BOOKS TOO GOOD TO MISS !

Newer Reviews Are At The Top
Or
Choose A Specific Review

(For more reviews see the Director's newspaper columns.)

Let me begin by saying that Ms. Sherman overstated her case in the title. If a reader hopes (as I did) that by reading this book they will be able to persuade anyone of anything, they will come away disappointed. However, if a reader’s aim is to become a better communicator and more valued as an employee or friend, this might be the right book.

Get Them To See It Your Way, Right Away is really about how to improve communication skills in all types of settings—formal and informal, public and private. Ms. Sherman provides guidance for those who speak in public and make formal presentations and for those who simply want to communicate better at work or at home.

Chapters contain charts, helpful hints, and questionnaires all aimed improving the communication skills of the reader. Communication skills include talking, writing, reading and listening. Ms. Sherman believes that good communicators are made and not born and that communication techniques can be taught to those willing to learn. I found

the charts and forms, which were provided, to be useful. Also, permission is given to make copies of these materials. The chapters on listening skills, questioning techniques, formal presentations, voicemail, and email were most helpful to me. Each chapter ends with a summary of "Ruth’s Truths" for easy reference.

Can I now persuade anyone of anything? Probably not. However, I can become a better communicator.

Return To Top

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency is not a new book but the first in a series of mysteries about Precious Ramotswe, the lady of the title. Precious’ father has died of lung disease, acquired in the diamond mines of South Africa. On his deathbed he tells Precicous to use her inheritance (cattle) to start a business (maybe a butchery). Precious, ever a woman with her own ideas, tells him through her tears that she is going to open a detective agency. It will be the No.1 detective agency in all Botswana. She feels she is called to help her people solve the mysteries of their lives. Using Agatha Christie as her model, Mma. Ramotswe, as everyone addresses her, opens her detective agency. She paints a sign, buys a building, purchases some yellow curtains-two desks-two chairs-a typewriter, hires a secretary and waits for clients. She is the only lady private detective in Botswana.

This is not your ordinary murder and mayhem mystery. The character’s are memorable and drive the story. Just as memorable as the characters is the setting, Botswana. The author lived in Botswana and his love of the country is evident in his descriptions of it. "If you went there, out into the Kalahari, you might hear lions by night. For the lions were there still…She had been there as a young woman…and she had felt the utter loneliness of a place without people. This was Botswana distilled; the essence of her country." It is a country where time is of little concern, and the sights and sounds of Africa may be enjoyed over a cup of tea. The writing is beautiful. The setting and characters are memorable. I highly recommend The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and its sequels.

Return To Top

Mystery of the Nile: The Epic Story of the First Descent of the World’s Deadliest River tells the harrowing account of the first navigation of the Nile by raft from its source in Ethiopia to the Mediterranean. If your attitude is like mine was, that this will just be a simple retelling of a ride down the rapids like the Colorado River prepare yourself for a surprise. It also surprised me that the first navigation by boat down the Nile was completed as recently as on April 28, 2004.

This was not a trip for the faint-hearted. The two adventurers, who completed the journey of 3,000 miles and 114 days, were Pasquale Scatureo and Gordon Brown. Both men were not new to exploration or to risking their lives; however, the trip down the Nile may have been the "mother of all adventures". They and their companions overcame the world’s most dangerous rapids, man-eating crocodiles and gun-toting guerillas along with malaria, sandstorms, and extremes in temperature. (The insects alone would have sent me home.) Not your basic raft trip down the Grand Canyon, on this journey two brave and perhaps foolhardy men risked their lives to be the first to accomplish one of the last great adventures on Earth.

Return To Top

My Descent into Death: A Second Chance at Life by Howard Storm is a recounting of Rev. Storm’s “near death” experience. Life after death is a topic which probably is of interest to most people. It certainly is to me.

Howard Storm was 38 years old and an avowed atheist on June 1, 1985, when he almost died. While on an art tour of Paris, Storm suffered a perforated stomach. He was rushed to a hospital but didn’t receive medical attention for ten hours. As he describes it, during this time he was transported both to hell and to heaven. According to Storm, hell was absolute darkness and the absence of God’s presence. Beings (demons), who he could not see, ripped at his body and called him the foulest names. Even today he blocks from his memory some of the things that transpired.

