NYPL Blogs: Biblio File

Inspiration in the Picture Collection: Louis Slobodkin

Billy Parrott, Mid-Manhattan Library, Art and Picture Collections — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:55:30 -0400

For the famous or for those aspring to be, for those who have a job to do, an assignment to finish, or for those just doing what they love, the Picture Collection has long been a valuable resource and source of inspiration.

On May 20, 1944 the Picture Collection received a thank-you letter from Louis Slobodkin.

Slobodkin was a sculptor, author, and illustrator and a regular user of the Picture Collection.

In 1939 he was runner-up in a sculpture contest associated with the New York World's Fair. He was awarded $10,000 (the equivalent of receiving $165,030.22 today!) for his statue of a young rail-splitting Abraham Lincoln. In 1941 he headed up the sculpture division of the Works Progress Administration.

It was during this time that he started the work he is most known for. He illustrated numerous books for Eleanor Estes, including The Moffats (1941), The Middle Moffat (1942), Rufus M (1943), and The Hundred Dresses (1944). In 1943 he illustrated Many Moons, by James Thurber, which went on to win the Caldecott Medal for 1944.

The Caldecott Medal was first awarded in 1938 and is awarded annually to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children. It was upon winning this prestigious award that Louis Slobodkin wrote a letter of thanks Romana Javitz, then head of the Picture Collection, stating "I am particularly grateful to you and your grand staff of the picture collection for the gracious and efficient service you render all artists and help some of us get a break like this Caldecott Award."

Louis Slobodkin lived in the Bronx but his studio was at 333 Fourth Avenue, just a few blocks southeast from the Picture Collection. I like to imagine Slobodkin leaving his studio for a nice ten minute walk to the Library to look for inspiration.

For almost one hundred years the Picture Collection has inspired New Yorkers to create. Has the Collection inspired you? We would love to hear your story!

Words or Music, Part 4: Macbeth and Manon

Robert Armitage, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Gen. Research Division — Tue, 01 May 2012 08:54:19 -0400

I have spent a lifetime reading books and perhaps half a lifetime going to the opera. Each is a very real pleasure — neither can be done without — yet both offer different kinds of satisfaction. Words? Music? Which is more important? Fortunately, I am not in the position of having to choose. Books can sometimes lead to opera; opera can sometimes find its way back into books. Since the library specializes in both these worlds of artistic expression, it might be intriguing to look briefly at some of the places they intersect.

* * *

Theatrical tradition has it that calamity will befall anyone who dares to stage — or in fact even to mention — "The Scottish Play."

A few Saturday afternoons ago I attended the operatic version of the Scottish Play, and there are certainly enough degrees of separation between Verdi and Shakespeare that I can tell you, if you haven't already guessed, that I'm talking about Macbeth.

A good case can be made for Verdi as the greatest of opera composers, and I doubt if anyone will dispute Shakespeare as the greatest of all dramatists. Shakespeare has his language, Verdi has his music, and both of them will survive nearly any sort of directorial outrage. The only thing neither of them can quite do is substitute for the other.

Although my Saturday Macbeth was gloriously sung and rousingly conducted, it was one of those odd, busy productions of which I've seen too many lately, the kind which makes me long for the old days when singers just stood there and sang. It was distractingly set during one of the European wars, probably the First (remember the Big Three: Lloyd George, the Kaiser — and the Thane of Cawdor?) The witches were a comical group of what might be called "bag ladies," who danced a sort of jitterbug to Verdi's choruses. Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking scene was performed while teetering precariously across a row of kitchen chairs. And it is unlikely that during an earlier age of opera Leonie Rysanek ever had to jump up on Leonard Warren and wrap her legs around him to show what the relationship between the Macbeths was all about. I like to think Shakespeare would have been amused, but I suspect Verdi might have registered a few complaints.

English to Italian, words to lyrics... librettos are necessary but problematic things. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, when Lady Macbeth first sets her mind on crime (regicide, back then the worst crime of all), she ponders her husband's wavering disposition:

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be
What thou art promised; yet do I fear thy nature,
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win. Thou'dst have, great
Glamis,
That which cries, 'Thus thou must do' if thou have it;
And that which rather dost fear to do,
Than wishest should be undone. . . .

The equivalent scene in operatic Macbeth (from the libretto of the RCA Victor recording ) is translated as follows:

An ambitious spirit
is yours, Macbeth . . . You long for
greatness
but would you do wrong for it?
Full of misdeeds is the path
to power, and woe to him who sets
his foot upon it doubtfully and then
retreats!

Without doubt a poorer thing, but the spirit is in these words, the addition of music makes them compelling — and at the end of the day, even a bit of authentic Shakespeare comes shimmering through. (To listen for yourself, go to YouTube.)

Others might rage at what they see as the indecent coupling of Shakespeare with opera. I am not one of them. Opera needs dramatic scaffolding, and for that where better to turn than the Bard (who often borrowed the scaffolding of his own plays from others)? There have been countless Shakespearean musical adaptations, and Verdi stakes a claim to three of the best (Otello and Falstaff are even more sophisticated than Macbeth). To name only two of my other favorites, there are the Gounod Romeo et Juliette that I have enthused about in a previous post, and on a somewhat lower but even more curious level, Ambrose Thomas's Hamlet, which contains not only a jaunty drinking song but also a happy ending!

But those comic witches, provoking titters in the audience, continue to fester in my mind in a different way from the way they festered in Macbeth's. In the 1709 Rowe edition of Shakespeare, an engraving was created for each play that would depict a specific scene, often reflecting a contemporary stage setting. Even in this earliest of Macbeth illustrations, simple though it appears, the appearance of the witches in the foreground and the apparitions in the mouth of the cave behind, illuminated by the flickering light of the cauldron, indicate their serious purpose in the drama. They are the usurpers of religion, of society, and of nature itself. Is it the witches who have determined Macbeth's actions? Is Macbeth acting on his own evil initiative? Whatever the case, these witches are clearly no laughing matter.

* * *

Opera sometimes plunders the best for its source material, as in the case of Shakespeare, more often it has even greater success in translating the second-rate.

For instance, Massenet's operatic Manon has always struck me as superior and more subtle than the original novel.

I have written before about Abbe Prevost's The History of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux, first published in France in 1731, but in terms of one of its later operatic incarnations (it has led many lives in opera and ballet) as Puccini's Manon Lescaut. The Benedictine Prevost, who is said to have based Manon Lescaut on certain sordid affairs in his own life, sounds like a fascinating character, and I suspect his biography might be more interesting than his fiction. Still, in a modern translation this novel can still be great fun to read, in a lurid sort of way. Scandalous then and still powerful today, the story follows the nobleman Des Grieux, who gives up name, reputation, and fortune to be with his lover, Manon, only to find that he must sink lower and lower (even to the point of murder) to gratify her ever-increasing taste for luxury.

In the novel, it is the monumentally unappealing principal characters who are a hurdle to any sympathetic response.

In Massenet's French operatic version, however, while Manon is just as ruthless and single-minded in her pursuit of the good life, the underlying musical themes offer a psychological complexity not to be found in the original. Maybe that's because music strikes more directly at the emotions. In the score, Manon's reflections as a young girl on her way to the convent (from which she will soon be deflected) show an innocent fragility. Her aria "Adieu notre petite table," sung with the knowledge that her betrayal of Des Grieux must lead to the end of her present happiness, is hauntingly poignant. And in her death scene, the various motifs mingle and merge to heartbreaking effect. Here Des Grieux's pain is also palpable and infinitely more touching than the novel's blunt and horrific conclusion, which finds the Chevalier alone with her corpse, where he "remained for twenty-four hours without taking my lips from the still beauteous countenance of my adored Manon."

In prose or music, Manon Lescaut is still the portrait of a woman as seen through a man's eyes, and it is an archetype you'll find repeated again and again in books and plays — in fact, many of the mercenary femme fatales in film noir have their roots in Manon. Although I find no redeeming qualities in Prevost's materialistic heroine, I can clearly see in her operatic equivalent the reasons for Des Grieux's obsession. When she is embodied by Anna Netrebko — what Chevalier wouldn't give up his good name?

Netrebko is magnificent in the role; but except for her radiant presence, the recent staging I saw was clunky and unsubtle. To give one notable example: in the novel, Des Grieux tries to forget Manon by turning to the religious life, where, in his words, "I now thought myself entirely safe from the dangers of love. I fancied that I could have preferred a single page of St. Augustine, or a quarter of an hour of Christian meditation, to every sensual gratification, not excepting any that I might have derived even from Manon's society." But Manon tracks down the new abbe in the chapel of Saint Sulpice, where he is plunged "again headlong into the gulf; and my ruin was the more irreparable, because, falling at once to the same depth from whence I had been before rescued, each of the new disorders into which I now lapsed carried me deeper and deeper still down the profound abyss of vice." In Massent's opera, Des Grieux's wavering resistance cannot hold out for long against Manon's provoking, insinuating, irresistible music. Everything you need to know about their relationship is in that music. On stage, however, in case you might otherwise have missed the point, the scene was played on a bed. A bed which had somehow found its way into the middle of the chapel! This seems a good example of distrusting both words and music.

For earlier reflections on books which were the source of opera, and operas which turned books into something else entirely, see earlier posts on July 8, 2010, March 31, 2009, and November 25, 2008.

Made of Corn But Not Quite Edible

Jessica Pigza, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Rare Book Division — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 08:43:19 -0400

George M. Rommel, an early twentieth century animal husbandman and farm expert, was not one to shy away from novel solutions to agricultural challenges in America. In 1905, he championed the import from Bermuda of a breed of “woolless” sheep to address America’s “alarming appetite for lamb” (Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/5/1905). And he was always on the lookout for potential new uses for leftovers from agricultural enterprises. It should not, therefore, come as a surprise that his book on agricultural refuse industries, Farm Products in Industry, was printed on paper made from cornstalks and bound with boards made from cottonseed hulls.

Published by the Rae D. Henkle Company in 1928, Farm Products in Industry was the result of Rommel’s extensive survey of possible ways to conserve agricultural resources as well as provide relief for farmers. The volume itself, made of corn and cottonseed refuse, is a monument to the possibilities of using agricultural waste in bookmaking. Cornstalks were just piling up and in need of a makeover, apparently. Just in Iowa and Illinois, Rommel estimated, the “unused parts of the corn plant... amount to 8,000,000 bone-dry tons” annually. I examined the copy of Rommel's book held by the Rare Book Division, and its pages are clean, sound, and in perfect condition, 84 years later.

From my admittedly inexpert reading of some scientific papermaking reports, it seems that many challenges (of chemistry, of fibers, of equipment, and more) stood in the way of creating a large-scale cornstalk paper industry in the early twentieth century. Nevertheless, the topic is of perennial interest. A corn-based toilet tissue won the 2009 Indiana Student Corn Innovation Contest just three years ago. And in the Philippines, plans were announced just a few months ago to build a papermaking plant that will make use of the surrounding cornstalk-filled countryside.

Farm Products in Industry might not quite be an edible book, but I still think it’s worth considering during this month when we celebrate such things.

