Checking In: The Marriage Plot

Every once in a while, I come across a book that I just cannot put down.  I am happy to report that I am in the middle of one of those right now with The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.  You may have heard about the author as he penned the Virgin Suicides, which is more prominent as a film and Middlesex, which got a stamp of approval from the one and only Oprah.  I started his new book rather reluctantly (I felt obligated to read it for some reason), but it quickly became engaging.  Set in the 1980s, English major Madeleine is struggling to find a suitible use for her degree while juggling friends and suitors, Leonard and Mitchell.  One might find all the mentions of radical French philosophers a bit off-putting, but the depiction of the three main characters captures the existential crises that often afflict recent college graduates perfectly as they struggle to find their place in the world.  A word of warning … if you are looking for a book to replace the sunshine that the  famously overcast Pacific Northwest is devoid of this time of year, you may want to skip this one.

-Karen

Kid’s Corner: Let’s hope for snow!

Caralyn and Mark Buehner are wonderful husband and wife team when it comes to picturebooks. I especially enjoy their “snowmen” series: Snowmen at Night, Snowmen at Christmas, and Snowmen All Year!

Have you ever wondered what snowmen do at night when nobody is watching? Drink ice-cold coca, skate, play baseball? How do they celebrate Christmas? Have a Christmas party, play tag, dance, get presents from Kris Kringle? And what would you do if you could keep your snowman all year? Teach him how to fly a kite, take him to the Zoo, play games together?
Read all three stories, and you will find out!

Also, remember to watch for animals hiding on each page! Mark Buehner likes to hide a cat, a T-Rex, a rabbit, and other animals in each painting.

Have fun! I do every time when I check out these books!

Marta, Youth Services
                                                                                                  

The inside scoop: My favorite Elizabeth

Queen Elizabeth: “So there’s definitely been no sign of Edmund?” 

Lord Percy Percy: “I fear not, ma’am.”

Queen: “Why then he’s vanished, simply vanished.”

Percy: [poignantly] “…Just like an old, oak table.”

[Pause]

Queen: “…Vanished, Lord Percy.  Not varnished.”

Blackadder II, “Chains”

Cate Blanchett was stunning, Dame Judy Dench was regal, and Quentin Crisp was touching, but my favorite Queen Elizabeth I is still Miranda Richardson in Blackadder II.  Her Queen Bess was a spoiled, baby-talking brat, casually threatening to cut people’s heads off and spouting childish abuse at her devoted Nursie.  But she was also charming and absolutely hilarious. 

There were four Blackadder comedy series: The Black Adder, Blackadder II, Blackadder the Third and Blackadder Goes Forth; as well as several specials produced from 1983 to 1999.  Rowan Atkinson and the other actors portray characters in the middle ages, the Tudor period, the Regency and the First World War.  The same names crop up again and again, but the fortunes of the characters bearing them change.  Atkinson’s Edmund Blackadder is by turns an idiotic prince, a clever Lord, a scheming butler and a self-centered army captain.  Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and Tim McInnerny all reappear throughout the ages with different ranks and characters, as well.  Blackadder’s servant, Baldrick (Tony Robinson), however, is eternally dim and downtrodden. 

Blackadder: “To you, Baldrick, the Renaissance was just something that happened to other people, wasn’t it?”

Blackadder II, “Bells”

Atkinson is an expert in withering sarcasm, but it takes great skill to play stupid as brilliantly as Laurie and Robinson do.  Or to play selfish and silly as likeably as Richardson.  If you enjoy Monty Pythonesque humor and have never seen Blackadder, try it.  If you have seen it, maybe it’s time to go back and watch it again?

Available on DVD and in downloadable audiobook format from Library2Go

 –Amy

 

 

Blurbs From the Branch: Magic for Nature Lovers

My favorite juvenile fiction book that I have read recently is The Mostly True Story of Jack by Kelly Barnhill. Mixing nature and magic, it contains elements of a great fairy tale: a boy who feels invisible, a soul stealing evil known only as “the Lady” that sleeps beneath the soil, and a magic child swapped every generation with sons of the richest family in town. One of the things I loved about this book is that Barnhill doesn’t give the whole story away early. She gives readers little details here and there so that they learn the truth about the town and Jack’s past as he does. I couldn’t put this book down and look forward to reading more from Kelly Barnhill in the future.

 -Becca

Off the Shelf: A Train in Winter

When the Nazis arrived in Paris in June 1940, French citizens were horrified but took a wait-and-see approach to the situation.  The Vichy government advised cooperation with the Germans and in fact, most French didn’t protest the treatment of exiles and Jews in the early days of the occupation. There were those, however, who vigorously objected to the occupation right from the beginning. Many of these resisters were young men and women who had been radicalized in the 1930’s by the Spanish Civil War and who, as the occupation continued, formed a network of factions that supported a range of activities including printing and distributing forbidden tracts, providing safe houses and secreting individuals across the demarcation line to the free zone, and eventually committing acts of sabotage and assassinating German soldiers.  By the spring of 1942, the Gestapo, French police, and civilian collaborators had managed to root out most of these early cells of resisters whom they referred to as terrorists.  Men, women, and teenagers were arrested and tortured in intérrogatories énergiques.  Hundreds of the men were executed, but the women remained imprisoned in Romainville, a French military fort outside of Paris, until January of 1943 when 230 of them were rendered into what the occupiers called the Nacht und Nebel, deportation to Auschwitz and subsequently to Ravensbrück and Mauthausen.  Family and friends of the women had no idea where their wives, daughters, sisters had disappeared to; in fact, at this point in the war, Auschwitz and other extermination camps were unknown outside the Nazi regime.  Fewer than 50 of their loved ones would survive to return home after the war. A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead reveals the story of these 230 women who were transported to Auschwitz in the middle of winter on the only train during the 4-years of German occupation to take women from the French Resistance to the Nazi death camps.
Moorehead begins by introducing dozens of women from all parts of France who participated in the Resistance. As Moorehead moves quickly through the introductory portion of her narrative, I sometimes found it difficult to keep track of these individuals and the passage of time. However, once the women were deported, the focus narrowed, allowing the women to emerge as individuals. I felt I came to know each one intimately – so much so that I didn’t want to lose these women, to stop knowing them, when I reached the end. A Train in Winter is an extraordinary story of bravery and endurance in the midst of unimaginable savagery. Above all, it is the story of abiding devotion these women held for each other and the power of friendship in the face of absolute evil.
Outside of diaries and memoirs, this is the first time these women’s story has been told from the singular perspective of their friendship and the opportunities for survival that friendship afforded. One of the women who survived was Charlotte Delbo who is featured prominently in Moorehead’s book. Charlotte wrote extensively about her experiences as a political prisoner and provided biographical information about the women who endured alongside her. One of her books, Auschwitz and After, is available for check out in Cedar Mill’s collection. You’ll also want to watch the catalog for the addition of a documentary entitled Sisters in Resistance. This film by Maia Wechslera follows four women from before the war to the present. The women speak about what compelled them to resist, their roles in the Resistance, their arrests, deportation and liberation. They talk about the struggle to rebuild their lives after the war and their continued battles in the name of justice.  You can view a 4-minute excerpt from this documentary on YouTube (see above).

Lynne