Ideas for Before or After Easter by Janice Clauser

The Crawfordsville Library will be closed Sunday for Easter.

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

            Some new biographies bring us a variety of information. Chris DeRose brings us “Congressman Lincoln” subtitled The Making of America’s Greatest President. Each book about Lincoln has its own mission, and this one explains his “ambitious and controversial early political career, and his surprising ascendancy that was both historic and far from inevitable.” “Wave” by Sonali Deraniyagala is her documentation of the morning of December 26, 2004 and her subsequent life since only she survived the Sri Lanka tsunami which claimed her husband and two young sons. Her journey’s goal is to learn balance between her loss and her need to keep her family, somehow, still alive within her. “In the House of the Interpreter” by Ngugi-wa Thiong’o  is a memoir of his life and times at boarding school, the first secondary institution in British-ruled Kenya in the 1950s, recalling the tumultuous Mau Mau uprising for independence and Kenyan sovereignty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A country girl from Henrietta, Tennessee grew up driving fast and playing hard, learning basketball while working in tobacco fields under her father’s demands. Going on to set records for victories, earning an Olympic medal, becoming head coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Vols, winning more games than anyone in NCAA Division I history, finally receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom–all these are included in Pat Summitt’s “Sum It Up.” Next, in “The Ordinary Acrobat” Duncan Wall recalls his life as a college student in Paris, his application to the Ecole Nationale des Arts du Cirque and his success in that fascinating organization.

            “Finding Florida” is “the true history of the Sunshine State” by T. D. Allman. Also new is Fodor’s “New England: Travel Intelligence” of historic towns, fall foliage, and hiking and skiing information. 

            L.E. Modesitt, Jr.’s “Imager’s Battalion” features Quaeryt, commander in the Telaryn army leading history’s first imager fighting forces against the hostile nation of Bovaria, teaching men to control the dangerous imaging skills at their command.

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

            Family stories include Lisa Gardner’s fiction “Touch & Go,” looking at what lurks behind the façade of a perfect family, vanished without a trace. “The Prophet” by Michael Koryta shows ordinary people caught in the middle of an extraordinary nightmare, this time a horrible crime blamed on the wrong people. “Schroder” by Amity Gaige creates a seven day period a father spends on the road with his daughter after kidnapping her during a parental visit. “Indiscretion” by Charles Dubow starts with an envied and admired couple, and their changed life that begins when they meet a quiet young girl drawn into their inscrutable magnetism.

 

           

           

 

 

 

 

 

            Andre Brink’s “Philida” is the story of a female slave and her fierce determination to survive and to be free in 1832’s South Africa. “Canada” by Richard Ford finds a 15-year-old helped by a friend on the Saskatchewan prairie where an American fugitive with a violent past presents danger; he is there because his life in North Dakota was altered when his parents were put in jail for robbing a bank, and the friend took him away to a new environment. “The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen” by Syrie James begins when our heroine finds what she believes is a letter alluding to an Austen manuscript that “went missing at Greenbriar in Devonshire.” The clever story “offers a deeper understanding of what Austen’s unreported life might have been like.” - The Los Angeles Times.   

Needlework Inspires Spring Fever by Janice Clauser

            As spring begins, the Sugar Creek Quilters welcome us to a colorful and satisfying experience viewing their latest creations at the Crawfordsville Library. The Mary Bishop Memorial Gallery is filled with clever handwork of various sizes. Just inside the entrance to the east is the large white-on-white piece called “Welsh Beauty.” The titles suggest the makers’ themes like “20 Blue Pinwheels,” “Mom’s Twenty Antique Handkerchiefs,” “Australian Spirit,” “Southwest Symbols,” “Out My Windows,” “Florence,” “Jellyroll 1600’” “Western Sky.”  These artists share very special work involving many hours of designing, locating materials, and careful stitching. The beauty of spring is right there to see. This organization invites “anyone interested in learning about and/or creating quilts. Beginners are welcome!”

           

 

 

 

 

 

            Fiction has its themes too. Paul Doherty’s story “The Straw Men” is dated January, 1381 as John of Gaunt’s personal acting troupe performing in the Tower of London is interrupted by the violent death of two VIP guests. Could there be a spy in the heart of the royal court? Has that happened before? Robert Cargill’s “Dreams and Shadows” follows two boys from their star-crossed childhood in the realm of magic and mystery to their anguished adulthoods; it’s about “the magic and monsters in our world and in our self.”

