Staff Picks Audience: Adults

Widow’s War by Sally Gunning [Book]

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Set on Cape Cod (in the area which is now Brewster), in the year 1761 we meet Lyddie Berry, whose husband drowns while whaling. She defies convention and chooses not to live with her son-in-law (and who could blame her), and holds onto the law of being able to use (but not own) 1/3 of her husband’s property. She defies social, legal and religious strictures of her time, and makes her way through a world that is not made for independent women. Throw in some romance and intrigue with the details of daily life and you have a very captivating story. The author was led to the subject by her own historical research into her family, and her familiarity with the area is clear in the book.

Rags & tangos by Ernesto Nazareth, James Scott, Joseph F. Lamb performed by Joshua Rifkin, piano [Music CD]

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Put this in the CD player, close your eyes (assuming you’re not driving) and be transported to turn-of-the-20th-century piano heaven. Ernesto Nazareth is the greatest composer you’ve never heard of. His music is descended from Brazilian choro, Frédéric Chopin, and the soul of dance hall piano. In between the Nazareth “tangos” –which aren’t really tangos in any conventional sense– are works by my two favorite ragtime composers: James Scott, the bridge from Joplin to jazz, and Joseph Lamb, who can make the romantic tradition sound like striptease music and fill your heart with nostalgia for places and times that never were. One listen is worth ten thousand words.

That is All by John Hodgman [Book]

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Wild Flag by Wild Flag [Music CD]

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Submarine by Richard Ayoade [DVD]

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Olivier Tate (played by young actor Craig Roberts), the protagonist in Richard Adoaye’s quiet, quirky, charming, dark and thoroughly enjoyable film Submarine is a likeable precocious Welsh boy searching for an identity and direction in the stifling climate of small town coastal Southern Wales. He tries on affectations:”I’ve tried smoking a pipe, flipping coins – listening exclusively to French crooners, I’ve even had a hat phase”. This quote is immediately followed of course, with a shot of him at the family dinner table, wearing a Blue Stetson, looking fairly ridiculous. His teenage flailing about for identity finds its focus when he discovers the dark and indifferent charms of classmate Jordana (Yasmin Paige), who lures him into more and more morally reprehensible schoolyard acts. She is outwardly resistant to his charms except when he is misbehaving, and seems most allured by his taking part in the bullying of a fellow school girl. The cast is fantastic, both Paige and Roberts inhabit their roles fully and believably, while the adult characters (Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor as Olivier’s parents), are comically stuck in their own lazy unspoken despair, too wrapped up in their own ridiculous melodramas to offer guidance to Olivier. Paddy Considine appears as an almost incongruously broad comic foil and rival to both Olivier Tate and his father. Adoaye, most famous for his work on the UK sitcom “The IT Crowd”, who adapted the script from a novel by Joe Dunthorne, directs the film with care and fills it with beautiful shots of the beaches, woods and amusement parks of the Welsh Coast. There are aspects of the film’s plot, details and cinematic style which will appeal to fans of many other refreshingly offbeat comic films (Wes Anderson’s films in particular) but the unique characters, acting performances and Welsh character give it a charm all its own.

Winter in Wartime [Blu-ray, DVD]

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This beautifully shot period film follows 13 year old Michiel, a small town boy in Nazi-occupied Holland in the Winter of 1945.  Michiel’s childhood innocence and restless desire for adventure lead him into increasingly dark and morally ambiguous territories when the realities of war,  resistance and adulthood collide and converge upon his small town life. He is apprehensive about his father’s uneasy cooperation with their German occupiers and looks up to his uncle Ben, a resistance fighter whose connections, gifts and attitude intrigue Michiel. When an allied fighter pilot crashes near the village, Michiel and his sister, a young nurse, are drawn into the search for the pilot and must debate whether to take action or remain silent, and question who they can truly trust. The film, while somewhat conventional in some of its WWII era plotlines, offers enough twists and intrigue to keep the viewer’s attention, but its real appeal is grounded heavily in the films setting. The scenes are filmed beautifully and the village, woods, snow, bicycles, knitwear and natural light combine to give the film an enchanting sense of place, and ground the viewer in Michiel’s conflicted world, caught between action and fear, occupation and resistance and childhood innocence and the risks of adult responsibilities. This film is one of several Forbes films now added in Blu-Ray and DVD (both discs are included in one case, so patrons will not mistakenly get home and find the film unplayable), and the Blu-Ray is especially recommended for its crisp picture, which captures the film’s setting wonderfully.

Talking Tabla by Bikram Ghosh [Music CD]

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Talking Tabla is an exciting recording showing off the work of a masterful tabla player. The tabla is a popular Indian percussion instrument, and is ubiquitous in the classical music of Northern India. The tabla consists of two hand drums of contrasting designs: on the left is a kettle drum with a deep sound and variable pitch; on the right is smaller conical drum with a high, fixed pitch. The drums are struck with the fingers and palms of the hands to create the sounds known as bols, these are the syllables of North Indian drumming and can be spoken as well as played; well performed, they sound very much like language, hence the title of this album, Talking Tabla.

