Staff Reviews: Books, Films, Music, and More

by Children’s Librarian Helen Morgus 

The Children’s Library houses a great collection of nonfiction for the curious of any age. And I really do mean ANY. If you are a person who likes to begin learning about a subject with an overview before going granular, children’s nonfiction is just the thing for you. Plus, bonus: illustrations! One of my favorite series within our spectacular collection is Who/What/Where/ Were?  

The Who Was books are biographies, published by the children’s division of Penguin Books and authored by various writers. We have nearly 30 of them, from King Tut to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They are a hit with young readers, especially those who don’t usually go for “real” books (children are taught that fiction is “fake” and nonfiction is “real”).

As a librarian, I love that they are all the same size, which makes them very easy to spot on the shelves, and that they’re appended with excellent timelines and bibliographies. Each book sports a colorful caricature of its subject on the cover, and contains a profusion of black and white illustrations and diagrams. For example, Who Was King Tut? has maps, pictures of objects found in Tut’s tomb, an illustration of his mummy and its three nesting cases, and much more, all annotated. 

As all good writers of nonfiction do, the authors of the Who Was series both lay out the essentials and make room for the bizarre.

As all good writers of nonfiction do, the authors of the Who Was series both lay out the essentials and make room for the bizarre. So in King Tut’s case, there are gory details of how mummies were made, theories about how Tut died, and a chapter on Mummy Mania.  

More recently added to our collection are the What Were and Where Were (or Is/Are) volumes, covering a range of topics from ancient to modern times, and in the same format as the biographies. The Where Is titles include natural and man-made geographical wonders, from the Great Barrier Reef to Stonehenge to The Kremlin. What Is topics cover historical events and sites: Pearl Harbor, The Titanic, The Twin Towers, and many more.  Recent additions are graphic-format volumes about Cesar Chavez, Joan of Arc, Rosa Parks, and the Battle of Gettysburg.  

Satisfy your curiosity about historical figures and places with these fun, information-packed small bites.  All the volumes in these series make great read-alouds for adults to share with younger children (and the adult gets to learn some interesting facts along the way), and are about the right reading level for 4^th grade and up.

You’ll be surprised by what you thought you knew, but didn’t! 

Kyla Merwin, Communications Manager, recommends A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes. 

War: Stratagems, combat, mortal wounds, loss, despair, weapons of destruction, endless days of boredom punctuated with heart-rending violence.  

These are the accoutrements of the women in Natalie Haynes’ inspired re-telling of the Trojan War. Fasten your seatbelts!

You’ll meet Penelope, wife of Odysseus; Helen, bearing the face that launched a thousand ships; the Amazon princess Penthesilea; Hecabe (Hecuba), mother to Hector and Paris; Iphigenia, sacrificed by Agamemnon (uh…her father). You’ll see these heroic women, and many more, as you’ve never seen them before—with tremendous depth and emotional lives as finely wrought as the hilt of a sword.  

You’ll also meet The Furies, three goddesses of vengeance and retribution; the nymph-goddess Thetis, mother of Achilles; and the bickering goddesses Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena, who fought over an apple engraved with the words, “to the fairest,” and started this whole fiasco. 

A Thousand Ships takes a deep dive into the trenches of conflict—between nations, rivals, individuals, and one’s own tumultuous desires. 

A Thousand Ships takes a deep dive into the trenches of conflict—between nations, rivals, individuals, and one’s own tumultuous desires. 

The author narrates the audiobook version of this title, and she is so so good – so good – that I chased her all the way into the podcast, “Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics.” Who knew she was a stand-up comedienne as well as a high-minded classicist and a dazzling storyteller? So, she’s brilliant, obviously, and dang bloody funny.  

But back to the book.  

Natalie’s rendition of the Trojan War begins as one woman wakes to an empty house in a city on fire. Troy has been betrayed and the city is being sacked by Greeks. Yes, those same Greeks who bore the gift of a Trojan horse (the fabled wooden statue hiding a pack of Greek warriors led by Achilles and Odysseus). The rest is history.  

But we’re not going forward; we’re going back, to watch the ten-year war unfold through the eyes of the women who forged their own mettle and waged fierce battles with all they had to give. 

Natalie Haynes weaves vivid tales of vastly different women into one beautiful, heart-breaking tapestry that redefines what it means to be thrust into the heart of war.  