On the edge of oblivion, a voice deep within himself told him to pray. He had never prayed and thought prayer was a ludicrous endeavor, practiced by the ignorant or foolhardy. He did pray, however. His prayer was a combination of the Lord’s Prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, and God Bless America, but it worked! He was immediately transported by angelic beginnings to the light, and there taken into the presence of Jesus. He was given an opportunity to commune with the divine. Like most people who report these experiences, Storm did not want to return to his earthly body. He was told that he was still needed on earth and returned to his desperately ill body.

After returning to the United States, Howard Storm suffered months of agony, recovering from peritonitis, but his life was transformed. The avowed atheist became an ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ. The Reverend Howard Storm now makes it his life’s work to share his experience and to share with others God’s unconditional, redeeming love. This book moved me. I hope you will enjoy it too.

Return To Top

“Autism is a world” is a new DVD available at the library. An Academy Award nominated film for the 2004 Documentary Short Subject, it is the story of Sue Rubin and is told in her own words. “Autism is a World” takes the viewer on a journey into Sue’s mind, her world, and her life with autism. A co-production of CNN Productions and State of the Art, Inc., the film runs about 40 minutes.

Return To Top

The Senior’s Guide to Easy Computing: PC Basics, Internet, and E-Mail is exactly what it says, a basic guide to the personal computer. Easy to read and in a clear, user-friendly format, it covers everything from what is a PC and how to start a computer to understanding Windows, file management, Internet and e-mail. This is the book for anyone who is interested in learning to use a computer but who feels they are too ignorant to start. It takes the “fear factor” out of beginning computing.

Return To Top

Parents of preschoolers who want to help their children learn should read Ready to Learn: How to Help Your Preschooler Succeed by Stan Goldberg, Ph.D. Chapters include the following:

• Becoming a World-Class Teaching Parent
• Understanding Your Child’s Feelings
• Strategies to Help Learning
• Getting Others to Help
• Your Child’s Future

This is a book I wish I had read when my children were toddlers.

Return To Top

“The great capital city of the Assyrian Empire was Nineveh…At the height of its glory…it was surrounded by rich irrigated farmlands…and had an estimated population of 120,000 people…Nineveh was a city of huge palaces and temples and gorgeous sculpture.” Today the site of ancient Nineveh is one of devastation, a barren landscape. What caused this desolation? Archeologists discovered that the Assyrians caused their own downfall. A decline in natural resources, deforestation, and environmentally unsustainable irrigation all weakened the civilization and made it vulnerable to its enemies. Salinization, soil degradation and desertification gradually turned what had once been the rich Assyrian Empire into a bleak desert. The region committed “ecological suicide”.

In their book, One with Nineveh, Stanford University biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich argue that the world is facing the same problems today, and this time the impact could be global. The Ehrlich’s contend that rising consumption, increasing world population, and unchecked political and economic inequity are the driving forces of this coming calamity. However, they also offer solutions, which if implemented could avert disaster. It is time for the world and the United States in particular to stop burying its collective head in the sand and deal with this threatening environmental catastrophe.

Readable and well-researched, One with Nineveh should be read by all who believe we are to be good stewards of the Earth.

Return To Top

By far the best Patricia Cornwell book, I have read to date, is Portrait of a Killer. (To be fair I have only read two others, Southern Cross and Isle of Dogs.) Cornwell uses modern investigative techniques, including DNA analysis, and superb research to construct a circumstantial case against a well-known 19th century artist, Walter Sickert. For my money, she got her man!

Sickert was at best a bizarre character and at worst Jack the Ripper. Born with a sexual deformity, Sickert underwent three surgeries as a boy to correct the defect. The agony he must have suffered in those days of primitive surgical techniques, no anesthesia, and the want of decent sanitation can only be imagined. At least two of the surgeries failed, and it is unclear whether Sickert could perform normal sexual functions as an adult.

