Staff Picks Audience: Adults

The Homemade Pantry by Alana Chernila [Book]

view/request

The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making, written by Great Barrington’s Alana Chernila is a practical guide to becoming more self sufficient in the kitchen. The book is cleverly organized by aisle and features staples that many people buy at the grocery store including pasta sauce, jelly, granola bars, and even a homemade version of the beloved Pop-Tart. Every recipe is accompanied by a personal story so if you don’t have a lot of time for cooking you can still enjoy some light reading.

I recently tried the recipe for whole wheat sandwich bread. Bread is one of those things I always really want to make for myself but usually the product is blatantly inferior to the local bakery or even the grocery store version. The instructions had the bread slowly rise in the fridge for up to three days so after nervously waiting, I finally baked my bread yesterday and was delighted to find that it was a success!
If you just can’t get enough of Alana, she also has a blog, Eating From the Ground Up.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman [Book]

view/request

Okay, this book did come out in 2001 and it is a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards so you may have heard of it or even read it already. If you haven’t read American Gods yet, if it has been sitting on your “to read” list, or has slipped through the cracks in some other way, I would like to confirm that it is a great read.

Part modern day epic, part rambling road narrative, American Gods has something for a variety of audiences. Neil Gaiman, best known for the Sandman graphic novel series, has again proven his abilities in adult fiction writing with this masterfully crafted piece of storytelling. I found myself sucked into the intricately woven plot line and fascinated by the combination of modern and ancient mythological characters. While at times dark and a little graphic (the main character is an ex-con after all), the story has an element of gritty realness not often found in fantasy novels.

I honestly don’t want to give anything more away because I enjoyed learning every new piece of the plot as I read and I think you will too.Whenever anyone asks me for a book recommendation, this is almost always the first title that comes to mind.

Down the Nile: alone in a fisherman’s skiff by Rosemary Mahoney [Book]

view/request

I liked this independent, determined woman. In the late 1990s, Mahoney, an American writer and experienced recreational rower, got the idea of rowing herself down the Nile.  This is not allowed and virtually never done — tourists always travel on cruise boats or feluccas (small sailboats piloted by their owners). When she set out to buy a small rowboat in Egypt, she was met with disbelief.  Women, even western women, did not travel alone. To a fisherman, rowing was work, so why would she want to do it herself?  Felucca captains and boat owners assumed a woman couldn’t know how to row. Eventually she succeeds in her adventure, and it’s both more and less than expected but always fascinating.

Mahoney is empathetic and eloquent. She engages in conversations with Egyptian men and women she meets, learning a great deal about cultural differences, rampant poverty, and the restricted status of women. She quotes extensively from 19th-century European travelers, notably Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert, and gives a selective history of tourism in the region (including colonialism and theft of artifacts) which puts the present-day in context.  So much has changed and so much is the same.  In particular, her descriptions of the river and its natural environment — the wildlife, vegetation, water and sky — are poetic and timeless.

All a Novelist Needs: Colm Tóibín on Henry James by Colm Tóibín [Book]

view/request

All a Novelist Needs is beautifully written with fascinating insights into Henry James and his creative process. Anyone who likes Tóibín or James will enjoy this book.

The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux [Book]

view/request

Have you ever considered traveling from England to Russia via Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, China, and Japan by train? Me either. Paul Theroux does just that and survives to tell about it in his 1975 travel narrative The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia. This long journey is broken up into chapters by train, starting with the 15:30 London to Paris and ending with the Trans-Siberian Express. Though Theroux embarks from London on his own, he meets a number of colorful characters and manages to have interesting interactions (usually over a drink) despite linguistic and cultural barriers.

Theroux’s writing style is at times so rich with description that you can practically smell the pungent passenger sitting across from him. In other instances, he is blunt and to the point, relaying only that he is in a particular place to catch a train.The writing style mimics the ups and downs of traveling alone in foreign country and truly makes the reader feel as if they were riding the train alongside the narrator. Though Theroux rarely spends more than a day or two off the train, he manages to convey a surprising amount about each of his destinations through descriptions of the train and characters.

Longtime Companion by Sonny & the Sunsets [Music CD]

view/request

Step one after a break up is to write and record a country album. San Francisco native Sonny Smith has followed this guide, only he’s unexpectedly added a little bounce, shuffle and humor. I saw Sonny & the Sunsets on the Longtime Companion tour at Flywheel in Easthampton, MA and he played a number of songs from this record alongside his usual catchy, sometimes surfy, melodic fair. He also took off his pants.

