February 2009 Staff Book Reviews

Last Updated on Wednesday, 15 September 2010 15:16

Frequently Asked Questions - Reader Services

Now that the excitement of a new year is over you may find yourself with a little extra reading time. The staff of the hometown libraries have been busy scouring the shelves to find good reads for every book reader interest.

February 2009 Staff Book Reviews feature fiction for Teens and Adults and a special treat of several nonfiction titles.

So if you find yourself with a spare minute or two - and have an interest in anything from Russian Literary Classics to Romance to Dallas Cowboy football - we've got you covered! So, why not check out one of these titles?

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Genre: Teen Fiction
Reviewer: Cindy Stevens, Center for Readers Services

This book was recommended by a friend that is on the Teen Sequoyah read team. I am also interested in Sherman Alexie because he is a Spokane Indian and I am originally from Spokane Washington.
The story is semi autobiographical about Arnold, or Junior as he is known, a 14 year old boy, on the Spokane Indian reservation. Junior was born hydrocephalic, is goofy looking and really smart - a sure fire combination to ensure lots of grief at school. After a quite unexpected interaction with one of his teachers, he decides to go to school in Reardon, the nearest white school off the rez.

This is a wonderful story for any age. Alexi is funny, poinant, poetic, and soul-searchingly deep. I got the audiobook which is narrated by the author and lent the added touch of hearing the litling sing-song cadance of the Spokane Native American speech. My best friend growing up lived on a reservation and it brought back fond memories. The picture Alexie paints of Pacific Northwest reservations is true. They are not alluring, there is rampant poverty and alcoholism and most people growing up there have little chance of moving away. Absolutlely True Diary is the story of a plucky teenager that makes important choices - choices that any of us may make. Choices to live up to our potential, no matter our beginnings. Choices to be true to self, to find love, friendship and hope.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Genre: Adult Fiction
Reviewer: Tiffany Criswell, Norman Public Library

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a beautiful work that won author Junot Diaz the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The book chronicles the Cabral family from the Dominican Republic in the 1940s to New Jersey in the 1990s. It tells the story of the curse that has followed the family for generations, causing violence and tragedy to follow them relentlessly, despite their ignorance of it or their efforts to steer clear of its wake. The narrator lets the story unfold by jumping back and forth to observe different characters, from the origins of the curse with the Dominican family's patriarch to the tragic American teenager named Oscar. The book is written in creative and fast-paced prose, peppered with Spanglish phrases and footnotes to keep the reader informed of necessary Dominican history and culture. the book is strangely uplifting, despite the sadness that drifts through it, as it ulitimately about the family's search for happiness, despite misfortune and disaster, and finding out what is worth living and dying for. Also available as a downloadable audiobook.

Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty by Jeff Pearlman
Hell-Bent: The Crazy Truth About the "Win-Or-Else" Dallas Cowboys by Skip Bayless
Genre: Adult Nonfiction
Reviewer: Steven Streetman, Norman Public Library

Jeff Pearlman's recently-released Boys Will Be Boys, an expose' of the seedy side of the NFL juggernaut that was the Dallas Cowboys of the early 1990s, quotes and borrows liberally from 1996's Hell-Bent, written by longtime Dallas-area journalist and current ESPN mainstay Skip Bayless, and thus inspired this two-for-one review.

Bayless's book was released in the wake of the Cowboys' 1995 Super Bowl win between then - Cowboys coach Barry Switzer, star quarterback Troy Aikman, and their respective camps of supporters. Bayless, an Oklahoma City native who grew up as a huge Sooner fan, paints a sympathetic portrait of Switzer and does an excellent insider's job of detailing the soap-opera intricacies of the relationships among Cowboys staffers and players.
Pearlman's work is broader in scope, covering the entire period of the 1990s Cowboys dynasty, beginning when Jerry Jones bought the woeful Cowboys in the late 1980s and brought in University of Miami coach Jimmy Johnson to return them to glory in a few short seasons, winning championships in 1992 and 1993. Unable to overcome their contentious working relationship, Jones fired Johnson before the 1994 season and hired Switzer, who coached the team to a Super Bowl XXX victory in his second season, but later resigned after an underachieving 6-10 campaign in 1997. Pearlman presents vivid pictures of Cowboy players like Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith throughout the teams' rise and fall in sordid, ego-driven, sex-drugs-and-police-blotter detail.

