Staff Recommendations
Pages
-
Nevertheless : a memoir
by Baldwin, Alec, 1958-
July 20, 2017
Call Number: 812.092 B181
Alec Baldwin, an actor renowned for his versatility and pugnaciousness, has written a candid memoir of considerable delicacy and thoughfulness. The product of a large boisterous, Irish Catholic household on Long Island, Baldwin stumbled into his career after dropping out of college and acting in soaps in the 1980s. His role in The Doctors and Knots Landing catapulted him to early stardom, but his life was spinning out of control. His father's death precipitated a dark period of drug and alcohol addiction. After getting clean and sober in the mid-1980s Baldwin... Read Full Review
-
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter
by Goss, Theodora
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryJuly 3, 2017
Call Number: M
Many classic horror novels, including Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and The Island of Dr. Moreau, have almost no female characters. If there is a woman included, often she is relegated to being a servant or, more often, a victim. She is rarely featured as a protagonist and NEVER a monster. Dr. Theodora Goss, of Boston University, wrote her doctoral dissertation on these missing female voices and has addressed it directly in a most enjoyable way by writing The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s... Read Full Review
-
QB : my life behind the spiral
by Young, Steve, 1961-
Reviewed by: Janice Batzdorff, LibrarianJune 26, 2017
Call Number: 796.271 Y76
A facetious question posed by an NPR radio host lured me into reading Steve Young’s memoir, QB: My Life Behind the Spiral. Did the pro football Hall of Famer receive special treatment at Brigham Young University where he played quarterback because he is the great-great-great grandson of Brigham Young?
With outstanding high school achievements, Young was readily admitted to the university, but the football team listed him as number eight on the depth chart for the quarterback position (future Chicago Bears Super Bowl winner Jim McMahon was number one). The quarterback coach... Read Full Review
-
A Closed and Common Orbit
by Chambers, Becky,
Reviewed by: Daryl M., Librarian, West Valley Regional Branch LibraryMay 23, 2017
Call Number: SF
Published last year, A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers is a breath of fresh air in the genre of science fiction. Sci-fi has long been languishing in multiple dystopian visions exploring just how wrong our world, and many others, could possibly go. A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is an unabashed space opera, a bit short on plot, but well outfitted with a wonderful world populated by interesting and relatable characters. The novel was nominated for the Kitschies Award for Best Debut, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, the Tiptree Award, The... Read Full Review
-
High notes : selected writings of Gay Talese
by Talese, Gay,
May 15, 2017
Call Number: 071.092 T143-2
Gay Talese, the nattily attired New York-based reporter, writes non-fiction pieces in the style of short stories, with omniscient third person narrators, vivid descriptions of the commonplace, and surprising, revelatory endings. High Notes collects many of the greatest works from his sixty-year career. His most famous act of reportage, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” (Esquire) dwells on the private side of the man known as The Chairman of the Board, without interviewing the subject directly. Talese later revealed more details of the assignment with the essay “On Writing... Read Full Review
-
The undoing project : a friendship that changed our minds
by Lewis, Michael (Michael M.),
February 13, 2017
Call Number: 612.82 L675
The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis Journalist Michael Lewis (Moneyball) examines the friendship of two Israeli cognitive psychologists, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky. Kahneman, a Holocaust survivor who lived in hiding as a child, and his younger colleague, Tversky, a war hero, left Israel early in their careers for academic positions in North America. Their work is responsible for the development of the field of behavioral economics.
The hallmark of the academic legacy of Kahneman and Tversky is that... Read Full Review
-
The kingdom of speech
by Wolfe, Tom.
October 3, 2016
Call Number: 401 W855
Satirist Tom Wolfe is back with another contrarian broadside against sacred cows. In The Kingdom of Speech, Wolfe takes on two scientific icons, Charles Darwin and Noam Chomsky. In this slim, provocative volume, Wolfe risks the scorn of the scientific establishment by criticizing the self-importance of these legendary figures.
Wolfe contrasts the patrician Darwin, whose theories were always backed up by other English gentleman scientists, such as Charles Lyell, with the “flycatcher,” Alfred Russell Wallace, a working class naturalist who had... Read Full Review
-
Shadow box
by Plimpton, George.
July 3, 2016
Call Number: 796.33 P728
From “A Poem on the Annihilation of Ernie Terrell” by Muhammad Ali and Marianne Moore " . . .He is claiming to be the real heavyweight champBut when the fight starts he will look like a trampHe has been talking too much about me and making me soreAfter I am through with him he will not be able to challenge Mrs. Moore." (Click... Read Full Review
-
This old man : all in pieces
by Angell, Roger.
March 21, 2016
Call Number: 818 A583
Roger Angell, America's senior man of letters, returns with a collection of pieces culled from The New Yorker. Angell was a long time fiction editor and baseball columnist for the magazine. He writes gracefully about the ravages of old age, and the pleasant memories of the past which keep him going after losing his wife and daughter. Angell's mother, Katherine White, and stepfather, E.B. White, both wrote for The New Yorker. Katherine White was the magazine's first fiction editor. E.B. White was a mentor for Angell when he was budding young writer... Read Full Review
-
Although of course you end up becoming yourself : a road trip with David Foster Wallace
by Lipsky, David, 1965-
August 11, 2015
Call Number: 813 W188Li
In 1996, David Lipsky, a New York-based Rolling Stone writer, traveled to the Midwest--Bloomington, Illinois and Minneapolis/St. Paul Minnesota--to hang out with novelist David Foster Wallace at the tail end of his Infinite Jest book tour. The proposed feature never made it into print that year (it would have been Rolling Stone’s first author profile in ten years), but Lipsky held on to his tapes of their rendezvous. He decided to publish the interviews in book form after Wallace’s tragic suicide in 2008. The book, which came out in 2010, is the basis for the new... Read Full Review
-
So that happened : a memoir
by Cryer, Jon, 1965-
May 18, 2015
Call Number: 812.092 C9565
Jon Cryer’s So That Happened: A Memoir is the rare celebrity tell-all that is as insightful as it is entertaining. Cryer, star of Two and a Half Men, comes across as a levelheaded person in a crazy business. The author doesn’t spare us any salacious details, particularly about his time working with Charlie Sheen, but he balances his life story with moments of compassion and empathy. In essence, Cryer manages to merge a literary sensibility with a jocular tone. Cryer grew up in a bohemian apartment house in New York, surrounded by artists of all stripes. He and his... Read Full Review
-
All I Love and Know
by Frank, Judith
Reviewed by: Janice Batzdorff, LibrarianFebruary 22, 2015
Lydia Rosen’s inane chatter about bourekas during the flight to Israel baffles Matt Greene. To his partner, Daniel Rosen, his mother’s preoccupation with the stuffed pastry makes total sense. “She’s trying not to have to imagine how much of her son’s body has been blown to bits,” he explains. But the grim reality intrudes when Daniel, his parents, and Matt land at the Tel Aviv airport and are transported directly to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Jerusalem. There, amidst indescribable, horrific odors and the sound of crying and wailing, the family is asked to identify Joel’s body... Read Full Review