Walter was the son of a remote, often absent father and a mother, who doted on him, perhaps in unhealthy ways. A pampered child, he grew-up to be a cold, self-absorbed man. Cornwell describes him as a psychopath--arrogant, manipulative--who lacked feeling. It was when she viewed his violent paintings that she became obsessed with applying modern forensic and investigative techniques to the Ripper crimes in an effort to prove Sickert’s involvement.

Cornwell comes up with a number of noteworthy discovers, including the following:

• DNA links
• Similarities in the drawing styles
• Similarities in wording and phraseology

The case is circumstantial, but when added together, the weight of the evidence is impressive. Patricia Cornwell has written a fascinating, persuasive account that just may have solved the case of Jack the Ripper.

Return To Top

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was the worst disaster in New York City history until the sorrow of September 11, 2001. Dave Von Drehle retells this catastrophe in horrific detail in his thoroughly researched history. He sets the scene in his prologue, describing rows of unrecognizable, charred bodies, lying in coffins, lining a New York City pier. Then flashing back to the 1909 general labor strike, Von Drehle sets the historic scene of the labor movement in the early Twentieth Century and the working conditions that led to this tragedy.

The Triangle Shirtwaist factory employed primarily young immigrant women, who worked for meager wages in unsafe working conditions. Von Drehle goes back to March 25, 1911, and introduces readers to some of the workers who lost their lives. He leads readers to see them as not just nameless statistics, but as young women struggling to survive, living in dingy tenements, and working an 84-hour work week. Once the fire started, it took only fifteen minutes to kill 146 people in a blazing inferno. Some jumped to their deaths, but most were trapped behind a locked door on the ninth floor. In the fire’s aftermath factory owners were acquitted of all charges; however, public outrage led to reforms that the 1909 labor strike had not achieved for factory workers. One can not help but be saddened that it took a tragedy of this magnitude to attain these rights. Triangle: The Fire that Changed America is a well-documented, readable history of a sad day in American history.

Return To Top

Two people lie battered and dead among the sand dunes of Baritone Bay. In Jim Crace’s Being Dead chapters alternate back and forth in time and introduce readers to the deceased couple, Joseph and Celice. Moving backward (sometimes by an hour—sometimes by two) author Crace describes the seemingly unimportant decisions, made during their last day, that led inexorably to the death of the couple. Other chapters return Joesph and Celice to their first encounter and move forward to explain the significance of Baritone Bay in their lives, and the lives they led. Interspersed among these chapters are other chapters, describing crabs, gulls and maggots as they toil during the process of decomposition. Because of these scenes and others of graphic violence and of sexual content, Being Dead is not a book for the squeamish and is not recommended for everyone. It is, however, a thoughtful look at two lives and at the process of being dead, and it is also an ALA Notable Book.

Return To Top

Ned Kelly is to Australia as Jessie James is to America. He is the quintessential Australian outlaw. Raised dirt poor in the Outback, Ned is the son of Irish immigrants in a country where the Irish were "considered a notch beneath cattle". Living conditions are horrid, and law enforcement is corrupt, kowtowing to the wealthy and powerful English interests.

The tale begins with the capture of the Kelly gang, foretelling an unfortunate end for Ned. It proceeds in flashback and purports to be Ned’s own narrative of his life, composed for his unborn daughter. Ned is a good-hearted young man, who dreams of homesteading and horse breeding. Alas, it is not to be for poor Ned. When he is twelve years old, his mother apprentices him to the notorious bushranger (outlaw) Harry Powers in the hope that he will learn a "trade" and provide her a comfortable lifestyle. Ned is set on a course he did not choose.

Carey writes in Ned’s semi-literate style, ignoring grammatical niceties. He substitutes polite euphemisms for "rough expressions" i. e. "It were too adjectival hot". However, this style effectively encapsulates the social and historical setting of the book.

True History of the Kelly Gang is a historical novel, set in Australia, that reads like an American western. It is a 2002 ALA Notable Book.

