Blog Post
Soulful Rhymes: Voices in Black Poetry
by copelands
February might be over, but we're continuing the celebration of black history and culture. Check out a few recommendations below for some of the best in Black poetry.
Light for the World to See by Kwame Alexander:
In this collection of poems, the New York Times bestselling author Kwame Alexander gives readers a rap session about race. Best known for his youth novels, Alexander writes a book of poetry for adults in Light for the World to See. Inspired by three distinct events, Alexander masterfully writes about the murder of George Floyd, the anti-racism protest of Colin Kaepernick, and the historic election of Barack Obama. Adding to the thought provoking text and galvanizing themes are graphic illustrations that make this title all the more enjoyable to read.
Blog Post
I Am Every Good Thing
by copelands
In the growing field of youth books that discuss antiracism, I Am Every Good Thing is simply one of the best. This book is essential and showcases Black boyhood in an empowering way. Author Derrick Barnes and illustrator Gordon C. James work together to tell a story that every parent should read with their child to understand or reaffirm the beauty and complexity of black children. It encourages diversity, acceptance, and unity in a world that is often riddled with bias and intolerance. Representation in literature matters and children from all walks of life can appreciate the beautiful artwork and moving words. The boy shown inside moves about in the world with confidence and joy. He is helpful and kind while also being brave and resilient. In an important lesson, he learns that while he is strong, it’s okay to be afraid at times. He is aware of his self worth and is a leader. And most importantly, he is proud of who he is. I Am Every Good Thing teaches us to love all parts of ourselves, to respect each other, and to take pride in who we are and where we come from. I found this book to be very enjoyable and hopefully you will too!
Blog Post
Quarterlife Lit. for the Twenty-Somthing Set
by muffy
It's that time of year....A fresh new year (and a new decade!!), the semester is just starting, mid-terms and papers are far into the future, and you need a good book.
You asked, "What should I read?"
So I go to my trusted source - Kayleigh George, the HarperLibrary Marketing Coordinator. We met when she put into my hand a fresh and fun zine aimed at the 20somethings. Now, even better, it is online - as a blog.
You will find she totally gets you, how your days are "hectic, stressful, strange, and euphoric". She makes a point of having something for "hipsters, English majors, poetry buffs, and those making their first foray into the sometimes-unforgiving corporate world."
Subscribe (you know the drill) and check out the links on the left. I especially liked EarlyWord. It lets me get on the waiting list ahead of the crowd.
Hey, I hope this does not mean you won't come in, browse and visit.
Blog Post
What are you reading: Dave Askins of the Ann Arbor Chronicle
by Clarence Cromwell
Dave Askins, the bearded, long-haired interlocutor of a blog called Teeter Talk has one of the more interesting pedigrees, in New Journalism. After completing a master's degree in German, and studying theoretical linguistics, toward a Ph.D. that never was completed, he embarked on what he describes as "a collection of odd jobs" in the Ann Arbor area. Those included work as a frozen foods clerk, a kennel keeper and a data programmer for a company that conducted public opinion surveys.
He's best known for his blog, and the question-and-answer sessions that he conducts with people of interest--while riding on one of his two handmade teeter totters. Askins has achieved equipoise with former President William Jefferson Clinton, Ann Arbor Mayor John Hieftje, various media personalities, and Ann Arbor District Library Director Josie Parker.
He currently is involved in two business ventures that are equally suited to his intellectually curious, peripatetic nature. One is known as H.D. Hauling and Delivery, a firm which is comprised of Askins, a bike and a two wheeled trailer. For a fee, he moves packages to local destinations; thanks to two local businesses, he makes two trips to the post office every business day, both of them with about 200 pounds of freight.
His other financial endeavor is The Ann Arbor Chronicle, which he produces along with his wife Mary Morgan. The Chronicle is an online-only daily newspaper covering the city of Ann Arbor. Askins does a good deal of the writing, in his informal and inquisitive style, even if it means being on the lookout for stories as he traverses the city with his bike and trailer. The Chronicle is supported by advertising from local businesses, and by donations from readers.
When we asked him to recommend a book, Askins naturally chose one with a depiction of a teeter totter on the cover.
