Lethal

Now in its eleventh year, the Everyone’s Reading program was established to enhance the reading experience by sharing a single title throughout the community. Participating libraries are set to offer book events such as group discussions, appearances by Sandra Brown, and related topic presentations to facilitate dialogue.

According to this year’s Everyone’s Reading Reader’s Guide, best-selling author Sandra Brown has been praised by critics for her “storytelling ability” and “the way she is able to combine strong female characters with plots so complex and fast-paced that her readers are constantly challenged to figure out what might happen next.”

Anyone can get involved in the program by participating in the various  events listed by both date and library location on the Everyone’s Reading homepage. The Baldwin Public Library in Birmingham will be shelving extra copies of Lethal, stocking reader’s guides, and facilitating two librarian-led book group discussions that are open to everyone.

This year’s Everyone’s Reading program runs through March 22, 2012. Due to high demand, free tickets for Ms. Brown’s speaking appearances will be distributed by Baldwin Public Library through lottery for residents of Birmingham, Beverly Hills, Bingham Farms and Bloomfield Hillls. For more information call 248-647-1700.

-Post by Megan Shaffer

These indies, each offering their respective knowledge and charms, compliment rather than compete through their pure, unmitigated passion for the literary arts. Such cumulative verve for the book is palpable, and has many readers road-tripping North for more than cherry pie.

One of the key draws of the much-talked-about Traverse City lit scene, however, is undoubtedly the National Writers Series. “Some observers believe that Traverse City’s growing reputation as a city of book lovers can also be attributed to the National Writers Series,” asserts Publisher’s Weekly in Traverse City is for Book Lovers. Brainchild of TC native and author Doug Stanton, the National Writers Series was founded in 2009 and continues to flourish with each new season.

The Detroit News recently featured the man behind the NWS magic, noting Stanton’s dedication not only to the art of writing, but to its future voices as well. “You don’t often get a chance to water your own roots, but that’s what he’s doing with every session,” states the Detroit News. “The events raise money for scholarships and the Front Street Writers Program, a workshop for talented high school students.”

The NWS brings at least one celebrity author each month to Traverse City for a reading and discussion of their work. The ticketed event is usually held in TC’s 19th-century opera house. This year’s lineup includes authors Jodi Picoult, Anna Quindlen, and Geraldine Brooks among others. Also, the incredibly popular Harvard professor Michael Sandel will appear to discuss What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets.

For book lovers like myself who live in the Detroit metro area, Traverse City can feel like a world away. However, with the flavorful Writers Series and an incredible string of informed independents both in and outside the city, I can assure you that the drive Up North is definitely a trip worth taking.

*Support your local bookstores, libraries, and universities. It matters.

-Post by Megan Shaffer

Enjoy Michigan’s Independent Bookstores!

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- Post by Megan Shaffer

Natalie’s husband Josh Taylor died on Father’s Day of 2007. He was 27 years old, married to the woman he loved, and happily awaiting the birth of their first child. Who would have thought that a quick blow to the back of his head while Carveboarding would put an end to his own life just as the one he created was beginning to bloom?

Signs of Life is the narrative compilation of Natalie Taylor’s journal entries that span the year following her husband’s death, yet Taylor’s pragmatic approach toward handling her grief is precisely what lands Signs of Life in its own little camp of the genre. Though Taylor’s voice cuts with pure pain and candor, she unwittingly softens the blow with her straight-forward sincerity and unwavering humor.

“When I decide to do something, I want it done quickly. I do not dilly-dally. When Dr. G. told me that grief takes time, I wanted to say, ‘But what about for the smart kids?’ I took Advanced Placement Calculus in high school. Let’s talk Advanced Placement Grief. But one of the first things I realize about this stupid emotion is that AP Grief does not exist. Time goes by, weeks pass, a month passes, my belly grows, my hair grows, but when I wake up in the morning it feels exactly the same. Grief goes at its own speed.”

As Taylor begins to piece together the brokenness of her life, the fog of her grief lifts just enough to reveal a bit more of both herself and the world around her. Through Josh’s death, Taylor is inadvertently exposed to life outside of the insulated bubble in which she grew up. Instead of self-absorption with her own sorrows, Taylor finds in herself an unexpected wellspring of compassion and understanding for all walks of life.

