Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Martin Stuhr-Rommereim, Grinnell High School '10

loves reading books by Max Brooks. He carried the Zombie Survival Guide around with him all last school year, and he is currently trying to find the time to finish:

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. New York: Crown, 2006.
If you enjoyed Brooks's mock Survival Guide, this is a more serious look at the threat of Zombie attack world wide.

For those Zombiefiles on the Grinnell College campus, contact [rinaldi] for information about Grinnell Zombies, a Zombie movie a week during spring semester '08. (We just noted the poster in the library this morning--)

Monday, January 21, 2008

Barry Byrne recommends the following books

Recently, I have enjoyed these books:

Lance Armstrong's War: One Man's Battle against Fate, Fame, Love, Death, Scandal, and a Few Other Rivals on the Road to the Tour de France by Daniel Coyle. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding Correcting and Common Dog Problems by Cesar Millan. New York: Harmony Books, 2006.

What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love by Carole Radziwill. New York: Scribner, 2005.

No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home by Chris Offutt. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002.
3rd floor
PS3565.F387 Z474 2002

An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography by Paul Rusesabagina. New York: Viking, 2006.
On order for the Grinnell College Libraries

Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt. New York: Knopf, 2002
1st floor
CT275.B57984 A3 2002

Myths to Live By by Joseph Campbell. New York: Viking Press, 1972
1sst floor
BL315 .C27
The Library has several editions including a version on tape (Listening Room)

Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog (Mary Brave Bird) with Richard Erdoes. New York: G. Weidenfeld, 1990.
2nd floor
E99.D1 M425 1990
(Also Ohitika Woman. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994 2nd floor. 2nd floor E99.B8 B733 1994)

A Monk Swimming: A Memoir by Malachy McCourt. New York: Hyperion, 1998
2nd floor
F128.9.I6 M376 1998

Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism by George Soros. New York: Public Affairs, 2000.
2nd floor HB3722 .S67x 2000

French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano.
New York: Knopf, 2005.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Heather Parker recommends two books that she read over winter break

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards. NY: Viking, 2005.

The story takes place in the 1960s. A mother gives birth to twins, a son and a daughter. The father, a doctor, has delivered the twins himself with a nurse in attendance. The boy is healthy but the girl is born with Down Syndrome. The father tells the mother that their daughter has died, but in reality he has given her to a nurse expecting that she will take the child to an institution. The nurse, decides to raise the girl herself and disappears to another city. The story is about the different childhood's experienced by the children. The boy is raised in a family of secrecy while the girl is raised in an open, loving environment.

On order for the library.

Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut. First published in 1985 by Delacorte Press (New York).

Lorrie Moore wrote in the New York Times in 1985: "Leon Trout, Mr. Vonnegut's doppelganger, speaks to us, moreover, from a million years hence, from the afterlife, whence he can best pronounce on what was wrong with us 20th-century folk - our brains were too big - and reveal what, through evolution and for purposes of survival, we became: creatures with smaller brains and flippers and beaks. Even if people of the future ''found a grenade or a machine gun or a knife or whatever left over from olden times, how could they ever make use of it with just their flippers and their mouths?'' Leon Trout asks. And: ''It is hard to imagine anybody's torturing anybody nowadays. How could you even capture somebody you wanted to torture with just your flippers and your mouth?'' For the full review: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/28/lifetimes/vonnegut-galapagos.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Sounds as though twenty-plus years later, the premise of this novel is still relevant.

3rd floor
PS3572.O5 G3 1986



Monday, January 7, 2008

More from Walter Giersbach '61

He writes, ". . . Wild Child has just published the second volume of stories in Cruising the Green of Second Avenue. [See November 15 entry for news about the first volume] The tales take up where Vol. I left off˜bringing back Klein the Biker, Straight Charlie and Sammy the Madman while introducing some new characters facing the difficulties encountered by life in the late 60s."

More information available: http://www.wildchildpublishing.com/content/view/426/125/

For an excerpt: http://www.wildchildpublishing.com/excerpts/cruising2.html

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish

I've just completed Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. It's an amazing little book with beautiful language and strong images -- making head cheese, among others! I was surprised that the NY Times named it one of the five best non-fiction books of 2007 -- surprised, but pleased.

Reviewed by Barbara Benda Jenkins '64

1st floor Smith Memorial F627.B4 K35 2007