Paris The Luminous Years

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Paris was the center of all that was new and exciting in the arts. Genius walked arm and arm down Boulevard Montparnasse with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Josephine Baker and Aaron Copland among many others. Something magical attracted these men and women to create radical new ways of looking at the world while living in the CIty of Lights. And seduced by that magic, they created some of the greatest artistic masterpieces the world has ever seen.

The PBS documentary, Paris The Luminous Years vividly captures the explosion of artistic innovation between 1905 and 1930 in that great city. Old Paris comes alive through interviews with the artists themselves, contemporary film footage and the sultry sounds of the all-night jazz clubs in this two hour film. Watching Paris The Luminous Years made me yearn to travel back in time to hang out and gossip at the Cafe Deux Maggots, glass of wine in hand, along with Hemingway, who, after his estrangement with Gertrude Stein, remarked of her writing: “A rose is a rose is an onion.” Or to clamber up the stairs to Pablo Picasso’s cold water flat on Montmartre where he and fellow painter Georges Braque stayed up until dawn discussing art as they burned rejected canvases to keep warm.

Paris The Luminous Years is a heady and intoxicating look at a time when everything in the art world seemed possible and life was lived to its fullest. Don your black beret, sit down, pour yourself a glass of vin rouge and revel in the world that was Paris at the turn of the last century. You can reserve it here.

Storyteller comes to Literacy Park

Storyteller Ken Iverson is coming to Literacy Park at 1:00 pm on Wednesday, July 31. He is part of Newport Public Library's wildly popular summer reading program, Dig Into Reading.

Ken has been telling stories most of his life. An early fascination with Jonathan Winters led him to write and perform stories for friends when he was 17 and he hasn’t stopped yet! He loves the connection that sharing stories creates and how the telling of a story can bring people together. Ken believes the old adage "Laughter is the Best Medicine" is close to true. It’s not the only medicine, it's the most fun to take.

Sometimes using a drum, he tells traditional and contemporary folktales and myths from around the world for audiences of all ages. A third prize winner at the Seattle Folklife Festival's Liar's Contest, Ken's energetic telling of Jack tales, Arthurian tales and world folktales has been enthusiastically received.

Summer Reading at Newport Public Library happens every year thanks to the generous support of Newport businesses and private supporters. If it weren't for Umpqua Bank, La Quinta Inn and Suites, The Sylvia Beach Hotel, Jeannette Hofer, Janis & Ross Neigebauer and the Lincoln County Library District, summers at the library would be much quieter...too quiet for this children's librarian!

Dreams and detections in the Crescent City

I am of two minds about Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, first of a mystery series by Sara Gran.

On the one hand, it’s a fast-paced, well-written noir thriller, set in New Orleans in the chaotic year after Hurricane Katrina. Claire DeWitt, the world’s greatest PI (she tells us), is searching for a lawyer named Vic Willing, who had vanished without a trace during the storm. Her search takes us into New Orleans’ violent and unpredictable underworld, where drug abuse, poverty, and corruption are endemic, and where thousands of abandoned children grow up and die in gangs.

The dark and gritty setting is perfectly suited to our detective, the deeply troubled Claire, who doesn’t give a damn about much of anything. Only the mysteries in her life seem to keep her going.

On the other hand, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead is kind of weird. In hunting for the solution to the mystery, Claire relies not only on clues and evidence, but also intuition, dreams, coincidences, drug-induced hallucinations, the I Ching, and the wisdom of Jacques Silette, Claire’s guru. Silette’s writings are excerpted throughout the novel, and are either existentially enlightening, or tediously opaque and circular. (I’ll let you decide which.)

Author Gran seems to be trying to marry a detective story with a deeper exploration of psychology and philosophy. Does it work?

I’m not sure it does, really -- but I certainly enjoyed reading this fresh and interesting story. I like my mysteries to be intellectual puzzles with perfectly logical conclusions, which this isn’t. However, I couldn’t put it down, eager to follow Claire as she hunts for clues and wrestles with her own painful and unresolved memories.

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead is the first of a new series. Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway is next on the list.

An Afghan Family Story

The Boston Marathon bombing was horrific, as were the shootings at Sandy Hook, Aurora, and Columbine.  Imagine: the Afghan author of Fort of Nine Towers lived through decades of such horrors. Some of the scenes in Qais Akbar Omar’s memoir are so revolting, especially the scenes of systematic torture, that it seems miraculous that the author survived.

