Ford County: Stories by John Grisham

I have never read any of John Grisham’s courtroom novels for which he is best known.  Odd though – I read his childhood memoir-esque book A Painted House several years back and liked it very much.  It’s Grisham’s occasional willingness to digress away from his standard formula that gets me to read his material.  And I like the short story format, so Ford County seemed a natural fit.

Ford County is several slices of small town Mississippi life, served up in a straightforward writing style that makes the reading click along.   The tales seem to take place in a nebulous latter-day setting – definitely post-segregation times.  A few affirm the vague present with mentions of cell phones and such, and one (Funny Boy) definitely takes place in 1989, but there’s a strong timelessness to all of these.  Grisham’s characters are lawyers, ex-cons and stalkers, low-lifes and high-falutin’s, white and black, desperate, and flawed.  Some are scum of the earth and dare you to call them that.  Vengeance is a strong theme in several of these stories; the methods in which it is exacted will at turns make you laugh or cringe. 

I was reading some reviewers of this book that have shunned John Grisham as a serious writer.  Maybe it’s because he’s a best-seller writer; as such, he could probably write utter drivel and it would sell.  But then on the flip side, Grisham was an early driving force behind the Oxford American, perhaps one of the best publications of modern Southern literature in recent times, so he is aware of and encourages writers from the region.  And, he (thankfully) knows how to flex his own literary muscle beyond the legal thriller.  This short collection showcases this literary muscle nicely.

Ford County isn’t quite Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha, but it sure is easier to spell – and its stories, easier to digest.

(William Hicks, Information Services)

Prophet of Purpose: The Life of Rick Warren by Jeffery L. Sheler

Rick Warren plays a prominent role in American religion, much as Billy Graham did during his long career.  Unlike Graham, Warren is the pastor of one particular church, devoting his entire life to his work there.  Many of us are familiar with his name - either we have read his book The Purpose-Driven Life, the bestselling nonfiction bestseller ever, seen him interview both Barack Obama and John McCain during the presidential campaign, or heard him give the invocation at Obama’s invocation.  You may also be aware of Warren’s taking evangelicals into new territory, such as the fight against HIV/AIDS and assisting African nations.  The facts that both Bill Clinton and John Kerry praise the book and that Warren works with Bono and Tony Blair and counts both Obama and McCain as personal friends further show Warren’s influence. 

Prophet of Purpose gives an interesting picture of Warren’s life from his childhood in a Baptist parsonage through the inauguration.  If you already know about Warren, the book will fill in the gaps in your knowledge – if not, this biography offers a good way to become familiar with this influential man.

(Helen Snow, Information Services)

Christmas Cake by Lynne Hinton

Hinton’s first novel, Friendship Cake, has been popular with Greensboro readers since its publication in 2000.  That book is the story of a church cookbook committee whose members, Beatrice, Margaret, Louise, and Jessie, and their pastor, Charlotte, bond as they work on the project.  The author, pastor of a church in Whitsett, based only one of her characters on a real person but knew well the small-town, small-church world which she described.

In Christmas Cake, Hinton, now pastor of a church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, updates the story of these women and their special ties of friendship.  In this novel, Charlotte has moved to the Southwest to run a shelter for abused women.  The other women are working on a new project – a cake cookbook.  As Christmas approaches, they complete the cookbook but struggle with finding an appropriate prize for their contest for the best cake in the book.  Beatrice, Louise, and Jessie are concerned about Margaret’s health and finally join her on a great adventure – a trip from North Carolina to Texas to hold a reunion with Charlotte and to help Margaret to fulfill a wish which she cannot quite explain.  The book includes sorrow, humor, and, most of all, the warmth of a story about close friendships.

Get ready for Hinton’s next book – Wedding Cake.

(Helen Snow, Information Services)

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I didn’t expect to read this book so soon.  For starters, the request list here at the library is a mile long.  Thank goodness I know reading friends who have other sources.   I read the first 10-15 pages of The Help about three months ago, then picked it up again about two weeks ago when a friend lent me his copy.

