Monkeewrench by P.J. Tracy

I admit it, I’m a sucker for misfits – and Monkeewrench is a perfect band of misfits.  There’s Grace, a ultra-private tough girl whose house is a fortress; Harley, a tattooed biker with a pretty obvious (and obviously adopted) last name; Roadrunner, a beanpole of a man whose preferred attire is spandex bodysuits; Annie, a plus-sized sexpot; and Mitchell, uptight corporate type.  How these five came together is a mystery, but you know they’ve been through something big, and probably together.  Now they form the software company called Monkeewrench, and they’re doing well with their game SKD (Serial Killer Detective) – until the killings start.

The first murder scene looks awfully familiar, but it isn’t until a second body shows up that they realize the reason it’s so familiar is it looks exactly like scenes from their game – scenes of victims 1 and 2, respectively.  From here out it’s a race to find and stop the killer before he stages the next scene.  Knowing what that looks like – i.e., how the victim dies – doesn’t help much when you don’t know where, when, or who the victim will be.

This series was written by a mother-daughter team, but you’d never know there are two authors.  Transitions are seamless and the tension never lets up.  The story is one you’ve probably heard before, but it’s delivered in such a way, and with so many  interesting characters and quirks, that you’ll be wanting to read the next book in the series when you finish this one.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Find and reserve this book in our catalog.

Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell

I’m in a New York Mood this week, I suppose.  And, Joseph Mitchell is just the thing; though born in Southeastern Robeson County, Mitchell moved to NYC and began writing for The New Yorker.  For many writers he set the standard for stellar journalism.  Most of his pieces are profiles of unusual NYC locals; to explain why this book is so utterly engaging, I’m going to first talk about someone else.

My grandfather Johnny Sartori tended bar every day at the King Kong on the Bowery in the ‘40s and ‘50s.  Not one to crook an elbow, he preferred sober company to drinking.  When he wasn’t making friends, most of his time was spent either taking my grandmother dancing or my mother and uncle to Chinatown to eat with the proprietor’s family in the back of this or that restaurant (thus my mother’s penchant for frighteningly spicy food).  While my mother was still a child he died, apparently of heat stroke.  His experiences as a Bowery bartender, Italian immigrant, and war veteran died with him, save what my grandmother, uncle, and mother can recall.

Online you will find absolutely no trace of the King Kong Bar.  But I know it existed–I have a pile of old swizzle sticks that still bear the name (thin yellow plastic topped with a rearing elephant).

One afternoon I opened Up in the Old Hotel to read “Mazie,” an essay about a kind-hearted curmudgeon who “presided for twenty-one years over the ticket cage of the Venice Theatre, at 209 Park Row…where the Bowery begins.”  6 pages later, I caught my breath at this: “When she gets thirsty she sends an usher across the street to the King Kong Bar & Grill for a cardboard container of beer.”  Mazie’s story became, peripherally, my grandfather’s story.  Here were some of the odd Bowery folks he probably served from behind the bar.  Here were the same streets he walked when heading home to my family’s x-shaped building on St. James Place or to visit a friend’s restaurant on Mott or Mulberry.  Here are the people and places and peculiarities of New York City from the late 30s to the mid 50s, described by someone who lived there and loved it.

While neither a Luddite nor technophobe, I am generally irritated by the supposed panacea of Google, by those who assert that “everything is online.”   And while it is the case that there is a Google Books digital edition of this title, page 29 –the page where my grandfather’s bar is mentioned– “is not shown in this preview.”  A journalist’s narrative sure beats a handful of plastic swizzle sticks.  I’d hazard a guess that that’s true for the other 30+ essays that immortalize New York’s fishmongers, street preachers, bartenders, restaurant owners, drunks, bearded ladies, policemen, gypsies, and all the rest of it.

Check out or reserve a copy.

Straight Man by Richard Russo

I picked this title up out of curiosity.  The Cameron Village Library’s Evening Book Club had selected it for discussion, and after talking with the group’s facilitator, I decided to give it a try.  I chose the audio version (WCPL owns it only on cassette) for this foray into adult literature (I am primarily a youth services librarian), although I have since re-read the book in its print form.