The Importance of Earthworms: Darwin’s Last Manuscript

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 05:36:59 -0400

Charles Darwin died 130 years ago today, leaving an intellectual legacy which has profoundly influenced the general course of Western thought. He is best known for his work On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871), both of which introduced radical new ideas for the time concerning the origins of humans and all life. Darwin's last work, however, devoted itself entirely to a more down-to-earth species: the lowly earthworm.

In his final book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms (1881), Darwin concluded, "It may be doubted if there are any other animals which have played such an important part in the history of the world as these lowly organized creatures." If the concept of evolution didn’t give Darwin enough grief from his contemporaries, this monograph on worms provoked even more ridicule. But Darwin had the last laugh: The book was a runaway best-seller. Although its title would never fly with today's publishers, the book nevertheless sold more copies than his earlier books, due largely to England's healthy obsession with gardening.

With the help of his children, with whom he set out early each morning (and often on rainy nights) while the ground was still cool and moist, Darwin observed and recorded the habits of the earthworm and its effect on soil formation. Darwin learned that worms literally move the earth in the process of their meanderings. Their passage through the earth aerates the soil and the natural chemistry of their guts renders soil and plant matter into fertile pellets. As a by-product of their movements, worms deposit new soil on the surface, causing whatever was on top to slowly submerge. Thus, whole monuments may be buried over a period of decades. It is estimated that for a single acre of cultivated land, earthworms move 8 tons of earth in a year, enough to produce a new layer of earth 2 inches thick, rich in nitrogen, phosphorous and calcium.

Before the plough, the earthworm was the earth’s best tiller, as it digested earth and munched on leaves, leaving behind a rich hummus layer. Vermiculture enthusiasts will agree that worm juice (or "compost tea") collected beneath their compost bins is a superior organic fertilizing agent for their gardens.

Originally a student of geology, Darwin was of course interested in how earthen strata transformed over geologic eras, but his uncle, Josiah Wedgwood, suggested he investigate a peculiar small-scale mystery: What made soil cover dissipate and disappear over time? Uncle Jos suspected the vanishing was achieved solely through the agency of the humble worm, and it soon became obvious that earthworms were indeed the culprit. Darwin measured the rate of burial by using his famous “worm stone” which was a stationary stone whose slow submersion was tracked and charted by Darwin and his son Horace.

NYPL has a digital version (also available to download) of an early edition of The Formation of Mould, a must-read for fans of gardening, a good example of the scientific method, and probably the most attractive pictures of worm poop you'll ever see. NYPL also has books about gardening and vermiculture (such as "Worms Eat our Garbage") for us compost-loving city folk.

Kids, parents and teachers, celebrate Earth Day by joining the Bug Bioblitz as part of the National Environment Education Week, April 15-21, 2012.

Special Library in Focus: The American Museum of Natural History Library

Miranda J. McDermott, Grand Concourse — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:19:46 -0400

Background Info on the Museum & Library: Luckily for me, I was able to visit the library of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) with a staff group. I did not realize that their library is open to the public, and I was not aware of the amount of empirical research that goes on in the museum. The museum is focused on the natural sciences, the earth and animals. There are about 200 scientists that work for the museum, and the library is a METRO member. The library is a special library and academic library. There is a graduate school attached to the museum in which students study comparative biology. The museum publishes three journals.

Online library: There are many databases available electronically, either with no restrictions on location of access (world symbol) or available on site in the Research Library of the AMNH.

Education department online resources:

Ology: The Museum Science Website for Kids

Physical library: The physical library is open to the public Tuesday through Thursday 2 p.m.-5 p.m. High school students (or any student group) could have a tour of the library if they would like. The public is welcome to use the materials in the library. They cannot borrow books. Photocopying for the newer books is available for 25 cents per page. For older materials, the library staff asks that customers bookmark which pages they would like photocopied, and the staff will photocopy the pages for them. Materials in the closed stacks can be paged by filling out a call slip and submitting it to staff. Items can be placed on reserve to facilitate access to materials at a later time. There is mainly information on earth science, zoology, astronomy, astrophysics, anthropology and animal natural sciences in the library, some in foreign languages, including German and French. Users of the library include PhD and postdoctoral students, as well as staff of the museum.

The library consists of 14 full-time staff, including the director, reference librarian, a conservator, acquisitions, cataloging and special collections departments (Special collections includes non-print materials such as photographs, moving images, archives and manuscripts, and art and museum memorabilia). The library is very open, spacious, and inviting. There are tables where people can work and comfortable chairs to sit in. Wi-fi access is present. There are display cases with artifacts and framed photographs decorate the library. It is a beautiful facility that is useful for those doing advanced research in the natural sciences. The library consists mainly of books (e.g., dog breeds) and journals relating to the natural sciences (e.g., zoology), but also including a fair amount of reference books, including a Chinese-English dictionary. There are also five computers for database access.

The museum does have an off-site storage facility, and there are libraries in the specific research departments, which are often small and highly specialized. The library is working towards adding all of the materials in the department libraries to the online catalog to increase accessibility of the items. The library enhances its collections through donations and grants. The library is also a part of the Biodiversity Heritage Library, which is an effort to digitize materials relating to the biological sciences and make them free to users to prevent extinction and make the material accessible to users who do not live in large urban areas.

My experience working in a medical library: I have relatives in medical professions, including two nurse aunts and two medical physicists (an uncle and a sister). I also had the occasion to work in the library of a medical communications company. We worked to digitize our journal collection there. I also worked on augmenting a database we had that consisted of medical meetings and journals. The company had staff that worked with professors at universities to publish their manuscripts as articles in medical journals.

Find 2012 Pulitzer Prize Winners at NYPL

Lauren Lampasone, Reference and Research Services — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:47:39 -0400

To see all past Pulitzer winners, visit the Awards section of the NYPL BiblioCommons catalog.

Fiction

Winner: None.

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell ("'It Was a Very Good Year': One Librarian's Fiction Recommendations for 2011", video of Karen Russell at NYPL with Wells Tower)
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace ("This is Water.")

General Nonfiction

Winner: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

One Hundred Names For Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing by Diane Ackerman
Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men by Mara Hvistendahl

Biography

Winner: George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis (Surprise, Security, and the American Experience)

Love and Capital: Karl and Jennie Marx and the Birth of a Revolution by Mary Gabriel ("WOW @ The Library in Celebration of Women’s History Month")
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable (panel at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

History

Winner: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable (panel at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

Empires, Nations & Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860 by Anne F. Hyde
The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan
Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard White

Drama

Winner: Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegría Hudes

Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz
Sons of the Prophet by Stephen Karam

Poetry

Winner: Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith

Core Samples from the World by Forrest Gander
How Long by Ron Padgett

Iceland Moss and Charles Dickens

Jessica Pigza, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Rare Book Division — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 06:38:31 -0400

Thanks to bibliophile George Arents, the Rare Book Division's holdings include an extensive collection of nineteenth century books in parts, and they are fascinating artifacts of their time. Little did I know, however, that I'd learn about a healthful and tasty lichen drink while reading one.

Sarah Augusta Dickson, the first curator of the George Arents Collection, defined this particular form of serial fiction as "published piecemeal over a period of time, each unit having its separate cover, usually paper or boards, and in many cases with the title-page and other preliminary matter for the volume or volumes at the end of the last part." A nineteenth century reader of books in parts would purchase a new part in the series perhaps once a month, and at the novel's end would be able to take the entire stack of parts, with their inserted supplemental pages like illustrative plates and title page, to be bound together into a standalone novel.

Dickens famously published his work in parts, and recently I had the opportunity to study Our Mutual Friend (pictured above), published in monthly installments from May 1864 to November 1865. It's often the pages found at the beginning and end of each part that are most interesting to readers and scholars. These pages include ads for household products, fashion, foods, remedies, and other books promoted by the publisher. And the advertisement that caught my eye in Our Mutual Friend was this one, for Fry's Iceland Moss Cocoa.

A lichen, Iceland moss was once commonly used to treat pulmonary difficulties, inflammation, and digestive ailments. It was usually prepared by boiling and steeping before drinking, and chocolate and sugar were popular additions to the mixture to make it taste better. Today, you might find it in toothpaste, as a baking ingredient in a dried and ground version, and — just as in Dickens's time — in hot drinks made to treat colds and coughs. This particular advertisement appears only once in our series, in part one, although other Fry & Sons advertisements appear later, promoting other cocoa concoctions.

If you want to learn more about the world of Our Mutual Friend, I recommend visiting the University of Santa Cruz's Dickens Project, where you'll find information and images covering nineteenth century London, Dickens as a writer, the advertisements like the one above, illustrations of the novel, and more.

The Annotated X-Men: A Top 10 List

Ryan P. Donovan, Mid-Manhattan Library — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:07:05 -0400

Looking for a good guide to get started with everyone's favorite mutant superheroes, the X-Men? Well, the New York Public Library has got a list for you! Explore this annotated list of the X-Men adventures collected in trade paperback format. Sadly, my favorite one-time X-Man Longshot is not featured in any of these stories. Also, join us next month at the Mid-Manhattan Library for Free Comic Book Day!

The Dark Phoenix Saga

Largely considered to be one of, if not the, greatest X-Men stories of all time. The Dark Phoenix saga focuses on original X-Man Jean Grey and her corruption and eventual destruction as the cosmic entity Phoenix. Initially, Jean Grey became the Phoenix to stop the mad tyrant D’Ken from the alien Shi’Ar. After defeating him and ending the crisis, the Phoenix remains with the X-Men... but it finds itself addicted to human feelings and impulses. When Mastermind, an old foe of the X-Men, exposes Phoenix to dark urges... well, things don’t go so great for anybody. This story is adapted in the X-Men Animated Series and less faithfully in X-Men: The Last Stand.

Age of Apocalypse

Not everyone knows that Charles Xavier, founder of the X-Men, had a son. His name was David Haller and, for much of the young man’s life, Charles didn’t know of his existence, either. Suffering from a form of dissociative identity disorder, he was institutionalized and medicated for much of his life. Accessing his vast mutant psionic powers, he hatches an insane plot to go back in time to Israel when Charles and his enemy Magneto first became friends. His plan? To kill the Magnus before he can become the X-Men’s greatest enemy. When he kills Xavier accidentally, he plunges the world into an Age of Apocalypse.

God Loves, Man Kills

The X-Men face a very different enemy in this story: Reverend William Stryker. Using anti-mutant sentiment across the country to gain a following, Stryker is able to eventually kidnap Professor Charles Xavier, Cyclops, and Storm in an attempt to eradicate all mutants. This forces the team into a somewhat uneasy alliance with their enemy Magneto, who also seeks to stop Stryker. The story is notable in that the X-Men don’t face off against any costumed super-powered villains and serves to highlight the prejudice and discrimination the team faced just for being born different. The story is adapted loosely in the film X2.

Civil War

Not so long ago, the Marvel Universe was plunged into a superhero Civil War. The X-Men were not on the front lines of this war, having recently become an endangered species after the Avenger Scarlet Witch had depowered most of the world's mutants. But when rogue members of the X-Men’s defunct sister team X-Force take it upon themselves to liberate mutantkind, Cyclops, Bishop, and the government all attempt to stop them. For other Civil War stories featuring Marvel characters, be sure to check out Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the Amazing Spider-Man, and Young Avengers & the Runaways. For background information, visit the Marvel Universe Wiki.

