Read, Listen, Watch

Staff Picks and Suggestions

Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire

I finished my first TBR Challenge 2008 book: Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire. It’s been many years since I read his Wicked, of which Son of a Witch is a sequel of sorts. At first I felt a little lost, and I think that I may have missed some of the nuances of Emerald city and Munchkinland politics, and which I might have better understood if I had just finished Wicked. But soon enough, I found myself enjoying the novel on its own merits. Son of a Witch is an orphan’s coming-of-age story. It’s an absorbing tale that focuses on Liir, who may be the son of the late Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba Thropp. Maguire really creates an appealing and fully realized alternate universe, and because even the bare bones outline of the Wizard of Oz is so well-known, it works. The novel spends many of its pages going into detailed vignettes from Liir’s past. A large middle chunk of the novel deals with his military experience, and while it’s a fantasy novel, it’s hard not to draw parallels to real soldiers, be they in Iraq, Vietnam or Germany. Son of a Witch weaves together a large cast of characters-some as well-recognized as Dorothy and the Scarecrow, and other original creations like Elphaba’s nefarious brother, Shell. Having read most of Maguire’s other adult fiction, a shared trait across his novels that I really admire is his thoughtful characterization. Maguire really seems to respect his characters, and even if they’re not exactly human, he almost always conveys a weighty sense of their humanity. I found myself particularly engrossed towards the end of the novel, which I felt, succeeded in striving towards a big crescendo. This also made me think about book endings. I know there are books that I’ve felt have been shattered or redeemed by their endings. What do you think? How much does a book’s ending impact your feelings toward it? Share those titles! And if anyone’s read Son of a Witch, please weigh in!

Desk Set

If you like movies and libraries, I’ve got a recommendation for you. Desk Set (1957) is a comedy, starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, set in the reference library at a television network. Hepburn is the head librarian and Tracy is a man hired by the company to install the “electronic brain” aka very large computer in the reference department. The librarians fear that with the installation of this new bit of technology, they will all soon be out of a job. Faced with this possibility, Hepburn sets out to prove that no computer can ever match the abilities of the human mind. You can find this film and many others here in Snell Library.

Swap Tree

In honor of Earth Day, I wanted to post something I learned about recently that’s meant to be environmentally conscious.  Yesterday, a friend told me about SwapTree.com, a site where you can exchange products you have (like books, cds, and dvds) for others that you want.  It’s a massive trading website where you just have to pay shipping and handling costs.  While I’m a hoarder who likes holding on to things, I certainly appreciate SwapTree’s message of re-usability and bartering!  My friend also told me that for every trade made today, SwapTree will donate $1 to the Sierra Club.  (Though I couldn’t find anything corroborating that on their website.) I also think that taste is such a funny and personal issue, that it would be interesting to see what people are looking for (or looking to unload.)  It seems like their could be some airing of dirty laundry-from my cursory survey it seems like people are looking to pick up much ‘hipper’ items (and trade away Chicken Soup for the Soul and Kenny G!) Has anyone tried this before?  What do you think?

The Library at Night

I recently read a review of Alberto Manguel’s The Library at Night in the LA Times. It sounds like an interesting read-I’ve heard of his With Borges, but haven’t yet read it. While The Library at Night sounds like a mix of memoir, general history and musings, the review got me thinking about the library as dramatic setting. One of my favorites is the rather creepy and ambiguous tale, The Ghost Writer by John Harwood. The scenes in the British Library stuck with me, and I wish I could visit it! (In the book, the Library is still part of the British Museum). When I finally visited the British Museum in 2005, I was disappointed. While their reading room is nice, it’s much smaller, and very different from the spooky Victorian locale detailed in The Ghost Writer. I’ll have to make a special visit to the British Library, the next time I’m in London. Have any of you visited there? And what are your favorite stories set in libraries? What do you like about them?

North and South

The North and South of my post title does not refer to the American Union-Confederate divide; but instead the division between the north and south of England. (Though they did have their own Civil War). This North and South is a nineteenth century novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. I read it last summer, in large part based on the recommendation of a friend, and I liked it. Once I learned that there was a 2004 miniseries version, I really wanted to watch it. I only just did, but am pleased to report that it’s fantastic! I was really impressed with the production values, and even the score is amazing. While North and South is a love story, I think it includes many other elements that make it much more engaging. The Hale family moves to fictional Milton, in the industrial north of England when clergyman patriarch Richard Hale has a crisis of conscience and abandons his parish post. In Milton, the cotton mill is king. One of my favorite things about North and South, is that you really get a full and complicated picture of industry and trade. The “masters” (as the mill owners are called), the workers (the “hands” in the novel), and the gentry class as embodied by the Hales, are often in conflict, but it’s hard not to see both the righteousness and the flaws in all of their divergent positions. It’s great to see a really detailed depiction of unionization and a worker’s strike. Watching it, I was thinking how I’d love to show it in a class on business ethics. When Margaret Hale narrates on the cotton mills, that “I believe I have seen hell, and it’s white, it’s snow-white,” I just got shivers down my spine. One of my reading pet peeves is dialect, which I find to be distracting. While I know that some authors are praised for their accurate and exemplary use of dialect, I nearly always find something condescending about it. (Even though I know that not everyone speaks alike). This is well rectified in the movie, as the actors covey the great differences in their speech, in a way that’s both subtle and immediately apparent. This particularly led me to find the Nicholas Higgins character far more admirable (and likable) in the movie than in the novel. I really cannot say enough good things about this miniseries-I thought the acting was very strong, and that Sandy Welch did a superb job of adapting the story. At four hours long, I still felt like I wanted to watch it again immediately!