Once upon a quinceañera

September 15 - October 15 is Hispanic Heritage Month (you may have noticed our book display that was out the last couple of weeks). So it seems only appropriate to wind up the month by talking about a new book on our shelves: Once Upon a Quinceañera: coming of age in the USA, by Julia Alvarez. Alvarez is a very popular novelist, and we have 5 of her 6 novels here on the shelves (one of them is in our Banned Books display - very cool!). She describes all of the excitement, stress, emotion and meaning that is involved in a quinceañera celebration. Think 'wedding', and then picture the bride (the center of all this attention) as a 15-year-old. That's a pretty moody, emotionally fraught age to begin with, but to add the drama of a massive celebration involving hundreds of family and friends, catered dinners, expensive ballgowns and lavish entertainment and you can see why it is such an important part of any Latina upbringing. Alvarez spent a year attending various quince celebrations and she brings the reader into the world of a young girl on the verge of womanhood. Interspersed with these details are descriptions of Latino culture in general and what it is like to grow up as a Latina in the United States. It can be a little disconcerting as Alvarez flips back and forth between the quince celebrations she is describing and her memories of her own quince and upbringing, but the book is very interesting. Teen girls might find this book especially attractive, as it shows the teen experience through a slightly different filter.

Cluck Cluck

Ordinarily, when I think of poultry country, I think of Arkansas, not Alaska. But I can name three people off the top of my head who are currently raising chickens here in town (and I mean, within the city limits - goodness knows how many chicken ranchers there are out in the 'country'). So if you are interested in raising chickens, you might like to take a look at Keeping Chickens: the essential guide to enjoying and getting the best from chickens by Jeremy Hobson and Celia Lewis. Their book will walk you through the things you need to consider before you get your chickens, how to decide what breed would be best for you, and how to set up your chicken housing. (One thing to consider is predators. Bald eagles and bears may not be a concern in Arkansas but they certainly are here.). What do you need to feed your birds? Well, it depends on the type of bird (layer, breeder, or meat bird) and their stage of life. Don't forget about grit and vitamins! Learn about the health and hygiene of birds (we're not just talking about sex-ed) and how the whole laying process works. The authors will also discuss killing and cleaning your bird. They describe how to pluck the bird, but a local grower has advised me that it's a lot faster and cleaner to just skin it. Besides, chicken skin's high in cholesterol. Apparently, the whole chicken-raising process can be quite rewarding and less hassle than you might think. It's easier than trying to raise a herd of cows on your lawn, anyway.

An absolute page-turner

I picked up one of the new books coming across my desk because of the cover. It is florescent, rain-slicker yellow, with a plasticized cover. It is an eye-grabber. And when I opened up Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff, I expected to just skim quickly over a couple of pages before putting it out on the new books shelf. 44 pages later, I came to and realized that I had been completely sucked in to the story. The premise - Jane Charlotte is a member of a secret organization called the 'Bad Monkeys' that eliminates evil people and she has just been arrested for murder - is not the kind of plot I generally connect with (too sci-fi, too thriller). But the writing is so good, and the character is so interesting that I could not put this book down. Basically, the entire novel unfolds as an interview between Jane Charlotte and a psychiatrist who is supposed to decide if she is insane or criminal (or both). Jane is a bit antisocial, a bit of a rebel and troublemaker, and you can tell she has led a life on the edge, but she is still someone you would like to meet and have a conversation with. I have made the ultimate personal sacrifice, and put this book out on the shelves before I finished reading it, but it's all part of my honor-bound duty as a librarian. So I can't give you any hints on how it ends, and please don't tell me what happens because as soon as things slow down, I plan on finding out where this bad monkey leads.

Book Sale Starts Tomorrow!!

