Words Worth Reading

CDPL's literature blog created to help you find books worth reading

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

This is a week of weighty books, new books, wonderful books, but heavy books. The champion is “The Louvre: All the Paintings”, eight-plus pounds, 700-plus pages of beautiful plates and descriptions of the “richest and grandest collection of European art anywhere”. There is a DVD too. The publisher is Black Dog & Leventhal.

Three good new American history books await your eyes. “The Gods of Prophetstown” by Adam Jortner tells about the battle of Tippecanoe and the Holy War for the American frontier. “The First Frontier” is Scott Weidensaul’s “forgotten history of struggle, savagery, & endurance in Early America” covering two and a half centuries of personal stories of the eastern frontier. Thirdly, “Coming Apart”, Charles Murray’s study of the state of white America, 1960-2010, explains how a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their American kinship.

More big books, this time about sports. “Golf Style” by Vicky Moon shows homes and memorabilia collections inspired by golf courses and clubhouses of note. “Fenway Park” by John Powers, celebrates the 100th anniversary of the “coolest, cruelest, longest-running major league baseball stadium in America.

Three new travel guides are Bruce Hunt’s “Visiting Small-Town Florida”, Ben Box’ “South American Handbook 2012” & Richard Arghiris’ “Central America Handbook”.

Manuals are visually attractive while they challenge us too: “Wood Flooring” by Charles Peterson, Black & Decker’s “Wiring”, Jim Widess’ “Chair Caning”, “Cake Decorating” from Autumn Carpenter, and Matthew Robbins’ “Inspired Weddings”. There’s “Home Cooking with Trisha Yearwood”, and “Barefoot Contessa, How Easy is That?” by Ina Garten, and “the Healing Powers of Honey” by Cal Orey. Finally, “The Complete Guide to Small-Scale Farming” by Melissa Nelson, is fun to read even in the middle of a big city.

In “Treasure Island!!!” Sara Levine tells how after reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s book, she adopted a new adventurous life, advertised as “insane, hilarious, and irreverent”. The pre-Civil War South comes to life as a certain slave, reputed to be a healer, practices her helpfulness in “The Healing” by Jonathan Odell. Vampires and their hunter are drawn into combat in Laurell Hamilton’s “Hit List”. American life changed drastically at the turn of the 20th century, and a one-day laborer in the American West suffers personal defeats dealing with these radical changes in “Train Dreams” by Denis Johnson.

Lauraine Snelling’s “Valley of Dreams” is part one of her Wild West Wind story series. It’s about a girl whose father had promised to take her to the Black Hills, but he died before keeping his promise.

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