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 SCPL Staff Picks...           

Friday, November 20, 2009
The Summer Everything Changed

Title: Out Stealing Horses
By: Per Petterson

The beautiful, spare prose of this short novel helps create an atmosphere and characters that will be remembered long after the last page has been turned. Set in Norway, the story moves back and forth in time--from the summer of 1948 to the present. The narrator, aging widower Trond Sander, has recently moved from Oslo to a small, isolated cabin. But it is his memories of another cabin--and a now distant summer--that become the focal point of the story. This is a book about loneliness and relationships, about the passage of time and change, and it reminds us again and again that we can never completely know the people around us (or even ourselves). In Petterson's words: "People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are." A haunting, beautiful read.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Redemption of Criminal Youth

Title: Last Chance In Texas
By: John Hubner

The most violent criminal youth find hope in an unlikely place, "punish-'em-hard" Texas, The Giddings School, where all-day, one-on-one and group therapy sessions led by dedicated professionals teach the juvenile offenders to take responsibility for their crimes and to develop empathy and compassion for others. Instead of coming back into society angrier, dumber, and more violent, they return with extremely high chance of never hurting another soul on the face of the earth. They understand what abuse hardened them, what horrors they inflicted on others, and how to live a productive life. Our local author, Pulitzer-Prize-winning John Hubner observed the progress of several Gidding's students and described their hard road to redemption, some of whom refused treatment and asked to be sent back to do prison rather than face themselves and the world. Hubner's insight raises hard questions about the juvenile probation systems that fail, and shows why the Gidding's system leads youth to safety.

Sunday, November 1, 2009
Tale of Two Sisters

Title: Shanghai Girls
By: Lisa See

Sometimes I think I am the only person who didn't enjoy Lisa See's earlier novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. For this reason I was reluctant to try Shanghai Girls, but I found myself with a copy in my hands and decided to give it a chance. I'm glad I did! Approximately five pages in, I was immersed in the story and could barely come up for air. During the days when I wasn't able to read, I found myself daydreaming about sisters Pearl and May. The sisters lived with their well to do parents and worked as "beautiful girls" in 1930s Shanghai. They bought new dresses every week and had servants to cook and clean for them -- until their father admitted that he gambled away their money and was in debt. To pay off this debt, he promised his daughters as wives to two Chinese American men. Although Pearl and May try to escape their fate, the invasion of the Japanese turns their arranged marriage into an opportunity to flee China. Their voyage to California is horrific, and they find life in Los Angeles and "Haolaiwu" much different than they had hoped, but their perseverance and endurance of physical and mental agony is great. See has an amazing capability to transform what might be an ordinary scene into a delectable experience for the reader. This book leaves me with a new interest in the experiences of Chinese Americans during WWII and the Red Scare.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009
It's A Long Drive Down Interstate 5, or that's a lot of cotton!

Title: The King of California, J.G. Boswell and The Making of A Secret American Empire.
By: Mark Arax

This book dovetails perfectly if you happen to be reading John Steinbeck, or studying the photographs of Dorothea Lange. A biography which examines the life of a very powerful farmer (at one point owning over 200,000 acres of rich farmland) used to driving bargains across bar stools and shaking down his opponents in boardrooms. The book is written by two L. A. Times journalists who, after much convincing, are lucky to have their subject, Jim Boswell himself, drive them around in his old pickup truck and tell them his version of the story. Boswell’s company drained Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, (four times the size of Lake Tahoe). Finally it comes down to the value of water and to what extremes Jim Boswell and his business empire did to get that water. Boswell & Co. was one of the first companies to employ lasers to level fields so that water flowed evenly and efficiently. He hired the best and most creative scientists who perfected the soil and germination of cotton seed. Boswell & Co.'s special Pima cotton is considered the finest cotton grown anywhere in the world. Carefully intertwined throughout the book are the personal sacrifices and racial differences; stories of sharecroppers escaping to California; the strategy and consequence of importing laborers from Mexico in the 1930's. Did you know that it takes 257 gallons to make one cotton T-shirt? But at what cost to the environment? Includes maps and photo illustrations.

Saturday, October 10, 2009
Journeys of a Passionate Traveller

Title: A Year in the World
By: Frances Mayes

Mayes' most well-known work Under the Tuscan Sun and its offshoots never appealed to me so I was surprised and delighted when I discovered her more recent memoir, A Year in the World. In her day job Mayes was a writing instructor, and here she shows her craft in top form. The title is somewhat of a misnomer – her several journeys around Europe were actually conducted over a five-year period – but they are arranged in calendar order, beginning with a January visit to Andalucia and concluding at year-end with a trip to Mantova, Italy. Always she is looking around and wondering, 'How do place and character intertwine? What is home to those around me? Who are they in their homes, those mysterious others?' In this luminous, beautifully written work Mayes' observations get to the essence of place, whether listening to soul-filled fado in Portugal, wandering the souks of Fez, or finding the perfect restaurant outside Naples. For all armchair travelers and those who love beautifully crafted, evocative writing.

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