January 2009 Archives

Reviewed by John Glover, Reference Librarian for the Humanities

The Musical Illusionist is a work of strange fiction, the sort most notably practiced by Borges in works like "The Total Library." Traditional concepts of character and plot dwindle almost to the vanishing place, replaced by bizarre anecdotes and conjectures that are located in his postulated Library of Tangents. The experience of reading these stories is closer to that of reading essays than that of traditional stories. They deal in possibility rather than in the definite, couched in Rose's dryly speculative prose. If a Victorian entomologist had chanced to step through a looking glass to a parallel Earth, this might have been the result.

Each story is framed as part of a words-and-pictures Special Exhibition, inviting the reader to examine the grouped stories as much as consuming them. If you're looking for something unusual to read, a flight of fancy that will leave you thinking new thoughts and dreaming strange dreams, this is your book.

Cabell Library PS3618.O7828 M87 2007

Nineteen writers dig into the imaginative spaces between conventional genres—realistic and fantastical, scholarly and poetic, personal and political—and bring up gems of new fiction: interstitial fiction. This is the literary mode of the new century, a reflection of the complex, ambiguous, and challenging world that we live in. These nineteen stories, by some of the most interesting and innovative writers working today, will change your mind about what stories can and should do as they explore the imaginative space between conventional genres. The editors garnered stories from new and established authors in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, and also fiction translated from Spanish, Hungarian, and French. The collection features stories from Christopher Barzak, Colin Greenland, Holly Phillips, Rachel Pollack, Vandana Singh, Anna Tambour, Catherynne Valente, Leslie What, and others.

Cabell Library PN6120.2 .I47 2007

Note: Quick Picks are new to the collection. Some may not yet have reached the shelves. If you want to check out an item that is not yet available, click the "Is this item available?" link in the catalog record, then click the "Request" link.

Reviewed by Judy Pask, Reference Librarian

As the subtitle says, this is the story of “one man’s mission to promote peace….one school at a time” in the mountainous regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Honoring a promise to build a school for a small village in Pakistan, Mortenson has found his lifetime work in planting the seeds of peace through education, and particularly the education of young Muslim girls.

Mortenson stumbled into the poor village of Korphe, high in Pakistan’s Karakoram Himalya region, tired and depressed after an unsuccessful climb to the summit of K2, the second highest mountain in the world, in 1993. The generosity of the villagers who nursed him back to health motivated him to promise his help in providing a school building. His promise evolved into an organization that has now built over 65 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as numerous community projects such as women’s centers and water systems.

Learning how to work in the native culture as well as how to build such projects, he survived an 8-day armed kidnapping by the Taliban, escaped a 2003 firefight with feuding Afghan warlords and overcame two fatwehs from enraged Islamic mullahs for educating girls. His work demonstrates his belief that the war on terrorism is one of hearts and minds, not bullets and bombs, and that it can be won by providing young people with a non-extremist education. This bestseller is a very personal account of change in a region of the world that remains in the headlines.

Cabell Library LC2330 .M67 2007

Reviewed by John Glover, Reference Librarian for the Humanities

New York City has been the subject of countless novels and short stories throughout its existence, and it finds an eerily able chronicler in Richard Price. The author, well known for his gritty, street-level writing shifts his focus here from Jersey to the Big Apple, exploring the crumbling tenements and lives that are being "transitioned" into something newer, bigger, better, and brighter--whether they want to or not. These changes don't come free, and over the course of the book we see the inevitable fading away of much that is good along with the bad.

The story springs from the killing of a young, eyes-on-the-prize actor whose death causes a media sensation. The plot hews to the familiar lines of mysteries and police procedurals, but invests them with the depth of humanity found in all enduring literature. He shifts the prose to match the rhythms of the moment, but the dialogue is where the book shines. Price's dialogue has been praised by many reviewers and critics, and the pains he takes to represent contemporary slang--and the lives of characters much different from himself--is on clear display here. Lush Life will appeal to readers to who enjoy stories of city life, racial politics, and urban resurrection.

Cabell Library PS3566.R544 L89 2008