The Help is about the social situation in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s, when the civil rights movement was picking up steam.  Specifically, the book concerns the relationships between black maids and their white employers, and the tightly controlled segregated system that defined these relationships.   The story is told through the alternating voices of Aibeleen and Minny, two friends who work as maids, and Skeeter, a young white college graduate who is decidedly at odds with the social expectations of the times.   This mix makes for a lively read - rock-steady Aibeleen, who has raised umpteen white children, and grinned and bore her way through a lifetime of humiliation; fiery Minny, who can out-cook anyone in town but speaks her mind, sometimes with disastrous results; and Skeeter, whose desire for a career far outweighs her naiveté. 

The book is at times sad to read, as when the author incorporates the murder of Medgar Evers into the narrative or mentions the brutalization of a friend’s grandson for using the “wrong” restroom.  On the flip side, there are places that are laugh-out funny.  Minny’s accounts of her most recent employment are particularly memorable, when she works a clandestine job at a large and strange house out in the country, with a reclusive employer who is determined to keep Minny’s employment a secret from her husband.  The juxtaposition of humor and tragedy reminded me of certain places in The Color Purple, another book about the pre-Civil Rights era South that had plenty of sly jokes or turns of phrase.  Reading The Help had me laughing uncontrollably, oh, in restaurants or wherever I brought it; I would also read a heartfelt passage and start tearing up.  Definitely a winner of a book - highly-needed at a time when I haven’t wanted to read much lately.

(William Hicks, Information Services)

Plain Style: a guide to written English By Christopher Lasch; edited and with an introduction by Stewart Weaver

I was delighted to find this book of common sense about writing in English clearly.  Lasch is best known for his books about American social history such as The Culture of Narcissism: American life in an age of diminishing expectations.  He was a socialist who became disillusioned with the failure of the radical left to adhere to practical core values.  He angered liberals with criticism of the women’s movement, and increasing bureaucracy of social activists.  American conservatives were even worse in his opinion.  He was an enemy of capitalism without restraint or concern for social morality.  It seems to me that he managed to alienate almost everyone, but he did it clearly.  His concepts were difficult for me to understand and I disagreed with some of them, but he expressed his thoughts well in compelling, ordered language.

Lasch felt compelled to write a primer on writing after years of grading papers and finding his students often were unable to string together a sentence where the subjects and verbs agreed with each other, or arrive at the end of a paragraph without wandering off into nonsense.  The subjects he taught were difficult and required sustained concentration and study to understand.  The students would read the books and put forth great effort to write pages and pages that were unintelligible.  Though The Elements of Style by Strunk and White was required reading for Lasch’s classes, it became apparent that something more was needed.  Lasch compiled notes and the mimeographed copies were standard issue to his students at Rochester University.  These classroom notes became Plain Style.

(Kelly Prewett, Hemphill Branch)

Dewey by Vicki Myron and Bret Witter

If you’re a cat lover, then Vicki Myron’s Dewey:  The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World is definitely a must read for you.

Co-written with Bret Witter, Dewey is the delightful story of a tiny little kitten found in the book drop of the Spencer, Iowa, public library one very, very cold January morning in 1988.

Almost immediately, Myron, the library director, adopted him as the library’s cat — with the approval of the library board, of course!  Before you know it, he becomes the library’s star attraction and eventually garners worldwide fame.

Clearly Dewey (named after the famous librarian Melville Dewey, full name ”Dewey Readmore Books”) was no ordinary cat.  As Myron points out over and over in her book, he seemed to have a sixth sense about who most needed his love and liked nothing more than to curl up in that special someone’s lap and purr away.

Like clockwork, Dewey would camp out at the entrance to the library each day, first greeting Myron with a wave of his paw as she entered the building at 7:30 (seriously, he did kind of wave!).  Most of the rest of his day was spent welcoming others and milling about the library, going from one lap to another. 

Naturally cats will be cats, and Dewey of course did manage to make a little mischief as well during his long life.

You’ll find lots in the book about Myron, who was a single mom with health problems and only her share of family tragedy.  And there’s also much about Spencer, a struggling farm community back in the 1980s.

Getting back to Dewey, it’s almost as if his effect was so great that he nursed the two of them — Myron and Spencer — back to health.  

At any rate, I highly recommend this endearing story to anyone who loves cats, libraries, small town America, and the love and companionship that animals bring to our lives.

You’ll shed a tear or two, but Dewey is worth it — he was indeed a special cat.

