What to read ...

Wondering what to read this summer? The Monroe County public library has an idea; here's the press release sent along from Anne Layton Rice: What now? Is June eBook of the MonthBestselling author Ann Patchett offers an essay on hope and inspiration for graduates and anyone at a crossroads Based on her lauded commencement address at Sarah Lawrence College, this stirring essay by bestselling author Ann Patchett offers hope and inspiration for anyone at a crossroads, whether graduating, changing careers, or transitioning from one life stage to another. With wit and candor, Patchett tells her own story of attending college, graduating, and struggling with the inevitable question, What now? From student to line cook to teacher to waitress and eventually to award-winning author, Patchett's own life has taken many twists and turns that make her exploration genuine and resonant. As Patchett writes, "'What now?' represents our excitement and our future, the very vitality of life." Praised as “The best graduation present on the market…” by Publisher’s Weekly, What now? highlights the possibilities the unknown offers and reminds us that there is as much joy in the journey as there is in reaching the destination. Provided through the generous support of HarperCollins Publishers, What now? will be available to Monroe County Public Library patrons June 1-30. If you have already established a NetLibrary account through Monroe County Public Library Library, visit www.netLibrary.org and log in.  If you do not have a NetLibrary account, you can create an account from any Monroe County Public Library library computer.  Library hours and directions are available here: www.keyslibraries.org For more information, contact Anne Layton Rice at rice...@monroecounty-fl.gov

Other ideas should be on the air Sunday from 9 to 10 a.m. on U.S. 1 Radio (104.1 for local listeners, us1radio.com for those far away) when I, along with Kristina Neihouse and Christine Bell from the public library, will be on Cruisin with Grusin to talk about summer reading. I'll be talking about all the cool stuff you can get here at the college library -- anyone in the Keys can belong! -- as well as all the stuff to read before next year's Literary Seminar. So listen up.

Could you spend the rest of your life reading Joyce Carol Oates?

Probably. Hell, if you're old enough, and/or a slow reader, you could spend the rest of your life just reading the Oates books we happen to own at the FKCC library -- 43 titles according to my quick search of our catalogue -- and that represents a small portion of her oeuvre, I'm sure. But if you're going to read just one, and especially if you're an unrehabilitated English major, I can recommend Wild Nights -- my review is in today's edition of Solares Hill, available as a downloadable PDF (the review is also posted on the Citizen's website).

What else? I went on a reading binge last weekend -- finished up "The Man Who Made Lists," Joshua Kendall's biography of Peter Roget, of Roget's Thesaurus fame. It was OK but I didn't feel like I knew the guy -- the way I already feel I'm getting to know the characters in my current reading, Patricia O'Toole's "Five of Hearts," a group portrait of Henry and Clover Adams, John and Clara Hay and Clarence King, all post-Civil War movers and shakers in Washington. This is the first book of hers that I've read and it's great. Can't wait to see her at the upcomng Key West Literary Seminar.

After my disappointment with Alison Weir's Elizabeth novel, I turned to Jhumpa Lahiri and, after finishing the Roget bio last weekend, I finished "Unaccustomed Earth" -- the stories got more powerful as the book went along, especially the last three that were linked stories about a man and woman. And the ending, which I should have seen coming but didn't, was surprising and moving.

After that I temporarily lost my mind and persuaded my husband to embark on a long-overdue attic cleaning (it cooled off a bit on Monday and we figured this was our last shot at working in the attic without serious overheating issues). It needed to be done, I'm glad we did it, but it was an exhausting end to the holiday. Since then, all I've been able to take in is a couple episodes of "Deadwood" and a couple New Yorker "Talk of the Town" pieces. Hoping to make a full reading recovery this weekend, though. (Speaking of Deadwood, after starting the show I noticed that we happen to have the Pete Dexter novel of the same name on the shelf at home -- it turns out it's not the basis for the series though it shares some characters, ie. Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane -- it may have just moved up the stack just out of western curiosity ... I don't think I've read one since the fabulous "Lonesome Dove," which is getting close to, um, 20 years ago.)

I'm back!

Yes, this blog hit a sophomore slump for awhile there. But I have been reading and even reviewing, if not writing about it in this forum. My latest was a book called "Literary Seductions" by Frances Wilson -- I saw it referred to somewhere, looked it up in our catalogue at work and got it through interlibrary loan. Last weekend, I read it. It was OK though not to my standard of high-end literary gossip/lives for regular readers ("Parallel Lives" by Phyllis Rose being my high watermark in the genre). It was kind of a hybrid between academic treatise and layperson read. Maybe that's how they do it in the UK. Anyway a decent read. But not as good as the previous one, "Wild Nights!" by Joyce Carol Oates, which I have reviewed for an upcoming edition of Solares Hill. I know, I know, JCO's prodigious output can be intimidating. And I even made sure to write this review without using the word "prolific." But this is a good one, maybe because it's also on the literary lives vein -- but with the Oatesean twists of eerieness and weirdness pushed a few shoves beyond comfort level.

The stories are all very different from one another, which is good, and makes it difficult to choose a favorite. I might have liked the first one the least, perhaps because of all the writers I've read the least Poe, perhaps because the 19th century diary style was a tad offputting. The Emily Dickinson robot story is savagely funny, the Hemingway story full of pathos. And, in an additional Key West link, the book is dedicated to Joyce and Seward Johnson, of sculpture and Key West Literary Seminar scholarship fame.

I also read "The Princess of Burundi," another Swedish mystery, this one by Kjell Eriksson (and from the FKCC collection). I thought it was a better read than "Sun Storm," and I enjoyed a little brain candy. But I think I'm done with the Swedish mystery genre for the moment -- my list of other reading, for review and for the upcoming seminar, is just too long. Fortunately the next is a combo: Tony Horwitz's new book, "A Voyage Long and Strange," about European interactions in the New World between Columbus and the Pilgrims. "Confederates in the Attic" is one of my all-time favorite nonfiction books, so I'm hoping Horwitz is on form with this one.

Review and reading

My review of Quiet, Please, Scott Douglas' memoir of working in a public library, is in today's edition of Solares Hill and on The Citizen website. I liked the book, but not as much as I'd hoped to. But it's still a great behind-the-scenes look at life in the library. And definitely check out Scott's blog. I also FINALLY finished Samantha Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else, a historical novel about Nikolas Tesla and a young hotel chambermaid. It's mostly set in the early 1940s in New York though it contains extended flashbacks, mostly to Tesla's life. I liked it a lot and hope we may see Hunt down here for the 2009 Literary Seminar. It's going to be a great one, and there's lots of reading to do. Lots and lots.

And some really great news: We're getting a lot of new titles onto the shelves at the college library, from donations and other sources. Every day I go in and find a new book I just have to read. Since I don't finish a book a day, this is a bit of a problem. But at least they're library books so I have to give them back and they won't add to the book storage issues already occupying my house. (And I always assume people know this but many don't: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A COLLEGE STUDENT TO BORROW BOOKS FROM US!!!!!)

Yep, he really is good

I've now read the entire published works of John Wray -- in other words, I finished his other book, "The Right Hand of Sleep." Like "Canaan's Tongue," it's a historical novel but set in a very different time and place -- this time, it's an Austrian mountain village in 1938, aka the time of the Anschluss. Wray's mother is Austrian and he spent a lot of time there growing up and it's astonishingly surehanded and mature for a first novel. This guy is that good.