Taylor is a high school English teacher, and she structures Signs of Life around the books she teaches and those that pass through her hands the year after Josh’s death. Seeking solace through literature, Taylor looks to some heavy hitters for help. Alice Walker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ralph Waldo Emerson are but a few of the many authors who step up to hold Taylor’s grieving hand.

Also balanced by the support of some killer friends and family, Taylor puts you on a nickname basis with Ads, Matthews, Moo and more, but it’s never overdone. Taylor’s memoir is incredibly fresh and breathes life and hilarity into the not-so-funny-at-all realm of death, darkness and grief. While Signs of Life is based on Josh Taylor’s terribly sad and untimely death, one can’t miss the budding evolution of a determined woman, a beautiful baby boy, and the incredible ongoing power of life.

*Support your local bookstores, libraries, and universities. It matters.

- Post by Megan Shaffer

There are some 37,000 secondary schools in the United States, yet those who attend  posh prep schools up the ante and level of admissions play by deploying an annual mass of glowing curricula vitae to America’s finest universities. Not only do these high caliber students put the squeeze on the competition, but they also turn up the heat for admission officers as they attempt to bring only the best and brightest to their respective campuses.

Author Jean Hanff Korelitz provides a glimpse into the chaotic, mystifying world of university admissions in her engaging novel Admission. Korelitz has firsthand experience with the process of Princeton University admissions where she was a part-time reader for their Office of Admission during the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Intimate with student essays, credentials, and recommendations, Korelitz fuels her story with the angst and crush of desperate 18 year olds determined to make a difference.

Main character Portia Nathan, also an admissions officer for Princeton University, takes us inside the big machine of Ivy student acceptance and decline. Hand picking from thousands of applicants across the globe leaves Portia emotionally drained as the future lives of the finest students teeter on the brink of her decision. The “ordinarily qualified, the usually brilliant, and the expectedly talented” are all relative when moving through the towering stacks of mega potential.

The drama surrounding Portia’s personal life is a bit predictable and overdone, but the characters are vidid and certainly entertain. Admission exposes the shocking world of inflated ego, poor parent behavior, privilege, entitlement, and the lengths that people will go to access the ivory tower.

Not everyone was as entertained by Admission as I was, particularly this high school senior who reviewed Korelitz’s “silly novel” for The New York Times. Regardless, should you live in an area of privilege and affluence and think your child is a shoo-in for the ivy league, Admission is a must read and will definitely leave you thinking again.

*Support your local bookstores, libraries, and universities. It matters.

-Post by Megan Shaffer

The one store that I never had to plead a visit to was Jacobson’s. If you lived in the Birmingham area, you’ll recall that Jacobson’s, in it’s day, was a fashionable destination that offered everything from wedding gowns to baby booties. Elegant sales men and women would efficiently assist as you browsed, quietly calculate your totals on small hand-written pads, and deftly tissue your purchases and send you on your way.

From it’s opening in 1950 until it’s closing in 2002, “Jake’s” was a mainstay of  Birmingham’s bustling retail district. The modest store that began in Reed City, Michigan in 1868 not only expanded across the state, but into the hearts and memories of its patrons as well.

Shelby Township author and architect Bruce Allen Kopytek has carved a unique literary niche for himself as a department store historian. Kopytek’s interest in department stores that either no longer exist or have changed beyond recognition are, in fact, the impetus behind his book Jacobson’s: I Miss It So! The Story of a Michigan Fashion Institution (The History Press).

Kopytek’s Jacobson’s: I Miss It So! takes a look at the much loved Michigan institution, the various buildings and personalities behind the upscale outfitter, and Nathan Rosenfeld, the retail genius behind it all. Kopytek’s nostalgic retail story and study Jacobson’s: I Miss It So! was also recently selected as a 2012 Michigan Notable Book.

Though Jacobson’s no longer  exists physically, Mr. Kopytek has managed to preserve it virtually. If you have the time, it is well worth a visit to Kopytek’s blog, the Department Store Museum. This online site  is a beauty designed to pay homage to “America’s great, late-lamented department stores.” Other stores featured include Gimbels, I. Magnin & Co., and Sage-Allen with fabulous pictures and intriguing information.

