Hero or Traitor?

Anyone else here obsessed with the Serial podcast? I listened to the whole first season in one sitting. Yes, that’s 12 hours. No, I didn’t talk to anyone or move.

If you aren’t familiar with the series, it’s from the creators of This American Life with host Sarah Koenig. It tells one true story over the course of a season; hence the name.

The first season was a riveting story about Adnan Syed, a young man — wrongfully? — convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee in 1999. Using court documents, police interrogations, witness interviews and even driving tests, Koenig found far more information than was ever revealed in court. In fact, her investigation led to an appeal in Syed’s case (currently pending).

Season two follows another case: that of Robert Bowdrie Bergdahl, better known as Bowe Bergdahl. Bergdahl is the Army soldier captured in Afghanistan and held captive (and tortured) for five years by the Taliban. The circumstances of his capture and release have generated a lot of controversy. Donald Trump called for his execution. Is he a traitor? Is he a hero? Why did he leave his post? Was he working with the Taliban? Is he just a dumb kid who made a terrible, life-altering mistake? Koenig articulately captures the frustration of Bergdahl with his superiors, as well as the frustration and anger of the soldiers tasked with “rescuing” him. I hate to be the one that tells you, but you never really find out the answers. In December, Bergdahl was charged with one count of desertion with intent to shirk important or hazardous duty (Article 85) and one count of misbehavior before the enemy by endangering the safety of a command, unit or place (Article 99).

AP Photo/U.S. Army, file

I wanted to read more about Bergdahl himself, but it turns out that no one has written a book about him! Sebastian Junger should get on this. I did find this list of books to read if you’re addicted to season two of Serial. And while lists don’t usually do it for me, I read two of them: one from each end of the spectrum.

No Way Out: A Story of Valor in the Mountains of Afghanistan, Mitch Weiss and Kevin Maurer

I have read very few books about the Afghanistan War, even though it’s been going on most of my adult life, and I am friends with people that served there. Part of me thinks it’s surreal to read about a war that is still happening. And maybe part of me doesn’t want to know. No Way Out is the story of a Special Forces team dropped into an enemy-held valley with the mission to capture a terrorist leader. Instead they were ambushed, stuck in the Afghanistan mountains, continuously attacked by machine gun fire and rocked-propelled grenades. It’s fast-paced, especially the battle scenes, and you often have to remind yourself that you are reading non-fiction. This actually happened. While learning about the war, the battle and the weaponry, you are also introduced to individual soldiers, which makes the book better, but harder to read. When the battled ended, 10 soldiers were awarded the Silver Star, the Army’s third highest award for combat valor.

Guantánamo Diary, Mohamedou Ould Slahi

This is the first (and only) diary written by a Guantánamo detainee. Mohamedou Slahi has been imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba since 2002. It is very easy to think of the remaining 93 Guantánamo prisoners as faceless, nameless, American-hating religious extremists. But then there’s this German-trained engineer from Canada. In his third year he began a diary. By turns darkly funny and terrifying, Slahi recounts his life “before” U.S. custody. Page upon page of text have been black-bar redacted by the United States government. Slahi has never been charged with a crime. A federal judge ordered his release in 2010. The U.S. government appealed. Slahi remains in U.S. custody.

Serial fans, how did you feel about the last episode? Does Bergdahl seem like a traitor?

For the record, I think he was far more “dumb kid” than “needs to be executed.”

suzy

 

“I Paint So That I Don’t Have to Talk”: The Art of Drew Struzan

Back in December when we were reflecting on all the Star Wars-related materials the Library has, I briefly touched on the majestic music of John Williams. Today I want to talk about another artist who was first introduced to me via Star Wars–Drew Struzan.

If that name doesn’t ring a bell, what about names like Indiana Jones, John Rambo or Harry Potter? Now there’s probably so much bell-ringing in your ears you should make an appointment with an audiologist. You might not recognize Drew Struzan’s name, but you’ve certainly seen his work, whether it’s in the form of an album cover, a book jacket or one of his over-150 movie posters.

