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Staff Reviews: Books, Films, Music, and More

Weird Fiction, Part 2

November 7, 2022 by kmerwin

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

Filed Under: Staff Reviews: Books, Films, Music, and More

Book Review: “Sandman Slim”

October 26, 2022 by kmerwin


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.

Filed Under: Staff Reviews: Books, Films, Music, and More

Book Reviews: My Heart is a Chainsaw…

October 20, 2022 by kmerwin


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.

Filed Under: Staff Reviews: Books, Films, Music, and More

Let’s Get Weird!

October 14, 2022 by kmerwin

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

Filed Under: Staff Reviews: Books, Films, Music, and More

Book Review: “Ordinary Grace”

October 12, 2022 by kmerwin

Carter Hedberg, Director of Philanthropy, recommends Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger.

Summers were pretty quiet for me growing up in the village of Waldorf in rural south-central Minnesota, population 283. Every Sunday my family went to church, and a trip to the town’s tiny grocery store meant riding my bike two blocks. I have fond memories of navigating the railroad tracks on the edge of town with my cousin Debbie as we looked for the perfect agate, or going down to Little Cobb Creek where I would collect water bugs and an occasional crayfish. The summer heat was broken by an occasional thunderstorm and the warm evening breezes sometimes brought the sweet scent of freshly cut alfalfa into town from a nearby farm. Life in a small town may sound quaint and idyllic, but of course it was never perfect, and as with all of life, there often can be a dark side to the good.   

William Kent Krueger’s gripping book, Ordinary Grace, places on full display the dark side of the fictional town of New Bremen, Minnesota. New Bremen is located in the Minnesota River Valley, not too far from where I grew up.  It is the summer of 1961—a time of excitement with a new young president and the Twins baseball franchise making its debut in Minnesota. Thirteen-year-old Frank Drum is expecting to have a fine summer doing the things he loves to do—visiting the soda counter, reading comic books, walking along the river with his little brother, and mowing lawns to earn some extra money. When calamity hits, Frank’s summer turns ugly.  Yet he is able to bravely and with budding maturity, confront tragic deaths, scandal, human frailty, and his own limitations.  

“Early in the novel, all emotional hell breaks loose when a series of deaths transpire and the townsfolk grapple with the horror and confusion of confronting these nightmarish tragedies.” 

Frank’s wise father, Nathan, is the town’s Methodist minister who lives with an undisclosed emotional burden from in World War II, and seeks solace in his deep faith, especially as one tragedy after another happens. Ruth, Frank’s mother, does her duty as a pastor’s wife, yet she is restless and dreams about her unmet desire to be a professional performer and often resents Nathan’s devotedness. Frank has two siblings: sister Ariel is a talented vocalist and composer with plans for Juilliard. His little brother Jake, who is his constant companion, is shy with most people because of his stutter, but is intuitively insightful in ways that are far beyond his years. 

Early in the novel, all emotional hell breaks loose when a series of deaths transpire and the townsfolk grapple with the horror and confusion of confronting these nightmarish tragedies. The reader follows the narrative as told by Frank and his storytelling is so gripping, so authentic, and written so beautifully it is hard to put the novel down.   

“Thirteen-year-old Frank Drum … is able to bravely and with budding maturity, confront tragic deaths, scandal, human frailty, and his own limitations.” 

Honestly, I do not want to reveal too much of the plot because I want you, the reader, to discover the power of Kreuger’s prose.  That said, wisdom, grace, faith, and forgiveness are dominant themes that run throughout the book. Krueger has stated that by setting the book during this era he was able to “explore themes that have been important to me all of my life.”  The voices he gave brothers Frank and Jake are transcendent, with the clarity needed to navigate these difficult themes with artistry and aplomb.  Krueger said that Ordinary Grace is the “best thing” he has ever written; “everything I know about storytelling” went into this book. You experience the power and grace of exquisite storytelling, and there is nothing ordinary about it.   

Find Ordinary Grace in print and eaudiobook here.

Filed Under: Staff Reviews: Books, Films, Music, and More

Book Review: Woman Without Shame

October 4, 2022 by kmerwin

Martha Williams, Director of Programs and Education, recommends Woman Without Shame by Sandra Cisneros.

In her new collection of poems—her first published in 28 years—Sandra Cisneros breathes fearless words into everyday life. The poems in this book are ripe with self-discovery and self-appreciation, but also desire and aging and death. Acknowledging where she may find shame as she ages, Cisneros instead finds joy and humor and a deep understanding of how she wants to move in the world.

That season,

I was experimenting to be

the woman I wanted to be…

I was in training to be

a woman without shame.

~from “Tea Dance, Provincetown, 1982”

Cisneros moves between English and Spanish throughout the book, reflective of her world and the spaces we share. Some poems read like prayers, others like songs or recipes for life, and others still like news reports of acts gone unmentioned.

Cisneros . . . finds joy and humor and a deep understanding of how she wants to move in the world.

Some poems are stamped with a year, allowing us to place them in her life’s timeline. Many feature the dreadfully ordinary—suddenly and simply extraordinary through her mouth—like in the poem called “Smith’s Supermarket, Taos, New Mexico, at the Fifteen-Items-or-Less Checkout Line.” Examining her purchases in comparison to the young man in front of her, she meditates on the pains of young love as compared with the comforts of old love.

We often get to picture her writing or curled up in bed with a book. The pleasure these acts bring is described like new and old love all at once.

I am a woman of a delightful season…

filled to the brim I am.

I said the brim.

“I believe in the power / Of a thought, a word / To change the world” she writes in the poem “Creed,” where she also names mothers and grandmothers as the solution to all violence and points out that no one doubts the existence of love (“Even and especially those who have / Never met love.”)

Through these poems, Cisneros invites us to know her. We are welcomed into her private world, and to see our shared world—for all its pains and beauties—through her magical eyes.

I am a woman of a delightful season…

filled to the brim I am.

I said the brim.

~“At Fifty I Am Startled to Find I Am in My Splendor”

Find Woman Without Shame in English and Spanish editions here.

Filed Under: Staff Reviews: Books, Films, Music, and More

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