Prelude to Onslaught

Bishop, a time traveling mutant law enforcer from the future, found himself stranded in our time while pursuing a criminal. He’s more than a little starstruck at meeting the mythical X-Men... after all, in his time they are legends. He tells the team a cautionary tale; there was a rumor that the team had been destroyed from the inside out. There was a traitor in their midst. Believing it initially to be Gambit, Bishop begins to change his mind after getting to know him. He admits to not having any idea of who it could be. This story chronicles the revelation of who that traitor is... and why the X-Men never would have seen it coming.

X-Men Forever

Ever wondered how Chris Claremont’s 17-year run on Uncanny X-Men would have ended? This is the concept behind the series X-Men: Forever. In Picking Up Where We Left Off, Storm betrays the team and incinerates Wolverine. Subsequent stories follow an expanded roster of the team, including Kitty Pryde sporting an adamantium claw and a de-aged Storm named 'Ro. Check out these additional collections: The Secret History of the Sentinels, Come to Mother … Russia!, and Devil in a White Dress. The story is considered to be in an alternate history of the X-Men where Magneto never returned (and perhaps really died) after the destruction of Asteroid M.

X-Cutioner's Song

It’s a beautiful day in Central Park. Pop superstar Lila Cheney is holding a benefit concert for peace. Charles Xavier is slated to speak, and he opens with a heartfelt plea for all of humanity to look at mutants like they are people, too. It’s during this speech that Cable, a time travelling ally of the X-Men, appears and shoots Xavier in the chest. He teleports out and the X-Men race to get their mentor stabilized. As a techno-virus threaten to destroy Charles from the inside out, the extended family of the X-Men come together to track down Cable and the archvillain Apocalypse and avenge the man that brought them together.

Marvel Masterworks

Sometimes the only place to start is at the beginning. Explore these classic collections of the original issues of Uncanny X-Men reprinted in black & white. Many of these stories, written by either the prolific Stan Lee or Chris Claremont, also feature crossovers with the X-Men’s sister team The New Mutants who were formed around this time. Several stories, such as the United Nations putting Magneto on trial for crimes against humanity, don’t often play out in the ways you might expect. The team also faces memorable antagonists like The Hellfire Club, Proteus, and the evil witch Selene. Also, check out more recent issues of Uncanny X-Men, too.

Messiah Complex

After Magneto’s daughter Wanda Maximoff depowered most of the world’s mutant population rendering them as nearly an endangered species, the X-Men soon realized that no new children being born were mutants. Hank McCoy tries to find both a scientific or a mystical reason for this but answers are not to be found. So when a young girl with red hair — named Hope, of all things — is finally mutant-born, the X-Men race against Mr. Sinister, the Marauders, the Acolytes, and others so they can protect the child at all costs. What’s even more disturbing? The biggest threat to Hope is in fact a former X-Man no one expected.

Nation X

After relocating to the west coast, the X-Men eventually settle on the remains of Magneto’s former base Asteroid M. With Cyclops attempting to make the team’s new island home both habitable and sustainable, he also opens his doors to any and all mutants who want to live there. After butting heads with his longtime comrades Hank McCoy and Professor Xavier, he finds support from unlikely individuals such as the Atlantean king Namor and the X-Men’s foe Magneto himself, who offers to help Cyclops embrace his vision as it now coincides with his own. But with the X-Men gathering mutants all in one place, are they just making themselves one big target?

Check out this booklist on BiblioCommons >>

When Kings Clash — A "Game of Thrones" Reading List

Joshua Soule, Spuyten Duyvil — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 08:13:26 -0400

Once the shock of last season's ending wore off, the clamor began for new episodes of Game of Thrones. Fans have been whetting their appetites for a year now, and hopefully last year's read-alike list helped take the edge off the anticipation for some of you. But now, war comes to Westeros, and with it a new suggested readings list for those who crave a little blood and grunge in their fantasy. Let the Clash of Kings begin!

Have you ever read a book that turned your genre expectations upside down, inside out, and spanked them like misbehaving brats to boot? Even in today's fantasy literature environment, which is filled with authors like George R.R. Martin, Joe Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy, beginning with The Blade Itself, stands out like a festering boil of rotten politics, conniving heroes, and honest torturers. From wastrel army officer Jezal dan Luthar and ex-wastrel officer turned maimed torturer Sand dan Glokta to a barbarian with a supremely blood reputation, the book plumbs human depravity with a certain unsettling glee while still making its protagonists sympathetic. This book hits like a dagger to the gut — or one of Glokta's cleavers — and keeps cutting through the bone.

The 600-year-old IMS Chathrand has disappeared on its mission to bring peace between two warring empires with an arranged marriage. On board the gigantic, ancient ship is a captain who may or may not be insane, sentient rats waging a battle against him, and a wizard from another world who speaks through a portal to the bride-to-be. Also on board is Pazel Pathkendle, son of a disgraced hero, master of languages, and sufferer of strange seizures due to his linguistic powers. The IMS Chathrand also boasts several stowaway Ixchel, miniature warriors who threaten Pazel with his life if he reveals their presence on board. Pazel must not only contend with seizures and death threats, he also finds himself unraveling the mystery of the Red Wolf and the secrets of a diplomatic mission that bodes far more deadly consequences than peace. Robert V.S. Redick provides a satisfyingly grim tale of adventure on the high seas in The Red Wolf Conspiracy.

Raif Sevrance is only a teenager when he and his brother return from hunting to find his father, his clan chief, and several of his friends murdered in cold blood, seemingly at the hands of rival Clan Bludd. Raif suspects there is more to events than a simple quarrel between his clan, Blackhail, and Bludd, but finds himself ostracized the more he pushes to learn the truth. Ash March is a foundling living in the border city of Spire Vanis, subject to the whims of an adoptive father all too interested in her first period. Effie Sevrance is the lonely sister of Raif, possessed of strange premonitions and an affinity for the vicious hounds maintained by Clan Blackhail. Vaylo Bludd is the daring chief that ousts the mightiest of clans from its roundhouse but soon finds the price to be more than he's willing to pay. In the midst of the conflicts they live through, darker powers stir beyond the Blind, a barrier holding back creatures more terrible than death itself. In J.V. Jones' gritty and chilling fantasy, Raif and Ash must journey to the Cavern of Black Ice to prevent these creatures from escaping and wreaking havoc on their world.

You will despise Rodrigo of Caledon. This is not an opinion. You will despise and loathe him as the utterly spoiled brat he is. When his mother, Caledon's queen, passes, Rodrigo is left to fend for himself in the ensuing games of deadly politics. Rodrigo's struggle for succession serves as his trial by fire, burning the callow, youthful cruelty from him. His coming of age is complicated by the legacy of his mother: the Still, an ancient and mysterious power wielded only by members of Caledon's royal house only if they remain virginal. In The Still by David Feintuch, Rodrigo — frustrated by his lack of release while his friends and fellow travelers can indulge their desires — takes his first tentative steps to becoming a man.

Now sit back, enjoy some popcorn with the show, and plunge into these deep, satisfying, and oftentimes brutal fantasies. They are more than meaty enough to fulfill the cravings of the most demanding readers.

Terence McKenna and the Logos

Sally Speller, Mid-Manhattan Library — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 07:44:29 -0400

Sometimes naked
Sometimes mad
Now the scholar
Now the fool
Thus they appear on earth:
The free men.
— Hindu verse from Avadhoota Gita

Terence McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000), America's most beloved psychonaut, bard, ethnobotanist, folk hero, and freewheeling philosopher, rose to fame in the early 1990s with the publication of several influential books: The Archaic Revival (1992), Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge — A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution (1992), Trialogues at the Edge of the West: Chaos, Creativity, and the Resacralization of the World (with Ralph H. Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake, and Jean Houston, 1992), and True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise (1993).

Of his childhood in Paonia, Colorado — a cattle and coal town — he says in a 1993 Details magazine article, "I think my first encounter with psychedelics was looking at Colorado and trying to understand that it was once the shores of an ocean with hundred-foot-long sauropods tromping through the mangrove swamps."

In 1965, while still in high school, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and then attended the University of California, Berkeley for two years. After that, he journeyed through spiritual India, collected butterflies in Indonesia, and taught English in Japan. Drawn to Nepal by his interest in Tibetan painting and Bon, pre-Buddhist Tibetan shamanism, he studied the Tibetan language and worked as a hashish smuggler until, according to legend, a Bombay-to-Aspen shipment was seized by U.S. Customs. To avoid capture by Interpol, he fled through Asia, studying ruins along the way.

A year after the loss of their mother in 1970, he and his brother Dennis (who would later become a formally trained botanist) journeyed to the Amazon to hunt for oo-koo-he, a plant preparation containing DMT. When they arrived at the Colombian village of La Chorrera, they found ayahuasca — the hallucenogenic "strange brew" of the shamans — and Stropharia cubensis, or magic mushrooms. After an eventful trip, Terence returned to Berkeley to finish college. He completed a distributed major in Ecology, Resource Conservation, and Shamanism in 1975. One of the first outcomes of the brothers' Amazonian travels was The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens and the I Ching (1975). Another was Psilocybin, Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide (1976), the first technical handbook of its kind. Originally published under the pseudonyms O. T. Oss and O. N. Oeric, it has since been republished with the authors' real names credited.

What happened at La Chorrera would inform the rest of Terence's life, for it was there that he first experienced what he called the Logos, or the "voice in the head," a commonly reported phenomenon specific to psilocybin (the Stropharia cubensis or Psilocybe cubensis' psilocybin alkaloid is part of the tryptamine class and bears a structural relationship to serotonin in the human brain). In The Archaic Revival, Terence writes, "Psilocybin is a source of gnosis, and the voice of gnosis has been silenced in the Western mind for at least a thousand years... Our institutions, our epistemologies are bankrupt and exhausted; we must start anew and hope that with the help of shamanically-inspired personalities, we can cultivate this ancient mystery once again. The Logos can be unleashed, and the voice that spoke to Plato and Parmenides and Heraclitus can speak again in the minds of modern people. When it does, the alienation will be ended because we will have become the alien. This is the promise that is held out; it may seem to some a nightmare vision, but all historical changes of immense magnitude have a charged emotional quality. They propel people into a completely new world."

In the early 1980s, Terence did large-scale psilocybin farming, producing 70 pounds every six weeks. Then a good friend of his, an acid chemist, got arrested. Terence said in Wired magazine, "They f*cked him so terrifyingly that I saw I couldn't do this anymore. I had to work something else out." So he began lecturing on the topic of psychedelics, developing a witty and informative stream-of-consciousness style that approached performance art. The psychedelic experience, he often proclaimed, "...has no meaning unless it is able to be carried back into the collective." These talks were to be his true oeuvre, hundreds of hours of which were audio- and video-recorded and are now available online. In 1985, Terence and his then-wife, Kathleen Harrison, founded Botanical Dimensions, an ethnobotanical garden on the Big Island of Hawaii. Its purpose, says Harrison, is to build "a bridge between the categories of environment, cultural preservation, medicinal plants and psychoactive plants, hopefully to help change some of our cultural notions about plants, drugs and medicines."

