Best New Nonfiction of 2008

While Mary M. is accumulating the Best New Fiction that we’ve all read this year, how about thinking about some Best New Nonfiction?

So, out with it!  What were your favorite nonfiction books of 2008?

Here are my two favorites so far:  

Under a Flaming Sky:  The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894 by Daniel James Brown.   Clearly written, well-reseached and beautifully personal story of the Hinckley fires.  It’s unbelievably absorbing. 

The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival by Stanley Alpert.  From the cover:  “On January 21, 1998, federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert was kidnapped off the streets of Manhattan.  This is the story of what happened next . . .” Amazing memoir, unbelievably riveting and wonderfully written.  Impossible to put down.

Now you!  (Carol J.)

Fun Home – Amazing Read

Cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s illustrated tragicomic memoir Fun Home received a starred review in PW and has appeared on many Best of lists.  The title refers to the funeral home her family ran (she compares them to the Addams Family) and explores her relationships with her family, particularly her English teacher/funeral director/closeted gay man/historic restorationist father, with dark humor.  If you like the cartoons of Lynda Barry, memoirists like Augusten Burroughs or the essays of David Sedaris, you may also enjoy this book.

One of the most amazing and unusual aspects of this memoir, though, is the sheer scope of literary references.  (I love when a book comes with its own reading list.)  Both of her parents were English teachers, her mother was an amateur actress, and Alison herself turns to books when exploring her own sexuality. 

Here are just SOME of the books referenced in Fun Home:  Stones of Venice – Ruskin, Just So Stories - Kipling, Happy Death – Camus, Myth of Sisyphus – Camus, Sappho Was a Right-On Woman – Abbott, Sun Also Rises – Hemingway, The Great Gatsby – Fitzgerald, Far Side of Paradise – Mizener, Washington Square – James, Taming of the Shrew – Shakespear, Word is Out – Adair, Well of Loneliness – Hall, Delta of Venus – Nin, Dream of a Common Language – Rich, World of Pooh – Milne, James and the Giant Peach – Dahl, the poetry of Wallace Stevens, Zelda – Milford, Remembrance of Things Past – Proust, The Nude – Clark, The Worm Ouroboros – Eddison, American Dream – Albee, Mornings at Seven - Osborn, Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care – Spock, The Trumpet of the Swan – White, Johnny Tremain – Forbes, The Wind in the Willows – Grahame, The Importance of being Earnest – Wilde, Waterfall – Drabble, And the Band Played On – Shilts, The Fellowship of the Ring – Tolkien, The Catcher in the Rye – Salinger, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – Joyce, Earthly Paradise – Colette, and, finally, Ulysses by James Joyce. 

WHEW!  And it’s not even a very long book.  (Carol J.)

So You Want to Write a Memoir

This week’s Entertainment Weekly included a great article by Kate Ward called So You Want to Write a Memoir, which provides a selective (but extensive) list of the memoirs published since 1995 (with the exception of celebrity memoirs). 

Divided into subjects (childhood, family history, loved ones, struggles, addictions, traumas, racial identity, religion, employment, foodstuff, travel, death, etc.) and with a capsule description of each, this is not only helpful if you want to write your own story (and want to make sure someone hasn’t trodden the same ground already) or read a new memoir, but it’s also helpful from a readers advisory standpoint, for those patrons who say, do you have that memoir?  You know the one?  With the woman?  Who did that thing?   Check it out.  It’s a great list! (Carol J.)

A Few Words on Jazz (History)

Much has been written about jazz in its first century, a fact that young scholar and author John Gennari seized upon in his book BLOWIN’ HOT AND COOL: JAZZ AND ITS CRITICS, first published in hardback by the University of Chicago Press in 2006. This important, almost popularly styled survey, or – if you prefer – history of jazz criticism, covers all that has been written
about jazz from its New Orleans debut in the 1920’s right on down to the
shifting global perspective of the present moment. Well, maybe not all that
has been written about jazz. In fact, Gennari’s book has a bias: he writes
about the writers that have made their mark on the broader canvas of the
national scene, and in some cases, international scene. It is in that sense
that I refer to this volume as an almost popular survey. I mention this
because Gennari can engage in some academic hairsplitting at times, and when he does, no one would think then that they were encountering a popular historical account. Yet by and large, that is, in the best sense of the word, what Gennari has managed to finesse into being: namely, a text that is both intelligent and highly discriminating on the one hand, while at the
same time providing the reasonably knowledgeable reader with a square meal worth savoring.

