The Magicians
by Lev Grossman
[Book]
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What if Harry Potter and his friends were older and lived in New York instead of England? Despite its references to Narnia and other fantasy classics, The Magicians is not a children’s book. The protagonist is neither hero nor anti-hero — he’s more like an actual human being (granted, with magical gifts) looking for meaning in the world and generally failing to find it. He and his classmates graduate from a secret, elite college for wizards and don’t know what to do with the rest of their lives. (Here’s where the existential literary fiction comes in.) Everything is open to question — was that a quest we were given, or are we just projecting? — and the lines between good and evil are often unclear, or beside the point. The plot is twisty enough and the prose captivating and spiced with humor. There are occasional disappointments, but The Magicians is still an adventure that’s hard to put down. It’s going to make a great movie someday.
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: Fantasy, Fiction, Literary fiction
The Mighty Uke
[DVD]
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Given the scores of people who have borrowed ukuleles from this library, it was time for me to watch a documentary on the uke. According to filmmakers Tony Coleman and Margaret Meagher, the humble ukulele (which means “jumping flea” in Hawaiian) is at the crest of a worldwide resurgence in popularity. Why? Well, it’s accessible, it’s cheap, it sounds pretty good right from the start, you can adapt a huge variety of music to it, and it’s small and easy to carry around. Who would have guessed, as our 1920s-era ukulele method books languished on the shelves since the last uke fad died out, that in the 21st century there would be ukulele clubs in every major city? Or that a virtuosic ukulele player (is ukulelista word?) would be hitting the pop charts?
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: Documentary, Music, Ukulele
The Bedwetter
by Sarah Silverman
[Book]
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Comedian and actor Sarah Silverman is known for her outrageously rude humor which belies her ingenuous appearance. Her memoir, subtitled “stories of courage, redemption, and pee,” revels in contradictions and brilliant comic timing. Silverman uses shame to promote self-respect. Her “potty humor” is bizarrely sophisticated. She uses meta-political incorrectness to express sincere liberal tolerance. She endears herself to her audience through obnoxiousness.
It’s hard to tell how much of these stories are factually true, but in Silverman’s comic style, the exaggeration and twistedness bring out a deeper truth.
Note: The subject matter and the short chapters make this ideal bathroom reading, though you might lose track of time in there, and the people waiting outside will hear you laughing.
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: Actors, Memoir, Non-fiction
The Bones of All Men
by Philip Pickett and Richard Thompson
[Music CD]
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This album marries two of my favorite genres of music: specifically, 16th century Renaissance dances and British folk-rock of the 1960s and ’70s.
Richard Thompson and some ex-Fairport Convention comrades joined conductor and multi-instrumentalist Philip Pickett (who has Albion Band credentials as well as early music) in 1998 to rock out on a selection of tunes by William Byrd’s contemporaries. When I used to play electric harpsichord for English Country Dancing back in the early ’90s, this was the sort of sound I dreamed of achieving. Imagine a note-perfect recorder consort accompanied by Dave Mattacks on drums, or dueling krumhorn and electric guitar, or virginal with a very electrified bass continuo. The tunes are brilliantly arranged, irresistibly driving, reverently irreverent (or vice versa), passionately fun and absolutely classic in every sense of the word. Turn it up, way up.
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: Early music, Rock music
One of our Thursdays is missing
by Jasper Fforde
[Book]
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Jasper Fforde’s latest offering in the Thursday Next series is a metafictional tour de farce. The original Thursday — literary police Special Operations Agent (ret.) and the star of her own series of novels-with-novels — has disappeared, and it’s up to her fictional character to find her by impersonating the real Thursday. There’s a border dispute in BookWorld between the genres of Racy Novel and Women’s Fiction, and if Thursday doesn’t show up for the peace talks, war might ensue. Fforde sprinkles his story with characters and allusions from the classics and popular fiction, and makes liberal use of puns including setting up whole subplots just for a punch line. His style is uncategorizable and nearly indescribable, at least not in a way that makes any sense, but irresistibly entertaining and uniquely inventive. This sequel refers back to things that happened (or didn’t) in previous titles in the series, and it might help to start with the first installment, The Eyre Affair.