Some of his most famous movie posters are collected in Drew Struzan: Oeuvre and The Art of Drew Struzan. From Hook to Hellboy, The Thing to The Walking Dead, Blade Runner to Batkid Begins, Struzan’s work is instantly recognizable and unquestionably beautiful. The books also include some of his studio work, like portraits of his grandchildren and his own interpretation of Baba Yaga. I’m someone who can barely draw stick figures, so I admire an artist like Struzan—his drawings and paintings almost look like photographs.

For more on Struzan beyond the art, I highly recommend the 2013 documentary Drew: The Man Behind the Poster. It reveals a placid, taciturn family man, like the sweet grandfather everyone wants. While the details of his early life are fascinating, hearing him talk about his work is the most interesting aspect of the documentary. Regarding movie posters, he says how important it is for a poster to not only sell the movie’s premise but also evoke the feeling or emotion of the movie. In a world where most movie posters consist of awful photoshopped giant heads, Struzan’s work has a classiness to it that harkens back to a golden age of cinema, when the multiplex was a portal to another world of imagination and wonder. Often imitated, but seldom replicated, you can look at a movie poster by Struzan and know exactly what kind of movie you’re going to see.

If you’re a fan of Steven Spielberg or Star Wars (read: everyone), or if you just like good art, you should check him out.

–Ross

The Difference: Thoughts during Women’s History Month

March is Women’s History Month, and I have been reflecting on the long history of women’s issues, especially in the workplace where woman have historically had to deal with lower pay, sexual harassment and other types of discrimination. Over the years I have tailored my own actions as a woman in the workplace based on my experiences and the fear that I would appear less than equal to my male co-workers.

Click for a list of books on back pain available through the Library.

In the last month I had two medical issues to deal with. The most recent happened when I managed to slip while hiking  and wretched my back. I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening on the couch with a heating pad and letting the kids destroy the house. It wasn’t until Monday morning when I dropped like a sack of potatoes trying to stand up that I realized I may have done a little more than pulled a muscle. Turns out I am the new owner of a bulging disc. Not a slipped or herniated disc, just one that is bulging, and I have been told this is better, less painful.

The whole scenario was pretty funny and offered some excellent stories for me to tell. In less than 48 hours I over-shared this whole experience with co-workers and my poor boss … texting him at 6 am to tell him I wasn’t going to come in to work and explaining the why and the how. I am sure he was beyond thrilled to be woken up at 6 in the morning to me explaining that my left leg was numb and asking about back injuries.

The other medical issue? Well, it was a miscarriage. This, dear reader, is difficult to discuss. I like to share funny stories, but emotions? Not so much.  It happened in the middle of February and began at work. I had to ask to leave. I spent the rest of the day on the couch experiencing intense symptoms and eventually had to go to the ER. I was then sore, tired and overall pretty off for a few days. I had gone in to work, though, and assumed I would be fine, but it turned out I just wasn’t. Yet I was loath to tell my boss; I needed to explain to him that I was not well and needed to leave, that I had pushed myself too hard but it hadn’t worked. What was the difference? I told him every sordid detail of my back escapades, why didn’t I share this medical emergency too?

Click for a list of books on handling miscarriage and infertility.

Partially it was because it wasn’t funny. I like to make people laugh, and letting them laugh at my own misfortune is fine, but this went beyond misfortune to misery. The other reason, I think, is because it can’t happen to him, at least to his person. Anyone can have back issues, and it didn’t make me feel weak or “less than” to share that experience, but I was afraid to talk about my miscarriage. I was afraid that it would look bad to discuss a woman’s issue in the workplace and to use it as a reason for missing work.

Of course, this was my own inner projection. My boss is a lovely, caring soul who could not have been more understanding and accepting. The difference though, was my own experience of how it would be perceived. As a younger woman in the workplace I heard the grumbles from co-workers about the moms who would leave early to get a sick child. At the time, I vowed never to be that woman. Then I had kids of my own, and I have left on many occasions for lots of issues, all the while hoping that my co-workers understood.

The experience of women in the work place isn’t something that is the same across the board. It is as different as each person in the work place. We all have our share of obstacles and difficulties, and my recent experiences serve as a reminder to me that we should support each other, because you just don’t know what might be going on behind the scenes. I am lucky to have experienced such support at work, but realize this isn’t the case with every, or possibly most, women in the workplace.