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- Post by Megan Shaffer

Ayad Akhtar’s

Akhtar is an American-born, first-generation Pakistani-American from Milwaukee. As such, there’s an authenticity to his work that offers readers an open, innocent approach to Islam, and allows an inside look at Muslim life in America prior to 9/11.

It will come as no surprise to readers of Dervish that Akhtar is a screenwriter. Entertaining yet provoking, Dervish is a page-flipper that will leave those in the movie industry fighting for film rights.

Ayad Akhtar on American Dervish

Review Links (Beware of possible spoilers)

NPR – Growing Up Muslim and Midwestern in ’Dervish’

New York Times – Stumbling Through an American Muslim Maze

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-Post by Megan Shaffer

This year’s list, which features fiction, nonfiction, picture and children’s books alike, were either penned by a Michigan resident or written about a subject related to the Great Lakes region.

“The list has been a year-end tradition since 1991 with selections made by a panel under the umbrella of the official state library, part of the Michigan Department of Education,” states the Detroit Free Press. “Authors don’t receive prize money for the award, but the prestige of appearing on what has become a high-profile list does invite greater visibility and a potential bump in sales.”

This year Night Light Revue weighs in on only three of the 20 titles, and all fiction at that. I must say that Bonnie Jo Campbell’s Once Upon a River is not only my favorite book of 2011, but now falls into my “best book of all time” list. Also, Ellen Airgood’s South of Superior is highly entertaining while Scott Sparling’s Wire to Wire is a dark and dirty little ride.

Sales aside, Michigan now holds some of the country’s hottest authors in its mittened hand. Regardless, our authors modestly accept their awards and graciously make themselves available to Michigan readers through library tours, appearances and literary engagements. In addition, our university presses get a big boost and a much deserved nod for their remarkable, prolific publications.

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-Post by Megan Shaffer

Merci  Monsieur -

“Perhaps no man has ever given as much to travelling strangers, lest, as an inscription on a shop wall reads, ‘they be angels in disguise’.”

 A Bibliophile in Paris

Link

George Whitman, Paris Bookseller and Cultural Beacon – New York Times

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-Post by Megan Shaffer

If you have yet to meet cheeky wunderkind Flavia de Luce, author Alan Bradley is giving you another fabulous chance. I’m Half-Sick of Shadows is the fourth installment in Bradley’s shrewd series involving the saucy eleven-year-old super sleuth, Flavia de Luce.

No job’s too big for Flavia as long as it involves a dead body and a chance for the flourishing chemist to get her Bunson burners blazing. With her lab tucked into the far corner of the east wing of Buckshaw’s crumbling estate, the solitary Flavia puts her mind and passion for poisons to work in order to solve whatever mysteries might come her way.

One wouldn’t think the pastoral countryside of Bishop’s Lacey would offer much action for anyone, let alone a gifted little girl with ants in her pants. However, Alan Bradley has imagined the perfect setting for Flavia to toy with village authorities and tinker with the clues of Bishop Lacey’s latest homicide.

Flavia is a character to behold. Fresh and enthusiastic, she has made her way into the multi-aged hearts of her readers and settled in as one of literature’s finest female crime-solvers.

Wrapping up her first mystery in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (followed by The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag and A Red Herring Without Mustard), Flavia has blossomed right alongside Bishop Lacey’s body count. Now, Bradley gives  the gift of Flavia this Christmas as she returns for some Yuletide mystery in I’m Half-Sick of Shadows (trailer).

While Flavia enchants, Alan Bradley himself fascinates. He taught Script Writing and Television Production and was one of the founding members of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild. Bradley, who is an electronic engineer, worked at numerous radio and television stations and was the Director of Television Engineering in the media center at the University of Saskatchewan before retiring to write.

Remarkably, Bradley became a first-time novelist at the age of 70 and continues to rake in honors and accolades for his Flavia de Luce series.

Whispers of movie rights are in the air, but let’s hope that Alan Bradley doesn’t relinquish control of his little lady any time soon. Characters this enjoyable are much better played in the mind than on the big screen.

*Support your local bookstores, libraries, and universities. It matters.

- Post by Megan Shaffer