Not only did he survive, he retained his love and respect for life and for his country.

Omar was a young boy in Afghanistan during the Soviet Union’s occupation. Life was good for his middle class family. His father and grandfather sold carpets, his mother worked in a bank, there was a large extended family that spent time together, and Omar enjoyed going to school and flying kites with his favorite cousin, Wakeel.

But when the Soviet Union pulled out, Afghanistan dissolved into civil war.  Factional fighting slowly destroyed Omar’s neighborhood and his family’s way of life, and Omar and his family became internal exiles in their own country. Omar and his family finally returned to Kabul and camped out in an old fort just as the Mujahedin were replaced by the Taliban. Cruelty continued, but even after Omar was arbitrarily tortured and imprisoned he retained his hope that things would change for the better. After he was released from prison he secretly set up a carpet weaving business to provide work for neighborhood girls.

This memoir is beautifully written by a young man who has suffered much but still loves his country. I highly recommend Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story.

Posted by Kay.

Magic in Literacy Park

A storytelling, balloon-sculpting, magic-making speech and communications teacher performing in Literacy Park?  Yes! Jay Frasier makes his Newport Public Library debut this Wednesday, July 24 at 1:00 p.m. as young readers continue to Dig In To Reading.  He's been making magic, telling tales and turning balloons into interesting shapes for a decade while keeping his day job as an instructor at Lane Community College.

A recipient of the "Dom Deluise Comedy Magic Scholarship," Genii magazine considers Jay one of the top children's performers in the country. Using sleight-of-hand, physical comedy, and audience participation to create a magical and entertaining performance, Jay makes certain that children and adults experience the impossible made possible, reinforcing their senses of wonder and engaging their imaginations. 

Join us for this free summer reading event made possible by Ready-to-Read grants from the Oregon State Legislature, support from community members Jeannette Hofer, Janice and Ross Neigebauer and Umpqua Bank and lodging from La Quinta Inn and Suites. Check here to find out what else is going on at your Library this summer.

The 9th Girl by Tami Hoag

On a frigid New Year’s Eve in Minneapolis, the driver of a rented limo is so distracted by the half-drunk and half-dressed bachelorette party taking place behind him, he’s not paying attention to the road—until a grotesque bloodied figure, with a half-melted face, tumbles from the trunk of the car ahead of him. He screeches the brakes, but too late—the limo plows into the disfigured body soon to be known in sensationalist headlines as Zombie Doe. In the ensuing chaos, the vehicle she fell from disappears.

Is Zombie Doe the ninth victim and first slip-up of a serial killer known as Doc Holiday, who’s been hunting across the Midwest but so far left no trace? Or do the differences in the murders mean that a second mad killer is on the loose, maybe one with a more personal grudge? Detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska must identify her, and fast.

I expected The 9th Girl to be cheesy, slick, and shallow because of the packaging and the “Zombie Doe” angle, but it’s a readable, solidly plotted thriller, with a common theme well-threaded through the plot and subplots, and distinctive and largely believable characters. There was a focus on relationships between mothers and teenaged children from various angles that I enjoyed, and enough twists and tension to keep the pages turning quickly throughout. 

This book can stand alone, but it is the fourth book Tami Hoag’s Kovac & Liska series.

1.  Ashes to Ashes
2.  Dust to Dust
3.  Prior Bad Acts 
4.  The 9th Girl

How About Some Literary Fiction?

I picked up Three Junes by Julia Glass without much enthusiasm. It looks very much like something Cosmo would recommend as a light and beach-y read (which is really not my bag), or what’s commonly referred to in the parlance of our times as “Chick Lit.” (I have always had a problem with that term. “Women’s Literature” is hardly better; ask yourself, is there really such a thing as “Men’s Literature”? Anyway, I digress.) Three Junes did, however, win the 2002 National Book Award for fiction, so I decided not to be so snotty about cover art and give it a try. It was totally worth it--this is some enjoyable literary fiction, let me tell you.

The story centers on the MacLeods, a family that hales from rural Scotland, and relates the events of three momentous Junes through the perspectives of three different characters: Paul, father and newspaper owner; Fenno, gay son and New York bookstore owner; and Fern, an aspiring young artist and former love interest of Paul. I enjoyed how Glass delves into the inner lives of her characters and the way she conveys the complexities inherent in their relationships with one another. Pick up Three Junes to experience a gorgeous rendering of a family complete with its strengths as well as flaws.