Peachy Reads

Faceless Killers / Henning Mankell Click here to check availability at AFPLS If you, like me, were not sated with Scandinavian thrillers after the last Stieg Larsson Millennium installment, travel back to Sweden’s underworld in Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander series, of which Faceless Killers is the first. The book opens with a horrifying scene of brutality that shatters the quiet solitude of a Swedish country idyll, and the intrigue grows as the case escalates with attacks against foreigners and an additional murder. The small southern Swedish town of Ystad in Skåne is the setting for this series and Kurt Wallander is as believable a police inspector as you’ll ever come across with many human faults and no superpowers whatsoever. His dogged tenacity and his intuition are his greatest assets and allow him to solve the crime in the end. Faceless Killers may not be as fast-paced as The Girl Who Played with Fire , but it still takes place in the same Scandinavian milieu where the win...

You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons: The World on One Cartoon a Day / Mo Willems Mo Willems is HUGE in kiddie lit and has received Caldecott honors for his cartoonish Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Knuffle Bunny and Knuffle Bunny Too . I was curious about this volume he published for a somewhat older audience, namely adults. The library system didn’t have it, so a quick order to Amazon and a few days later it was on my doorstep. Just out of university, Mo Willems did what many young adults do, he took a year off to see the world. At the end of each day he produced a pen and ink drawing about an unusual or memorable event that happened that day. The drawings are collected in You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons with contemporary commentary from Mr. Willems. He draws in an almost expressionistic style and with this volume has created a rather unusual chronicle of a trip to different cultures and peoples. It’s really quite enjoyable to flip through, and is ...

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo / Stieg Larsson Click here to check availability at AFPLS This crime novel from Sweden has become an international publishing sensation. The first in a trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo deals with the family history of a slightly faded Swedish industrial dynasty that holds many secrets. Just how horrific these secrets are doesn’t become apparent until journalist/investigator Mikael Blomkvist and his unlikely research assistant Lisbeth Salander (the girl in the title with said tattoo) start to unravel the details of the disappearance of a young female family member some forty years earlier. It was hard to put this one down. I liked the descriptions of the brutally cold Swedish winters, the coziness and banality of small town life in Hedeby, the bustle of Stockholm, the eccentric personalities in the family, work relationships... all this against the brutality of the crimes that are revealed. ©Ken Vesey, 21 Apr 2010

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...

Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life / Steve Martin Click here to check availability in AFPLS Anyone who remembers the silver-haired man in the white suit who delivered the catchphrases of the seventies, “Well, excuuuuuse me,” or “I’m just a wild and crazy guy,” will want to find out more about his rise to fame in this svelte self-penned memoir about his life leading up to his stand-up days. Reading this book, you realize how unlikely his comic success actually was, what with his intelligent “anti-comedy,” his hilarious non sequiturs, and his spastic dancing. This revolution in stand-up, however unlikely, propelled Steve Martin into enduring Hollywood fame, and even those who don’t remember his King Tut will know Steve Martin from his many movie roles and television appearances (and for your teenage daughter as Hillary Duff’s father on "Cheaper by the Dozen"). ©Ken Vesey, 15 Mar 2010

The Year of the Flood / Margaret Atwood Click here to check for availability in AFPLS In her latest book, The Year of the Flood , Margaret Atwood portrays a future, a very close future, in which there has been catastrophic environmental and societal collapse. Atwood explored this theme in 2003’s Oryx and Crake , and revisits the same timeframe with even some of the same characters making appearances, though this is neither a prequel or a sequel (maybe a co-quel?). The "flood" in the title refers to a waterless flood, a global pandemic that has wiped out all but a small percentage of Earth's human inhabitants. Flashbacks reveal the main characters in situations leading up to the flood. In The Year of the Flood Atwood creates a future world that is not so unfamiliar from our own, which may make it all the more terrifying. Reminiscent of Jose Saramago's Blindness or PD James's The Children of Men (both of which have been made into film). Often grim, but always th...

Quarantine / Jim Crace Click here to check for availability in AFPLS Five penitents wander into the Judean wilderness for various reasons, known only to themselves, for a quarantine (40 days) of meditation and fasting. Their planned solitude and prayerful reflection are somewhat derailed when they all convene near a waterhole and their destinies interconnect. One of the penitents is named Jesus, and while Crace’s story doesn’t follow the Gospels, and literalists will not care for it, the figure of Jesus is an enigmatic and a charismatic presence in their midst, even though he attempts to separate himself from the others. The characters are well-drawn and all are interesting in their own right. The ending is a surprise, there is death and resurrection of sorts, and this novel will offer much food for thought for readers of any religious persuasion. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 1997, Whitbread Novel winner 1997 ©Ken Vesey, 12 Feb 2010