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

            Ron Rash’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” holds 14 stories about lives haunted by violence and tenderness, or full of hope and fear, in Appalachia from the Civil War period to the present day. ”Middle Men” by Jim Gavin offers seven stories set in California about men as they make valiant forays into middle-class respectability. A  James Joyce “Ulysses” quote heralds the theme: “Every life is many days, day after day.  We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.” Short stories from the long war are called “Fire and Forget.” Edited by Roy Scranton and Matt Gallagher, these 15 are introduced by Colum McCann who says “All stories are war stories somehow. Every one of us has stepped from one war or another.” Sue Grafton’s “Kinsey and Me Stories” begins with nine tales in her private-eye voice, then 13 more written in the decade after her mother died, featuring Kit Blue, a younger version of Sue herself. They have emotional impact. These stories reflect her passage as a writer who reads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“If a Stranger Approaches You” by Laura Kasischke exposes the heart of the domestic, reminding us of the bizarre and the ordinary, always at play. “Her writing does what good poetry does - it shows us an alternate world and lulls us into living in it.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

James Patterson’s “Private Berlin” tells how tragedy strikes the Berlin headquarters of the world’s most powerful investigation firm and exposes a hidden past. “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” by Ayana Mathis portrays the children of the Great Migration. In 1923, a 15-year-old girl flees Georgia, settles in Philadelphia and marries a man who brings only disappointment, as she raises many children with grit but without tenderness, preparing them for the sadness of life in a world that won’t be kind, a certain world of racism.

            Kristan Higgins’ romance “The Best Man” is a Blue Heron novel about a young lady, having been jilted at the altar, who returns to her family’s vineyard to confront the ghosts of her past.

Looking Back at Ayres Department Store by Janice Clauser

Thursday, March 7

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently acquired by the Crawfordsville Library is “L.S. Ayres & Company: The Store at the Crossroads of America” by Kenneth Turchi, Crawfordsville native, who was employed at Ayres during college. It’s the history of the business begun in 1872, and “For the next century, Ayres was as much a part of Indianapolis as Monument Circle or the Indianapolis 500”. He shows Ayres developing interests in specialties, discount locations, and even food products, with a constant commitment to women’s fashion that gave the store the same cachet as its larger competitors in New York and Chicago. He traces the Ayres family and the store’s history through three wars, the Great Depression, and the changing tastes and shopping habits of America in the 1960s and 1970s. The behind-the-scenes look should fascinate every reader interested in this entity we called the “store with everything.” The book’s index notes names of many active employees along the way. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Attractive covers promote the texts of new books like Michelle Rhee’s “Radical” giving her plan for better schools, making “students - not adults - our top priority.” “Good Prose” explains the art of nonfiction with stories and advice from a lifetime of writing and editing by Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Kidder. ”The Lady and Her Monsters” by Roseanne Montillo is called “a tale of dissections, real-life Dr. Frankensteins, and the creation of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece,” a blend of literary history, lore, and scientific exploration. Another Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Moss offers a book about how the food giants hooked us, called “Salt, Sugar, Fat.” “You Are Why You Eat” is Ramani Durvasula’s treatise to change our food attitude to change our life. One of her new rules is “Pleasure and dessert should be a regular part of your life, not just a rare treat.” “Midnight in Peking” by Paul French shows how the murder of a young Englishwoman haunted Old China’s last days in 1937 as the Japanese encircled the city.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The story “Ghostman” by Roger Hobbs is introduced by a casino robbery in Atlantic City that goes horribly awry. Earlene Fowler’s mystery “The Road to Cardinal Valley” deals with alcoholism in a small California town. Carolly Erickson’s “The Unfaithful Queen” is historical Tudor fiction about Henry VIII’s charming young fifth wife whose captivating ways led her to the Tower and the headsman’s axe. “Cross Roads” by Wm. Paul Young  shows an egotistical man who while comatose in a hospital “awakens” to a surreal world where he has vivid interactions with others he assumes are projections of his own subconscious, and deep entanglements where he “sees” through the eyes of others. Jackie Collins’ thriller “The Power Trip” takes place on a luxury yacht off the coast of Cabo San Lucas, where some power-hungry elites are shocked when they find out that maybe they don’t control as much of the world as they thought. It’s a plot mixing the super-rich with a master-pirate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jonathan Kellerman’s “Guilt” takes us to Southern California’s eternal sunshine as a series of horrifying events occur in the upscale neighborhood of L.A. “The Fifth Assassin” by Brad Meltzer uses the fact of four U.S. Presidents’ death by assassin to discover a killer in D.C. who’s re-creating the crimes of these four men. Dick Wolf, architect of NBC’s Law & Order show offers “The Intercept” a Jeremy Fisk novel in which the detective takes as a signal an incident aboard a commercial jet just days before the dedication of One World Trade Center at Ground Zero.

 

The library has received three computer manuals: “Teach Yourself Visually Windows 8” by Paul McFedries, “Windows for Dummies” by Andy Rathbone, and “Windows 8 for Seniors for Dummies” by Mark Hinton.