Read, Listen, Watch

Staff Picks and Suggestions

Sad Follow-Up to a Prior Snell Author Talk

Those who follow Snell Library’s Meet the Author Series may remember author John Hollway’s discussion of his book, Killing Time, the story of an innocent man’s 14 years on death row and how he came to be found innocent and released. At the time of the talk, the Supreme Court was due to hear a civil case brought by the innocent man, John Thompson, and his attorneys against the New Orleans prosecutor’s office that was found to have withheld evidence in the original case, evidence that would have led to his acquittal but whose suppression meant he lost all those years of his life to unjust prison time. A local jury awarded him $14 million to compensate for the time he spent on death row, and appeals courts upheld the award, all the way to the Supreme Court. A sad update this week, however, as the Supreme Court handed down its 5-4 decision overturning the monetary award, stating the prosecutor’s office could not be held responsible for the “bad actions” of a single person, even though it has been shown that the office had a clear pattern of violations of the rules for handling evidence and was obviously not training its prosecutors in correct procedures — and even though all the lower appeals courts had upheld the local decision that the prosecutor’s office was responsible. Commentators around the news media are outraged by the decision; for examples, see this New York Times op-ed or this piece in Slate.com. According to the Facebook page for the book (which by the way offers more links to additional media coverage of the decision, as well as to the text of the decision itself), “Now the only remedy that any of us has for prosecutorial misconduct is a complaint to the State Bar Association — which, in most states, you can only make if you are admitted to the Bar yourself.” This is a grim outcome for all of us, not just John Thompson.

Go Deeper: Delve into African American Studies

This month and all months, we honor the African diaspora and the many contributions of African-Americans. The Northeastern University community is fortunate to have two related experts to help us to learn more about African American history. Kantigi Camara is the Librarian who runs the John D. O’Bryant African-American Institute Library. And Research & Instruction Librarian Christine Oka designed this research guide. She also provides reference assistance and manages a related collection at Snell Library. Additionally, here is a gorgeous website celebrating Black History Month, which was put together by the Library of Congress.

Listen to Grammy Award Winners

There were some surprises last night at the Grammy Awards, and you’ll be surprised that some of the award-winners and their recordings can be found at the Snell Library, too! The best new artist of the year, Esperanza Spalding, is featured on a 4-DVD set available at the Snell Library called “Icons Among us: Jazz in the Present Tense.” For pop and r&b artists, we may not have the winning recordings but we do have some CDs and DVDs featuring Jeff Beck, Eminem, John Legend, and Neil Young. Intriguingly, we happen to have a recording by the Nor’easters, Northeastern’s a cappella group, of a Lady Gaga medley. In the classical category, you can find the multi-award winning Metropolis Symphony and Deus Ex Machina by Michael Daugherty (Best Engineered Classical, Best Orchestral Performance, Best Classical Contemporary) streaming online from Naxos. I admit I have my issues with contemporary classical but I really liked Metropolis (which is based on the Superman Comics) a lot; it has great energy and is modern in the best sense, with echoes of Gershwin. Naxos also streams the Parker Quartet’s Ligeti’s String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 (Best Chamber Music Performance) and P. Jacobs’ organ recording of Messiaen’s Livre du Saint Sacrement (Best Instrumental Soloist). We’ve also got recordings by these award-winners: If watching the Grammy Awards made you want to expand your horizons, scratch that itch at the Snell Library!

