Blog Category: Director's Notebook
Posted by KChin on Mon, Nov 30
Director’s Notebook
December, 2009
When you read certain books, do you sometimes imagine what it would be like as a movie? And if you do, do you imagine certain actors playing the book’s leading characters?
I couldn’t stop thinking of Johnny Depp as I read The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti. Depp has made a career playing charming rogues, untrustworthy and shady characters who are somehow beguiling as well. This is a pretty good description of Benjamin Nab, one of the leading characters in...
Posted by KChin on Fri, Oct 30
Director’s Notebook
November, 2009
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan is a book I have avoided for a while. I started avoiding it when I first read a review about it in my favorite book catalog Bas Bleu. I continued to avoid it when I saw it on the bookshelves in the library. But when my friend Joanne raved about it, having recently read it, and eagerly offered to lend me her copy, I knew I couldn’t avoid it anymore.
Why would I avoid a book? In this case, not because I knew...
Posted by KChin on Wed, Oct 07
Director’s Notebook
October, 2009
It’s October; time for ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night. It’s also a great time to read literary ghost stories. Literary ghost stories are stories that are a cut above the crowd, as far as “scary” stories go. Written by highly respected writers with great skill and effectiveness, literary ghost stories as a genre date back about two hundred years ago, becoming exceedingly popular in the mid-Victorian period and...
Posted by KChin on Wed, Sep 09
Library Director’s Notebook
September, 2009
One of my favorite writers whom not too many people know about is Barbara Pym. Pym, a British writer who wrote primarily in the 50’s and 60’s, was once called by a well-known literary critic "one of the most under appreciated writers of the 20th century.“ Well, I’d like to add another name to that list of the under appreciated: Dorothy Whipple.
I first heard about Dorothy Whipple while browsing through my favorite book catalog Bas Bleu. Bas...
Posted by KChin on Mon, Aug 17
Library Director’s Notebook
August, 2009
I just read a mouthful, or I should say a book with a mouthful of a title: The Guernsey Literary and Sweet Potato Peel Pie Society. Written by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, this novel might have fallen prey to the temptation to be as cute as its title. Instead, it soars into the exalted land of funny-but-serious-charming-but-believable-can’t-stop-reading-it-have-to-tell-everyone-about-it. In fact, this book has taken off...
Posted by KChin on Tue, Jul 21
Director’s Notebook
July, 2009
There’s a problem with dead authors. They can’t write any more books. This is especially frustrating when you really love an author, as I, and countless millions love Jane Austen. Unless someone discovers some previously unknown manuscript of Jane Austen’s (and what a literary sensation that would be!) we have to rely on modern day authors who use the popular literary device of “discovering” a novel or a diary or “finishing” one of Jane’s...
Posted by KChin on Fri, Jun 19
Director’s notebook June, 2009 One of the best, I mean the very, very best things about working in a library with a wonderful book collection like Barrington Library, is to be able to prowl the bookstacks looking for an unknown book to read. I have found so many wonderful books over the years this way, books I’d never heard of, written by authors I did not know. That was exactly the case when I came across Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast, by Bill Richardson, earlier this month. I admit,...
Posted by KChin on Fri, May 01
Just when we thought it was safe to go into our gardens, writer and gardener Amy Stewart has decided to shake us up a little with her sly compendium of wicked plants. The full title of Amy’s newest book is Wicked Plants: the weed that killed Lincoln’s mother and other botanical atrociities.
A plant killed Lincoln’s mother? Lincoln’s mother Nancy Hanks Lincoln died at the age of 34, leaving her 9 year old son Abe behind. Her illness, known as milk sickness, was a common scurge of...
Posted by KChin on Tue, Apr 07
Director’s Notebook
April, 2009
There are few events in history that have generated so much writing, analysis, film, and commentary as World War II, and in particular that horrific event known as the Holocaust. It is very painful to read of the struggles of Jews and others caught up in the maelstrom of Nazi propoganda and violence, yet often books on WWII and the Holocaust are inspiring rather than depressing.
Such is the case of Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. This...
Posted by KChin on Fri, Feb 27
Director’s notebook
March, 2009
“Location. Location. Location.”
That is supposedly the chant that realtors or business people are always intoning when they consider what will make a house or a business succeed.
Now, how about this location?
Concord, Massachusetts … in the mid eighteen hundreds, when it earned its reputation as “the biggest little place in America”. A quiet and unexceptional, rather quaint New England town on the outside; but inside, behind the doors of the cottages and...