I hated it at the beginning.  As I drove and listened, I thought, “Oh, man.  What am I doing listening to a book about a middle-aged man having a mid-life crisis?  This stinks!”  But, for some reason, I kept giving it a chance.  I am not sorry in the least that I persevered.

Straight Man is the story of Hank Devereaux, Jr.: middle-aged English department interim chair at a Podunk branch of the Pennsylvania state university system.  Hank is about as go-nowhere as a man can get, but his sly observations on the people who populate his daily existence, and his constant attempts to get their collective goat are what keep him going.  The story unfolds as Hank’s wife leaves him alone at home for the weekend. Hank proceeds to tangle with just about everybody who crosses his path, setting off a humorous chain of events that compounds minor catastrophes into one big turning point for Hank.

Listening to Straight Man turned out to be a delight.  Reading the book again in print, I found it even more hilarious.  Perhaps this is because I got to see Russo at work – I got to pay close attention to the writing, instead of just absorbing the story.  The story itself flows from its inhabitants.  Russo gets characterization just right – even his punctuation contributes to the crystal clear images of the people he’s chosen to tell his story, making Straight Man a winner for anyone who is in the market for an entertaining, character-driven novel.

Click here to find this book in our catalog.

My Old True Love by Sheila Kay Adams

If you don’t know who Sheila Kay Adams is, it’s about time that you found out.  Simply put, she is one of North Carolina’s most gifted storytellers, authors and musicians.  Originally from a small Appalachian community in Madison County, NC, Adams honed the gift of storytelling and folk singing passed down to her from generations of her family, as well as people in her closely-knit community.  I had the extraordinary pleasure of hearing Ms. Adams tell stories and sing at a luncheon several years ago, as she was promoting her book My Old True Love.

With its roots in Adams’ own family history, My Old True Love is the story of the Nortons and Stantons of Sodom, North Carolina.  Arty, the story’s narrator, looks back on her family’s story from the year 1919, when she herself is “older than God’s dog.”  In her mountain-tinged narrative voice, Arty relays a history of hard times and laughter, love and heartbreak beginning in the years before the Civil War and lasting just past the end of that conflict.  Through Arty, we meet her brother Hackley and their cousin Larkin, who have been raised like brothers, sharing a love of the ways of their mountain and for the traditional ballads that ring through the hollows and across the balds.  When the two come to love the same young woman, the result is as heartrending as the old songs they know so well.

Having only listened to Kate Forbes’s masterful audio recording of this historical novel, it is hard to imagine reading the story in print, especially because Adams relies on the traditional ballads to tell parts of the story.  Forbes’s voice rings true both as narrator Arty, as well as in the singing of the ballads that Adams uses to bind her story together.  This audiobook will have you sitting in your car, in the driveway, listening to the end of a track or a chapter, and will leave you longing for more when it is over.

Click here to find this book in our catalog.

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

Obsessive fandom is not new territory to British author Nick Hornby. His first book was a chronicle of his own obsession with the Arsenal football club.  Hornby knows firsthand what it is to be a number one fan, and he brings this knowledge to his latest novel, Juliet, Naked.

Tucker Crowe, a reclusive singer-songwriter is the object of obsession in Juliet, Naked.  The novel takes its title from the newly released acoustic, unfinished recording of Crowe’s final album, which appears twenty-two years after Crowe stepped out of the spotlight.  The recording is sent just prior to its general release to Duncan, a small time professor of media studies, and majorly obsessive Tucker Crowe fan. The arrival of Juliet, Naked is an event that sparks the ultimate breakdown of Duncan’s relationship with his longtime girlfriend Annie.

Duncan and Annie have very different takes on this “new” album. When Annie asks Duncan to post her response to his own, first, exclusive review on his Tucker Crowe fan site, Duncan does so reluctantly.  Less than twenty-four hours later, Annie has received an honest-to-goodness response to the review from Tucker Crowe himself.  As her clandestine email relationship with Tucker develops, her relationship with Duncan crashes and burns when he reveals his real-life affair with a colleague.

Hornby has made a name for himself writing realistically flawed characters in search of redemption.  Juliet’s characters are hilariously poignant, mainly because they could be any of us.  Perhaps what’s best about this novel is that none of the characters seem to find exactly what they’re looking for, and Hornby makes that okay.

Click here to find this book in our catalog.