This is a huge issue, and thankfully, the Library has plenty of resources where you can learn more about women’s issues in the workplace:

-Natalie

On Reading 100 Books, Part II

Another year over, and once again I failed miserably at reading 100 books.

But I did succeed in garnering the silent judgement of cats everywhere.
Source

All right, maybe “failed” is a strong word. I ended up reading 70 books and that’s nothing to scoff at, right? Scornful sideways glances from feral felines aside, I decided to highlight five of my favorite books and three of my least favorite books of 2015. If it tickles your fancy, you can look at the whole list on the next page.

The Five I Liked the Most:

Love is a Dog from Hell: Poems, 1974-1977 by Charles Bukowski
I learned about this book of poetry by way of The Limousines’ song of the same name. This was my first foray into the writings of Bukowski and it didn’t disappoint. With lines like “I have gotten so used to melancholia / that / I greet it like an old / friend.” and “I am going / to die alone / just the way I live,” this certainly isn’t Lord Byron or John Keats.  This is the kind of stuff you read after a breakup, right before rushing out to do it all over again. These are a few of my favorite lines from the poem Chopin Bukowski:

people need me. I fill
them. if they can’t see me
for a while they get desperate, they get
sick.

but if I see them too often
I get sick. it’s hard to feed
without getting fed.

You by Caroline Kepnes
Stephen King—of whom I officially became a fan in 2015 thanks to It and Four Past Midnight—called this book “hypnotic and scary.” What more of an endorsement do you need? You illustrates how easy it is to stalk a person in the digital age. It’s an eerie, well-written page-turner that’s left me eagerly awaiting the sequel, Hidden Bodies, due out in February.

Mosquitoland by David Arnold
It’s very seldom that a book bring me to tears (in a good way), but this YA debut did just that. The premise—a teenager has to return to her home town via Greyhound when she learns her mother is unwell—was what interested me in this book. Whether in real life or in fiction, I love a good road trip. Just like the tumultuous teenage years, Mosquitoland is equal parts happy and sad. It’s now one of my favorite YA novels of all time.

Sea of Trees by Robert James Russell
I came across Aokigahara—a dense forest at the bottom of Mt Fuji and a popular place where people go to commit suicide—while reading one of my favorite websites. Doing a simple Google search for more information on the location led me to this novella. It’s a quick, creepy mystery about a couple searching Aokigahara for the woman’s lost sister. What’s even creepier is that two movies have been made about this forest, one starring Matthew McConaughey released in 2015 and one starring Natalie Dormer that came out just last week. The creepiest bit, though, is that this is a real place. Check out this great documentary short put out by Vice for more on the Suicide Forest.

Poorly Drawn Lines: Good Ideas and Amazing Stories by Reza Farazmand
This book actually came in for someone else, but I saw it and ordered it for myself. It’s hilarious, nonsensical and was a welcome break from the previous book I’d read, The Price of Salt, which was neither hilarious nor nonsensical. Visit the website of the same name for more giggles.

Source

The Three I Liked the Least:

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
I went into this book with almost zero expectations. I’ve experienced first-hand how disappointing a decades-later followup can be (I’m looking at you, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). Part of the charm of To Kill a Mockingbird was the way that Lee wrote Scout. Everything that happens is seen through a rose-colored, knee-high lens of childhood. That’s not the case with Watchman. Scout is twenty-six and has returned to Maycomb to visit Atticus. Events transpire that make her question the truths she clung to during childhood. The readers question these truths right along with her and I normally love a good existential rumination, but it’s handled in such a bland and forgettable way here. And that’s not even mentioning how certain characters are almost unrecognizable (ethically speaking) from their Mockingbird counterparts or how the death of a beloved character from Lee’s first novel is only eluded to rather than shown. How this ended up on Goodreads’ Best of 2015 list is baffling, especially when almost every patron I talked with about it also didn’t like it. I don’t want to waste anymore digital ink complaining about it, so I’ll just echo Philip Hensher‘s comments:  it’s “a pretty bad novel.”

Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig
Unlike Go Set a Watchman, I had at least one expectation for this book–that it would prepare me for the galactic landscape after the fall of the Empire. Sadly, this book did little to elucidate the mystery of what happens between the end of Return of the Jedi and the beginning of The Force Awakens. The plot takes its time getting started and by the time it does, I wasn’t nearly as invested in the characters as I should have been. These weren’t familiar characters like Luke Skywalker or Han Solo, so I didn’t particularly care what happened to them. Not to mention the new characters all came across as annoyingly self-assured. Because of this, I felt like there were no real stakes in book at all. But maybe that’s on me; it’s been a long time since I’ve read supplemental Star Wars material. There is one scene of Han Solo and Chewbacca aboard the Millennium Falcon, but as a whole, the book skews toward poorly-written fanfiction. In the plus column, I’ve got to give credit to Wendig for introducing the first gay hero in the form of ex-Imperial soldier Sinjir Rath Velus as well as a lesbian couple. In a universe where there are literally hundreds of different alien species, Star Wars has never been that concerned about diversity … but that’s a blog post for another day.

American Pastoral by Philip Roth
This is up there (or down there) with The Train from Pittsburgh as one of my least favorite, most hated, severely unenjoyable reads of 2015. The actual plot of this book–an all-American family is torn apart after their daughter blows up a convenience store at the height of the Vietnam War, with musings of the rise and fall of the American Dream sprinkled in–could be boiled down to probably fifty pages. The other 350 pages of Roth’s novel are made up of tangential ramblings including, but not limited to, the history of Newark, the minutiae of Miss America contests and more information on glove-making than any human ever needs to know. It was frustrating for me to read through these prolonged chapters filled with walls of text and just when I thought that there was no point to be made–that maybe I’d picked up a New Jersey history book by mistake–and I was about to give up, Roth would wrap up his tangent and continue with the narrative. In It, Stephen King was similarly long-winded while detailing of the history of the fictional town of Derry, but King held my interest far more than Roth did in describing a place that’s only a six -hour drive away. Again, I have no one to blame but myself–I only read this because first-time director Ewan McGregor filmed the adaptation here, but getting through this book was such an ordeal that I’m now in no hurry to see the movie, despite my well-documented love for Pittsburgh on film.

Did you set or reach any reading goals in 2015? Do you have any reading goals for 2016 or any tips on how I can finally get to 100? Sound off in the comments below!

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June 2015 Recap

You’re a busy person with many worthy internet essays to read, so we thought we’d try something new to help keep you in the loop with all things Eleventh Stack: recap posts!

On the last weekday of every month Eleventh Stack will publish  a list, with brief descriptions, of posts you might have missed the first time around. Since it’s never too late to discover a good book, film, or other library item, you’ll get a second chance to make your TBR list even longer. Read on to see the topics we tackled in June!

Art by MikaylaM on RedBubble.com (click for portfolio!)

• Maria J. previewed the Summer Reading Extravaganza, which turned out to be just as excellent as she promised it would be.
• Corey contributed a two-part guest post on his recent professional trip to Spain. Start here. Finish Here.
• Kayla reviewed indie pop band Florence + The Machine’s new album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. She also had a lot to say about season 3 of the popular Netflix series Orange Is The New Black.
• Ginny spoke with several CLP volunteers about their Summer Reading goals (and added a number of their picks to her own to-read list in the process).
• Speaking of Summer Reading goals, Jess added a few more books to her TBR pile, and profiled some LGBTQ superheroes, while Abbey suggested some great reads you might want to take on vacation.
• Ross learned about a movie adaptation of Austin Wright’s 1993 novel Tony and Susan, which begins filming this October in Los Angeles. You can read the book, and Ross’ review, while you wait.
• Suzy wrote about the trials and tribulations of being a night person in a daytime world in Madrugada. And she threw in some books about dreaming and sleeping for good measure.
• Audrey reminded us that June holds some important historical anniversary dates.
• Scott pondered the design, execution, and history of drones, and also weighed in on a few of his favorite cinematic car chases.
• Joelle showed us how you can learn to play all kinds of guitar styles with the Library collection’s help.
• Melissa F. helped you read your way through Mercury retrograde, and reviewed Maria Bello’s new memoir during Pride Week.
• Eric reminded us once again just what we lost with Sir Terry Pratchett’s passing
• Awesome Amy promoted a film program that, if you missed it, can be repeated at your house any time thanks to the Library’s DVD collection
• Leigh Anne did double duty for Pride Week by introducing you to the scope of the Library’s LGBTQ resources, and mini-reviewing some of this year’s Lambda Literary Award-winning books.
• Last, but certainly not least, Isabelle shared what titles folks at this year’s Pride Fest felt had changed their story.

