Staff Reviews: Books, Films, Music, and More

Janet Ross-Heiner, Library Assistant and ELL Instructor, recommends Solito: A Memoir by Javier Zamora.

I invite you to enter and deeply feel Solito. Javier Zamora, who will be a guest at The Community Library July 19, 2023, is a writer of authentic magnitude and epistemic experiences. A special man, a poet and an activist; Javier a boy alone. “Solito” journeyed from El Salvador to the US to be united with his parents in Los Angeles. This beautifully written memoir is a testimony filled with compassion, trust, and a deep belief in the human spirit. It offers the intimate account of a young boy’s treacherous journey through Guatemala, Mexico and across the US Border.  

Can you remember when you first learned to tie your shoes? Javier at nine years learned. During this time, practicing with laces he could hear whispers “La USA” and a forthcoming trip-trip-trip. His parents had crossed years prior with a coyote. He was left in his loving grandparents’ care until the early dawn of the day that was to arrive soon. “Listo nieto.” The 3,000-mile journey was to begin. 

This beautifully written memoir is a testimony filled with compassion, trust, and a deep belief in the human spirit.

“He writes in the pitch-perfect voice of that child as he makes his perilous way, on foot, by boat, bus, and truck, recalling moments of true terror and unexpected tenderness.” – Mitchell Kaplan interview  

The “trip” in 1999 from Herradura, El Salvador, to Los Angeles took Javier on a courageous journey. A trip that was to take two weeks, took two months. Reading or listening to this story that he narrates, you will experience Solito’s crawling and groveling atop dust, prickly cacti, snagging barbed wire—surviving the sizzling and freezing desert temperatures. But underneath whirling helicopter blades, Solito searches for his Cadejo. He developed idioma skills when in Mexico. He used popote NOT pajilla as a Salvadoran would verbalize. He must hide his identity in route.  

Aubade from Shakespear means; How we deal with death’s inescapability. In the pre-dawn darkness. Solito’s Cadejo was with him.  

I’ll be back soon mijo – But in our windows still no glass,  
When raindrops hit the sill they touch my skin like her eyes did  
That morning she said I’ll be back soon mijo.  
I touch the larvae growing in old tires in our backyard, I know she won’t return.   

Aubade – poem from Unaccompanied 811.6 ZAM (2017)  

Javier had an intuitive sense of character at an early age. He knows it might have been the gifted amulet, a Cadejo that his grandfather told him would protect him on his journey. The Cadejo, is a Salvadoran legend about a dog-wolf like creature with red eyes and goat hooves that protects those who believe.  

As a note: Javier & Francisco Cantú are the best of friends. As a border patrol officer, Cantú resigned his position and authored the book: The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border. Both books hold close in my heart and hands. 

Find Solito: A Memoir in 92 ZAM, SPA 920 ZAM, Axis360 E-book & E-Audiobook. Javier Zamora holds a BA Alma mater from Berkeley, MFA from NYU, is a Wallace Stegner Fellow, has a Radcliff Fellow at Harvard.  

Note: Javier Zamora will be speaking at The Community Library at 6:00 p.m. on July 19, in partnership with the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. More/register here.

Will Duke, Information Systems Manager, recommends gaming resources at The Community Library.  

We have games. If you bring your laptop to our Wi-Fi, you can play our games, for free. We are, in fact, a Steam PC Café. As a PC Café, we license specific Steam games, and anyone connected to our Wi-Fi can play them. Oh, you’ll need your own Steam account, but those are free! On the positive side, your Steam games will follow you here, and you can use our Wi-Fi to play with your friends or with people you meet here. 

…these computers are smoking-hot gaming machines… Everything you need to bring the heat.

For those over 18, you’ll need to bring your own gaming laptop. You can sit outside under an umbrella, or inside by the fireplace—with headphones please. Nobody needs to hear you stomping aliens or blowing up WWII Destroyers. You can even sit in your car and play, because our Wi-Fi has you covered outside the building.  

For teens, we have gaming computers available in our Juice Box. Sorry ages under 9 or over 18, the Juice Box is for teens only. But these computers are smoking-hot gaming machines. Gaming Keyboards. Gaming Mice. Gaming monitors. Headphones. Everything you need to bring the heat. Every Tuesday morning, I update them with the latest from Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, and all the games from the Library’s PC Café.  

For teens, we have gaming computers available in our Juice Box. … with the latest from Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, and all the games from the Library’s PC Café.  

For kids under the age of nine, the Children’s Library has Nintendo Switches with games to check out. Play Super Smash Bros., Splatoon 2, Mariokart 8 Deluxe, and more games here at the Library—free with your library card. 

So, swing on in and check out our technology. All the savvy kids are doing it. 

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If you’re not a gamer, we have you covered with computers with Office on them in the Learning Commons. We also have two Spanish computers/keyboards. Need to print? We’ve got you covered there, too, with a high-capacity laser printer, copier, and scanner. We even have laptops you can check out at the front desk.  