"You can judge a book by its cover. The cover of Alan Zweibel's the other shulman shows a modified yellow diamond sign used for designating playgrounds -- the kind that depicts two abstract human figures on either side of a teeter totter. The modification was to fatten up one of them and skinny down the other one -- which is somehow related to the thematic content of this novel. It involves a guy who is on some level interacting -- through recollections -- with a previous, fatter, less fit version of himself as he runs a marathon. And it's funny.
But I didn't know anything about the marathon theme or the comic aspect when I bought the book. A friend of mine emailed me an image of the cover because he thought I might like it -- based on the interview website I maintain called Teeter Talk. And I bought it based purely on the novelty of the cover image. The fact that the arc of this novel traces the route of the New York City marathon as it's traversed by Shulman was a pleasant surprise. Having suffered through two marathons myself, I counted this as a second connection to the book -- in addition to the teeter tottering image. The third connection came from the book jacket, which includes this about Alan Zweibel by Merrill Markoe: "Alan Zweibel is a very funny guy. And he as written a very funny book." Merrill Markoe knows funny -- she was a writer on David Letterman's show back in the olden days. And David Letterman grew up in Indiana, just like me. I like funny books. So there's a third connection.
So this was a can't-miss read for me. That's why I can't figure out why I haven't been able to make my way past the first chapter. Maybe it's because I know how it turns out: he finishes the marathon, right? He's bound to. Otherwise there wouldn't be much of a book. Maybe it's that the humor requires a close reading to appreciate, which takes a mental effort that I haven't been able to muster in the last six months. These aren't fart jokes that Zweibel has put together here. Or maybe it's that the teeter totter cover art doesn't obey the laws of ordinary physics: the fat guy is being held aloft by the skinny guy. Maybe that was a missed indicator that something was wrong with this book.
So I've read that first chapter numerous times, because on each attempt I start the book at the beginning -- enough time passes between each attempt that I feel like I need to go back to the starting line to refresh my memory. It's by now become like a warm-up jog for the race through the rest of the book that never quite happens. And yes, I will be timing myself on how long it takes me to complete the book. There's a notion of chip-time versus clock-time for running road races in these modern times, so I will appeal to some analog of that in recording the time it takes me to get to the end of the book. I'll time it from the finish back to the last time I started."
Blog Post
What are you listening to?
by Clarence Cromwell
Bo Hansson's 1972 album "Lord of the Rings" is like "a Renaissance fair with MOOG synthesizers," in the words of one staff person at Encore Recordings of Ann Arbor.
Patrick Pyne said he took the 36-year-old LP off the shelf and put it on the turntable one afternoon last week, because he likes the psychedelic vibe of the MOOG synthesizer. He has also enjoyed a Hansson album entitled "Magicians hat," which he described as "silly, but a good record."
Hansson also used drums, guitars, standard organs, and a saxophone to produce the album. But the MOOG is what lends the music its ethereal sound.
Pyne, a musician himself, said he likes the artistic innocence he perceives in Hanssons work, which he summed up as unpretentious. He said he's also been listening to Bruce Haack, another musician who used synthesizers to compose, but who built his own.
"This is just stuff that has been attracting my ear lately," he said.
Pyne plays various instruments for a local band called Wide-Eyed, for which he is also in charge of recording and producing. They've played at the Blind Pig, and at Ypsilanti's Dreamland Theater. More information about them can be found at Wide-EyedRock.com.
Blog Post
What are you reading: Mary Morgan recommends 'Magnetic North' by Linda Gregerson
by Clarence Cromwell
Mary Morgan's transformation into an entrepreneur probably shouldn't surprise anyone, since she started her journalism career as a business reporter. In August, after 16 years as a newspaper journalist, Morgan gave up editorship of the opinion pages at the Ann Arbor News and became the publisher of an online newspaper. The Ann Arbor Chronicle was born Sept. 2, 2008. It features articles written by Morgan, by her husband Dave Askins (host of another well-known site, Teeter Talk), and by other local writers. The site is supported by local advertising.
We convinced Morgan to take a break from writing, editing and managing the business side of the site, just long enough to recommend a book for library patrons. Here it is.
"I'm reading "Magnetic North," a book of poems by Linda Gregerson. I bought the book about a year ago from Shaman Drum, and have come back to it recently.
