Somerville Public Library Blog

You will need a sturdy coffee table, a DVD player, a cast iron dutch oven, some yarn, your favorite device for listening to music, access to the Internet and, possibly, a set of earplugs if you are inclined to pursue any of the things I’ve been smitten by since ringing in 2010.

It all starts with the coffee table, which is where you will want to put the following items so that you have them at the ready:

The TOON Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics, edited by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly, is introduced for younger eyes by Jon Scieszka, and for the bifocal crowd by Spiegelman & Mouly.  When my husband and I gave this book to friends of ours with children we received two favorable responses, “Lincoln immediately took the book and brought it with him to the bathroom…he’s never done that with a book!” and, “Lauren takes it to bed with her every night.”  It’s a glorious collection of comics from the 1940s through the 1960s that will be devoured by kids of all ages.  (Clifford in “Crossing the Street” by Jules Feiffer is a personal favorite.)

George Sprott: (1894-1975) by Seth. This oversized graphic novella about the life of George Sprott is meticulously crafted through flashbacks, interviews, and illustrations of weighty black lines over muted shades of blue, brown, and red, offering the exact right aesthetic needed to feel the passage of time. It is the perfect size for propping up with with pillows and blankets, thus making it excellent bedtime reading, though your nightstand might think otherwise.

Wholphin.  A DVD magazine from the ubiquitous McSweeney’s that highlights short films, both fictional and documentary, which I am so grateful for because how else can one find these hidden gems?  Time was spent catching up on back issues and Volume 6 was a particular favorite for exploring the possibilities of Big Foot, following the adventures of a seeing-eye pony with Nike kicks, and experiencing the trials and tribulations of introducing the concept of democracy to a classroom of young students in China.

I didn’t think it was possible to love my husband more than I already do (I mean, he plays guitar, for crying out loud!), until he started baking gorgeous loaves of bread with our cast iron dutch oven using the recipes in this book, My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method, by Jim Lahey.  His first attempt proved swoon-worthy and I’ve been mildly fainting with each loaf.  We initially borrowed this book from the library but it quickly was purchased and given as a gift to the baker for Christmas.  Oh, and we haven’t purchased a loaf of sliced bread since.

I am smitten with Bittman.  Mark Bittman’s column, “The Minimalist,” for The New York Times is where we discovered Jim Lahey’s no-knead miracle bread.  This is also the where I discovered a delicious sweet potato salad recipe (pictured on the left) that seemed to contain all of my favorite ingredients that weren’t cheese.

Three newly published books that make me happy to be a children’s librarian:

Call Me Gorgeous! by Giles and Alexandra Milton. A beautifully-illustrated companion for Eric Carle’s “The Mixed-Up Chameleon.”  Large, boldly-drawn illustrations invite young readers to guess at what this remarkable creature could be.  A new storytime favorite.

The Boy In the Dress by David Walliams, illustrated by Quentin Blake.  Brand new to the States, this novel for children has the warmth, wickedness and hilarity of Dahl, and the good fortune to be illustrated by Quentin Blake.  A very funny, sweet, and touching story about a boy who is ridiculously good at soccer, misses him mom terribly and loves wearing dresses.

It’s Perfectly Normal: A Book About Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health. Written by Robie H. Harris and illustrated by Michael Emberley, it is updated for its 15th anniversary.  A comfortingly humorous, detailed and informative introduction to, well, life.  Published by Somerville’s own Candlewick Press!

After a long hiatus I am back to knitting with a frenzy.  Ravelry, the online community for knitters has been my latest obsession.  Have one skein of yarn and are wondering what to do with it?  Ravelry can help.  Got a favorite obscure yarn you’re trying to track down but can’t remember what it’s called or where you bought it?  With a few keywords, Ravelry can help.  Want to find patterns for free, with pictures and yarn suggestions?  Ravelry can help.

Here is where you might consider earplugs.  Legendary Boston band Mission of Burma released their latest recording, The Sound, the Speed, the Light (Matador), just as the leaves were turning and are headlining two live shows at the Paradise Rock Club this weekend to support this new, loud, delicious effort.

Finally, I am beginning to wonder what Joe Pernice can’t do.  He’s most well known for his bands Scud Mountain Boys, The Pernice Brothers, and Big Tobacco, three bands Boston music lovers are proud to call their own, despite the fact that he no longer lives in Massachusetts.  But Pernice also holds an MFA in creative writing and in 2003, pubished a novella for the  33 1/3 series inspired by the Smiths’ Meat Is Murder. His first novel, It Feels So Good When I Stop, was published in 2009 and is about living in and around the obsession of music. He also had the very good idea to put out a companion recording of covers for songs are mentioned in the novel.  His show at the Lizard Lounge on January 14th provided the audience with a chance to sample both the novel and the covers, and hear a preview of the almost-ready new recording from The Pernice Brothers.  Let’s just say, there’s a lot to look forward to!