The wealth of characters with University of Oklahoma ties will make these titles of particular interest to Sooner followers. As a young assistant to Frank Broyles, Switzer coached Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson as members of the 1964 national champion Arkansas Razorbacks; Johnson later worked as an assistant coach under Switzer at OU, faced him as head coach at Oklahoma State, and went head-to-head with Switzer's Sooners as coach of the Miami Hurricanes in three legendary games in the mid-1980's. Other names like Larry Lacewell, Danny Bradley, and John Blake will make these tow books fascinating reading for any Switzer-era Sooner fan.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Genre: Adult Fiction
Reviewer: Jeremy Jordan, Virtual Library Intern

This classic text has been argued to be one of the most important novels of the nineteenth century and follows a man who commits a brutal double murder in an attempt to demonstrate that he is above the regular rules of man. This book provides an interesting look into the psychological punishment that some criminals inflict upon themselves and offers an insightful view of humanity. The cadence of the novel is initially slow and it is easy to lose interest in the book in the opening fifty pages. Once the body of the text was encountered, I found myself growing increasingly interested in the narrative, and the last section of the book is quite riveting. This novel will also provide contemplative material upon which to muse concerning the nature of man and morality in society and has a helpful introduction with notes on many of the novels most important areas.

The Fire Gospel by Michel Faber
Genre: Adult Fiction
Reviewer: Galyn Cresap Hembree, Public Information Office

I just finished a little novel - The Fire Gospel by Michel Faber. I picked it off the "Sizzler" shelf and it was a quick read and at times piqued my interest because I kept asking myself, "What if this did happen?" It's not a great novel; it's not even really believable most of the time. And by the end of it, I only slightly felt cheated of the hours I spent reading it, because it made me think about the power and possibilities within the publishing world. "Is this what might happen if someone found a new gospel," I asked myself.

In the Fire Gospel, Theo Griepenkerl is an Aramaic scholar from Toronto looking for antiquitites in a looted Iraqi museum when an explosion breaks open a bas relief containing a series of Aramaic scrolls. HE absconds back to Toronto with the scrolls to create his ticket to fame. He translates a new gospel by Malchus who was present at Christs' crucifixion and presents a different view than the one given in the Bible. Theo publishes his translation and is swept away with the trappings of literary success giving little thought for the ramifications that come with the questions his book raises about Jesus' divinity.

This author has written seven other books, one being The Crimson Petal and the White. I haven't read any other of his books. But, depending on the subject of the book, I might. His writing style is relaxed and easy, sometimes even funny.

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane
Genre: Adult Fiction
Reviewer: Susan Gregory, Manager Norman Public Library

Lehane, the author of Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone has made an extraordinary leap in his latest novel, the Given Day. From the mean streets of contemporary Boston to the colorful chaos of Boston at the end of the First World War it is filled with real historical figures such as Babe Ruth, Eugene O'Neill, leftist activist jack Reed, NAACP founder W.E.B. DuBois and a ruthless young Department of Justice lawyer named John Edgar Hoover.

The novel tells the story of two families, one black and one white, who struggle to find their rightful place in a society that is changing while they sleep. We're introduced to beat cop Danny Coughlin, the passionate son of a legendary Boston police captain and member of one of the city's "lace-curtain" Irish families. His friendship with a young black man on the run from a murder he committed in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and their mutual love for the lovely Nora, maid to Danny's family, form the nucleus of a story that culminates in the tragedy of the Boson Police Strike of 1917.

The reader is taken on a journey that hurtles from the meat-packing district of Chicago along the rails through rural America into the genteel Greenwood District of early 20th Century Tulsa and up into both the brutal poverty and elegant dining rooms of 1917 Boston. Love is lost, found, lost and regained. This is a beautifully written, engaging look into a neglected bit of history. I found Lehane's depiction of the Tulsa Greenwood District before the tragic riots to be fascinating and sympathetic. This book is well worth your time and left me hoping that Lehane continues to explore historical fiction.

Monkey Girl by Edward Humes
Genre: Adult Nonfiction
Reviewer: Jeremy Jordan, Virtual Library Intern

This sensitive portrayal of the events surrounding the 2004 U.S. Federal Court case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District follows the unfolding of the Dover School Board’s attempt to introduce “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution in their science curriculum. The book examines both the personalities that drove what was to become the first direct federal court challenge to the teaching of intelligent design in the classroom, as well as following the court proceedings and reasoning in an easily understood fashion. The books also examines the effects of the trial upon the town on Dover Pennsylvania and follows some of the principle characters involved in the trial. Humes provides a warm, insightful, and fair treatment of the topic in a book that will prove to be hard to put down.