Terence's breakthrough to wider media attention came in the late 80s/early 90s with Roy of Hollywood's "Something's Happening" program on KPFK radio in Los Angeles. Every Monday night, Roy showcased Terence's recorded talks and occasionally interviewed Terence live. This helped to get the word out. Something, indeed, was happening.

From the mid-80s until his death in 2000, Terence became the world's most eloquent and entertaining spokesperson for the Logos of plant intelligence, developing and expounding upon, among other Logos-inspired theories, Timewave Zero, the Stoned Ape, and the Archaic Revival. According to Terence's Novelty Theory, the end of the world is an attractor (also called the Eschaton, or the last thing), which pulls evolution and human events towards it with greater and greater speed and complexity. In his last recorded interview with John Hazard in October 1998, Terence says, "And to understand that human technologies, languages, migrations, art movements, ideologies are not something different from nature, they're the same downloads of processes that we see in the movement of continents, evolution of new species of animals except that, these human novel, emergent situations are happening much more quickly... But you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that if the universe is complexifying faster, an epoch, a time will come when this rate of complexification is occurring so rapidly that it will become itself the overwhelming phenomena in the world of three dimensional space and time. I call this the omega point or the transcendental object at the end of history... So what we have here is a new model of time, based on a very real intuition that I think most people share, which is, that time is speeding up, that human beings are part of that process, and that the culmination of that process, is now within the vein of historical time. In other words, I believe it will happen in 2012, in December, co incident with the same events that the Maya placed at the end of their calendar. Even if I am wrong, even if it's a hundred years or five hundred years later, these are spans of time that, when compared to the life of the planet, are fractions of a percentage."

Terence also conducted several public debates, or trialogues, with chaos mathematician Ralph Abraham and biologist Rupert Sheldrake, the creator of the Morphogenetic Field Theory; appeared on CDs; and performed at raves with musicians such as The Shamen, Zuvuya in England, and Space/Time in San Francisco.

In 1999, after returning to Hawaii from a speaking tour, Terence collapsed with a brain seizure and was subsequently diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most malignant form of brain cancer. Wired magazine reported, "To Terence's amazement, his doctor described the thing as a 'fruiting body' that sent 'mycelia' throughout the surrounding tissue — mycological lingo straight out of the Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide... Like everybody else, he suspected a lifetime of exotic drug use may have been to blame. 'So what about it?' he asked his doctors. 'You wanna hammer on me about that?' They assured him there was no causal link. 'So what about 35 years of daily dope smoking?' he asked. They pointed to studies suggesting that cannabis may actually shrink tumors. 'Listen,' Terence told them, 'if cannabis shrinks tumors, we would not be having this conversation.'" In an interview with Jon Hanna and Sylvia Thyssen at the 1999 AllChemical Arts Conference, when asked if he felt a need to complete any written works-in-progress, Terence replied, "...do I feel cut off in mid spiel? No, I don't feel cut off in mid spiel. It's good to rotate the spokesman, or spokespeople, every once in a while." He opted for the gamma knife, an allopathic treatment that surprised many, while his admirers around the globe provided a more holistic approach: power words gleaned from a hike up the side of the Mauna Loa volcano, a blast of good vibrations from Nevada disk jockey Art Bell's 13 million listeners, and almost 2,400 e-mail messages in his in-box from well-wishers. Less than a year after his initial diagnosis, Terence passed away, on April 3, 2000. We lost a great and fearless mind that day. In one of his last public speeches at the Esalen Institute, he said, "If psychedelics don't ready you for the great beyond, then I don't know what really does."

The Pompadour's Book: A Mystery Manuscript Owned by Madame de Pompadour

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 06:48:41 -0400

It's a small volume, neatly but unostentatiously bound in mottled calf. The gilt ornamentation is discreet, except for an impressive coat of arms on both boards. That becomes even more impressive when we identify it as the blazon of one of the standout personalities of 18th-century France, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, marquise de Pompadour — elevated from her haute-bourgeois background and a boring union with a certain M. Lenormand d'Étioles (nephew of her mother's lover) to become the official maîtresse-en-titre to King Louis XV, who ennobled her under the ancient (but extinct) title of Pompadour.

The brothers Goncourt wrote of young Mlle. Poisson/Mme. d'Étioles as she was when she burst onto the French social scene in the 1740s:

"Marvellous aptitude, a rare and learned education, had given this young woman all the gifts and graces which made of a woman what the eighteenth century called a virtuosa, an accomplished model of the seductions of her sex... All the talents of grace seemed to meet in her. No woman was a better rider; none could dance more lightly; none more quick to excite applause with the notes of her voice or the strains of an instrument ... There was no one, again, who could tell a story in a more piquant way. And where others might compete with her in the field of coquetry, she took the palm over all by her genius of dress, by the turn she gave to a bow, the air she gave to the nothing which adorned her, the signature that her taste set upon all that she wore. ...

"To please and charm, Mademoiselle Poisson had again her face, a complexion of the most extreme whiteness, lips somewhat pale, but eyes with the vivacity of fire, glances which seemed of flame, and which veiled in lightning the languid air of her lymphatic nature ... Again she had her magnificent chestnut hair, ravishing teeth, and the most delicious smile ... her figure, rounded but not large, curved admirably, her perfect hands, the play of gesture from all her vivacious, passionate body, and, above all, a mobile, varying physiognomy, marvelously animated, which the soul of the woman ceaselessly moved, and which, with incessant renewals, displayed turn by turn a moved or imperious tenderness, noble seriousness, or wanton graces."

It's no wonder the King was bewitched. Pompadour would remain his Number One Mistress from 1745 until the day she died, aged just 42, in 1764. In this role, she occupied one of the few positions of power available to women of her era. Her influence reached beyond the King's bedchamber to ...

Matters of state and of might,
Things that great ministers do...

...as the Victorian poet Austin Dobson would write in a ballade about a pretty trinket of hers, "On a Fan,"

She was also a friend and patroness of Voltaire's, which explains why the Rare Book Division of The New York Public Library acquired the volume we're discussing here. The Rare Book Division has a large collection of Voltaireana, the Martin J. Gross Collection, acquired during the administration of the former Library president, noted Voltaire scholar Paul LeClerc. (Browse the collection here.)

La Pompadour counted acting upon the stage among her plethora of accomplishments, and to please and amuse the King and herself, she installed a small but fully-equipped theater at Versailles. One of the roles she performed, on December 30, 1747, was that of the title character in Zéneïde, a trifling one-act comedy by Louis de Cahusac that may or may not have been inspired by an episode in Zeneyde by Count Anthony Hamilton, a writer of Scottish ancestry who lived in France, wrote in French, and published posthumously in his Œuvres mêlées en prose et en vers, 1731. An English version of Hamilton's Zeneyde is found in Select Tales of Count Hamilton (1760).

It was presumably around the time of this performance that the Marquise acquired the present manuscript volume, which is identified in the captions of its three sections and on the spine of its binding as "Zeneyde." It has always been assumed to be a version of Hamilton's Zeneyde. In the catalog of Pompadour's books offered for sale after her death, it was listed immediately following her copy of Hamilton's Œuvres.

However, upon closer examination, the manuscript appears to bear little or no relationship to Hamilton's Zeneyde. For one thing, there is no character by that name in all of its 487 pages, and none of its major characters appear in Hamilton's conte, a short historical tale left incomplete at his death. There is a bit of overlap in the period. The subtitle (inscribed in another hand) of the manuscript's first section is "Anecdotes du règne de Childéric," and Hamilton's Zeneyde is also set in part among the half-mythical early Merovingians.

I have been able to establish the manuscript's true identity. The text is word for word the same as that of a work by Marguerite de Lussan that appeared anonymously in 1736 under the title Anecdotes de la cour de Childeric, roi de France. This work was indeed once ascribed to Hamilton, who died 16 years before it was published. The Bibliothèque du roi (predecessor of today's Bibliothèque nationale de France) listed it under Hamilton in its catalog of 1752. However, A.A. Barbier, in his classic Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonyms (the 1822 and later editions) declares this attribution to be without foundation, and adds, "I have found the name of Mademoiselle de Lussan inscribed by hand in a copy."

Who was Marguerite de Lussan?

She was born in 1682, some say to a fortune teller named La Fleury and a coachman, while others declare her to be the child of Louis Thomas, Count of Soissons and Prince of Savoy, and an unknown courtesan. Or perhaps the child of La Fleury and the prince — modern research would seem to support this theory. At any rate, the prince, who was the older brother of the more celebrated Prince Eugene of Savoy, took a special interest in her education and permitted her to bear his arms. Feted and encouraged by older men of letters, she never married, but found a long-time companion in the minor dramatist, royal censor, and compulsive gambler Jean-Louis-Ignace de La Serre, to whom some of her works were, at times, unfairly attributed (a similar fate has befallen women writers in many eras).

Mining a vein uncovered by earlier French female romanciers, such as Madame de La Fayette and Madame de Villedieu, Lussan wrote a string of successful historical novels, mostly dealing with the tribulations of true love against the background of court life under various French monarchs. Such works were the "chick lit" of their day, popular but critically scorned — "except," writes Doris Cuff, "among enlightened people who favored literature in any form, such as, for example, Mme. de Pompadour." Indeed, Pompadour is said to have thought highly of Lussan, and possibly granted her a pension. Lussan's Anecdotes de la cour de François I (1748) is dedicated to the Marquise. She died in 1758.

I am still seeking an explanation as to why this manuscript bears the wrong title. If anyone reading this has any ideas, please tell me! In the meanwhile, the little volume keeps its secret. I've already quoted from the Austin Dobson ballade about another beautiful object that belonged to the Marquise de Pompadour. It concludes:

Where are the secrets it knew?
Weavings of plot and of plan?
— But where is the Pompadour, too?
This was the Pompadour’s Fan!

This was the Pompadour's book!

For further reading:

I've cited English translations of French works, when available.

Cahusac, Louis de. Zénéïde: comedie, en un acte, en vers, avec un divertissement. A Paris: Chez Prault fils, 1744. Available online via HathiTrust.

Catalogue des livres de la bibliothéque de feue Madame la Marquise de Pompadour, dame du palais de la Reine. A Paris: Chez J.T. Herissant, et J.T. Herissant fils, 1765. Available online via HathiTrust; Google Books.

Cuff, Doris A. "Introduction à une étude sur Marguerite de Lussan et le roman historique au commencement du XVIIIe siècle." Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France. 43e année, no. 1 (1936), pp. 1-19. Available online via JSTOR at all NYPL locations. Most of my information on Lussan is derived from this source.

Goncourt, Edmond de, and Jules de Goncourt. The Confidantes of a King: The Mistresses of Louis XV. Translated by Ernest Dowson. London: T.N. Foulis, 1907. Available online via HathiTrust; Google Books (v. 1; v. 2).

Hamilton, Anthony. Select Tales of Count Hamilton. London: Printed for J. Burd, 1760. "The History of Zeneyde": v. 2, pp. 154-230. Online resource; available onsite at the Library's research locations.

Jones, Colin. Madame de Pompadour: Images of a Mistress. London: National Gallery Company, 2002.