(Tim Cole, Information Services)

Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times by Ralph Stanley with Eddie Dean

If you are a fan of bluegrass and old timey music, take a reading trek up to hilly southwest Virginia and revisit the long life of Ralph Stanley.  Dr. Ralph has been one of the pre-eminent figures of bluegrass music; his early partnership with his brother Carter produced a slew of highly memorable “high lonesome” tracks.  The unfortunate death of Carter in 1966 could have ended his own musical career, but Ralph showed a tenaciousness that belied his shy nature, revamped his band into the Clinch Mountain Boys, recorded yet even more of an impressive body of work, and topped it all off by winning a Grammy for his contributions to the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack – and he’s still plugging away, singing a style of music that echoes the mountain ballads and church gospel of his extensive recollection. 

This book, co-written with Eddie Dean, captures Ralph Stanley’s personality wonderfully – ornery to a point but touched by poignancy in childhood, a hard man on occasion but one who obviously has had great affection for his colleagues – and what a list.  All the early greats of Bluegrass were friends of Ralph’s  – Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, etc.  He also mentored younger talents such as Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley, who both cut their teeth on the music of the Stanley Brothers and also worked for Ralph in the Clinch Mountain Boys.  It’s a wonderful who’s who of the bluegrass world, but in the telling, it’s very definitely Ralph’s world – a down-to-earth reminiscing of a distinguished life.

(William Hicks, Information Services)

Day After Night: A Novel by Anita Diamant

Atlit was an internment camp for illegal immigrants in Palestine before the creation of Israel.  Day After Night is a fictionalized account of the weeks leading up to the liberation of its inmates in 1945.  It’s a gripping story that addresses the aftermath of the Holocaust and the difficulties of pre-Israel Palestine, told through the eyes of four young women who are inmates in Atlit.  All four arrive in Palestine by the skin of their teeth; all of them have widely divergent tales to tell from the hell that was Nazi-controlled Europe.  

Diamant captures well the uncertainty and dismay of inmate life – the feeling that they exchanged one form of detainment for another, the lack of belief in a future, etc.  She also sheds light on the idealists and the dreamers of the time and place who later played such an integral part in the formation of the state of Israel.  The book is definitely a welcome addition to literature about the shaky times immediately following World War II.    

(William Hicks, Information Services)

Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar by James Marcus Bach

The learning process is not restricted to the classroom – at least, not for Bach, whose unconventional “buccaneer” approach to learning set him at odds with his school system at an early age.  He became a school dropout and emancipated minor at 15.  The prime making of a loser?  Think again -  within six years, the author was heading a software testing team at Apple, and since then has worked or freelanced his way through Silicon Valley and the speaking circuit, breaking the rules of decorum along the way and proving his worth without the diplomas on the wall.

What’s his secret?  My take, from reading Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar, is that self-education goes well beyond the test-determined years of public schooling.  It’s not what the schools teach, but what one is motivated to learn throughout a lifetime, and that the path to learning is not always a straight one.  In Bach’s case (and to his credit), his mind is never idle, and he is able to turn what are completely unrelated topics or experiences into fresh perspectives for problem-solving.  And I think that the book’s approach is helpful.  He doesn’t talk down to his audience.  Throughout the narrative, he relates many memories of personal screw-ups and disappointments; including these makes his message way more personable to the average reader. 

If you have a questing mind that is hard to teach, take heart and learn a little (or a lot) from this book.  

(William Hicks, Information Services)

The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville

The tragedies of past times take center stage in this thriller set in latter-day Northern Ireland.  The main character of Gerry Fegan is a former hitman who is tortured by the ghosts of his victims.  He drinks himself into oblivion to relieve himself of their constant manifestations, but they refuse to leave his conscience and appeasing them turns out to be costly for many of Fegan’s former associates.

The Ghosts of Belfast captures well how the sectarian issues in Belfast still reverberate, and how shaky the hard-won peace they have now is; the reader definitely will catch the grittiness of the situation.  This is Stuart Neville’s first novel – he writes a gripping yarn, and certainly ratchets up the suspense (and the gore).  The book is not for the squeamish, but then, the history of Ulster itself is hardly for the squeamish, either.  Gerry Fegan is strangely sympathetic – you hate what he’s done, but he still seems worthy of redemption.

I look forward to what the author has coming up next, although I think that I will probably read something lighter in the interim period.

(William Hicks, Information Services)