More Snow on the Way? Curl Up with One of the New York Times Top 10 of 2010

The New York Times Book Review released its list of the 10 Best Books of 2010 early last month and now you can find almost all of the celebrated tomes right here at Snell Library! Most of the books on the list are available at The Hub, our library’s special, rotating selection of international bestsellers, groundbreaking graphic novels, and popular DVDs that you can find immediately across from the Snell Library entrance. Check out the list below to learn more about the 2010 picks and where to find them at Snell. Get ready for a good read while the snow piles up outside! Fiction Freedom By Jonathan Franzen PS3556.R352 F74 2010 Touted by critics as a “masterpiece of American Literature,” and compared in Esquire magazine to Tolstoy’s classic War and Peace, Freedom is a darkly written comedy framed through the envious eyes of an American family’s moralistic neighbors. The book paints an insightful portrait of the cultural forces and individual choices that can bring families together—and tear them apart. Selected for several book lists, Freedom was not without controversy. Boston’s WBUR reported that several best-selling female authors, including Jodi Picoult, believed the critical praise for Franzen’s book was merely misplaced gender bias. Check out Freedom for yourself to discover if the book is worth the wide acclaim. Room By Emma Donoghue PR6054.O547 R66 2010 Jack, like other five-year-old boys, plays with his toys and loves his mom, but he lives a life quite different from other children. He has spent his entire life in a small room with his mother as a prisoner of a man called Old Nick. Despite the disturbing premise, Room is a story of endurance, filled with raw emotional extremes that make readers feel like they too are discovering the world for the first time. Winner of the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, Room is a strange but powerful novel. A Visit from the Goon Squad By Jennifer Egan PS3555.G292 V57 2010 Punk rock laced with obscenities? Sign us up, please. Jennifer Egan’s book starts in modern day New York before flashing back to the early Bay Area punk scene to follow the life of Sasha, a child of a broken, violent marriage who runs away and ends up in the radically new music scene of the late 1970s and early ’80s. A Visit from the Goon Squad is more than just sex and rock and roll—it’s rich with satire and clever prose. Pick up the book today to give this Brooklyn-based author a spin on the turntable. Non-fiction Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet By Jennifer Homans GV1787 .H58 2010 Homans, former professional ballet dancer and current dance critic for The New Republic, chronicles the formal and cultural history of ballet in her two-part work Apollo’s Angels. It is partly a celebration of the ballet’s most notable achievements and its cultural importance, but Homans also questions its survival as its relevance gradually fades. Written before Black Swan revived the public’s interest in ballet, it’s a fascinating exposition of a purportedly languishing art form. Cleopatra: A Life By Stacy Schiff DT92.7 .S35 2010 Countless literary and film portrayals present Cleopatra as a bold, manipulative seductress, but they neglect to credit her as a brilliant politician and leader, according to author Stacy Schiff. The author, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for her biography of Vera Nabokov, the wife of Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov, dispels the myths surrounding the legendary queen of Egypt while also crafting a “bloody and harrowing” portrait of the royal family. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer By Siddhartha Mukherjee RC275 .M85 2010 In his debut work, oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee writes a “biography” of one of our time’s most pervasive and misunderstood illnesses: cancer. It provides detailed accounts of our society’s battle against the disease and the gripping stories behind the treatments and breakthroughs we know today. Mukherjee shows us how far we have come in understanding this “emperor of all maladies,” but he also recognizes how little we actually know. Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes By Stephen Sondheim ML54.6.S69 S66 2010 Finishing the Hat, which is part self-critique and part illumination, analyzes lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s earlier works, including West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Sweeney Todd. The title refers to a line from Sondheim’s 1984 musical Sunday in the Park with George, where painter Georges Seurat is moments away from completing his grand work, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” Finishing the Hat provides great insight into the creative process of our generation’s most gifted composers. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration By Isabel Wilkerson E185.6 .W685 2010 When George Swanson Sterling, an orange grove worker in Florida, became aware he was a potential lynching victim, he fled the area for Harlem in 1945. Beginning in the 20th century and peaking in the post-WWII years, more than six million African Americans left the South to escape Jim Crow–era brutality for areas with industrial job opportunities. Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, culminates fourteen years of research in her work, The Warmth of Other Suns. She details the journeys of three individuals who made the trek from the American South to Wisconsin, California, and New York, respectively. Sterling’s story and others’ provide fascinating insight into the historical migration that shaped and enriched the culture of our major urban areas in the North and West, and consequently, our country.

New DVDs for Cold Winter Nights

I’ve just updated this week’s New Titles in Snell Library, and I noticed we’ve got a nice crop of new DVDs. If you like biopics, there’s Temple Grandin, about an autistic woman who becomes a pioneer in animal psychology. Hipsters? Catch Julie Christie in Darling (1965), about an English model and her descent into corruption. Or for those who like the classics, watch Ninotchka (1939), a lighthearted comedy about visitors to Paris who ascend into corruption (Garbo laughs!). For date night, borrow Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, based on a graphic novel about what it takes to win the girl of your dreams. A more serious take on love would be Vincere (“Win”, 2009) about the love between Benito Mussolini and Ida Dalser (in Italian), or Un Coeur en Hiver (“A Heart in Winter”, 2006), centering on the love triangle between a concert violinist, her lover, and his best friend (in, you guessed it, French). Working your way through this year’s Oscar nominees? Our newest arrival is the comedy-drama The Kids Are All Right (2010), with great acting from Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as lesbian parents of two teenage kids. Another family drama, Please Give (2010), explores the dynamics of a Manhattan family waiting for their neighbor to die so they can take over and renovate her apartment. Every week we update our lists of New Titles. You can browse the lists, or subscribe to the RSS feed, depending on your interests. Choose a subject like mathematics, or you can view new videos or new titles from our high-interest award-winning titles in the first floor Hub reading area.