Jullien, Adolphe. Histoire du théâtre de Madame de Pompadour, dit Théâtre des petits cabinets. Paris: J. Baur, 1874. Available online via Google Books.

Lussan, Marguerite de. Anecdotes de la cour de Childeric, roi de France. A Paris: Chez Prault père, 1736. Available online via Google Books (v. 1; v. 2)

Lussan, Marguerite de. Anecdotes de la cour de François I . A Londres: Chez Jean Nours, 1748. Available online at the Library's research locations, and via Google Books; dedication to Pompadour follows the title page.

Salmon, Xavier, editor. Madame de Pompadour et les arts. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2002. "Madame de Pompadour bibliophile," by Isabelle Conihout: pp. 268-279.

At NYPL: Books about Pompadour in English, to borrow or read online.

I would be remiss not to mention madamedepompadour.com, a Madame de Pompadour "fan site" maintained by Lorenzo Crivellin, in Italian, French, and English. It's a great source of miscellaneous information, documents, links, and pictures of everything Pompadour, including dozens of portraits.

"Once Upon a Time" … Reading Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales at the Library

Alexandra Gomez, Central Collection Development — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 05:49:53 -0500

Popular fairy tales are coming back to life in the 21st century to put true love to the test once again in a time travel battle between good versus evil. Once Upon a Time is a drama filled with adventure and fantasy. Every fairy tale character is linked to another in a parallel, ancient world full of mystery and magic and is also entangled and stuck under a spell in the small town of Storybrooke, Maine, where Regina Mills (the Evil Queen) is the mayor.

But wait a minute... Are Snow White and Prince Charming now sharing a daughter and a grandson?

What will happened to their kingdom, and what’s next to come?

We grown-ups, who by now may have already read many fairy tales, may now exhale...

and ask all the same — Who’s to blame?

Are Mary Margaret Blanchard (Snow White) and David Nolan (Prince Charming) in love again?
Will Sydney Glass (Mirror) ever be able to come out of the glass,
Or does he deserve to remain trapped?
Will he be joining his true love, captor, and evil queen?
Perhaps a fresh reflection on Snow-white and the Seven Dwarfs may help capture an outlook, in the time being...
Also in Spanish

How will Mr. Gold (Rumpelstiltskin) be collecting his dues?
Will he be good or will everybody get sued?
Will the answer remain hidden in the soul
of the man who spun straw into gold
or remain treasured in Rumpelstiltskin’s vault?
Also in Spanish

What will the Beast become when he discovers
who's Beauty’s true love and her whereabouts?
Will he ever recover?
Or be flipping out?
Will he come back to his senses?
Or hang in suspense?
But we may not need to be much concerned,
perhaps because somehow we have learned
that Beauty and the Beast have already bestowed
The beauty of reading it aloud!
Also in Spanish

Where may Ashley Boyd (Cinderella)’s prince charming be?
Will Cinderella give us a lead?
And will it also foretell,
if the fine shoe will be suiting yellow-haired?
Also in Spanish

What out of Archie Hopper (Jiminy Cricket)’s conscience
will be hopping out?
Will Geppetto ever find out who has lied or snuck out?
Perhaps Pinocchio’s book may tell us the truth,
or give us a nosy clue...
Also in Spanish

Have Hansel and Gretel finally ditched the witch,
escaped and become rich?
Or perhaps they will be bewitched,
turned into spinach or sandwich,
or another witch's favorite dish?
Let’s hope Hansel and Gretel help us
enrich our thoughts...
Also in Spanish

Will Ruby (Red Riding Hood) manage to give the hungry wolf
a lesson that would perpetuate her glory?
Or will she just remain ruddy
'til the end of the story?
But we may not need to worry.
Perhaps a little rereading of Little Red Riding-Hood
may give us a tiny taste of the ending likelihood...
Also in Spanish

The TV series Once Upon a Time airs on ABC Channel 7 on Sundays at 8 p.m.

"Once upon a time" is a timeless tale in our local library,
therefore... we can still expect happy endings...
from time to time... In the meantime, happy library lending!

"Chris in the Morning" Reading List

Billy Parrott, Mid-Manhattan Library, Art and Picture Collections — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 08:51:32 -0500

From 1990 through 1995, the television viewing public was obsessed with the goings on in Cicely, Alaska. Northern Exposure ruled the television airwaves. And while our airwaves were dominated by this quirky drama, on the show itself the airwaves were ruled by Chris Stevens and his KBHR radio show Chris in the Morning.

Stevens' (played by actor John Corbett) outspoken anti-establishment personality and philosophical poetic manner definitely set the tone for the award-winning show.

Watching and commenting as the world passed outside his broadcast booth window, he kept the town of Cicely up to date on current events and provided them with a healthy dose of culture in the form of on-air readings. The library in Cicely consisted of a few shelves of books in Ruth-Anne's general store, but I have a feeling that Stevens had a personal library that exceeded the town's. Well read and self-educated, Stevens could converse freely on such wide ranging topics as philosophy, religion, physics, history, art, and motorcycle repair. If Stevens was reading it, you knew it had to be good.

Twenty years later, the show still makes for fun television. Can someone please get started on a list of all films mentioned by Ed Chigliak in the show?! As for literary references, there's no need for you to tune into KBHR to find out what books to read. Here is a list of great books that Stevens read on air to the town of Cicely.

A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living by Joseph Campbell

"I felt a funeral, in my brain" by Emily Dickinson

The Friendly Beasts: A Traditional Christmas Carol

Paddle to the Sea by Holling Clancy Holling

The Owl and the Pussy-cat by Edward Lear

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust

Lincoln, the President by J. G. Randall

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Midwinter Reading: Reginald Hill, Teju Cole & Anne Brontë

Robert Armitage, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Gen. Research Division — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 05:57:24 -0500

When a favorite author dies, we feel as if we have lost a good friend. When the author is the creator of a series whose characters we have lived with for many years, we feel as if we've lost a roomful of friends.

I was saddened last month when I turned a page in the New York Times and discovered an obituary for Reginald Hill, dead at the age of 75. For some time now, I have been following the adventures of several literary detectives, trying to remain patient as I await their annual or near-annual reappearances. On my list are Peter Robinson’s Alan Banks, Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley, James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux, P. D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh, and Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski. My list formerly included Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse and Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander, but they are certainly not coming back. With all these detectives competing for attention, however, I have always considered Hill’s Yorkshire coppers Dalziel and Pascoe my personal favorites.

“Fat Andy,” as his colleagues call Dalziel, is witty, rude, vulgar, and intuitive, with more than a bit of Falstaff in his character. Pascoe is younger, married, university-educated, and politically correct. They would seem to have nothing whatsoever in common, but as crime-fighters, they make a formidable team.

These characters are so vivid that their lives have always seemed to me, on some curious level, independent of the stories they appear in. Once I became involved with these 24 novels, I began to wonder what Dalziel, Pascoe, Ellie, Wieldy, and the others were getting themselves up to between episodes. At least there was always the prospect of a new book to fill in the gaps, but now they’ve all skidded to a halt and will remain forever in literary limbo.

I thought at least Dalziel would go on forever...

* * *

In a recent blog post, I lamented the fact that first novels and I don’t often hook up. Mostly I don’t hear about them, and when I do, in places like the New York Times Book Review, I can rarely work up sufficient enthusiasm to pursue them.

If I had only read the ambivalent Times review of Teju Cole’s Open City, I might have been tempted to give it a pass... and in doing so would have missed an engrossing, unusual, and beautifully-written reading experience. Although I finished it a few weeks ago, Open City continues to haunt me at odd times of the day or night. The story’s momentum at first seems almost non-existent. A young man takes solitary walks around Manhattan (with a European interlude). He meets people; he engages with them in conversation. His walks inspire meditations on a variety of themes involving race, identity, culture, and isolation. For a while, I thought the story was only a triumph of narrative voice, because it was that sensitive, lyrical, and often funny voice alone that propelled me forward. By the time I had finished, however, I realized that, along the way, a number of memorable and sharply delineated characters had emerged, all set precisely within a quietly modulated but very distinctive storyline.

Open City has to qualify as some of the best writing about New York that I’ve ever come across. As the main character ambles about Manhattan, the city becomes a living presence, throbbing to its own inner rhythms and pulses. I not only visualized the scenes and settings of the novel, I felt them on some deep, internal level. This is the city I know; this is the city I dream about.

* * *

In my recently born and now seemingly inexhaustible fascination with the Brontës, I’ve finally come to the baby of the family, Anne Brontë. Although I was quite familiar with Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, I had never actually read or even thought much about Anne’s novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, perhaps regarding them as pallid imitations of her sisters' more powerful works. Now I’ve discovered they are so much more than that.

How even to get a hold on elusive Anne? Only a handful of her letters and private papers survive. The closest we come to a contemporary portrait is when Charlotte — the steely, determined, domineering elder sister, in her Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell — describes Anne’s “constitutional reserve and taciturnity,” which “covered her mind, and especially her feelings, with a sort of nun-like veil, which was rarely lifted.”

The first biography of the Brontës, by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, solidified the portrait of “docile, pensive” Anne, who from childhood was “always patient and tractable” and turned it into a sort of mythology. Yet this portrait does not entirely mesh with an author who, in the back of her prayer book, could write that she was “Sick of mankind and their disgusting ways;” who, as the most consistently employed of the Brontës, claimed that her governess position was colored by “unpleasant and undreamt-of experiences of human nature;” whose two novels, depicting the shady side of upper class moral standards, were characterized by most reviewers of the time as “coarse” and “brutal.”

I have recently finished Agnes Grey, the story of a plain heroine suffering the humiliations of a governess (written before Jane Eyre), and went right on to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the story of an abusive, drunken husband and the wife who walks out on him (the second idea being even more shocking to Victorian society than the first). While suffering a bit only in comparison to Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, these are both uniquely fascinating, powerful, highly readable novels which deserve attention not only for their own virtues, but for the fresh perspectives they cast on the Victorians in general and the Brontë family in particular.

Watch out for my public presentation, The Passionate Brontës: The Life and Works of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte, to be given some time in late September or early October 2012.

Waiting for "Downton Abbey"

Anne Rouyer, Seward Park Library — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 05:40:29 -0500

Updated February 2012! Do the names Lord Grantham, Mr. Carson, and Lady Violet mean anything to you? Can you discuss at length the love story of Mary and Matthew? Does the word week-end, bring to mind Maggie Smith’s impeccably-timed line delivery? If so, then you are a Downton-ite... or is it Downton-head? Whatever the case may be, it means that you are a fan of the ITV/Masterpiece Theater drama Downton Abbey. First airing on PBS in January 2011, this British series depicts life (upstairs and downstairs) in an English manor house belonging to Lord Grantham and his family, from 1912 to 1920. It was a surprise hit in the U.K. and in the States as well.

Now that series two has finally aired in America, the long wait for series three has arrived! It will hit the U.S. in January 2013 (but will air in Britain in Fall 2012). Here are a few hints as to what will happen (or so they say!): it will start up approximately four months after the last episode aired, in spring 1920, and will span a time period of 18 months. For those of you thirsting for more books and movies depicting life in England during the Edwardian era, World War I, and the Roaring 20s I am here to save the day! If you haven’t yet seen Downton Abbey, now is your chance to get caught up and become well informed before the next season airs in the U.S.!

