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)

The Lady and the Poet by Maeve Haran

I was an English major, and I well remember studying the writings of John Donne—the poems which he wrote during the many courtships of his youth, the love poems celebrating his relationship with his wife, and the religious poetry and prose of his later years.  This novel tells the story of Donne and his beloved wife, Ann Moore.  As the novel begins, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Ann is fourteen years old, living with her grandparents in a rural area near London and awaiting the wedding of her sister Bett.  Soon Ann goes to London to live with her aunt and uncle, expecting to become one of the Queen’s ladies or to enter the marriage which her father is attempting to arrange.  Then she meets John Donne, already in his late 20s, an ironmonger’s son with a scandalous reputation.  His poetry and ambitions are not enough to make him acceptable to her father, and everyone in her family warns her against falling in love with him.  Despite many difficulties, Ann and John fall in love, and this story about of their romance ends soon after Ann’s father learns about their secret wedding.  Ann, a sympathetic character, seems modern in her belief that women should marry for love rather than for the advancement of their families and her dislike of the rivalries of the court.  Her education is extraordinary for a woman of her time.

The president of the John Donne Society calls this “a remarkable imaginative portrait.”  The author, who has studied a number of books about Donne, as well as documents relating to his life, says that Donne has been her lifelong passion.

While history does not record many facts about Ann, this story gives us a fascinating glimpse of her time period and a novel that will delight readers who enjoy historical fiction.

(Helen Snow, Information Services)

Shop Class As Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford

The value of work is the recurring theme in Shop Class As Soulcraft.  This eyebrow-raising book explores the dichotomy between white collar employment, of the two considered more academic and abstract, and the milieu of the trades,  in which the work is more hands-on and direct.  Crawford discusses the effects of the industrial age, in which the role of the knowledgeable craftsman diminished in the wake of assembly lines and motion studies, and the worker was further distanced from control of a finished product.  In his view, this has continued on to the present-day office setting, where a “product” is often something not tangible and workers are valued more for collective malleability than for individual talent.  For lack of any real contact with a physical product, modern day cubicle dwellers don’t find a sense of meaning in their work.  Workers in the trades do have hands-on experience, they do see the actual fruit of their labors, and therefore, work has meaning to them.

The author has had his feet in both camps.  He slogged through the acquisition of graduate degrees, and worked in moneyed think tanks and “information worker” settings, but found far greater satisfaction (and better money, in some cases) working as an electrician between college semesters.  In the present day, he runs a motorcycle repair shop, and revels in the lessons learned through the world of machines.

Shop Class As Soulcraft is certainly timely – the manufacturing and information sectors may get whittled away to overseas operations, but things still break down, here and at the moment, and somebody has to know how to deal with these things.  I’m not sure if this book is THE manifesto to give the trades their due, but I’d vote it a high mark.  It’s written almost as a philosophical treatise, and there’s some wordiness here to go through, but keep at it - the message is essential for those considering a career path beyond the cube farm.

(William Hicks, Information Services)

Long Story Short; Flash Fiction by Sixty-five of North Carolina’s Finest Writers, edited by Marianne Gingher

Flash fiction is a term meaning “very short fiction.” The stories in Long Story Short range in length from one page to five pages, and, Gingher writes, “the longest can be read, even savored, in less than ten minutes.” If you’re a reader who doesn’t often choose short stories when looking for reading material, remember that this book provides a delightful way to spend a few vacant minutes between one activity and another. If you don’t read the whole book, at least try the tales by your favorite North Carolina authors. You’ll find stories by Doris Betts, Orson Scott Card, Fred Chappell, Pamela Duncan, Clyde Edgerton, Marianne Gingher, Margaret Maron, Jill McCorkle, Robert Morgan, and Lee Smith, to name just a few of the sixty-five contributors, as well as biographical information on each author. You may even discover a new favorite among the authors who are not familiar to you.

(Helen Snow, Information Services)

Editor’s note – other books in the “Flash Fiction” genre that the library has:

Flash fiction forward : 80 very short stories/ edited by James Thomas and Robert Shapard.  2006

Flash fiction : very short stories/ edited by James Thomas, Denise Thomas, and Tom Hazuka  1992

Short shorts : an anthology of the shortest stories / edited by Irving Howe and Ilana Weiner Howe ; with an introduction by Irving Howe  1982

Believer, Beware selected by Jeff Sharlet, et al.

Faith lurks in many forms and practitioners.  Sometimes those who walk the road to faith are John Q. Public ordinary, and then on occasion, not.  Read up on some of the more unconventional types in this accessible collection of short memoirs and sketches.  Its casts of writers include a seeker of Sufis in war zones, fundamentalist Christian camp survivors, disillusioned Orthodox Jews, pagans, and more.   Hip and quirky, outlandish to some – this short anthology highlights all varieties of latter-day spiritual seekers.  Just be prepared for some hair-raising in places.

