Book Lovers

L-Vis Lives! Racemusic Poems
Kevin Coval

This collection of poems by Chicago native and artistic director of the Chicago Youth Poetry Festival Kevin Coval is an imagining of how a new Elvis would come up, act, and be accepted in the world’s most popular musical art-form, rap. Coval certainly pulls from his own life as a hip-hop and rap artist (he's a four-time HBO Def Poet) but combines it with “other whiteboys who consider themselves down,” such as “Elvis Presley, Vanilla Ice, Eminem, …, the Beastie Boys …” to make a character, L-Vis, who struggles with his whiteness in a mostly black music and language. Coval takes us through the first mix tape, the high school rap that changed it all, getting signed and frustrated in the music business, and the subsequent bottoming out and return home. He ends the book with a suite of poems for John Walker Lindh, the American who joined the Taliban, titled “White boy I could’ve been” which takes a compassionate look into this young man’s thinking. A great book for anyone who likes/loves hip-hop.

Jun 2, 2012
Anonymous
Lord of Misrule
Jaimy Gordon

This book (I listened to the CD recording) covers a whole cast of characters whose lives are made and lost on a claims horse-racing track in Wheeling, West Virginia. There's Medicine Ed, a horse trainer and track lifer, just looking for a home. There's another lifer, Deucy, a self-professed old lady "gyp," who offers lots of off-beat color. There's handsome newbie and upstart, Tommy Hansel, who receives his support in mysterious ways, and his girlfriend, Maggie, a former recipe-writer turned horse trainer. There's the local mob boss, Joe Dale Bigg, who has his eyes on more than horses here. And, of course, there are the horses: Lord of Misrule, the Mahdi, Pelter, and Little Spinoza. The story moves between most of the colorful characters and even some of the horses and narrator Mary Lucretia Taylor does a wonderful job alternating voices. The National Book Award council got it right in naming this their award winner in 2010.

Jun 2, 2012
Anonymous
The Family Fang
Kevin Wilson

For Camille and Caleb fang, the only worthwhile art is the product of chaos and havoc. Their children have learned that when it comes to the creation of art, nothing is off-limits. Annie and Buster (known in artistic circles as Child A and Child B), are used to playing vital (if sometimes unwitting) participants in their parents’ performance art. After a series of personal setbacks, both Annie and Buster come home to recover and regroup, and resist the urge to fall back into their parents’ artistic endeavors. When they receive a call from authorities informing them that their parents have disappeared and may be dead, Annie and Buster don’t know whether to begin mourning, or assume they are the unwilling participants in one more performance. Fans of the films of Wes Anderson (especially The Royal Tennenbaums) are sure to enjoy this quirky, mirthful tragedy.

Jun 1, 2012
Anonymous
Lucifer's Tears
James Thompson

After solving the traumatic case that unfolded in Snow Angels, Inspector Kari Vaara is now in the Helsinki homicide department.  Life is now a major headache, both literally and figuratively, for Vaara.  This time, he has a new eager partner and they need to solve a murder case that could have major political implications.  Also, he has been asked to check up on possible war crimes involving not only a war hero but his own grandfather.  Plus, his wife is pregnant and her siblings have come for a visit.

Jun 1, 2012
Susan
The Disappearing Spoon
Sam Kean

It is clear from the first chapter that Sam Kean loves chemistry. He loves it so much that he wants you to see the beauty in every element. If he could, he would write poetry about radiation and electrons. Instead, he wrote The Disappearing Spoon, a history of the periodic table of elements that is as much about people as it is about atoms. For those who struggled with high school chemistry, Kean does an excellent job of explaining complicated scientific concepts in laymen’s terms, though it gets a bit tricky when he enters the areas of astrophysics and quantum mechanics. Still, novices and science geeks alike will find this book to be a wealth of “did you know…” conversation starters and a fascinating read.

May 25, 2012
Anonymous
Fall Higher
Dean Young

"The error is not to fall / but to fall from no height." This is the quip that leads us into Dean Young's 9th collection of poetry. Young, the surrealist master of contemporary American poetry, proceeds to take us on a comic, sometimes dizzying, sometimes diverging ride- and with titles like "Selected and Recent Errors" and "Is this why love almost rhymes with dumb?", we get a chance to experience this in spades. But Young is also reflective (or as reflective as only he can be) on the birth of his son, past jobs ("Full-time at the Cyclotron"), and touches on themes of love and mortality ("Vacationland"). This is not poetry for those who like their poetry to be narrative or to make sense, but an irrational, musical, and fun romp through one esteemed poet's quirky (and quick-witted) mind. Enjoy!

May 25, 2012
Anonymous
Snow Angels
James Thompson

It's kaamos time in northern Finland--very cold weather and almost complete darkness.  Inspector Kari Vaara has a brutal murder to solve as well as the other crimes that occur during this bleak time.  He thinks he has the crime solved but the true perpetrators may be someone much closer to him than he thinks.  Once you start the book it's very hard to put it down.

May 15, 2012
Susan
The Stonecutter
Camilla Lackberg

Book 3 in the Patrik Hedstom-Erica Falck series.  This time Patrik has to find the person responsible for the drowning death of a seven-year-old girl, who just happens to be the daughter of one of Erica's friends.  Another fast-paced story of the evil that can be present in the picturesque Fjallbacka.

May 14, 2012
Susan
My Lobotomy
My Lobotomy
Howard Dully

This interesting memoir offers a firsthand account of a man who received a transorbital lobotomy when he was 12 years old in the early 60's.  Howard Dully was only told that his doctor was going to run some tests in the hospital, when he had an ice-pick inserted in his eye sockets to sever his frontal lobes.  Dully describes his behavior problems as a little boy and his abusive step-mother who took him from psychiatrist to psychiatrist trying to find someone who thought there was enough wrong with him to institutionalize him.  She couldn't find anyone who thought his issues were greater than a bad home life until she met Dr. Walter Freeman--the father of the American lobotomy and one of the few practitioners anywhere who still performed this awful procedure.  Afterwards Howard slips into a life of heavy drinking, drugs and petty crime.  It is not until later in his life that he begins to reflect upon what led to his life trajectory and getting past the stigma of being lobotomized to research and speak out about what happened to him.

May 8, 2012
Kristy
The Preacher
Camilla Lackberg

When a young woman's body is found, more skeletal remains are also unearthed.  Patrik Hedstrom (first introduced in The Ice Princess) has to not only find the killer of the recent victim but is there a tie to the skeletons of two women missing for 24 years.  All fingers point to someone in the Hult family, could one of them be a murderer?  Time is especially short when another young woman goes missing.

May 7, 2012
Susan

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