Available in print, ebook, and eaudiobook.  

by Nicole Lichtenberg, Director of Operations

Hello again, spooky pals! This is the second half of my series on Weird Fiction—a subgenre that can include elements of magical realism, fantasy, horror, science fiction, speculative fiction, even western! A feature of most Weird Fiction is that there is some sort of transgression of a norm or expectation—this could be a social norm or a manipulation concerning the laws of physics. It is supposed to be weird, and weird plays by its own rules.  

The works I’m recommending in Part 2 do contain more mature content. Just like in real life, characters may take part in sexual relationships, use swear words, or engage in/experience physical violence. As I mentioned previously, the diversity of character identities and their unconventional pasts aren’t necessarily what makes them Weird Fiction.  It’s the stories’ reflection of the world around us, especially those parts that are shifted and swapped out, that makes them such powerful stories in the Weird Fiction world and beyond.   

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin. I don’t know how to describe this book, but it’s one of my top ten favorites. Is the central conflict person v. person? Person v. nature? Person v. paranormal? Nature v. nature? All? Neither? I recommend the audiobook. Audience: High School and up. Find it here. 

The Shape of Water. Amidst the fear and uncertainty of the Cold War, a nice young woman working in a secret laboratory meets a nice young man. Like the proverbial algae, love blooms. I should note the nice young man has webbed feet. And hands. And gills. Audience: Rated R. Find it here. 

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. This is a heck of a movie. A middle-aged woman, already a wife, mother, and business owner, is forced into being a different kind of superhero as she surfs the multiverse. Chaos abounds. Calamity aside, I found this movie surprisingly poignant. Audience: Rated R. Find it here. 

Lovecraft Country. This is the 1950s as you’ve (hopefully) never seen them. Against a familiar backdrop, everything that isn’t nailed down gets warped, warped, warped. Brilliantly. Audience: I don’t know. I watched it. It’s a lot. Watch if you dare. Find it here. 

The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story by Richard Preston.  Sometimes the weirdest reality is the one we’re all trapped in. Audience: Middle school and up, if that middle schooler has a strong stomach. I sure didn’t. Find it here. 

Click here to read Weird Fiction, Part 1

Will Duke, Information Systems Manager, recommends Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey.

Today is Halloween. My offering to you is a magical mashup of urban fantasy and hard-boiled detective, mixed with just about everything else.  

“I wake up on a pile of smoldering garbage and leaves in the old Hollywood Forever cemetery behind the Paramount Studio lot on Melrose.”  

James Stark is back on earth. From Hell. Literal Hell. Lucifer and demons and the rest of the great unwashed from down below. And that’s how the book starts: with a compelling back story. 

I’ll keep this short, because the book is too good to ruin with spoilers. Our hero is hated by everyone, demons to angels, and pretty much hates them all right back. There are no good guys, only guys, and gals, and others, all of whom are set on harming our guy. While everyone tries to finish him off, Stark takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Dick Tracy, Sam Spade, Mike Hammer, Phillip Marlowe, even Harry Dresden look soft compared to Stark. Like those other well-known dicks, Stark’s got rapier sharp snark, and isn’t afraid to wield it. 

Our hero is hated by everyone, demons to angels, and pretty much hates them all right back.

Richard Kadrey has created a remarkably unique world for us. It’s a phenomenal mélange of Los Angeles, indie movie rental stores, Hell, Heaven, stolen cars and motorcycles, torso-free talking heads, dames, and gleeful mayhem. Best of all, if you like it, there are more books in the series. Settle in for a rowdy good time. 

Find it in Science Fiction/Fantasy here.

As the shadows grow longer, before the days of suns return, a pair of recommendations…
how scary is TOO scary? 

Cathy Butterfield, Collections Manager, recommends My Heart is a Chainsaw and The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water.

Halloween is coming, a holiday rife with perilous contradictions.  Gifts of candy are shared with stories of ghosts.  Pre-Christian traditions tangle with All Hallow’s Eve observances.  The walls of reality thin, and bend, and rumors of the dead rise as the last rays of summer set.  The living don masquerade and dance in the darkened streets.  Trick or treat. 

I searched for a good, crunchy, literary horror book to immerse myself in, to honor (or appease?) the spirits of the season.  Stephen Graham Jones’ Bram Stoker award-winning book My Heart is a Chainsaw seemed an ideal read.  Stephen King calls Jones the best new horror writer since Neil Gaiman launched.  The book is set in a (fictional?) resort on a lake in northern Idaho, where scary people sometimes really do in fact do very scary things.  Even the title is creepy.  Too creepy. 