If any of this sounds appealing - it is all accessible, one way or another, at your library.

All are invited to attend a community vigil and healing ceremony in honor of the victims of the Haiti Earthquake, to be held on Monday, January 18th (Martin Luther King Day) beginning at 7pm in the Somerville High School auditorium, located at 81 Highland Ave. Please join the City of Somerville for an evening of remembrance, and to express your thoughts and emotions about this tragic event.  All are welcome.

Our hearts go out not only to the people living in Haiti but also to Somervillian Haitians who have lost loved ones or are anxiously awaiting news about them.   Fortunately there are ways we can help. If you want to do something immediately, NPR has a list of organizations accepting donations via text message or online. The Huffington Post has a list of aid organizations and their activities as well–so you can even decide how you want to help, whether it’s to provide food, buy mosquito nets, or help fund a clinic. And here are links for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and Episcopal Relief and Development.

On Friday, January 15, the Somerville Haitian Coalition will be hosting a town hall meeting to discuss ways to help earthquake victims. The meeting will be at 6 p.m. at the Arthur D. Healey School, 5 Meacham Street, Somerville.

If you have doubts about the magnitude of this disaster, you can read an extensive news report and see photos here.

Note to Twitter users: if you see notices on Twitter that UPS is shipping packages of food and clothes weighing fewer than 50 pounds to Haiti for free, be aware that is not true. The same goes for Internet rumors that JetBlue and American Airlines are flying doctors to Haiti for free.

As promised, here is our next installment of best books read during the last decade.  My list is widespread, but each book now has a very special place in my heart.  They are the books I am constantly remembering, constantly suggesting to friends and patrons, and constantly glancing at on my home bookshelf, all with a smile.  I remain envious of those who can experience these wonderful books for the first time.

My time as a children’s librarian has greatly influenced this list, so that’s where I’m going to start.  I grew up with a younger brother and was often that girl who longed for a sister.  The Penderwicks: a summer tale of four sisters, two rabbits, and a very interesting boy, by Jeanne Birdsall, gave me a glimpse into what life with sisters could have been like.  These sisters are extremely adventurous, but also loving and kind, and their summer vacation spent in the Berkshires is a story you will hold close to your heart for a long time.  I take great comfort in books that offer such a safe respite from our busy and complicated world, books like Little Women, Mary Poppins and Charlotte’s Web.  This was such a fun and satisfying read.

Following the children’s literature path, another fascinating book for me during the last decade was Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.  Gaiman is a master storyteller and his story of Nobody “Bod” Owens, a boy adopted and cared for by a dead couple living in a graveyard, is completely enthralling.  The illustrations by Dave McKean enhance the dark elements of the story and are simply outstanding - I found myself staring at them over and over again, fascinated by this dark, mysterious world.  Gaiman’s inspiration for the book is cool, too.  His young son used to ride his tricycle between gravestones in a neighboring graveyard..twenty-something years later, we have this great story.  I don’t think I’ll ever look at a graveyard the same again.

Now for my two favorite adults novels of the decade.  First up is a novel originally published in 1997: Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier.  I first read this book in my high school senior English class.  It was newly published and I was only 17, but I’ll never forget how much the story moved me.  Growing up in the glorious South (Virginia, Capital of the Confederacy), a Civil War novel was easily considered curriculum.  But this was so much more than an assignment for me.  I reread the book a few years ago and loved it all over again.  War, love, a long journey, colorful characters (Inman, Ada, Ruby Sue, Stobrod) the mountains of North Carolina…irresistable.  The book was also made into a movie, which as good as it is, pales in comparison to Frazier’s rich story.  So much is missed!  I will say, the soundtrack is great - Jack White, folk, bluegrass - check it out!

I have seen my last choice on a lot of decade lists, but it still warrants a spot here as well.  The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, is an urban love story whose main character, Henry (a Chicago librarian), is a prisoner of time.  With no warning at all, Henry is swept away from the present to either the past or the future.  He once meets his wife, Claire, when she is only 6 years old; another time he visits the future and learns his own fate.  The narration is clever and switches between Henry and Claire’s perspectives.  Love is the anchor in this novel, but the fear of not knowing when a moment will escape you and the sadness of losing the present, is what lingers.

More staff picks to follow this week.

Stay tuned.

All over the universe media outlets are publishing lists of The Best Books of the Decade - here’s one from The Boston Globe, and another from Salon.com - so who are we to be behindhand?  But wait; our lists will have a twist.  Instead of limiting ourselves to books published in the last decade, we’re listing favorites from among the books we’ve read in the past decade, regardless of when they were published.  Why?  Because we’re like that, that’s why.  Here goes.