"Linda teaches Renaissance lit and creative writing at the University of Michigan, and she's an example of some of the remarkable people who live in this town. She was a Guggenheim Fellow, and has won a ton of awards for her work - " Magnetic North" was nominated for the National Book Award last year.
"This isn't a book that I read from cover-to-cover. I'm not really sure how most people read poetry, but I'm a scanner. I page through the book until something strikes me, a word or phrase - like her description of "all-but-impenetrable bracken" near Maple Road (in "Bright Shadow") or of a troubled teen, her "lashes sticky with sunlight" (in "Prodigal") - and then I'll settle in and read that poem. I think images like that help shift your worldview just a bit, allowing you to look at common, taken-for-granted things in a slightly new way, which is a gift.
"Some of her poetry is inaccessible to me - meaning that I have to work at it, digging to uncover allusions and references to Juan Munoz or the siege of Lucera, or words like "homiletic" and "pellucid." That erudite back-in-school tone is a counterpoint to her seemingly casual, offhand observations:
"'Cloud cover like a lid on.
Thwarted trees. And three more hours
of highway to be rid of. My darlings don't want
a book on tape. They want
a little indie rock, they want to melt
the tweeters, they want
mama in the trunk so they can have some un-
remarked-on fun.'
"My life is fairly hectic right now, and reading one of Linda Gregerson's poems, letting the words tumble around in my head and slow me down, is a great antidote."
Blog Post
What are you reading?
by Clarence Cromwell
If you're searching for a good mystery, Robin Agnew would like to make a couple of suggestions.
Robin is the vice president of the Kerrytown BookFest (which takes place this Sunday, Sept. 7). What's more, she and her husband Jamie own Aunt Agatha's, the peculiar book shop at 213 South Fourth Ave. that specializes in mystery and detective books.
They founded the store in 1992, after Jamie, also a bookworm, spent some time working for Borders, another book store that originated in Ann Arbor. The choice to sell mystery and detective fiction was natural, Robin said. She worked her way through Nancy Drew in elementary school, and in middle school she read every one of Agatha Christie's mystery novels. She's remained a mystery reader ever since.
Robin is usually on the lookout for new authors to share with other book lovers, and this year she's telling people about Cornelia Read, after being impressed with her first novel, A Field of Darkness. She emailed us last week that the book was "terrific," and the writing "beautiful."
Now, here's what she has to say about Cornelia Read's latest novel, The Crazy School:
"Cornelia Read's series character, Madeleine Dare, is a young woman from a very advantaged background who has married and lived first in Syracuse and now lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, where she works at a school for disturbed teenagers. Her present penny pinching lifestyle has been somewhat resolved (for her) in the first novel; this second novel is more directly concerned with her job, as the husband in question (with the interesting job of working on a device to shave railroad tracks to extend their life) is kept mainly off canvas. He fulfills the job a lot of wives had in older detective novels - he's the warm space the heroine comes home to while she figures out what's going on (he even cooks).
"In any case, while Madeleine hopes she is helping the children she works with, she's not sure, and several things about the school disturb her. It's "crazy" on more than one level, with the students probably being on the lesser end of the crazy scale. It's run by a man named David Santangelo whose main concern seems to be the helipad he's building on campus; meanwhile some of the students (who are paying the equivalent of a college tuition) are living in buildings so infested with rats it's the job of some of the students to set out poison for them every night. The teachers are all forced to go to counseling - something Madeleine sees as completely bogus, especially when one of the counselors tells her she's sure Madeleine had been abused as a child because she sits up so straight. (Obviously this counselor was never sent to ballroom dancing school).
"Madeleine becomes more involved with the students while at the same time becoming more suspicious of the administration - something that becomes even more baffling when she's offered a higher level job seemingly out of the blue. When two of the students turn up dead the rest of the school is sure it's a suicide, but Madeleine, who's pretty sure she herself has been poisoned, is certain they've been murdered. Working with an unusual group of "helpers" - and Read is able to twist and change your expectations of certain characters - she's able to find a solution to the deaths, but it comes at a high price. What Madeleine Dare might be doing in the next novel is anyone's guess, but I feel sure that after you read this book you'll want to find out what it will be."