Movies and TV series:

The most obvious choice to fill the time is the acclaimed, long-running BBC show Upstairs, Downstairs, which aired during the 1970s and depicts life in a London townhouse between the years 1903 to 1930. It is a wonderful show, but be prepared to spend hours watching it. I watched one to three episodes a day, five days a week, and it still took me three months! A new installment of the drama aired in the U.S. this past spring, but it depicts the years 1936 to 1937. Another British drama with the same upstairs/downstairs plotting is Berkeley Square. Set in 1902 in London, it tells the stories of three nannies and the families who employ them. A little known favorite of mine is the BBC show House of Eliott. Set in London during the 1920s, it is the perfect look at a changing British society. It tells the story of two independent and enterprising sisters who turn their dressmaking business into a fashion house.

Two stellar feature films that have masters/servants story lines are Gosford Park and Remains of the Day. They may not be set during the Downton time line — they take place in the 1930s — but they both take place at English manor houses, and both contain powerhouse performances by acclaimed actors and actresses. Gosford Park, written by Julian Fellowes (creator of Downton Abbey), stars Helen Mirren, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Clive Owen. Remains of the Day, based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, stars Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.

For those looking for a non-fiction documentary series, back in the early 70s the BBC produced an eight-part series called The Edwardians, depicting the movers and shakers of the era, as well as dramatizations of pivotal events.

Non-Fiction:

Around the same time that Downton first aired, I read Juliet Nicolson’s The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm. The granddaughter of the scandalous literary couple Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, she has written a fascinating anecdotal history of Edwardian high society at it’s zenith during one long, hot summer. Her equally good follow-up is The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age, which depicts the years immediately following the war, England’s attempt to deal with the horror of all the dead and wounded, social upheaval, and the emergence of the Jazz Age.

Vita Sackville-West grew up at Knole House, one of the largest private houses in England, which has been inhabited for over 400 years by 13 generations of one eccentric family — the Sackvilles. In Inheritance: The story of Knole and the Sackvilles, author Lord Robert Sackville-West gives us if-these-walls-could-talk stories and larger-than-life characters that have the fictional Downton Abbey paling in comparison, proving that truth is stranger than fiction. One of those larger-than-life characters was Idina Sackville. In The Bolter, written by her great-granddaughter Frances Osborne, we learn of a young woman who rejected Edwardian morals, left her children and husband at the end of World War I, and embarked on a life of parties, scandalous love affairs, and a decadent life in Kenya. A more comprehensive look at the scandalous, aristocratic men and women of the Jazz Age is chronicled in Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London’s Jazz Age by D.J. Taylor.

For a closer look at the Downton series, try the recently published The World of Downton Abbey by Jessica Fellowes, a behind-the-scenes look at the show and Edwardian society. For a personal look at a servant's life, read Below Stairs by Margaret Powell, a memoir of a circa 1920s English maid. Published in 1968, it inspired Upstairs, Downstairs and now has a new edition. Highclere Castle, the setting for Downton Abbey, has it's own stories. Read Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey by Lady Fiona Carnavon. Lady Almina, the young, illegitimate daughter of a Rothchild, married the Fifth Earl of Carnavon and moved to Highclere Castle. She was instrumental in turning the house into a hospital for soldiers during WWI. Apparently, she is the inspiration behind the character of Isobel Crawley.

Fiction:

The classic choices for novels are Howard’s End and A Room with a View by E.M. Forster (both also available on DVD), which have exquisite depictions of early Edwardian life, stiff-upper-lip emotional repression, and class divisions. A lesser known classic is The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West, which skewers Edwardian high society with all its decadence and decorative, inbred aristocrats. It focuses on the young heirs Sebastian and Viola and a lavish house party that changes them forever.

There is plenty of recent fiction that takes on Edwardian society. In The Shooting Party (also available on DVD), author Isabel Colegate uses a weekend house party in 1913 to expose a decaying social and moral code and a way of life under siege. Then there is The Children’s Book by acclaimed British author A.S. Byatt, which focuses on several aristocratic and artistic families from 1895 to 1914. Shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker prize, it touches on social issues, the Arts and Crafts movement, and the politics of the era. For the more ambitious reader, there is Ken Follet’s epic Fall of Giants, which follows several different families from many countries as they face the juggernaut that is WWI. At 1,000 pages, you will be reading for a while, but it gives a great understanding of the war and how it changed the world and society. I recently read the entertaining The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin. Like Cora, Countess Grantham in Downton Abbey, it features a wealthy and naïve American girl (also named Cora) who marries into British high society in the 1890s, as well as the changes she must make to survive and thrive. A more classic take on this story is The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton (also on DVD).

If mysteries, thrillers, and romance are more your style, there is plenty for you too. In The House at Riverton by Kate Morton, the Ashbury family’s lavish Edwardian lifestyle comes to an end after a tragic death at a weekend party. Grace, a young housemaid at the time, has kept the family’s secrets, but at the end of her life she is about to expose them all. The Crimson Rooms by Katherine McMahon may take place in 1924, but Edwardian morals and the ghosts of WWI infuse the tale with a sense of repression and unease. It tells the story of a young female lawyer as she deals with her first murder case, a family scandal, and an illicit love affair. Family secrets and mysterious deaths abound in Marjorie Eccles’s Edwardian-era set suspense thrillers Shadows and Lies and The Shape of Sand. If you want a sleuthing series to keep you reading, a favorite of mine is the Bess Crawford series by Charles Todd, which starts with A Duty to the Dead. It follows a young, intrepid WWI army nurse as she solves mysteries while on leave from France. Another favorite is the Dandy Gilver series by Catriona McPherson. Starting with After the Armistice Ball, it follows a witty Scottish socialite and her mother. The socialite gets into the sleuthing game out of sheer boredom and takes place at the beginning of the 1920s. Of course, there is also the incomparable Maisie Dobbs series by Jaqueline Winspear. Set after WWI, psychologist-investigator Dobbs is a female heroine who is smart, independent, methodical, and able to move through all levels of English society.

Last but not least is the sweet, light romance Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson. Set at an English country house at the end of WWI, it is the story of a Russian aristocrat/refugee who gets a job as a housemaid. An all-time favorite of mine, the book may be a light romance, but it still manages to discuss the plight of WWI veterans, the Russian Revolution of 1917, anti-semitism among the British aristocracy, and the appalling Eugenics movement which would soon manifest itself in Nazi Germany.

Phew! Hopefully, this will keep you busy until the next DA airs. Please add your own recommendations in the comments section!

The "Mad Men" Reading List

Billy Parrott, Mid-Manhattan Library, Art and Picture Collections — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 05:40:09 -0500

Have you been waiting patiently? Perhaps catching up on your reading? Are there books you’d like to finish before the new season starts? Have you been rewatching all of the previous episodes, timing your viewings to flow perfectly into the new season? Will you be attending viewing parties dressed like your favorite character?

In preparation for the long awaited return of Mad Men, I’d like to present the revised Mad Men reading list!

You might remember my original list, which will always be available here.

This revised list will be easier to follow and, like my previous list, it will be updated as books appear in new episodes. Details on literary references will continue in the comments field. As mentioned in my original blog post, some of the books on the list are featured more prominently in the series than others, but all are a great way to gain insight into the episodes and the social and cultural times in which the series is set.

You might also be interested in taking a look at the Sally Draper reading list and my Mad Men and Sally Draper reading lists on BiblioCommons.

For #MadMenReading related discussions and other news, you can follow me and Mid-Manhattan Library on Twitter and Facebook. Lastly, as any ad man will tell you, a picture is worth a thousand words, so be sure to stop by Mid-Manhattan Library's Art and Picture Collections for all your visual resource needs! The conversation is about to begin again. Pour yourself another scotch, and enjoy! Jump to Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, Season 4, Season 5 Multiple Episodes >> You Might Also Like >> Books About the Show >> Season 5

Episode 9 - "Dark Shadows"

The Black Cauldron / Lloyd Alexander (Click here for more details)

Odds Against / Dick Francis

"Ozymandias" / Percy Bysshe Shelley (click here for more details)

Episode 8 - "Lady Lazarus"

The Crying of Lot 49 / Thomas Pynchon

Episode 7 - "At the Codfish Ball"

The Fixer / Bernard Malamud (click here for more details)

The Berlitz Self-Teacher: French

Episode 6 - "Far Away Places"

The Tibetan Book of the Dead

Episode 4 - "Mystery Date"

Where Love Has Gone / Harold Robbins (click here for more details)

Episode 3 - "Tea Leaves"

Mein Kampf / Adolf Hitler (click here for more details)

Sterling’s Gold / Roger Sterling (click here for more details)

Episode 1 and 2 - "A Little Kiss"

Johnny Got His Gun / Dalton Trumbo

The Sand Pebbles / Richard McKenna

A Thousand Days / John F. Kennedy in the White House / Arthur Schlesinger
Season 4
Episode 13 — "Tomorrowland"

You Are Not the Target: A Practical Manual of How to Cope with a World of Bewildering Change / Laura Archera Huxley, Gazella / Stuart Cloete (See 1/21/12 update for more details)

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold / John Le Carré

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Mark Twain

Episode 11 — "Chinese Wall"

Meeting with Japan / Fosco Maraini

Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships / Eric Berne

Sterling’s Gold / Roger Sterling

Episode 9 — "The Beautiful Girls"

The Clue of the Black Keys / Carolyn Keene
(See The Sally Draper reading list for more details)

Episode 5 — "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"

The Twenty-One Balloons / William Pène DuBois
(See "A Mad Men Mystery Solved" for more details)

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword / Ruth Benedict

The Horse That Liked Sandwiches / Vivian L. Thompson
Season 3
Episode 10 — "The Color Blue"

The Group / Mary McCarthy

Helping Yourself with Psychiatry / Frank Caprio, Set Theory and Logic / Robert Stoll, Meeting with Japan / Fosco Maraini, The Corps / W.E.B. Griffin
(See 10/23/10 update for more details)

Episode 9 — "Wee Small House"

The Bible

Episode 7 — "Seven Twenty Three"

Confessions of an Advertising Man / David Ogilvy

Be My Guest / Conrad Hilton
(See 10/23/10 update for more details)

Episode 6 — "Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency"

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Mark Twain
(See 10/23/10 update for more details)

Episode 3 — "My Old Kentucky Home"

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire / Edward Gibbon

Episode 2 — "Love Among the Ruins"

The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary
(See 10/20/10 update #2 for more details)
Season 2
Episode 11 — "Jet Set"

The Sound and the Fury / William Faulkner

Episode 10 — "The Inheritance"

Junior Classics Volume One (Fairy Tales And Fables) and Volume Seven (The Animal Book)

Episode 9 — "Six Month Leave"

Ship of Fools / Katherine Anne Porter

Episode 8 — "A Night to Remember"

Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies / C. S. Forester
(See 1/22/12 update for more details)

Episode 4 — "Three Sundays"

“A Diamond as Big as the Ritz” from Babylon Revisited and Other Stories / F. Scott Fitzgerald
(See "A Mad Men Mystery Solved" for more details)