(William Hicks, Information Services)

The Concubine’s Daughter by Pai Kit Fai

You may have read—and possibly discussed with a book club– the amazingly popular Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, the fictional story of a young Japanese woman (if not, you’ll want to read it.)  The Concubine’s Daughter, set in China in the early 20^th century, is also about a resourceful young girl who grew to be a woman in a culture very different from our own.  In this culture, girls were often unwanted and sometimes put to death soon after their births, might have their feet deformed by foot binding, and could easily be bought and sold for amazingly low sums of money.  Many, too, were denied the opportunity to attend school.

In 1906—only a little over 100 years ago, although it is hard to believe that we are not reading about the distant past—Li is born to a well-to-do farmer in his 70s and the 15-year-old concubine whom he bought against her will from a family in financial trouble.  Twice the farmer, desperately disappointed when his longed-for son turns out to be a daughter, tries to kill the baby.  When he fears to do so due to a superstition, he plots to sell her for as much money as possible.  Li’s life contains terrible difficulties; finally, when she is a young teenager, her owner becomes angry with her, and members of his staff beat her and throw her into the river to drown.  She survives to find love and happiness, to achieve her dream of becoming a scholar and a successful businesswoman, and to have a daughter of her own.

This daughter, Sing, grows up to be an expert in martial arts.  After a jealous acquaintance sells her, she eventually ends up in a world much like that of a Japanese geisha.  She has to fill opium pipes for a rich man, serve him food and drink, and entertain him with her music, but she is determined to escape before he becomes her owner.  Throughout the miseries and joys of her life, she never ends her search for her father.

If you are intrigued by the lives of strong women living in cultures that seem very strange to us, you won’t want to miss this book!

(Helen Snow, Information Services)

I Need My Monster

What do you do when your monster is not under the bed but you find a note that says gone fishing?  That’s the dilemma that Ethan finds himself and tries to solve by getting a substitute monster under the bed.  I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll is a nicely blended monster story that is both funny and entertaining.  The illustrations are not too over the top that would scare most readers and in fact are wonderfully creative in their presentations.  After all how many of us have ever thought of a monster under our bed whose name was Herbert?  Older readers may see more of the humor that is loaded into the story than younger ones but each will find something to laugh over.

(Mark Taylor, Benjamin Branch)

The Road to OZ

 Finally someone has written a biography about the author of one the world’s most favorite stories – The Wizard of OZ.  Frank Baum has long been in need of recognition not of his books or the movie (which everyone can recite lines from) but of the man himself.  The Road to OZ: Twists, Turns, Bumps and Triumphs in the Life of L. Frank Baum  by Kathleen Krull fills in that blank space.  Her highlights of Lyman (he could not stand this name) Frank Baum shows the path that he took which did not immediately result in the creation of the Wizard of OZ but rather the obstacles and misdirections that led this man to write about an imaginary place called the Emerald city.  And this came when he was at the young age of 44.  The formatting and illustrations nicely complement one another though some might find the font size a little small.  The author demonstrates her own interest in Frank Baum by her illuminating tale about the creator of Dorothy, the Scarecrow and the rest of the folks from OZ.  Try reading this not as a biography but more like an adventure  into place that exits only in our minds which is what Frank OZ did with his whole career.

(Mark Taylor, Benjamin Branch)

The Sister by Poppy Adams

When I first started reading this book, the premise of it struck me as something like “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”  in an English manor house setting.  All the elements of a Gothic thriller are here – the grand but crumbling mansion, skeletons in the closet, etc.  The narrator is Ginny, the older of two sisters who has lived at her family’s estate house largely alone; her sister Vivian left abruptly some 47 years ago.   The story begins with Vivian’s return.  Ginny is unnerved at her sister’s presence and its disruption on her daily routine.  Totally at a loss as to her sister’s motives, Ginny shadows her fervently, convinced that Vivian wants something more than just a convivial reunion.  Tempers flare, the proverbial closet-bound skeletons are let out, and…well, you’ll have to read it.

The manor house in The Sister is a character in its own right, a silent partner to Ginny and her reclusiveness, yet uncannily alive, a bricks and mortar creature that protests against its own decay and neglect.  The descriptions of the house and of the surrounding Dorset countryside bring a breath of life to the book, which does have its dry passages; the reader will probably learn far more about moths than they care to know.  The interesting parts are the flashbacks - the family history that gradually reveals Ginny and Vivian as adversaries rather than loving sisters.  It’s well worth reading as a study in dysfunctionality and how perceptions within a family differ from sibling to sibling.

(William Hicks, Information Services)