The Afrika Reich / Guy Saville

I’m always fond of a good alternative history, so when The Afrika Reich came across my radar screen, I snatched it up. In this novel Germany comes out triumphant in World War II. Great Britain negotiates a non-aggression pact with the Nazis that allows them to retain their empire. Africa is now primarily divided between the British and the Germans, the Nazis pursuing their racial policy, a diabolical plan of shipping Europe’s Jews to Madagascar and eradicating native peoples and transporting remaining black Africans to the region of Muspel in the Sahara.

Burton Cole is an Englishman with a mercenary past. He thinks those days are long gone when he is made an offer he finds impossible to refuse—a contract to assassinate his nemesis, a despicable Nazi in the new German African territories, whose efforts at the aryanization of the continent are stomach-turning. Plus he has a history with Cole.

So starts a nonstop thrill ride that rivals anything that James Bond or Jason Bourne could undertake. The body count is a bit high and there are buckets of blood, so this story is not for the faint of heart. The interesting thing is how some of the plot is rooted in history and the actual blueprints the Nazis had for the domination of Africa. The Afrika Reich is the first in an intended series of books.

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So Much for That / Lionel Shriver

This novel comes from the 2005 Orange Prize winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin , a disturbing book in which a parent with ambivalent feelings towards motherhood deals with the aftermath of a Columbine-style school killing perpetrated by her son. Lionel Shriver has said that she prefers to create characters that are hard to love, and So Much for That certainly contains some flinty characters, who although they may be hard to love, are nevertheless very believable. The topic this time is healthcare in America. Shep is all ready to launch into an exotic early retirement on the island of Pemba off the eastern coast of Africa, but when his wife reveals a diagnosis of mesothelioma, he must hold on to his job to maintain family health coverage to see her through her devastating illness. His work colleague and friend, Jackson, experiences a medical dilemma completely of his own doing, which proves to be his un doing. Jackson's daughter suffers from an unusual genetic disorde...

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating / Elisabeth Tova Bailey

The snail is a lowly creature, and probably one that most of us have never truly contemplated. The snail was probably a creature to which the author hadn't given much thought before a debilitating disease kept her confined to bed, practically immobile, for months and months. One day a friend put a woodland snail in a pot of violets on her nightstand. After being transported from the woods, the snail had emerged from its shell into the alien territory of my room, with no clue as to where it was or how it had arrived; the lack of vegetation and the desertlike surroundings must have seemed strange. The snail and I were both living in altered landscapes not of our choosing; I figured we shared a sense of loss and displacement. p 20 The companionship of this tiny creature is what sees her through the darkest days of her imprisonment by her horrible disease. The snail, thriving in its slow-mo existence and life of undemanding simplicity, provides interest and comfort to the author. ...

This Book Is Overdue! : How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All / Marilyn Johnson Click here to check availability in AFPLS This book is an interesting collection of essays that offer glimpses into the brave new world of librarianship. It’s sort of the antithesis of Nicholson Baker’s grumpy dissing of librarians in his 2001 book Doublefold . If you thought that librarians are still the be-bunned shushing ladies in wool skirts with reading glasses dangling around their necks on slender gold chains, then this book certainly is overdue for you. The author shows how librarians are morphing and adapting to the new information landscape, meeting new challenges with fewer resources and a public that wants instant gratification in clicks-and-mortar libraries. Meet librarians who offer triage reference services in streets filled with protesters and others who assume alternate identities and inhabit virtual libraries in the cyber universe called Second Life. Learn about how the venerable N...

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