One of the biggest annual events in our own little library-land is starting tomorrow morning at 9 am. The Friends of the Library Book Sale is always a popular way to spend a cold, rainy weekend, and you are sure to find at least one thing there that you think interesting. (Many people find boxes of things they want). In addition to thousands of books, you will also find magazines, DVDs, VHS, cassettes, and audiobooks. We have set up 40 tables - and we're hoping to get hold of more - and we are stuffing them with books from two full storage units. Some of the items available for sale will be library discards, but most of the books and videos will be donations from your neighbors. There will be mounds of history, gardening, cookbooks, crafts and computer guides. There will be piles of romance, mystery, western and science fiction novels. There will be classic literature, pulp fiction, award-winners and bodice-rippers. There will be books for toddlers, schoolkids, teens and college-bound. There will be large print books as well. Basically, there will be a huge cornucopia of learning, entertainment, how-to, enrichment, fun and escapism available for your purchase. Hardbacks are $1, paperbacks are .50¢, magazines are .25¢. The sale will run from 9 am - 5 pm on Saturday, and noon - 4 pm on Sunday. After 3 pm on Sunday, all leftover items will be free. Proceeds from the sale benefit the Friends of the Library, which in turn benefits your public library. So come prepared to spend some money and do some good!

Read this book at home

I don't cry over books. I didn't tear up when Beth March, Old Yeller, or Albus Dumbledore died, and I don't go out of my way to read 'downer' books. But I heartily recommend Obit: inspiring stories of ordinary people who led extraordinary lives, by Jim Sheeler. The title may lead you to think that the people memorialized in this book had secret pasts, or that they made remarkable contributions to science, art or humanity. But when Sheeler talks about "extraordinary lives", he is referring to those 'oh, wow' moments that we all have in our past. Every person has an intriguing aspect to their history - jazz, war memories, treehouses, poetry, a hardscrabble childhood - that contradicts the idea that anyone leads an ordinary life. The truly beautiful thing about these obituaries (which Sheeler wrote for various Colorado newspapers), is that they tease out the details of people's lives and that they present the subject as a unique individual worthy of attention, even if they never received much during their life. The stories that their family, friends, and coworkers tell about them are testimonies to the way in which one person can affect the lives of so many people. Obit is a really powerful read, and I found it impossible to get through even one of the obituaries without tearing up. I recommend reading this at home, alone, with a box of tissues handy.

Nice shoes

Some movies make earth-shattering statements on the human condition, and some movies are just plain fun. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is just plain fun. Originally released in 1994, this Australian indie film features three actors not usually known for their shapely gams and snappy dance moves. Guy Pearce (L.A. Confidential), Terence Stamp (The Limey) and Hugo Weaving (The Matrix) play drag performers who travel across the Australian outback in a beat-up city bus - Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - to a gig in Alice Springs. As on any good road trip, they spend lots of time thinking about their lives, loves and friendships. But the true attraction of this movie (for me at least) is the costumes. The costume designers for Priscilla deservedly won an Oscar for their efforts, and you may remember the dress that one of them wore to the awards ceremony made of 254 American Express gold cards. One of the outfits in the movie was made of flip-flops, but my favorite image has to be of Guy Pearce dressed entirely in silver lamé, perched on a giant silver shoe atop of the bus, riding across the desert with silver wings streaming out behind him. And of course the soundtrack, heavy on the ABBA, is great also. If you enjoy going to the annual Wearable Art Show here in Ketchikan, then you will love this movie. This film is relatively earthy, with strong language and a violent scene where one of the characters is attacked by a mob, so you should preview it before deciding whether it's a movie for your whole family (even if your kids love to dress up in shiny clothes and dance around, like my daughter). If you have a wide-screen TV, so much the better.

Banned Books Week

I've missed the official start of Banned Books Week (Sept. 29th) due to my trip, but it's never too late to get a librarian fired up about defending the first amendment and intellectual freedom. So I urge everyone to come in and check out the banned books display in the lobby of the library. All of the books on display have been challenged or banned somewhere in the United States, and the poor little ones with black armbands have actually been burned
(we used the American Libraries Association website - http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.htm - and UC San Diego - http://sshl.ucsd.edu/banned/books.html - as our reference list).
Some of the books may seem like familiar 'dangerous' titles: Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Harry Potter. But some of the books that have been challenged may leave you scratching your head as to the reasoning behind the uproar. My personal favorite: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, which was removed from school library shelves in Anchorage in 1976 due to objectionable language.
When you browse through our collection of subversive material, if you see anything you would like to take home and sift through in a dark room with the curtains pulled, feel free to bring it up to the desk and check it out. They are all helpfully enclosed in plain brown wrappers, so your neighbors don't have to know that you are pushing the envelope by reading John Steinbeck or even - gasp! - Dr. Seuss.