What to read?

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I never actually have this problem -- I have the opposite one -- but I hear people sometimes wonder what they should read. The wonderful Anne Rice at the Key West Library has compiled a list of various "Best of 2007" lists. I love these lists, even if I've compiled my own "to read" lists that are longer than several lifetimes. A good resource and worth bookmarking. One of my favorite online reads, Slate, also has a list of winter reading recommendations from various writers. And the National Book Critics Circle recently posted its Winter List of Good Reads.

(A note on library nomenclature: The library at the corner of Fleming and Elizabeth streets is, in all accuracy, the May Hill Russell branch of the Monroe County Library system. However everyone in town refers to it as the Key West library so I will, too. But if you live here you should know we're part of a countywide library system and the other branches are all worth checking out -- I'm especially fond of the Islamorada, aka Helen Wadley, branch on Upper Matecumbe.)

He might bite back

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chuck palahniujKris Neihouse from the Key West library reports: next Wednesday February 13 Book Bites will meet at 5:30 to discuss the author Chuck Palahniuk. I know many will have equal but opposite reactions to this cult favorite. Personally I adore him! I have been doing a lot of reading by and about him.  He is a very interesting writer (and person.)

Please come to share your opinion--no matter what it is!
See you at the Library!!
Kris
P.S.  Stay tuned for Toni Morrison in March!

Getting ready for 09

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The 20King Philip, or Metacom, as engraved by Paul Revere09 Key West Literary Seminar is looking back -- specifically at historical fiction with some history thrown in. One of the historians we've invited is Jill Lepore and I just finished reading her book The Name of War, about King Philip's War and how it has been recorded and interpreted in American history. Sadly, I managed to grow up and receive an alleged education in New England and still had no clear idea what King Philip's War was until I read "Mayflower" by Nathaniel Philbrick last year. I thought it was one of the French and Indian Wars, since they're named after royalty. Oops.

Philbrick's book takes King Philip's War as a kind of coda to the initial landing and establishment of the Plymouth Colony (it was Philip's father, Massasoit, who made the initial contact and alliance with the English settlers, to the Native Americans' later regret and dismay). It's popular history, written with the layperson in mind. Lepore's is more academic but still very accessible. And it's really interesting on the whole issue of who controls the narrative of history, from the English settlers who initially wrote vivid accounts of the carnage -- to help justify sending Native Americans to slavery and death -- to the early 19th century Americans who staged an overwrought play called "Metamora," starring Philip as a sort of proto-Revolutionary American.

Interesting stuff. And since I'm finally about to return this book to the Monroe County Library, others can check it out.