The Globe makes a point of leaving the Harry Potter books off of their list and Salon.com doesn’t mention them at all, but on my list they’re right at the top.  I’ve heard lots of criticism about Rowling’s shortcomings as an author and much of it is valid, but frankly this isn’t anything I care about - the Potter books do not pretend to be great art.  They are great stories, set in a fully realized imaginary world and peopled with characters who we love and hate and fear for.  The plotting is sheer genius - it develops steadily over seven books and thousands of pages, and as its intricacies are revealed, Rowling does not disappoint.  I stand in awe of her epilogue, which reveals exactly enough about what happens to Harry and the rest.  As I finished the seventh book I steeled myself for a feeling of sadness that it was all over, for wanting at least a little bit more.  Instead, as I read the last page, I felt…happy.  And satisfied.  How does she do it?

Evidently I have a soft spot for adventurous English children, as my love of the Potter books and my collection of tattered E. Nesbit paperbacks will attest.  That being so, I wonder that it took me so long to find Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons, which I first read sometime in the past decade.  Set in rural England in the summer of 1929, it tells the story of a group of children who have sailboats, a lake with an island in the middle of it, and the bare minimum of adult supervision - when they ask for their father’s permission to camp on the island he cables to their mother, “BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS, IF NOT DUFFERS WON’T DROWN.”  In other words, it’s a little slice of escapist heaven.

Speaking of escapism (not to mention England between the wars) I went on quite an Agatha Christie binge this past decade.  And what is there to say about Dame Agatha that hasn’t already been said many times over?  Her mysteries are the bar against which I measure all others.  Great writing?  Not at all, her style is rather plodding.  Memorable characters?  Very few - apart from Poirot and Miss Marple she gets by with a stock cast of red-faced colonels, acid-tongued spinsters, absent-minded clergymen, and other familiar types.  Ingenious plots?  Sometimes, but she doesn’t rely completely on them, as evidenced by the fact that she sometimes recycles plots from her own books.  The appeal of a Christie mystery lies in the author’s ability to trick her readers, time and time again.  She never “cheats” - there are no surprises at the end of the “Hah!  Here’s a vital piece of information that the reader was never given” variety.  All the clues are in plain sight, but even with a recycled plot, she still gets us.  My hat is off to the woman.

Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked is the last book I finished, and since I enjoyed it, I’ll just go ahead and add it to this list (which is seeming more and more random even as I write it.)  This book is Hornby doing what he does best - illuminating the lives of an aging fanboy and the woman who loves (or at least tolerates) him and somehow making us care about their pasts, presents, and futures.  The couple in question are Duncan and Annie, and the latest fly in the ointment of their relationship is the fact that Annie has begun a long-distance e-mail friendship with Tucker Crowe, the semi-obscure, completely retired, and reclusive American musician who just happens to be Duncan’s life-long preoccupation and the object of his worship.  It’s good Hornby, which I consider high praise, and I recommend it without reservation as an absorbing, fun read.

Which, I now realize is what all of these books are - just good fun (and for some reason, all British…hmmm.)  Maybe my colleagues, who will be posting their lists later this week, will choose some books that aren’t British and that offer a little more food for thought than my list.  Maybe they won’t.  As for me, the next books I read will be two that I chose from the Globe’s Best of the Decade list: Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red and Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies.  We’ll see how that works out.

..here’s a poem to send you into a leisurely weekend:

The Sloth by Theodore Roethke

In moving-slow he has no Peer.
You ask him something in his Ear,
He thinks about it for a Year;

And, then, before he says a Word
There, upside down (unlike a Bird),
He will assume that you have Heard–

A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug.
But should you call his manner Smug,
He’ll sigh and give his Branch a Hug;

Then off again to Sleep he goes,
Still swaying gently by his Toes,
And you just know he knows he knows.

So once again, to answer questions you’ve never asked, here are some of the many historic events that took place in January.

January 8, 794: The church at Lindisfarne, England is destroyed by Vikings. The local bishop is  outraged to discover  the diocese’s insurance company considers Viking raids in northern Europe a preexisting condition.

January 13, 1854: Anthony Foss patents the accordion.

January 14, 1854: Anthony Foss’s neighbors begin plotting his death.

January 24, 41: Roman Emperor Caligula is assassinated by his bodyguards. His successor the Emperor Claudius asks the imperial bodyguards to re-read their job descriptions.

January 25, 1149: Godfried the Young becomes Duke of Brabant. One of the perks of being duke is making everyone in Brabant keep calling you “the Young” even after you pass forty.

January 28, 1495: Pope Alexander VI gives up his son Cesare as a hostage to the King of France. Let’s start making a list of everything that is wrong with this scenario…..