We keep everything up-to-date, safe, and secure for you. At the end of every session, these computers reboot and wipe themselves clean.  

If you need specialized tech help, the Library offers a free Tech Help Desk with Paul Zimmerman in the Learning Commons twice a month. Drop in between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on the first and third Wednesdays of the month. Check our online calendar in advance to confirm dates and times, because sometimes they vary. 

Martha Williams, Director of Programs and Education, recommends Good Night Irene, by the 2023 Hemingway Distinguished Lecturer, Luis Alberto Urrea.

“The real service was that their faces, their voices, their sendoff might be the final blessing from home for some of these young pilots. The enormity of this trivial-seeming job became clearer every day.”

In his newest novel, Luis Alberto Urrea tells of a crew of American Red Cross workers as they drive across Europe supporting World War II Allied troops. The story was inspired by the real experiences of Urrea’s mother, Phyllis Irene, who worked as a “Donut Dolly,” caravanning from airfields to war zones in a 2.5-ton GMC “Clubmobile” equipped with a deep fryer, coffee maker, and record player.

The novel follows the fun-loving and sophisticated Irene and the hard-edged midwestern Dorothy, who both come to the war effort escaping painful pasts. As their beast of a rig traverses the continent, Irene and Dorothy follow troops into the heart of battle. They find carefree moments at the edge of war and terrifying days of violence and terror that they’ll carry for their rest of their lives.

In the book’s early pages, a soldier who’s come home tells Irene: “If you get to come home, you will be so grateful you won’t realize at first that you survived. But once you know you survived, you’ll only be starting to understand.” A young and inexperienced Irene can’t yet understand the soldier’s words, but she will reflect on them later as she and Dorothy witness the aftermath of D-Day, remnants of French towns destroyed by the Nazis, and the Battle of the Bulge.

Urrea writes with a propulsive energy and a deep care for the real-life Clubmobilers and the soldiers they served. He creates entire worlds of wonder and reality inside vans and hotel rooms, on tarmacs and beaches, under bomb debris and back home. Each character―those based on real figures and those who are completely fictionalized―bring us into this under-explored but extraordinary war history.

Goodnight, Irene is at once a beautiful historical novel, capturing the ARC Clubmobile story, and an ode to Urrea’s mother and all the women who went to war in the only way they could: bringing a bit of home to the young men who traveled farther than they knew to fight a war. It’s also a love story, a story of a great friendship and of the lasting effects of war on hearts and minds.

Urrea opens to us an imagined experience of all the women who smiled and laughed and served donuts and coffee, even as they, too, longed for home and could never forget the losses incurred even when a war is won.

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Urrea joins us for this year’s Hemingway Distinguished Lecture, which he’ll deliver on Friday, June 30 outdoors at the library. Learn more here.

Ann Sandefer, Philanthropy & Volunteer Associate, recommends A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman.

A Man Called Ove is a book about routines and the unexpected, happiness and sorrow, love and loss, youth and aging, life and death.

The book begins with a very grumpy, 59-year-old man with principles as deep as his daily routines who’s been having a rough time. Ove had always seen the world as black-and-white with his now deceased wife providing the only color for him. He’s mourning the loss of his wife and has recently found himself forced into early retirement. Lacking any purpose or direction in his life, he plans to die by suicide. The day of his first well-planned attempt to leave this world is interrupted by a young family moving in next door who flatten his mailbox with their U-Haul.

As Ove’s relationship with his wacky neighbors develops, his backstory unfolds, which is heart wrenching and yet endearing. His life is turned upside down with the new neighbors. The book becomes a heartwarming story of down-on-its-luck cats, unlikely friendships, societal misfits, and a neighborhood and community that finds itself reevaluating the person they thought for sure they had figured out. 

This is a rich story that slowly develops, peeling back the layers of a man’s life in an empathetic way, tackling sorrow, aging, and depression while revealing the reasons behind the grumpy exterior.

The new neighbor, Parvaneh, sets out to give Ove the purpose he’s lacking, asking him to help with small tasks: teaching her to drive, watching over her two young daughters, and taking in a stray cats. 

Eventually Ove “picks his battles” by convincing a father the importance of standing by his son and fighting an attempt by the government to remove his long-forgotten friend and neighbor, Rune, to an unwanted facility as his Alzheimer’s has deteriorated. Ove ends up successfully rallying the entire community around his cause. In the process, Ove forms emotional bonds with his neighbors, discovering a new sense of belonging for the first time since his wife died. 

Ove forms emotional bonds with his neighbors, discovering a new sense of belonging for the first time since his wife died. 

