We become the Bone Island Bike Blog

There's been a lot of talk about bikes around Key West recently. Much of this talk was from a local weekly newspaper, which has railed for months against the dangers posed by "scofflaw bicyclists." The police department, obligingly, launched a special enforcement effort aimed at bikes to curb wrong-way riding, running red lights, etc. As someone who both rides and drives, I'm all for the enforcement. However. I was very concerned about the city taking sides in the bike versus car battles that take place on the streets every day. Then the sexton got into the act, locking the Frances Street gate to the City Cemetery. I don't ride through the cemetery much -- I live on a street that is midway along the cemetery, so riding through shoots me a couple blocks out of my way. But I felt strongly enough about the hasty and unilateral decision to go down and speak at a City Commission meeting (where a vote to re-open the gate failed, 5-2). So my latest Letter From Key West, for WLRN's Under the Sun program, is about that. (The photo, by the way, is of my grandfather Douglas Grafflin -- he's the one on the right, acting goofy -- and his older brother, Don. Since I posted this photo on Facebook last night, I have learned a bunch of interesting family facts: Uncle Don left college to join a barnstorming flying circus as a mechanic. And three out of my four great-grandfathers belonged to cycling clubs, which must have been in the late 19th or very early 20th centuries).

Completely unrelated addendum: This is a much-deserved Google bombing link to the name Judith Griggs. You don't have to follow it or do anything -- as I understand it, the existence of the link is what matters -- but if you're curious about why I should do such a thing, there's more info here.

The girl who finally got around to reading Stieg Larsson

It's taken me years to get around to reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the international bestseller by the late Stieg Larsson. There are a few reasons for this. For one, it's a pretty big book. For another, it was reputed to be an addictive page-turner and I'm wary of taking those on without a good chunk of free time ahead of me. Third, I'm always wary of massively hyped bestselling books, especially genre thrillers. I'm still getting over having read Angels & Demons and I still want those four hours of my life back. And finally, I knew the tragic backstory -- that Larsson died of a heart attack, at 50, before the books were published -- and without a will, leading to a so-far-unresolved conflict between his father and brother, who inherited his unexpectedly valuable estate, and his longtime partner, with whom he lived for decades. Ugh. BUT. I do like Swedish crime novels -- my favorite so far is Kjell Eriksson's "Princess of Burundi" -- and these had gotten well reviewed enough that I thought it was safe to give them a try. Plus, Larsson is the subject of our Book Bites book club at the library this month. And I had a couple days of post-Fantasy Fest downtime. So I figured now was the time.

I actually had started this book once or twice before. It was one of the first that I bought when my husband got me a Kindle. But I had bounced off the beginning section and figured it wasn't the right time. This time, I stuck it out and by 30 pages in (a guesstimate, actually, since the Kindle doesn't give you a page number) I was hooked. The writing is nothing spectacular and I suspect the translation was clumsy at times -- either too literal or veering between British and American English -- but the plot and characters are so strong that it didn't matter.

Several friends have said they had trouble with the Swedish names, both for people or places. I don't speak or read Swedish but I am of Swedish descent, on both sides of my family including two grandparents who were raised there, and the names didn't faze me at all, except sometimes making me feel inadequate when I wasn't 100 percent sure on pronunciation. Oddly, since I have never been to Sweden, I had strong visual images of the island and guest cottage where a lot of the book's action takes place -- I guess I've seen enough photographs of the place, plus watched the BBC's excellent adaptations of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels. And the characters, especially the hero, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, and heroine, hacker/investigator Lisbeth Salander, were very strong. And the coffee! They're always drinking coffee. At all hours, at every meal and meeting. I was craving it even more than usual. That, and a liverwurst sandwich on rye.

And I appreciated Larsson's prescient and sensible attitude toward the financial industry, both the much-hyped billionaires who make their fortunes off what are, essentially, shell games instead of old fashioned industries where they made stuff -- and the financial journalists who hype them. Larsson goes out of his way several times to unfavorably compare financial reporting to the more skeptical treatment given other kinds of crime stories or political figures. And he's absolutely right.