Yet the setting and characters and trauma introduced in the first chapters are intensely real.  Utterly realistic.  Jones turns over the rocks in small town Idaho and exposes the abuse, racism, gentrification, and worse crawling underneath.  And therein lay the crux of the problem.  I am not easily triggered.  I am open to tackling every book on our shelves.  But each time I picked up the book, I could only finish a few pages before bouncing out again.  This was clearly not the book for me at this time in this fraught year as Samhain ushers in the darker half of the year. 

And that’s okay.  For everyone.  This is a good book.  A great book.  I recommend it to those looking for a spine chill that goes far beyond tingly, for a challenge with teeth.  I put it on my TBR pile for after the Day of Suns Return.  Life is too short to read good books at a bad time.   So…I searched the shelves (if you’re reading this, you’ve seen our shelves, there’s a lot of them.)  I realized I needed something bonding, and spirit-touched, and short (because I could hear the approaching whrrrr of the deadline) but not quite as viscerally…terrifying.  And I found the perfect literary palate refresher. 

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho is a wuxia fantasy (a Chinese genre featuring chivalric warriors) with a masquerade at its heart.  From the first pages I felt flashes of Akiro Kurosawa and Ang Lee, even as the author turns The Seven Samurai upside down and shakes it.  The story is deceptively simple:  a handsome bandit leader adopts a homeless nun with a subversive bent, ignoring the warnings of his secretive second in command.  The characters are bound together by chance and necessity in the throes of a nameless war that no one wants to talk about.  The novelette moves quickly, like a water skipper on a calm pond, but has deceptive depths, weaving philosophy with pragmatism, redefining chivalry (and warriors.)   

It is also really funny.  If the universe had a la carte cinematic ordering, I want Jackie Chan to direct this pilot, and Michelle Yeoh to star with Pei Pei Cheng.  And Bruce Lee to co-star.  Because it’s Halloween, and the liminal walls of reality thin, and bend, and rumors of the dead are rising… 

Find My Heart is a Chainsaw here.

Find The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water here.

Weird Fiction, Part 1 of 2

by Nicole Lichtenberg, Director of Operations

It’s spooky season! Halloween is my favorite time of year. It has it all—fun snacks, costumes, activities—for all ages. Please allow me to recommend some accompanying content.

I will be focusing on Weird Fiction, a flexible subgenre of fiction that can include elements of magical realism, fantasy, horror, science fiction, speculative fiction, even western! Generally, part of the plot includes the transgression of various norms—something is real that is not real in real life (allegedly), or in weird fiction some rule or value is turned topsy-turvy, or something else completely different. It’s a genre completely open to possibility. I’m including here books that are weird, but not necessarily super scary. Part I is for the haybale Halloween crowd, not the horror/terror/gore folks. 

Many of these books feature characters with diverse identities and life experiences. This is not necessarily what qualifies them as Weird Fiction—a variety of good books and movies, in my opinion, reflect the presence of diversity that is so important about being human—or in one case, a flat rock. 

The Key to Extraordinary by Natalie Lloyd. I listened to this on audiobook, and it was just a really nice, flowery, bizarre time. This is also a splendid example of magical realism in a kid’s book. Audience: Elementary school and up. Find it here. 

Eventown by Corey Ann Haydu. Nothing is weird in Eventown. And that’s just what makes it so weird. Audience: Elementary school and up. Find it here. 

Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Crandor. This book is set in the same universe as the podcast by the same name. The premise is, “What if all conspiracy theories were true?” It takes place in a small southwestern town and… It’s a trip. Honestly, I found the podcast really confusing until I listened to the novel, so maybe try this route if you also felt the podcast was a bit untethered. Audience: I think this is fine for middle school and up, but some pop culture references might fly over kid’s heads, making it not as fun a read for them. Find it here. 

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey. I will take every available opportunity I can to recommend this book. It’s a sub-subgenre called Weird West. I’ve recommended this before, so short version—it’s great. It’s weird. Read it. Audience: Middle school and up. There are some more mature references, but not super graphic. Find it here. 

My Antonia by Willa Cather. Honestly, I only read the first half of this book. It totally creeped me out because I would make a terrible pioneer. I once saw this mis-categorized as science fiction and ever since then, I’ve wondered—what if it WAS? Audience: Middle school and up. Find it here. 

Click here to read Weird Fiction, Part 2