As it turns out, Ove has a “too large heart” which is rather ironic given his lifelong inability to show affection for others, except his wife. By the end of the story, Ove has evolved from a lonely, angry man intent on suicide to being a central part of a close-knit community around him. Four years after the death of his wife, he dies in his sleep, leaving everything to his neighbors. At his funeral over 300 people celebrate the grumpy old man who once had no friends.

I loved this book as it tells the story of so many people in society that project an outside personality which may not reflect what’s going on inside. This is a rich story that slowly develops, peeling back the layers of a man’s life in an empathetic way, tackling sorrow, aging, and depression while revealing the reasons behind the grumpy exterior. 

One never knows what is going on inside another, you can never judge a book by it’s cover nor a person by first impressions. The book also heavily tackles “right” and “wrong” in society and interpersonal relationships and human dignity and decency.  The book will make you laugh as well as cry and tell a profound story of one man’s life and death that is very relatable and relevant.

Find it in print, ebook, eaudiobook, and DVD here.

The film, A Man Called Otto, starring Tom Hanks, is basked on this book. Find the DVD here.

Regional History Museum Librarian, Olivia Terry, recommends The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Punishment in Revolutionary America by John Wood Sweet.

Lanah Sawyer is a name not known by many today. But on a summer evening in 1793, the seventeen-year-old seamstress is raped in a New York Brothel by a man above her in class. She does something nearly unthinkable for the period; she charges him with the crime.

The trial that ensued sent shock waves across Revolutionary America, sparking debates about class, power, and sexual double standards. But even when Lanah herself was alive and at the center of the monumental trial, her name and her story became an afterthought in the countless publications and arguments that sensationalized the trial. Soon, the story of her rape appeared to be no longer hers at all.

During the actual trial, the finger of blame was first unsurprisingly pointed at Lanah: Did she invite the attack? Did she fight back? Did she report it in a timely manner? Then, shortly after the verdict was announced, the finger moved to the woman who owned the brothel the crime occurred in, Mother Carey: Did Mother Carey lie in her witness account for the defense? What business did a woman have running a house that thrived on the destruction of feminine virtue? Blame spiraled into anger leading to mass riots that destroyed Mother Carey’s house and personal property, as well as other women’s homes who ran similar businesses.

The way we think about, talk about, and administer blame and punishment for cases of sexual assault is a thread that remains largely unripped from the time of Lanah Sawyer.

Curiously though, the blame is never directed at the accused rapist Harry Bedlow, a man born into privilege, or the men who kept Mother Carey’s brothel open and thriving. In fact, Harry Bedlow goes on a campaign to retaliate against Lanah and her family, declaring himself a victim of character assassination. Eventually, Bedlow does face the consequences for his crime but not in the way expected.

John Wood Sweet makes this nonfiction just as captivating as a fictional drama by paying tremendous attention to historical details of the trial and the real people involved. He provides the political and social context of the time that reveal the complexities the case was entangled in.

Upon reading The Sewing Girl’s Tale, I was first struck by the egregiously apparent injustices of 18th century law. After finishing it, I thought about the parallels to today’s justice system and the social discourse surrounding rape cases.

The way we think about, talk about, and administer blame and punishment for cases of sexual assault is a thread that remains largely unripped from the time of Lanah Sawyer.

Find The Sewing Girl in MAIN Nonfiction here.

Director of Operations, Nicole Lichtenberg, recommends Modern Mending: How to Minimize Waste and Maximize Style by Erin Lewis Fitzgerald.

I really, really hate breaking in new clothes. I once wore this weird velveteen knit sweater until the sleeves only went partway down my arms, and I think my mom ended up disappearing it in the night. I also harbor, like many of us, feelings of guilt about the amount of water and other resources that go into the production of textiles that I don’t always translate into action.

Enter Modern Mending. This book explores a variety of ways to fix up clothing and other cloth goods such as dog bandanas and tea towels. It covers common mending materials and tools (pretty much the same as the contents of your grandma’s cookie tin), methods such as patching and darning, and provides numerous helpful and interesting case studies.

One of my favorite case studies is a shirt dubbed “Large Marge,” which was in tatters when it came to be in the author’s mending pile. Using such exotic materials as old underpants (they are great because they are usually really worn in and soft, I gather) and some basic techniques, Lewis-Fitzgerald breathes new life into a beloved garment.

Using such exotic materials as old underpants … and some basic techniques, Lewis-Fitzgerald breathes new life into a beloved garment.

What I like about Modern Mending is that it does a good job covering traditional mending styles as well as modern ones, and it has enough information that someone who doesn’t have a background in sewing or knitting would be able to jump in. One thing I appreciate about fiber arts is the wide range of possibilities that exist, and Modern Mending brings that spirit to a more commonplace medium.

So, go find a moth-eaten sweater, or a shirt with armpit holes, or a tea towel you burned, and try mending it. The stakes are low. If you do a really bad job, all you have to do is try again.

Find it in MAIN Nonfiction – 646.6 LEW.