Episode 3 — "The Benefactor"

Marjorie Morningstar / Herman Wouk

Episode 2 — "Flight 1"

The Agony and the Ecstasy / Irving Stone (click here for more details)

Episode 1 — "For Those Who Think Young"

Meditations in an Emergency / Frank O’Hara

Season 1
Episode 8 — "The Hobo Code"

Atlas Shrugged / Ayn Rand
The Crisis of the Old Order / Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
The Americans: The Colonial Experience / Daniel Boorstin

Episode 6 — "Babylon"

The Best of Everything / Rona Jaffe

Exodus / Leon Uris

Episode 4 — "New Amsterdam"

Nursery Friends from France / translated by Olive Beaupre Miller

Italy / Herbert Kubly and the editors of Life

Episode 3 — "Marriage of Figaro"

Lady Chatterley's Lover / D. H. Lawrence

Episode 1 — "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"

The Crisis of the Old Order / Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

The View from Chivo / H. Allen Smith, The Peking Man is Missing / Claire Taschdjian
La Presidenta / Lois Gould, Masterpieces of World Literature in Digest Form / Frank Magill

Multiple episodes
Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book

Betty Crocker's Hostess Cookbook
You Might Also Like
The Image, or What Happened to the American Dream / Daniel Boorstin

Sex and the Single Girl / Helen Gurley Brown
“The Swimmer” / John Cheever How to Predict What People Will Buy / Louis Cheskin The Real Mad Men: The Renegades of Madison Avenue and the Golden Age of Advertising / Andrew Cracknell From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor / Jerry Della Femina The Strategy of Desire / Ernest Dichter Handbook of Consumer Motivations / Ernest Dichter Memoirs of a Beatnik / Diane di Prima The Conquest of Cool / Thomas Frank The Feminine Mystique / Betty Friedan
The Arrangement / Elia Kazan Motivation in Advertising: Motives That Make People Buy / Pierre Martineau Peyton Place / Grace Metalious The Hidden Persuaders / Vance Packard Swimming in the Steno Pool: A Retro Guide to Making it in the Office / Lynn Peril The Lonely Crowd / David Riesman
Heaven's Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr, and Madwoman / Leigh Eric Schmidt The Hucksters / Frederic Wakeman The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit / Sloan Wilson Revolutionary Road / Richard Yates Books About the Show The Fashion File / Janie Bryant Mad Men and Philosophy: Nothing Is as It Seems / edited by Rob Carveth and James South Mad Men: Dream Come True TV / edited by Gary Edgerton
The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook / Judy Gelman Mad Men: The Illustrated World / Dyna Moe Mad Men on the Couch: Analyzing the Minds of the Men and Women of the Hit Tv Show / Newman, Stephanie Analyzing Mad Men: Critical Essays on the Television Series / edited by Scott Stoddart Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America / Natasha Vargas-Cooper

Goin' to the Dogs Part 2: A List of Stories About Man's Best Friend

Lois Moore, Mid-Manhattan Library — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:40:47 -0500

Dog stories was the January theme for Mixed Bag: Story Time for Grown-Ups, the read-aloud program I do on Wednesdays at lunch-time every other week. (I promised to read cat stories later this year in rebuttal.) Most of the stories I chose to read in January were selected from the book The Best Dog Stories. Since I included a list of 25 favorite films about dogs in my last blog post, this post features a list of favorite books about dogs.

As with the list of films, this list of dog books is not intended to be exhaustive, just some of the more popular and well-known stories about dogs, listed in chronological order by publication date. Whenever a book on the list was adapted into a film, I noted it and linked it to the Library's catalog, if possible. Eleven of the titles on the dog film list were based on books, plus the recent biography of Rin Tin Tin by Susan Orlean. I did not include those titles on this list. Please let me know which is your favorite dog story or if I left your favorite one off the list (sorry!)

Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography of a Dogg (1893). First on the list is my personal childhood favorite by Margaret Marshall Saunders. The story is based on a real dog in Ontario, Canada, an Airedale terrier who was abused but eventually rescued in 1890. The dog tells his own story, similar in style to Black Beauty, written by Anna Sewell in 1877. The full text of Beautiful Joe is available online to read or to download free from Project Gutenberg.

Lad, A Dog (1919). Near the top of the list is one of the most famous writers of dog stories, Albert Payson Terhune, an author and journalist who bred collies on his estate in New Jersey. This is his most famous work, based on his collie Lad. The book was a best seller that has been reprinted 80 times and was adapted into a film of the same name in 1962.

Big Red: The Story of a Champion Irish Setter and a Trapper's Son Who Grew Up Together, Roaming the Wilderness (1945). Jim Kjelgaard was an American author of young adult novels known for his stories of dogs and animals, and this is his most famous book. It was made into a Disney film in 1962.

Where The Red Fern Grows: The Story of Two Dogs and a Boy (1961). This is a children's book by Wilson Rawls about a boy who buys and trains two Redbone Coonhounds in the Ozarks. It was made into a popular film of the same name in 1974.

Travels with Charley: In Search of America (1962). In 1960, John Steinbeck took a road trip with his French standard poodle Charley and wrote this travelogue about the trip — an old man with his ageing dog as his companion, driving cross country together, seeing the whole country one last time, and trying to make sense of it.

The Plague Dogs (1977). Richard Adams, most well-known for his heroic fantasy Watership Down (1972), which features rabbits, subsequently wrote this adventure story about two dogs, a mongrel named Rowf and a fox terrier named Snitter, who escape from a British animal testing facility and become the targets of a nationwide doghunt. It was made into an animated film of the same name in 1982.

A Dog's Life (1995). Peter Mayle is most famous for his series of autobiographical novels, beginning with A Year in Provence. A Dog's Life tells the story of the dog named Boy that Mayle adopted while living there, told from Boy's point of view. Boy is a witty and urbane narrator who comments freely on the foibles of "management" (his owners). The black and white whimsical illustrations are by Edward Koren. (Note: There is an unrelated silent film of the same name from 1918, starring Charlie Chaplin and a mongrel named Scraps.)

Roverandom (1998). J.R.R. Tolkien told this story to his son in 1925, but it was not published until 1998. A young dog named Rover annoys a wizard who turns him into a toy. Rover travels the world over, to the moon and under the sea, to find the wizard and ask to be turned back into a normal dog again. The full text is available online.

Timbuktu (1999). Award-winning American author Paul Auster wrote this story about a dog named Mr. Bones whose master, a homeless man named Willy G. Christmas, is dying. Christmas refers to heaven as Timbuktu, and Mr. Bones is worried that dogs don't go to Timbuktu and that he may never see his master again.

Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). Kate DeCamillo (who also wrote The Tale of Despereaux) won a Newbery Honor in 2001 for this children's book about a 10 year-old girl named India Opal Buloni who lives in a trailer park in Florida. She finds a dog in the supermarket and claims he is hers in order to save him from going to the pound. The book was adapted into a film of the same name by Twentieth Century Fox in 2005.

For the Love of a Dog: A Memoir (2001). Elisabeth Rose wrote this biography of her beloved border collie Kierney. During the course of the book, she describes the unusual communion that humans have with their animal companions. At age 12, Rose can't believe it when the priest tells her animals don't go to heaven because they don't have souls. Living with, listening to, and loving her pets leads her to believe otherwise.

A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me (2002). Jon Katz is an American journalist and author who has written several books about dogs and training dogs. This is the story of Devon, the troubled border collie he adopts shortly after his two yellow Labrador retrievers die. Working with Devon helps Katz refocus his life and work through a mid-life crisis. The book was made into a film starring Jeff Bridges in 2008.

The Darkest Evening of the Year (2007). Dean Koontz is a prolific novelist whose suspense novels and thrillers include elements of horror, mystery, and science fiction. In this mystery, the protagonist, Amy Redwing, has founded an organization called Golden Heart that rescues abandoned golden retrievers and finds homes for them. Amy has developed a special bond with her newest dog Nickie. However, after Nickie's rescue, Amy begins to experience a chain of supernatural events, and thereby hangs a tale. Koontz is a dog lover who has written several books "with" his golden retriever Trixie: A Big Little Life, Christmas is Good, Bliss to You, and Life is Good: Lessons in Joyful Living. He is also an avid supporter of Canine Companions for Independence, a non-profit organization that trains and provides assistance dogs.

Christmas Dogs: A Literary Companion (2005). This anthology of short stories about dogs and their owners at Christmas time includes works from James Herriot, Willie Morris, Jon Katz, and Susan Orlean.

Dog Spelled Backwards: Soulful Writing by Literary Dog Lovers (2007). Author Mordecai Siegal presents a collection of writings about the divine nature of dogs from American and English literature, including selections from fiction, nonfiction, prose, and poetry.

Some dog books and stories are out of print but available online. The story I read on January 25, 2012, by Terhune was "The Coward," written in 1922, about a six-month old collie puppy named Laund who shows a natural talent for herding sheep. He is so good his owner wants to enter him in the annual field trials competition held by the National Collie Association. Then Laund is savagely attacked and wounded by a hawk and apparently loses his nerve. The full text is available on line.

In that same session, I read a story called "The Mixer" by P. G. Wodehouse, a British humorist who is famous for his stories and novels about Jeeves, the inimitable British valet who continually saves the day for his master, Bertie Wooster. With typical Wodehouseian wit, the dog tells the story of how he unwittingly gets involved in an attempted burglary. This story was first published in the United States in the June 1916 issue of Redbook under the title “The Mixer: He Meets a Shy Gentleman.” A follow up story appeared in the July 1916 issue called “The Mixer: He Moves in Society.” The full text of both stories is available on line.

Next Story Time: Wednesday, February 22, from 1 p.m. to 1:45 p.m., on the first floor of Mid-Manhattan Library.

February's theme: Celebrate Black History Month with readings of Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, and Zora Neale Hurston.

E.E. Cummings: To My Valentine

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:36:10 -0500

When Edward Estlin Cummings met Marion Morehouse in 1932, he was in the middle of a painful split from his second wife, Anne Barton. But loss soon gave way to what Cummings later described as "an ecstatic arrival." This was Marion.

Morehouse was tall and thin, of Choctaw Indian ancestry, with brown eyes and a narrow face like a Modigliani. Edward Steichen called her "the greatest fashion model [he] ever shot." Aside from Steichen, she was a favorite of Cecil Beaton and French Vogue's Baron George Hoyningen-Huene, and was frequently featured in Vogue and Vanity Fair in the late 20s and early 30s. After her modeling career ended, she took up photography herself (Cummings supplied the text for Morehouse's Adventures in Value, published the year he died.)

The Library's Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection has nine crayon and oil valentines, fashioned by Cummings for his wife. Most of these feature Cummings's signature totem, the elephant. In several of these, laughing elephants balance hearts on their noses, as if performing a circus trick. In an oil evoking the color palette of Indian painting, an elephant floating on a greenish-yellow cloud waves a banner spelling out "Love" against a deep cerulean blue. Nearly all are addressed, "To My Valentine."