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: Fantasy, Fiction, Humor, Literary fiction
The Weird Sisters
by Eleanor Brown
[Book]
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The first odd thing I noticed about this novel is that it’s told in the first person plural. It’s a clever and engaging device for sisters talking about themselves and each other, and kept me attentive to whose point of view I was reading as it shifted from the inside of a character’s head to one, two or three characters collectively observing another. The voice is opinionated, familiar, loyal, funny, and often jealous or spiteful as siblings are about each other. Not much happens (three adult sisters move home as their mother struggles with cancer; they find themselves to be more than they thought) but plot doesn’t much matter as the book is about personalities, family relationships, and how we evolve through involvement with others. A rich vein of Shakespeare runs through Weird Sisters in the naming of characters, the professor father’s constant quoting, and the cast of literary archetypes that inhabit these contemporary, believable women.
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: Fiction, Women
Anthem for Doomed Youth
by Carola Dunn
[Book]
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The 19th Daisy Dalrymple mystery was my introduction to this cozy murder series. Daisy is an aristocratic young mother whose husband is a Detective Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard. Set in 1920s London, the mystery revolves around some veterans of the ‘Great War’ whose bodies were found secretly buried in Epping Forest. The heroine possesses curiosity, common sense, intuition and a sly sense of humor. The period setting is engaging and the unraveling of the plot complicated enough to keep turning the pages. With the lead character’s appeal and just the right amount of Anglophilia, this was fun enough for me to borrow another one.
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: England, Fiction, Mystery
The Triplets of Belleville
[DVD]
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Sylvain Chomet’s feature-length animated film is like nothing you’ve ever seen. It’s weird, funny, sad, serious, lighthearted, suspenseful, perverse, sweet, surreal, retro, postmodern, and fantastic (in both senses of the word). There is virtually no dialogue, but there is music, adventure and character aplenty. The animation is hand-drawn and loaded with sophisticated detail. There are homages to Fred Astaire, Josephine Baker, Jacques Tati, the Andrews Sisters, and Django Reinhardt. The plot is quite satisfying, yet the style is the overwhelming story here. Despite the near-total absence of language, it could only be French. I have seen it three times so far and haven’t begun to get tired of it.
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: Animation, Feature film, Foreign film
Bossypants
by Tina Fey
[Book]
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SNL and 30 Rock star, writer and producer Tina Fey is as smart and irreverent as she is funny. This memoir gives an inside look at the improv comedy incubator Second City, developing material for Saturday Night Live, and how Fey and her contemporaries broke through the glass ceiling of comedy.*
Here in a quick engaging read is an honest tongue-in-cheek and witty look at success, motherhood, TV, sexism, and lots of famous people you may have been wondering about. A few classic scripts are included, notably the Sarah Palin/Hillary Clinton sketch that Fey and Amy Poehler did in the 2008 campaign season.
* “Women just aren’t funny.”–every male producer/director from the beginning of time.
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: Comedy, Memoir, Non-fiction
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party
by Alexander McCall Smith
[Book]
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In the latest installment of the popular No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, Mma Grace Makutsi gets married, Mma Precious Ramotswe deals with a complicated case of attacks on a farmer’s cattle, and the tiny white van takes on a metaphysical dimension. McCall Smith’s characters handle the large and small dilemmas of life with a realistic mix of (mostly) good intentions and human vulnerability. His prose is charming and the loving portrait of Botswana, always in the background, makes you want to go there.
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: Africa, Cozy mystery, Fiction, Mystery
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The American Humanist Association, founded in 1941, publishes The Humanist six times a year. It covers social issues, current events, science, arts and literature from the point of view of humanism, “a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion.” This month’s issue has articles about religion, health care, technology, war, sexuality, and peace activism, plus poetry and book reviews. The writers explore ethical and environmental questions “free of theism and other supernatural beliefs,” applying intellectual analysis and practical thinking to the goals of liberty, dignity, and responsibility.
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: Atheism
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
[Book]
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The Regency classic meets Buffy the Vampire slayer in this hilarious mashup of Austen’s best-known novel with flesh-eating undead. England is in the grip of a plague of zombies and the Bennet girls are keeping them at bay thanks to their arcane training in “the deadly arts.” Elizabeth is distracted from her battle against the zombies by the arrival of Mr. Darcy, who is also well known for his swordsmanship. Will she marry him? Will she get her brains eaten? Most importantly, can the rotting bodies climbing out of their graves cause enough mayhem to disturb the manners of the country gentry?
Reviewed by Faith
Tagged: Fiction, Parody