If you enjoyed this highlights reel, you’ll love what the Eleventh Stack team has cooked up for July. See you tomorrow with books, movies, and more!

What Book Changed Your Story?

Happy end of Pride Month, everyone! We celebrated with you this June at PrideFest by making a community quilt, and now I want to share what a wonderful experience we had. We asked PrideFest attendees to write a title of “A Book That Changed Your Story” on a quilt square, and the finished quilt will start to travel around our 19 branches in the fall. Here’s a teaser:

Photo taken by the author.

So, “What book changed your story?” I love this question for a few reasons. First, reading is a highly personal activity. We pick what we read, and we read what we love, which makes bookshelves probably the second window into the soul. (Raise your hand if you, too, make a beeline to someone’s bookshelf as soon as you spot it.)

Second, I like that this question makes us think about the profound effect reading has on our lives. There’s probably that one line you’ve read that you never came back from — that changed how you saw yourself, the world and your place in the world.

And then I like this question because, at PrideFest, it became abundantly clear that a concomitant joy of reading is living in the company of readers. There’s the thrill of excitement and sense of affirmation seeing someone read a book that’s dear to you as they wait for the bus and the fun of talking to someone about that book, or them asking you about it.

Photo by Maggie McFalls.

At PrideFest, some of you knew right away what book changed you. Others left the table, thought about the books they’d read and themselves, and came back hours later to answer the question. And when you answered, some shared stories about those books: reading Marianne Williamson’s A Return to Love in the early nineties after the AIDS crisis, naming a beloved daughter with some clever wordplay from the The Velveteen Rabbit (which is read by Meryl Streep on OverDrive). Many people answered that Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues changed your story, but almost all of you had different reasons why. One person praised Winnie the Pooh’s values and the character’s disregard for “gender role or size”. (It’s all about that honey!) We talked about children’s novels (Mommy, Mama, and Me), YA (I Am J, How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater, The Miseducation of Cameron Post), fiction (Rubyfruit Jungle, The Front Runner) and non-fiction (Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, anyone?).

Another reason I love this question is because we identify ourselves in so many different ways. Identifying and claiming a title is empowering. Sometimes, we find community, and we find ourselves when we do so. The only thing I know for sure is that on a fundamental level I am a reader, and I’ve always loved meeting my own people. Pittsburgh makes a lot of best-of lists, but one thing that isn’t mentioned explicitly is the people. So let me say explicitly that the best thing about Pittsburgh is yinz. Thank you to all who shared, thanks for being… my neighbor.

–Isabelle

The Good Fight

There’s a category of books I sometimes choose to read. I won’t say that I like them, even though I recommend them to friends. These books never leave me feeling better; most of them lack catharsis or even schadenfreude. They are full of terrible, violent things happening to undeserving people, and these events are so far in the past that no fundraisers or awareness campaigns or angry letters can ameliorate them.

When I was young, this category was manifest through Holocaust literature. There are a surprisingly large number of juvenile and adolescent works about the Holocaust (and the Second World War more generally). Some of the best are Number the Stars, The Devil’s Arithmetic, and The Book Thief. Perhaps so many exist because so many people were affected, so there are many stories that can be told. Though they have good and brave heroes, (including real historical figures such as Corrie Ten Boom and Anne Frank) all are, at some level, stories of fear and cruelty and death.

 

Image obtained from Hashtag the Planet – click through for source.

In college I discovered the Soviets. I had intended to introduce myself to classic Russian literature (i.e., Dostoevsky, et al.) and instead got Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. And while Russian literature is often characterized by suffering, the writings of anti-Soviets are particularly gut-wrenching because the suffering is a result of deliberate persecution by those in power. The Gulag Archipelago and The Bridge at Andau depict systemic victimization of populations within and outside of Soviet Russia, respectively. They depict a populace hurt, angry, and bitter. At their best moments, they leave me sobbing.