What I love about this book is its seizing of the day, so to speak; for
Gennari has plucked a topic out of the firmament that was just waiting to be enshrined in print. That he has done his great subject justice doesn’t hurt matters any.

Any librarian remotely interested in the story of jazz (or worth their salt
in American studies) would benefit by a cover to cover perusal of this, I
almost want to say, historiographical production. But that is not quite what
this engaging and opinionated narrative amounts to. For Gennari’s unique
focus on the history of jazz as it has been documented in print by various
writers over the past century involves encountering many influential books
on jazz that would scarcely qualify as historical texts in their own right.
Thus, BLOWIN’ HOT AND COOL: JAZZ AND ITS CRITICS amounts to a swell and expansive annotated bibliography of the literary texts, both historical and otherwise, that have shaped the national discourse and ongoing uncertainty over the status of jazz in the context of modern America.

I got this book through an interlibrary loan and can’t wait to find it in a
used bookstore. In other words, it’s a keeper. (Pete H.)

When the Story is True – part two

Speaking of non-fiction that reads like fiction, Carol Dahlquist, master book recommender, has a few new favorite non-fiction books to mention:  Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders by William P. Drennan, which is about the brutal murders in 1914 of seven adults and children dear to the architect and the destruction by fire of Taliesin, his landmark residence, near Spring Green, Wisconsin.  Another new nonfiction she recommends is Down the Nile: In a Fisherman’s Skiff by Rosemary Mahoney.  PW says: “This is travel writing at its most enjoyable: the reader is taken on a great trip with an erudite travel companion soaking up scads of history, culture and literary knowledge, along with the scenery.”  And for a little more local interest, she recommends The Florist’s Daughter by Patricia Hampl, a “thoughtful and elegant” (LJ) memoir of Hampl’s growing up in Saint Paul, and her relationship to her parents, told from the bedside of her dying mother.

Inquiring minds want to know:  What great nonfiction have you been reading lately?  Any recommendations?  (CLJ)

When the Story is True – part one

Nonfiction Readers Advisory is kind of the new thing in readers advisory–a new book is out, and there’s an increased focus on narrative nonfiction in RA circles.  In fact, this posting title is stolen from a workshop conducted at PLA on Practicing Nonfiction Readers Advisory.   The handouts for the training give a pretty good look at the ins and outs of Nonfiction Readers Advisory, which includes the following popular subjects:  biography, cooking, essays, humor, immigrant experience, memoirs, politics, science, sprituality, sports, true crime, travel, and true adventure.  The handouts include sure bets for each category.  And don’t forget the popular micro-history books (such as ______: The _______ That changed the World).  If you’re looking for more ideas on Nonfiction Readers Advisory, check out Library Booklists and Bibliographies: Nonfiction, which has a great selection of lists including bios, micro-histories, and nonfiction that reads like fiction (the highest compliment!).

So Readers Advisory question for you:  How much nonfiction readers advisory are you doing?  Do you recommend nonfiction to fiction readers?  Do you have a particular nonfiction area of expertise your fellow coworkers should know about? (CLJ)

Not So True Life Stories

Fake Memoirs are all over the news lately.  The most recent memoir to be exposed as fiction is Love and Consequences by Margaret B. Jones, which has now been recalled by the publisher.  In this memoir, which got glowing reviews (including a starred Library Journal review), Jones claims to be half-Native American and raised by a foster family in L.A. gangland.  In truth, she’s white and was raised quite comfortably in a upper middle-class home. 

Scott Simon discussed fake memoirs  (like Jones and James Frey) on NPR’s Morning Edition this weekend and made a great point about why Jones and Frey would write fictional stories and claim them as memoir: writers get a break when they’re telling their own stories; that is, life is hard, but fiction is harder. 

For discussion:  What’s your favorite memoir – true or fake? (CLJ)