There was yet another reason I had put off reading Larsson -- I had heard the books were incredibly violent, specifically violent towards women. The original title of this novel, in Swedish, was Men Who Hate Women. And it definitely featured some sadistic psychopaths who have it in for women but ... I didn't feel like Larsson was celebrating the violence or getting off on it in the way you sometimes do with thrillers. He, like his hero, was a lefty investigative journalist and is decidedly on the side of the underdog -- specifically Salander, who is both a victim of violence and adept at fighting back and protecting herself. And I appreciated that he provided plausible reasons that she would not seek help from the authorities, thus liberating her from the situation of the Too Stupid To Live romance novel heroine who is always getting herself into idiotic trouble for no good reason.

So I definitely plan on reading the rest of the trilogy -- even though several reliable sources have already told me the first is the strongest of the three. I just don't want to start the next one ... until I have another free day or two ahead of me.

Win a free book! Plus some thoughts on vampire lit

I tried to resist the vampire lit thing. I really did. I have successfully avoided reading a word by Stephenie Meyers. I haven't even seen any of the movies. Then True Blood came out. Curse you, Alan Ball! I was hooked. So hooked I read the first of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels, on which the series is based. It was a fun read -- very different in tone and even in plot from the series but still, I quit reading after the first book because I didn't want to spoil plot points from the show.

Over the summer, lured by Salon's first online reading club, I read The Passage, Justin Cronin's big (in many ways) dystopian page-turner. The vampires in that are in no way sexy -- they're predators, infected with a virus in ... wait for it ... a military experiment GONE HORRIBLY WRONG. No tuxes or seductions for these vampires -- they're just the enemy for the few remnant regular humans left in North America. It's a good book, and I'll definitely be reading the next installment.

So after Cronin's dark dystopia I was ready for the lighter side of vampire lit -- and along came Key West's own Meg Cabot with Insatiable. I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't previously read anything by Cabot, who is an extremely nice and generous person. So I figured this was my chance to start making up for that.

And I enjoyed it thoroughly. Insatiable is a bit of an homage to Bram Stoker's Dracula, with a heroine named Mina Harper who has a brother named Jonathan (and a dog named Jack Bauer). It's a bit of a romp, something of a romance and a great send-up both of pop culture (besides Jack Bauer, Mina is a scriptwriter for a soap opera) and vampire lit. And it'sfunny. If you like Jennifer Crusie, chances are pretty good you'll like this, too.

When we decided to focus on vampire lit for the October Book Bites book club at the library, we contacted Cabot with some questions about the book. She was extremely generous in her response -- answers to our questions can be found here on the library website -- and in giving us two signed copies of Insatiable.

And if you're in Key West and you're interested in reading the book, here's your chance: Cabot generously donated two signed copies of the book to us. And we're giving them away -- all you have to do is come to the library and fill out a form with your name and contact info. Winners must collect the book from the library -- we can't mail them out. So stop by, and take a chance -- and try out some other vampire lit while you're here. We have a big display up with all kinds of vampire books.

Near and far

Today's Miami Herald has my review of Bill Bryson's new book, At Home. It's an extremely entertaining read and informative, too. It's not a history as scholars would see it, but a review of various areas of private life in the 18th and 19th centuries in Britain and America. The book is organized as a tour of Bryson's home in Norfolk, England (thus, the title), and each room serves as a reason to muse about the history of the room and the functions it serves. Though Bryson does venture pretty far afield, it never seems boring or irrelevant.

There were tons of fun facts I couldn't fit into the review. Here, for your cocktail party fodder needs, are a few (but you should still read the book -- this doesn't begin to capture the depth and variety of good stuff within):

* George III ordered a palace at Kew -- that was half built -- made entirely of cast iron except for doors and floorboards "a design that would have given it all the charm and comfort of a cooking pot," Bryson writes. It was pulled down by the king's successor. But I would have liked to have seen it.