My shelf of terrible books has continued to expand, encompassing more of the world’s tragedies and shames. It now includes more contemporary stories of child soldiers (Never Fall Down), violence against women (Girls Like Us, Half the Sky) and more. Why do I do this to myself? Why do I read these books, not only despite but because of the discomfort they cause me? Why do I recommend them to my friends and family?

I read these books because the horrors they describe need to be known, and they need to be felt. I need to be familiar with this darkness so that I can recognize and fight it in the world around me. I need to see the effects lone people can have through deliberate moral action in the face of injustice. While it is far too late to save the victims of the Holocaust, the world still has cruelty and persecution I can fight.

What else should be on this shelf? What else do I need to read and know? Leave me your recommendations in the comments.

• Bonnie T.

Celebrating Black Women’s Writing

One great part of being a grown-up is that you can, if you want, educate yourself on everything you didn’t learn in school. This year I’ve been reading my way through the For Harriet blog’s list of the 100 books by Black women they believe everyone should read. After spending so much time with powerful fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, I have to say, it’s the perfect syllabus for the best class I never had.

There’s a point of entry in the list for every reading type and temperament, and many of the works are thematically linked, so you can pretty much jump in anywhere and learn a lot no matter where you start. Here are a few suggestions to inspire you.

photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Daughter: A Novel, asha bandele. Aya, a college student, is shot by a white police officer while out jogging,  in a hideous case of mistaken identity. Miriam, Aya’s mother, is left to cope not only with the current tragedy of losing her child, but the unhealed trauma of her past relationship with Aya’s father. As the story moves between present and past, we learn how carefree young women become cautious and hard, at the expense of their own ability to cherish the men they love and the children they bear. A timely, sobering pick that’s sure to spark spirited book club discussions. Available in print only.

32 Candles, Ernessa T. Carter. Davie’s favorite teen movie was Sixteen Candles, but unfortunately, she couldn’t get her own high school crush to give her the time of day. Years later, she runs into him again by chance, and sparks fly. Too bad she sort of forgets to tell him who she is, and that they already know each other, a decision that comes back to haunt her just when happiness is in her grasp. Solid chick lit about childhood dreams, adult deceptions, and — romance fans take note — hard-won happy endings. Available in print and as a digital audio book.

Brown Girl in the Ring, Nalo Hopkinson. Ti-Jeanne lives with her grandmother, and has learned a wealth of healing lore from her. However, she’s going to have to learn some things she hadn’t counted on in order to face down the evil spirit that stalks Toronto. Heavy on Caribbean legend and lore, Hopkinson’s first novel is a gripping foray into dystopian speculative fiction (long before we started calling those things by those names) partially influenced by Derek Walcott’s play, Ti-Jean and his Brothers (which has been anthologized in various collections). A good beginning for teens and adults looking for heroines of color in their SF/F.* Available in print, digital audio, and — for you intrepid late adopters — book on cassette.

Sister Citizen, Melissa Harris-Perry. Of all the great non-fiction on this list, Harris-Perry’s stands out for its clear explanations of concepts that might be unfamiliar to you, as well of a history of images and events of which you might not be aware. Harris-Perry explains what obstacles have prevented Black women from fully participating in democracy, using statistics, stereotype analysis, political theory, anecdotes of women’s lived experience, and other tools to make her case. She also references some of the other non-fiction works mentioned in the For Harriet list, which may help you to decide where to go next in your learning journey. Available in print and as a digital audio book.

homegirls & handgrenades, Sonia Sanchez. You get the sense, reading this collection of poems, that what Sanchez really wants to do is take you by the hand and lead you through her universe, saying, “Look. Listen.” Her speakers often function as observer-outsiders in many of these poems, implying that the teacher often functions as the student, even when the teacher knows her subject very well. Poems like “Bubba” and “Traveling on an Amtrak Train Could Humanize You” are fine examples of this: Sanchez telling stories that have broadened her speakers’ minds, and, hopefully, our own. Poetry for people who think they aren’t ready for poetry, but are willing to give it a shot. Available in print only.

The list of 100 also contains the authors you’d expect to be there (Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, etc.), but I deliberately chose less familiar selections to demonstrate just how much depth and breadth we’re dealing with here. If you’re intrigued, I hope you’ll try one of these selections, or others from the list; maybe this is an area you’re familiar with already. If so, I hope you’ll suggest additional titles, and share your own reading experiences in the comments.

