Hig, along with his dog Jasper and fellow resident Bangley, persists. He sleeps outdoors with Jasper snuggled on his leg. He flies his Cessna around on patrols once a day, playing through loudspeakers that anyone who comes near the airport will be killed. Sometimes, he helps Bangley enforce this death sentence. They don't trust any of the few other survivors who come near the airport.

Hig hunts and fishes. He flies to a nearby Mennonite village to visit and deliver Sprite, but keeps his distance--signs up warn that they have "the blood."

Three years ago, while flying, Hig picked up someone on the radio at the Grand Junction airport. Events in his life make him want to fly out now. Why, Bangley wants to know, what do you want?

That's the most important question of the book. It drives the narrative. Hig is alive almost without reason. He loves nature and poetry, he's not cold enough to be the sort of relentless killer Bangley is. He may not have survived to this point ten years after the virus hit if it weren't for Bangley. But what is he doing surviving? What does he want to continue living for? The story answers the question satisfactorily.

Heller's writing conveys his own love of nature. I confess to skimming his descriptions on occasion--I wanted to get back to the action. He also writes skillfully from the first person perspective of someone who's been mostly alone for a decade. Hig's thoughts wander and sometimes it's hard to tell if you're in the present or past, but it's not confusing for long. Sometimes it's hard to tell if Hig's thinking or speaking, which fits his state of mind perfectly.

If you enjoy nature writing and outdoor survival, or end of the world stories with a human slant like The Age of Miracles or The Road, you might see what you think of The Dog Stars.

The short version: This collection of the compelling first 12 issues of the mystery-horror comic book series set in a twisted boarding school is a satisfying hook that will make fans of readers who enjoy grim graphic stories with a dash of the fantastic, like The Walking Dead or The Unwritten. Enticed? Read on.

Nick Spencer's Morning Glories is one of those comics that keeps you in the dark about what's going on. I'd say it keeps you guessing, but it would be a rare success for any reader to guess the what's happening in an issue/chapter. And this is fun--an excellent hook.

This volume introduces six teens heading off to Morning Glories Academy, a prestigious college prep school, where they do few of the things you'd expect to see in a story set in a school, like attend class, go on dates, or give mom a weekly update phone call. Instead, they're cut off from communicating with their parents, nearly drowned in a locked room that fills with water, injected with green stuff, planning to make tear gas, and that's just in the first couple of issues.

The school is collecting teens who were born on May 4th. Why? Dunno. Some of them aren't the ones they're looking for--their eyes haven't been opened or something. More mysteries. Why do the school teachers seem to be evil and experimenting on kids? Who is the Headmaster they keep referring to? At this point, he's like Jacob from Lost--potentially an invisible being who expresses his dissatisfaction with teachers by slashing them up. And you'll read on because you want answers--it's apt that Damon Lindenhof wrote the intro, as the first season of Lost inspires the same sort of story-addiction.

The characters are interesting. At the beginning, they're brought in as stereotypes--the good, smart student; the spoiled rich boy; the catty snob; the Star Wars referencing, awkward guy; etc. Luckily, they develop a bit in these first 12 issues, while the torturer/teachers remain mysterious in their motivations and histories.

The story flows well and fast. There's action in addition to the mysteries, and Spencer will leave a scene hanging, brings a separate one to an equally compelling point and returns to the first, tugging each along a little at a time, driving you to zip through the pages to get to the end of a story arc. And it was good, so you start the next one. And probably finish it.

Which makes this a difficult book not to read in one sitting. The creepiness of the teachers, the mad science of the school, the surprising violence and intriguing back stories of the characters are all, in my opinion, the story's best qualities, but could be the worst if you prefer gentler fare. If you like horror stories/films, David Lynch-style mysteries where you've no hope of knowing what's going on, and stories featuring high school students/politics, you'll probably get into The Morning Glories.

The first sentence sets the perfect tone for this wonderful debut novel from Alice LaPlante.  "Something has happened."  With so much attention on Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, this book provides a thoughtful but thoroughly terrifying portrait of a victim.  Dr. Jennifer White is a renowned orthopedic surgeon. She has retired, and is doing volunteer work at a local clinic.  She also has dementia, and doesn't quite remember how her neighbor ended up murdered, missing four expertly removed fingers.  Her son, daughter and caregiver each deal with their own issues in addition to helping Jennifer navigate the foggy world that is her life.

Ned Vizzini's The Other Normals tells the story of Perry Eckert, a young math whiz whose divorced parents' lawyers agree that it would be cheaper to send him to summer camp than to feed him at home, and since he got kicked off the summer math team, there's no reason to keep him around. Also, socializing with other kids at camp could be good for him--his parents and brother think he spends too much time alone creating characters and reading rulebooks for the role-playing game Creatures & Caverns. It's sadder than your usual stereotype of a tabletop role-playing game geek (and I use the term geek as a proud game geek myself) because RPGs are intended to be played by more than one person.

Perry goes to camp and runs into a fantasy creature like the one he plays in C&C who takes him to the world of the Other Normals--an alternate dimension version of earth that's still very closely tied to Perry's earth. He has adventures there, crosses back over to camp, goes back to the other normals, back to camp, continues to rack up adventures hand over fist, all supplemented with a healthy dose of Vizzini's humor.

It's a fun, light fantasy X coming of age story. I'll acknowledge that I'm not a young adult, and that this contributed to my personally finding the story to be less than satisfying. The humor was occasionally too similar to an Adam Sandler movie (or whoever the current equivalent would be--Kevin James?) for my taste. You do have to suspend belief for a magical conduit to another dimension that involves mushrooms and a car battery, but even so Perry sometimes behaves in an over the top manner that's forehead-slappingly unbelievable (SPOILER - highlight to read: a scene in which Perry's love interest at camp accuses him of being a boy, not a man, involves him dropping his pants in front everyone at the camp dance). If that sounds like the sort of thing that makes you chuckle, and you enjoy adventure and fantasy world building, visit The Other Normals for yourself.