Hey everyone!  It’s not too late to learn something new before the end of the year!

Tomorrow (December 30th) at 11:00 a.m., you’re invited to the East Branch Library (115 Broadway) for a presentation about the rainforest by The Creature Teachers.  8-10 rainforest animals - including a scarlet macaw, a toucan, a kinkajou, a red-eyed tree frog (like the little fellow at left), a giant toad, a boa constrictor, a tarantula, and a coatimundi - will be the teaching tools in this overview of rainforests.  Topics discussed will include the layers that make up rainforests, their locations around the world, and the dangers that threaten these fragile ecosystems.

The Creature Teachers is a family owned business specializing in environmental and animal education.  Their goal is to fascinate audiences with the wonders and diversity of the animals whose planet we share.

This free program is sponsored by the Friends of the Library.  We hope you can join us!

A: a mermahuataur

Makes perfect sense when you think about it, doesn’t it?
If you’d like to see a bigger, easier to read, interactive version of this handy diagram, click here.
If you’d like to read about imaginary beasts, try one of these books:

The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges with Margarita Guerrero

Fairies and Magical Creatures by Matthew Reinhart and Robert Sabuda

Questionable Creatures: a Bestiary by Pauline Baynes

Mythical Birds & Beasts from Many Lands by retold by Margaret Mayo

Monsters and Water Beasts: Creatures of Fact or Fiction? by Karen Miller

Mythological Creatures: a Classical Bestiary: Tales of Strange Beings, Fabulous Creatures, Fearsome Beasts, & Hideous Monsters from Ancient Greek Mythology by Lynn Curlee

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander (actually by J. K. Rowling)

Finally, if you’d like a peek at some of the bizarre creatures that scientists and artists imagine present-day animals might evolve into someday, check out one of these:

The Future is Wild by Dougal Dixon and John Adams

The Future is Wild, a DVD set of the 3-part Discovery Channel special

After Man: a Zoology of the Future by Dougal Dixon

G. K. Chesterton is one of my favorite authors, although I’m not greatly interested in either of the things for which he’s best known: his Father Brown mysteries and his writings on Catholicism.  What I like are the bits and pieces found in his short story collections (The Club of Queer Trades, Tales of the Long Bow, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, etc.) and his occasional novel (The Man Who Was Thursday.)  Chesterton is full of odd and appealing ideas, and his writing is flat out beautiful.  I especially admire his talent for depicting places - he not only makes ordinary places seem marvelous, but he also makes you feel as if you are in them, experiencing them as he describes them.

The whole heavens were full of the hues of evening, though still as luminous as noon; as if in a land of endless sunset. It settled down in a shower of gold amid the twinkling leaves of the thin trees of the gardens, most of which had low fences and hedges, and lay almost as open to the yellow sky as the fields beyond. The air was so still that occasional voices, talking or laughing on distant lawns, could be heard like clear bells. One voice, more recurrent that the rest, seemd to be whistling and singing the old sailors’ song of “Spanish Ladies”; it drew nearer and nearer; and when she turned into the last garden gate at the corner, the singer was the first figure she encountered. He stood in a garden red with very gorgeous ranks of standard roses, and against a background of the golden sky and a white cottage with touches of rather fanciful colour; the sort of cottage that is not built for cottagers. (The Garden of Smoke)

Chesterton is equally adept at bringing people to life, sometimes through physical descriptions, and sometimes by means of other outstanding characteristics they possess.

For some months, indeed for some years, people had detected something curious in the judge’s conduct. He seemed to have lost interest in the law, in which he had been beyond expression brilliant and terrible as a K.C., and to be occupied in giving personal and moral advice to the people concerned. He talked more like a priest or a doctor, and a very outspoken one at that. The first thrill was probably given when he said to a man who had attempted a crime of passion: `I sentence you to three years’ imprisonment, under the firm, and solemn, and God-given conviction, that what you require is three months at the seaside.’ He accused criminals from the bench, not so much of their obvious legal crimes, but of things that had never been heard of in a court of justice, monstrous egoism, lack of humour, and morbidity deliberately encouraged. Things came to a head in that celebrated diamond case in which the Prime Minister himself, that brilliant patrician, had to come forward, gracefully and reluctantly, to give evidence against his valet. After the detailed life of the household had been thoroughly exhibited, the judge requested the Premier again to step forward, which he did with quiet dignity. The judge then said, in a sudden, grating voice: `Get a new soul. That thing’s not fit for a dog. Get a new soul.’ (The Club of Queer Trades)

If you’ve never read any Chesterton before, I hope that I’ve piqued your interest and that you’ll give him a try. He’s simply too good to be left on the shelf.