Leigh Anne

* This is a particular reading interest of mine so if you’re ever in the library, come find me and let’s talk about it. A great place to start your research is Bitch magazine’s series of blog posts on girls of color in dystopia, written by Victoria Law.

 

 

 

My Favorite Romances of 2014

I’ve read so many good romance novels this year. And this time last year, I spotlighted the books I most enjoyed, so I thought I’d make it an annual post.

Read on for my favorite romance reads (and my shortest post) of 2014.

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-Maria A.

It’s Scary Because It’s True.

Spooooky Dravo Cemetery

The ideal time to find out you are camping next to a haunted cemetery is around midnight, after you’ve had lots of beer and are twenty-five miles away from home and on a bicycle. The patrons of June Bug’s Restaurant & Bar in Sutersville were alternately amused and horrified that we were camping next to “Stringtown Cemetery.” According to local legend you can hear babies crying (only if you are a man and only after midnight) and other disturbing sounds. Supernatural Lore of Pennsylvania: Ghosts, Miracles and Monsters writes that you may be chased by a two-headed astral dog from Satan or feel sudden, unexplained cold winds caused by a ghost train. (Brief history of Dravo Cemetery, if you’re interested.)

But you know what scares me more than two-headed Satan dogs? Humans.

True Horror

Helter-Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, Vincent Bugliosi

Even 45 years later, the Manson Family murders have the power to fascinate and chill. In 1969 Los Angeles experienced a series of random murders, including the brutal stabbing of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and the seemingly unrelated murder of grocery store owners, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca . Written by the prosecutor of 1970 trial of Charles Manson, Helter-Skelter is a firsthand account of the cases of Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and other members of the”Manson Family.”

Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century, Peter Graham

Did you know Anne Perry (the author) is a murderer? In 1954, Juliet Hulme (now Anne Perry) and her best friend, Pauline Parker went for a walk in the woods with Parker’s mother, Honora. Honora Parker was later found “accidentally” bludgeoned to death with a brick. Both girls confessed and were convicted of the crime. Why did they do it? Because Honora Parker wanted to keep them apart. After serving five years in prison, Anne Perry went on to have a successful writing career. See the murder on film in the Peter Jackson directed Heavenly Creatures, starring Kate Winslet as Juliet Hulme.

The Zodiac Killer: Terror and Mystery, Brenda Haugen

After Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac Killer is one of the great unsolved serial killers in history. Starting in 1966 with the murder of student Cheri Jo Bates, the Zodiac killer claims to have murdered 37 people, but investigators believe his victim count was seven, two of whom survived. Taunting the police with cryptic notes and strange cyphers, police eventually ruled out over 2500 potential suspects. The one fingerprint found on a letter has never been matched to a suspect. In 2014 Gary Stewart released a book, The Most Dangerous Animal of All, where he claims that the Zodiac Killer is his biological father, Earl Van Best. As of right now there has never been a definitive DNA test and so it’s still officially unsolved.

The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson

Dr. Henry Howard Holmes is one of the first documented serial killers in American history. He designed an entire hotel with murder in mind. A murder “castle” using multiple builders, so no one knew the exact plan of the building. Except him. It was a perfect killing ground full of soundproof, windowless rooms to suffocate people, gas lines to asphixiate, and a convenient chute to the basement for dead bodies (where even more atrocities occured.) Capitalizing on the crowds converging on Chicago for the 1893 World’s Fair, Holmes eventually confessed to murdering 27 people. However, it’s likely his body count is close to 200.

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer

Krakauer combines a history of the Mormon Church with the investigation of a jarring double murder in this devastating book. In 1984 Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter, Erica, are discovered with their throats brutally cut. Delving into the dark world of the FLDS Krakauer recounts the “revelations” received by Lafferty’s own brother-in-law: revelations that required her “removal” for several offenses, as well as the underlying religious extremism that caused Ron and Dan Lafferty to romanticize and justify killing for God.

Friendlier in the morning.

For the record, we never heard any babies crying, we never saw any kind of dog, astral or otherwise, and all the trains we heard were real. The worst part of the trip was cold feet- because I forgot socks.

Happy Halloween!

suzy