The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics / DanielJames Brown

The 1936 Olympics are probably best remembered by Americans for the singular accomplishment of Jesse Owens, his athletic prowess totally debunking the notion of Aryan supremacy at the “Nazi Olympics”. The Americans also bested the Germans in the eight-man crew competition, and The Boys in the Boat tells of their quest to win gold.

The backstory mainly focuses on Joe Rantz and his hard-luck upbringing as a de facto orphan in depression era Washington. Rowing was his ticket to education at the University of W, and his place on crew, though never assured and always fought for, was a path to betterment and an improved station in life. I was really taken by his hard-knocks life and marveled at all the hardships that he overcame.

The book also focuses on George Pocock, the Englishman whose skill at boat-building (known in crew as “shells”) set the standard in the 1930s. There are other characters such as Al Ulbrickson, the indomitable coach, who badgers and shepherds the boys to victory.

The description of the races, especially the final in Berlin, will keep the reader at the edge of his or her seat. This was an era when crew regattas captured the attention of not only the local populace who lined the waterfront on race days, but drew in the entire nation via wireless. The reader may experience the same excitement of the unfolding action with the stroke-by-stroke narrative communicated almost as if it were being transmitted by radio.

Click on this link for a Youtube clip of the rowing competition at the 1936 Olympics. At the end is some original footage of the race described in The Boys in the Boat (along with some recreated scenes from within the boat) .

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Here we are / Graham Swift

This short novel offers a nostalgic look at England in the 1940s and 1950s. Evie, having just lost her husband after a long marriage, looks back at the fateful summer when they met up at the pleasure palace at the end of the Brighton pier. Evie was meant to marry someone else, Ronnie Doane, aka “The Great Pablo,” a magician whose talents really pull in the crowds in the days before television kept people in their front rooms (and to whom she serves as the feather-plumed magician’s assistant). The novel tells of Ronnie’s back story as a London child war evacuee, whose second family in Oxford is so nurturing and loving that he is conflicted about going back to his real home when the war is over. But Evie marries Jack instead and is ghosted (quite literally) by Ronnie even in her final years of life. A wonderful story about people and relationships.

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie / Alan Bradley

Pippi Longstocking meets Miss Marple in the character of precocious 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of three daughters in a once well-to-do family in early 1950s rural England. This first mystery in an intended series finds Flavia beating the local police inspector at his own game in solving the mystery surrounding the murder of an old school mate of her father's in their back garden (in the cucumber patch no less). Clues include a bird indigenous to Norway, a rare stamp, and a bit of flaky pie crust. This nostalgic and innocent whodunnit will have you at the edge of your seat by its suspenseful climax. I can see BBC/PBS picking up on the popularity of this charming mystery. The second in the series has already been published and the third is soon to follow. And by the way, here's a great library quote from Flavia on page 50: "... it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No

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