Return To Top

A wonderfully written account of the sinking of the ocean liner, Lusitania, in 1915 by a German submarine, killing 1,198 men, women and children of which 128 were Americans. The Lusitania tragedy reverberated throughout the world. It was a contributing factor in the eventual entry of the United States into World War I. Author Preston draws on previously unavailable British and American archives and recently translated German documents to provide a comprehensive history of the disaster. She puts to rest many of the fallacies and controversies surrounding the incident, including whether the Lusitania was carrying troops and explosives destined for the war. Author Preston weaves the stories of the doomed and of the survivors into her history, which involves the reader in the heartbreak of this pivotal event.

Return To Top

Bruce Olds' novel about the notorious gambler, gunfighter Doc Holiday is not for everyone and not a typical western. Readers should be prepared for a reading challenge with this book. It is an unusual collage-style novel, which is part poetry, part quotation, part fictional reportage, part narrative, and very little of the traditional novel. Olds tries to capture the essence of Doc Holiday and pluck the real man from fictional and Hollywood distortion. He does, in fact, accomplish his goal. Doc Holiday was a man, defined by the consumption that killed him. A walking dead man, Holiday was diagnosed and given six months to live while in his early 20s. However, he bucked the tiger (also a gambling term) for 15 years before finally succumbing.

Return To Top

Goodman, Carol.  The Lake of Dead Languages.

The Lake of Dead Languages is writing instructor Carol Goodman’s first novel. It is an intricately plotted tale of buried secrets. Set in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, Latin teacher Jane Hudson returns to her alma mater, the Heart Lake School for Girls; where the legend of the three rocks is said to lure girls to commit suicide. Jane’s best friends, Deidre and Lucy, died at the school twenty years earlier, supposedly suicides. Now, girls are dying again, and these new deaths are following the same pattern as Lucy's and Deidre's deaths. Missing pages from a journal Jane wrote during her teen years mysteriously begin appearing again. This does not seem to be coincidence. Are the secrets of the past coming back to haunt Jane? What evil is at the core of The Lake of Dead Languages.

Return To Top

Life of Pi: A Novel is a very different kind of story--not your typical novel. It relates the story of sixteen year-old Pi Patal, son of a zookeeper in Pondicherry, India. Pi is a young man in search of spirituality and truth. His search leads him to accept not only his native Hindi religion but Christianity and Islam as well. For a number of reasons Pi’s father decides to move his family and part of their zoo to Canada; however, the rickety cargo ship on which they travel wrecks in a typhoon. Pi loses his whole family and ends up sharing a 27 foot lifeboat with Richard Parker, a Bengal tiger. They spend 227 days together. The Life of Pi is really a fable about survival, spirituality and truth. Yann Martel is a Spanish writer, and this is his second novel.

Return To Top

Set in a small, rural North Dakota town, following the First World War, The Master Butchers Singing Club traces the lives of two people, Master Butcher Fidelis Waldvogel and Delphine Watzka.

Having fought for Germany in the world war, Fidelis returns home and marries Eva, the fiancée of his deceased best friend. Eva also happens to be pregnant with his friend’s child, but Fidelis had promised to look after her. His sense of honor convinces him that marriage is the right thing to do. He packs up his father’s butcher knives and immigrates to America. When his train has a stopover in Argus, North Dakota, Fidelis decides that this is as good a place as any so he opens shop.

Delphine, on the other hand, is a native of Argus and the daughter of the town drunk. A Vaudeville performer, she wants to put Argus behind her and has been traveling Minnesota, doing a balancing act with her live-in partner, Cyprian Lazarre. She and Cyprian return to Argus for a visit and stay to care for her father Roy. A hopeless alcoholic, he lives in a rundown hovel that reeks of a foul odor. The source of the odor will have a bearing on the rest of their lives. The Master Butchers Singing Club is simply the best novel I have read in a long time. I would put this book on a level with another of my favorite books, Cold Sassy Tree. Richly developed, unusual characters, a distinctive setting and intricately woven plot characterize this novel. The writing is beautiful. The characters are memorable. I highly recommend this book.

Return To Top

SPL Home Page