On Talking Tabla Bikram Ghosh plays a variety of compositions, fixed and improvised, in a variety of styles, including a piece in the less familiar Carnatic style of South India. Although Bikram Ghosh’s tabla is the focus of these recordings we are not deprived of melody—Ramesh Mishra does a beautiful job playing the sarangi (a kind of elaborate fiddle) on several tracks and on the third track Ghosh accompanies Tarun Bhattacharya’s santoor (hammered dulcimer). In addition, Ghosh’s beautiful baya (left hand drum) application creates a kind of melody of its own. (To fully appreciate this a pair of good speakers or headphones are recommended—don’t listen to this one through your laptop speakers!) Even those who are bored by the idea of an album devoted to the drums should consider listening to Talking Tabla.

Maphead : charting the wide, weird world of geography wonks by Ken Jennings [Book]

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I like maps, I like geography and I mostly liked this book. Ken Jennings’ book had many interesting stories to tell; my favorites being the sections on early cartography, the London Map Fair and the National Geographic Bee. He lost me however with the couple of chapters devoted to GPS (games and navigation) and geocaching. I was disappointed that I did not love this book in its entirety but would recommend it nevertheless because of the author’s informative and witty writing.

The Glasgow School by Orange Juice [Music CD]

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File this one under “neglected”.

Due to odd sizes of items, value, age, et cetera, we sometimes have material here at Forbes that lacks a certain “browseability” or just isn’t given an ideal sight line.  The Glasgow School certainly falls somewher under this category.  This cd, filed with our boxed sets because of its book bound style case, may be a little off the radar for our casual music browser.

Orange Juice, fronted by Edwyn Collins, was a group that successfully meshed clever, highly literary lyrics with danceable musical accompaniment.  The songs on The Glasgow School collects the band’s first singles and outtakes.  These sessions sound more rough around the edges than the slicker produced records that followed.  Collins’ romantic, baritone voice handles the majority of the lead singing with James Kirk interjecting some gems here and there (Kirk would leave OJ after the release of the classic full length debut You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever).

Here we have inspired music from Scotland at the start of the 80’s representing the lighter side of the post-punk era.  Lyrically, they match wits with the best.  Collins laments in Blue Boy “Oh curse and bless him with the gabardine which surrounds him/See him writhe at the sight of your eyes which repel him”.  Their lasting influence is easily heard throughout the catalogs of the Smiths, Belle & Sebastian, Franz Ferdinand and hopefully, if people can find Orange Juice, many more musicians to come.

Doctor Who: The Awakening [DVD]

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Peter Davison stars as the Doctor with the cricket inspired get up and celery stalk fastened to his lapel. You’ll have to wait until Davison’s last appearance however to learn the purpose of the mysterious vegetable! Regarding this particular shorter story, the Doctor promises to reunite his companion Tegan with her grandfather in her present time of 1984.

We soon discover that they have actually landed in a time parallel between the years 1643 and 1984 due to an underground beast who is also warping the minds of Little Hodcombe’s citizens and projecting humans from the 17th century in their reality. Confused yet? Check it out for yourself and enjoy this entertaining two-part Doctor Who adventure.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern [Book]

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Evocative. Descriptive. Atmospheric. The Night Circus is a good story, but its the atmosphere that will keep you turning the pages. Set in the late Victorian era, The Night Circus tells the story of two students, Celia and Marco, forced by their individual teachers to compete against each other in a game they don’t understand. Their playing field is an unusual circus, which becomes more and more fantastic as the two young magicians populate the circus with their increasingly elaborate creations. A carousel with strikingly realistic animals. A tree without leaves or flowers, but covered with candles which never go out or melt away. A hall in which hundreds of mirrors each show something unexpected. A garden made of perpetually unmelting of ice.

Everything about Le Cirque des Rêves is improbable, and much of the book is devoted to describing the circus and the experience of visiting it. The narrative shifts in time, place, and voice, but always describes the circus or the people connected to it. Some chapters are written in the second person, and while most of the book is written in the third person some chapters are completely without characters (unless you count the circus itself); these chapters especially create a feeling of immersion and they felt to me as if they were in the second person, even if they did not use the word “you”.

The level of detail is appropriately, but sometimes startlingly, varied. Morgenstern often writes at length about minutia such the smell of the popcorn, or the costume of a particular performer, only to gloss over the details of a conversation in the most general language. These glosses may, perhaps, represent some lost opportunities on Morgenstern’s part, where she could have further fleshed out her story, but on the whole I found them unobjectionable and even welcome; not only did they help keep the story focused, but they contributed to the tone of the novel, which I found unusual but very much enjoyed.

The Night Circus is a fantasy, and a romance of sorts, and will be enjoyed by many open-minded readers of both genres.

Let’s Spend the Night Together by Hal Ashby [DVD]

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