Smith’s deadpan delivery over the groovy “I See the Void” had me sold on his version of country music. He and the Sunsets played a mini set of their hip take of twang with nods to Buck Owens, The Flying Burrito Brothers (the self-titled number takes me to that “Hot Burrito no. 2″ place with steady soul bass over a simple chord change) and even a little Beachwood Sparks.

For a record dealing with heartbreak and separation, Sonny & the Sunsets offer the listener an enjoyable experience and while forging new ground within a classic genre.

Dodger by Terry Pratchett [Book]

view/request

Dodger is the latest novel by Sir Terry Pratchett, best known for his satirical Discworld series of fantasy novels. Pratchett’s usual wit and love of language shine through in this historical piece set in Victorian London and with a cast of characters that includes Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, Angela Burdett-Coutts, and Queen Victoria.

Dodger takes place above and below London, with the city’s ancient Roman sewers playing a prominent part. Much of the drama comes from the meeting of the upper and lower classes, the rich and poor, and the politics of the street vs. the politics of the state.

Pratchett has, very consciously, taken liberties with the setting and refers to the work as a historical fantasy, not a historical novel. The most obvious example is the inclusion of the almost certainly fictional Sweeney Todd. Less noticeable to most readers will be the the adjustment to the lives of Sir Robert Peel and John Tenniel whose careers did not, in fact, overlap as suggested in the novel. These changes may bother some, but if you take them in stride you will find Dodger to be a very enjoyable adventure story brought to life by its rich setting and colorful language.

The 100 year old man who climbed out the window and disappeared by Jonas Jonasson [Book]

view/request

I picked this up because of the intriguing title and because it was Swedish without being a grim, dark thriller.  It does have crime though, so you won’t feel deprived.  Anyhow, this crazy old character escapes from a nursing home and goes off on a series of adventures that recall his long and fascinating life.  It’s ironic, absurd, clever and surreal, populated by unique and sometimes famous figures from the past and present.  It shares the unlikely Forrest Gump just-happened-to-be-in-the-right-place-at-the right-time premise, so be prepared to suspend your disbelief once and for all.  Once you do, it’s wickedly entertaining, fast paced and very funny.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple [Book]

view/request

A couple of creative, perceptive and witty misfits star in this novel.  Mother, wife and lapsed architect Bernadette lives in Seattle with her high-tech superstar husband and too-smart-for-social-success teenage daughter.  They live in a beyond weird old house and can’t cope with their perfectly privileged and PC neighbors or private school.  The format is as original as the characters: the story unfolds through letters, emails, diary entries and school documents.  Maria Semple wrote for TV’s Arrested Development, so you’d expect the dialogue and plot twists to be hilarious, and they are; there are scenes that would be fabulous onscreen.  There’s also sincerity and real character development in these quickly-turning pages.

This is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz [Audiobook]

view/request

The audiobook is read by the author, Junot Diaz, to wonderful effect. We follow the life and romantic misadventures of Yunior, from the time his family immigrated from the Dominican Republic to his life as a professor in Cambridge — although not in a straight chronology. Diaz’s language is in turns brash and lyrical, peppered with slang. Yunior is not always an easy guy to like, and that he becomes a sympathetic character at all is due to Diaz’s genius (as further evidenced by his being named a MacArthur Fellow in 2012). The version of the audiobook I listened to was further interspersed with latin music, helping to set the mood and carry me away.

Birth House by Ami McKay [Book]

view/request

This book made me think about the births of my children as well as family tales I’ve heard from my mother and grandmother about their very different birth experiences. The clash between midwifery and “modern” medical care is at the center of this engaging story. The author does a great job of weaving in historical events and of setting the story during the nineteen-teens in a remote Nova Scotia village.

Waking Sleeping Beauty [DVD]

view/request

In Waking Sleeping Beauty, we go behind the doors of the Disney animation building and see an equal display of creative brilliance and management melodrama.  As the 1970’s drew to a close, the legendary animation studio was producing anemic box office returns (by Disney standards) and those in charge of the purse strings viewed its limping continuation simply as a tribute to Walt’s legacy.  Shifts in corporate leadership created new challenges to the once easy going, hippie-ish department and as a result, the company reached a range of highs and lows.

This film features interviews with animators, directors, composers and executives.  In addition, the curtain is lifted and we’re granted access to all sorts of behind the scenes footage.  We see the animators at work and goofing around, early film cuts and cells, actors recording voice-overs, corporate lectures, between take banter of Michael Eisner’s television introductions and even funeral speeches.  Waking Sleeping Beauty is a film for anyone who is interested in the history of the Disney empire and ever wondered how the magic is really created.