* "The Quechuan language in Peru still has a thousand words for different types or conditions of potatoes."

* The Europeans introduced many diseases that came close to wiping out Native American populations -- but they received one in return: syphilis.

* "For a century or so, no table of distinction was without its epergne, but why it was called an epergne no one remotely knows. The word doesn't exist in French. It just seems to have popped into being from nowhere."

* The name Boston Tea Party wasn't applied to the pre-Revolutionary rebellion until 1834.

* Franklin Delano Roosevelt's grandfather made the family fortune in the opium trade.

* Thomas Edison dreamed of filling the world with homes made of concrete.

* At the 1876 Centennial Exhibition most visitors were "far more impressed by an electric pen invented by Thomas Edison" than Alexander Graham Bell's new invention: the telephone.

* In 1726 gynecological medicine was so ridiculous that Mary Toft, an illiterate rabbit breeder from Surrey, "managed to convince medical authorities, including two physicians to the royal household, that she was giving birth to a series of rabbits."

* In the late 19th century people were so afraid of being buried alive that an Association for Prevention of Premature Burial was formed in Britain in 1899, and a corresponding group in America the next year.

* Buttons were so popular when introduced that they were applied all over clothes, even where they don't keep anything closed -- which is why suit jackets, to this day, have a row of buttons down near the cuff. "They have always been purely decorative and have never had a purpose, yet three hundred and fifty years on we continue to attach them as if they are the most earnest necessity."

Happy Banned Books Week!

Banned Books Week is here -- an issue about which the American Library Association likes to make a big honking deal every year -- and with it will come, predictably, a bunch of people pointing out that censorship is not quite the issue here in the U.S.A. as it was in, say, Soviet Russia. This issue is already being debated on our library's website (check the comments on the linked post). And while it's true, the event would be more accurately if less alliterativey called Challenged Books Week, and it's true most challenges come from individuals concerned about what their kids are reading, not government agencies trying to keep information from the populace, I'm still OK with the American Library Association making a big deal out of this and getting some press and attention to the issue of freedom of information.

The reason I am OK with it is that they brainwashed me at the ALA conference in DC back in June. No, wait. I wasn't supposed to say that! The REAL reason I am OK with it is that the First Amendment is an important one, foundation of our democracy and all that, and having a large influential organization that is hard core in defense of it is, in my opinion, a Good Thing. Would democracy be eroded if fewer youngsters had access to And Tango Makes Three, the gay penguin book that has been high on the list in recent years? Not really. Do I want to live in a country where the most uptight parents decide what books are available in the public library? Or a country where nothing that could possibly offend anyone is available in print? Definitely not.

Besides, I've always loathed the argument that because something is available it is being forced upon you. It's like when people complain about what's on TV. OK ... then STOP WATCHING. Unless you're being tied down, Clockwork Orange-style, with your eyelids pried open, I don't see what the problem is.

Speaking of "Clockwork Orange," that is in my personal Top Three of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen* and I don't ever want to see it again. But do I think it should be banned? Nope. Am I sorry I saw it? Not really. Isn't it good for us to be disturbed, to have our feathers ruffled, to think about things that are nasty or upsetting? Not full time, naturally, and I've been known to run for the Jane Austen/Georgette Heyer comfort read in a second after upsetting experiences. But dictating what others can read/view based on personal preference or worldview is no way to run a library, or a free country.

I was schooled as a First Amendment zealot by working as a newspaper reporter -- and that's another reason ALA's role is crucial. These days, with newspapers facing a vastly diminished role in public life, SOMEBODY has to step up and be the First Amendment hardliners. So why not ALA and librarians in general? Happy Banned Books Week!

* The other two, if you really must know, are "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" and "Breaking the Waves." And "Blue Velvet" finishes just out of the money but I have no plans to see that one again in this lifetime, either. All this is making me wonder: in these times of high-circulation DVDs, do those titles get challenged? Because a lot of the movies are WAY more violent and disturbing than most of the books. But Banned Media Resources Week just doesn' t have the same ring to it, does it?