The elephant had long been Cummings's favorite animal, and he had drawn them since boyhood. Cummings biographer Richard Kennedy attributes the poet's interest in elephants to early readings with his father of Kipling's The Jungle Book. The Berg Collection has over a dozen books from the Morehouse estate inscribed by Cummings's to his wife. In many of his dedications to Marion, the elephant reappears. A Berg Collection first edition of Cummings's Eimi features a tiny elephant holding a "love" banner, and is inscribed "For Marion Morehouse."

Cummings's valentines were only one expression of his considerable output as a visual artist. During the teens and 20s, The Dial published some of his abstract paintings, along with numerous drawings and caricatures. In a manuscript draft of a memorial piece written by Marianne Moore forThe Dial, available in the Berg Collection's Dial Papers, Moore compares the strokes of these early abstract works to "Chinese calligraphy which does not hesitate."

A second phase of artistic development brought more representational artwork — portraits, landscapes, nudes — complicated by a more experimental technique, and a more mature aesthetic. The Berg Collection has several examples of Cummings's artwork from this period. In an untitled portrait of Marian Morehouse, Cummings paints Morehouse in profile, with her eyes closed. His bold lines emphasize her long sloping neck, high cheekbones, and arched eyebrows. His subject looks both completely at rest, and yet simultaneously tense with energy.

An untitled country scene where a dark blue sky and horizon are obscured by a snowstorm of pink, white, red, and green splashes of paint, recollects the Fauvists. It also calls to mind Fairfield Porter's comment in his essay "The Paintings of E.E. Cummings" that Cummings used both words and paint sensuously and for impact, rather than meaning.

In 1949, Cummings's paintings were exhibited by the American British Art Center in New York. The rare program for the exhibition begins with an imaginary transcript of an interview between Cummings and an interviewer. Both parts are written by Cummings himself. An excerpt follows below, and offers a little-known commentary by the artist on his own work:

Tell me, doesn't your painting interfere with your writing?
Quite the contrary: they love each other dearly.
They're very different.
Very: one is painting and one is writing.
But your poems are rather hard to understand, whereas your paintings are so easy.
Easy?
Of course--you paint flowers and girls and sunsets; things that everybody understands.
I never met him.
Who?
Everybody.
Did you ever hear of nonrepresentational painting?
I am.
Pardon me?
I am a painter, and painting is nonrepresentational.
Not all painting.
No: housepainting is representation.
And what does a housepainter represent.
Ten dollars an hour.
In other words, you don't want to be serious--
It takes two to be serious--
Well, let me see...oh yes, one more question: where will you live after this war is over?
In China; as usual.
China?
Of course.
Whereabouts in China?
Where a painter is a poet.

The death mask of E.E. Cummings, also housed in the Berg Collection, is on display in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building's General Research Division, Room 315 until March 4, 2012.

And one additional Berg Collection valentine of note: The Berg Collection's Kerouac Papers include a homemade valentine card created in 1933 by 13 year-old Jack Kerouac for his mother, Gabrielle, in the shape of a tombstone.

The Annotated Batman: A Top 10 List

Ryan P. Donovan, Mid-Manhattan Library — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:43:51 -0500

After reading Greg Rucka's Batwoman Elegy last year, I've been thinking a lot about graphic novels featuring the original Caped Crusader, Batman. Stories involving Batman and the characters in his universe have been published for over seven decades! Since that's a lot of reading to do, I've singled out 10 of my favorite Batman tales, all available to check out or request at your neighborhood library with your library card. Enjoy!

Hush

Batman spends a lot of time using grappling hooks to swing from building to building. But what happens when someone cuts his line? After suffering a near-fatal skull fracture, Batman begins to suspect that someone has set out to systematically destroy his life. He or she has also organized all of Batman's allies against him. And what’s worse, he or she seems to be committing crimes out of character, crimes Batman can’t predict. For example, Poison Ivy manages to turn Superman against Batman with a custom-made kryptonite lipstick. As Batman struggles to uncover the culprit behind all his recent misfortunes, he is drawn into an unlikely romance with Selina Kyle (a.k.a Catwoman).

The Dark Knight Returns

Author Frank Miller presents a definitive and engaging tale of Bruce Wayne struggling to reclaim his role as Batman in the midst of an uncertain future for Gotham City. What has the world become? Two-Face is cured, Superman is a corporate puppet, and the Joker is about to be declared sane. Gotham City is now under the control of the fanged Mutants, a visor-wearing gang that rules the city through fear and intimidation. After saving the young Carrie Kelly, Bruce fully embraces his old mantle of Batman. When Superman is sent to stop his return, only one superhero will walk away. Originally published in 1986, this is arguably considered to be one of the greatest Batman stories ever told.

No Man's Land

Batman’s mission is to protect the innocence of Gotham City by striking fear into the hearts of villains and ultimately stopping crime in its tracks. But what happens when the city he loves is devastated by a natural disaster? After a cataclysmic earthquake — 7.6 on the Richter scale — the fictional U.S. government of the DC Comics universe abandons the metropolis and forbids anyone from entering or exiting. Batman and his allies opt to stay and restore order to the chaotic streets. With Oracle helping to coordinate their efforts, the heroes are often overwhelmed by villains, such as the Penguin, who have taken over entire sections of the city.

Year One

Batman is pretty awesome... but did he start out that way? We all know Batman’s most important ally is Jim Gordon, who is destined to become Police Commissioner of the Gotham Police Department. How did Gordon rise through the corrupt ranks of cops on the take? This is the story of both men, as well as a radical reinterpretation of Selina Kyle’s origin as a prostitute and dominatrix before becoming Catwoman. This story has become so popular — it inspired the theatrical releases of the animated Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and the live-action Batman Begins — that it was adapted for film in Batman: Year One.

A Death in the Family

One could argue that nothing in the life of Batman ever really changes. As a comic book character, he battles villains, sends them to jail, and then starts the process all over again. When Dick Grayson retired as Robin and became the hero Nightwing, Batman even got himself a new Robin named Jason Todd. But Jason was never really like Dick. He was angrier, more reckless. After having a fight with Batman, Jason storms away and resolves to find his birth mother. After an initially successful reunion, it’s learned that she actually works for the Joker. Batman races to save Jason from his fate, but arrives too late. Jason dies in Batman’s arms, and Batman's inability to save Jason is his greatest failure.

The Long Halloween

Author Jeph Loeb spins a tangled web of Batman’s early crime-fighting years and is aided by Tim Sale’s eerily-horrific art. There’s a new killer in Gotham City, and his (or her) name is Holiday. As his (or her) name might imply, Holiday prefers to kill on holidays. Batman works with district attorney Harvey Dent, the man destined to become the half-scarred Two-Face, to uncover the killer, while simultaneously fending off some of the more colorful characters in his rogue’s gallery. Sale’s art is surreal, often depicting things in a distorted way, such as the Joker’s impossibly-wide yellow smile. The sequel to The Long Halloween is Batman: Dark Victory and its concurrent story is Catwoman: When in Rome.

The Killing Joke

Author Alan Moore, known most famously for penning Watchmen, focuses not on Batman but instead on his chief antagonist: the Joker. Out of Arkham Asylum once again, the Clown Prince of Crime decides to make an example of Commissioner Gordon. Along the way, he savagely shoots Jim’s daughter Barbara in her doorway at home, crippling her. The situation escalates when the Joker kidnaps Gordon, tortures him, and recounts a suspiciously contradictory tale of his origin. Barbara is left in a wheelchair and ultimately becomes the hero Oracle.

Cacophony

Filmmaker Kevin Smith tackles his own Batman story, creating an intricate tale of assassinations and red herrings involving the Caped Crusader, Deadshot, the Joker, and a mysterious villain named Onomatopoeia. The story opens with Deadshot as he attempts to kill the Joker in Arkahm. He is stopped and apparently killed by Onomatopoeia, who frees the Joker and gives him money to create chaos. Onomatopoeia’s real target is Batman, and Onomatopoeia hopes the Joker's antics will help draw Batman out. As all the characters converge on one another for a final confrontation, Deadshot is revealed to have survived, and Batman must decide whether to save the Joker or not.

Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?

Prolific writer Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book) writes an esoteric account of the “last” Batman story. Suffering from some kind of near-death experience, Batman finds himself attending a funeral... only to realize it’s his own. Guided by an avatar of his deceased mother, Martha Wayne, Bruce listens to bizarre Batman eulogies by his butler, Alfred; villains, such as the Joker and the Mad Hatter; and Superman. As Batman struggles to make sense of his death, he begins asking questions about his life and what it means to be Batman. This story is based on the classic Superman tale Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

Batman: Year 100

Taking place in the year 2039 (100 years after the character of Batman was first introduced), Gotham City has essentially become a police state, and Batman has become something of an urban legend. According to Paul Pope, the writer and illustrator of 100% , "I wanted to present a new take on Batman, who is without a doubt a mythic figure in our pop-psyche. My Batman is not only totally science fiction; he's also a very physical superhero: he bleeds, he sweats, he eats. He's someone born into an over-arching police state; someone with the body of David Beckham, the brain of Tesla, and the wealth of Howard Hughes... pretending to be Nosferatu."

Check out this booklist on BibiloCommons >>

"Bet Me": A February Romance Review

Corinne Neary, Jefferson Market Library — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:31:38 -0500

Jennifer Crusie's Bet Me is more than a love story. It's also a book about calculating risk, eating food, taking chances, friendships, comedy, and did I mention food? After I finished the book last weekend, I immediately picked up the phone and ordered chicken marsala. If you've read Bet Me, you know why! And if you haven't read it yet, maybe you should. Unless, of course, you're trying to avoid doughnuts and Italian food, or if you're training for a marathon.

Min Dobbs has just been dumped. To make matters worse, she now has no date to her sister's upcoming wedding, for which she's got to fit into a bridesmaid's dress that's way too small. Add all that to the fact that she hasn't eaten carbs in weeks, and you'll find that Min isn't having the best month. Her mother's constant nagging over her weight definitely doesn't help. When Min meets the handsome and charming Cal Morrisey, it might seem like the answer to at least some of her problems, but things aren't that simple. There's the unfortunate issue of a bet that Cal placed with the guy who just dumped her. (Also, fans of the musician Morrissey will find the spelling of his last name — with one 'S' — troubling throughout the book.)

Min and Cal start spending a lot of time together. It seems they just can't stay away from each other, despite both of their intentions and the constant interference of family and friends. What really seems to be the glue of their relationship, aside from physical attraction, is — you guessed it — food! Cal encourages Min to eat, which opens up a whole new world for her. Food is so central to their romance, in fact, that some scenes involving chocolate doughnuts left me feeling more than a little unclean. Maybe I'm just not ready for such an intimate connection between pastries and sex.

Crusie's writing is funny and bright and her characters are flawed but likeable. Over the course of the novel, Min grows to accept herself, embraces carbs, and feels good about her body, and Cal is a big part of these changes. A heroine who doesn't have a perfect body, whose hair is frizzy, and who doesn't always feel confident is someone that a lot of women can identify with. Cal, on the other hand, might seem a little too good to be true, but any man who encourages high levels of doughnut consumption can't be all bad! As Min opens up to the things she has tried so hard to deny herself, she gains the self-assurance she sorely lacked. Bet Me is recommended for fans of funny, contemporary romance with a smart female lead.