Writing Tips for Librarians

From Library Journal's John N. Berry III's  "Skills Librarian Need to Survive: Learn to Write."

1)  Delete the first two paragraphs of an essay to see if a better beginning has been discovered.

2)  Do the same for the conclusion of the essay. 

3) Avoid rhetorical questions.

4) Avoid words ending in "ly.
Writing skills are needed more than ever, John Berry explains in "Blatantberry" because it will take "powerful prose" to prove that libraries are not obsolete. 

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

This epic story that  reads like a fairytale at times is the story of a Boyar, Pyotr, his sons, Sasha and Kolya and his strange daughter Vasilia. Before his wife died, she told him that Vasilia would be most like her mother who had the "gift."

Vasilia was born with  the ability to see the creatures that populate Russian airytale creatures--the rusalka, the vazila, domonvoi, vodianoy, leshy and the Frost King, Mozorko. While its commonplace to her, others are terrified of her abilities. Much of the town, and her stepmother, call Vasilia ("Vasya") a demon or a witch. 

Ironically, Vasya's stepmother, Anna, also has the ability to see these household spirits and cheyerti of the forest. Anna, however, denigrates what she sees as "demons" or manifestations of her madness. 

Konstantine, a priest sent by Prince Ivan to the wilds of Rus, terrifies the town by labeling the old village ways "demonic." Their fears only multiply the existing dangers. An old rivalry between two supernatural forces is renewed as the terrible Bear of the fairytales is released from his bindings. 

Don't miss the next two novels in the Winternight series: Arden's The Girl in The Tower and The Winter of the Witch.

Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World by Rachel Ignotofsky

Women in Science includes great information about little known women scientists who made incredible advances in science. 

Illustrations by Rachel Ignotofsky are adequate but lack color. Each scientist is assigned a single neon color. For instance, illustrations for Maria Sibylla Merian who observed and painted the metamorphoses of butterflies are each some shade of bright blue against a charcoal gray background. Marie Cure's illustrations are neon green and so on. 

Interesting facts can be found in the margins. The entry for Ada Lovelace, for instance, relates in the margins that Lovelace signed each of her letters to Charles Baggage as "lady fairy." In another entry (for Rosalind Franklin) we learn that Franklin, who took the first photo of DNA's double helix structure, also created a huge sculpture of the tobacco mosaic virus for the World's Fair. 


Ignotofsky's Women in Science is a wonderful starting place for those writing biographies on scientists. Since the entries or so short, though, most students will need to consult more resources. 

This book will please everyone but its especially written for young readers, grade 2 through 5. 

Louisiana Flooded

More than 60,000 Louisiana homes were damaged in the flood (the week of Aug 12). My family members who live there were affected; it's hard to understand how this so called 1,000 year flood (chances of happening are 1 in a 1,000 per year) could have happened.

Right now, it feels a little surreal because though the nightmare is very real, it scarcely gets a mention in the news. Everyone is quick to say that Louisianans are taking care of themselves but that hasn't really happened in my family's case. Everyone that has helped them has also charged them. I think they got one free case of drinking water. 

Klickitat by Peter Rock

Klickitat sounds completely different from any YA novel I've ever read.  I'm excited to read it.

http://peterrockproject.com/books/index.html
http://spellsproject.com/

He's Gone by Deb Caletti

Dani's second husband has gone missing. The two of them share an ostensibly fairy tale life. After he rescues her from an abusive husband, they move to a houseboat, far from the gossip of the suburbs. 

All, however, is not as it seems. Dani comes to realize how little she knows about Ian.

Unfortunately, Dani took two Vicodins the night her husband disappeared, leaving her with memory gaps. She remembers arguing with him at the party but very little else. 

Ian appears to have taken none of his clothes or other personal effects. His car was left in its usual parking spot.

Some additional details come to light. Nathan, a partner in the company, offered to buy Ian's share of the high tech start-up. This betrayal, Dani realizes, may have pushed him over the edge.

The missing person case gives Dani some clarity. She realizes her missing husband has been overly critical of her. After years of abuse from Mark, Dani has fallen from someone who wanted to rescue her. Only his rescue feels more like a trap. 

Ian often demanded she do exactly as he wanted. His hobby is collecting insects and what he says about a curious trait of butterflies is particularly disturbing.


Readers wonder if Ian's family will ever find him but another thread in the narrative concerns Dani. Will she ever find the self-confidence she needs?

Ghosts of Tupelo Landing by Sheila Turnage

The author of middle grade novel, Ghosts of Tupelo Landing, has also written a non-fiction book for adults, Haunted Inns of the Southeast. 

Writing tip: Write a non-fiction essay or book and then create a work of fiction based on the facts you've learned. 

Ghosts of Tupelo Landing by Sheila Turnage

The author of middle grade novel, Ghosts of Tupelo Landing, has also written a non-fiction book for adults, Haunted Inns of the Southeast. 

Writing tip: Write a non-fiction essay or book and then create a work of fiction based on the facts you've learned. 

Plain Kate by Erin Bow

American cover of Plain Kate

Everyone calls Kate by her nickname "Plain Kate." As a female woodcarver, she's an outsider. After her father dies, Kate becomes even more of an outcast.

English cover of Plain Kate

To make matters worst, an albino witch convinces Kate to give him her shadow. Kate foolishly agrees to give Linay her shadow in exchange for fish hooks and supplies. She does not realize the full implications of losing her shadow.

Since Kate and Taggle, her cat, cannot survive on their own, they tentatively finds a place among the roamers. The roamers (Roma) are a group that travels by caravan. Daj and Drina protect Kate though some of the roamers are fearful of outsiders. 

When Drina learns Kate's secret--her hasty bargain with Linay-- she becomes determined to help her. Drina's own mother was a healer who was tragically burned as a witch. 

In Toila, all of Drina's efforts, however, backfire. Instead of rescuing her friend from the false charge of witchcraft, the town accuses Drina of witchcraft. The girls barely escape with their lives. 

Bow's prose is poetic yet the action moves swiftly. The characters are strongly delineated against a backdrop of fear and suspicion. Kate is a heroine in the truest sense and strong role-model for girls.

Songs for the Missing by Nan O'Stewart

When Kim goes missing, her parents search frantically for her. They don't know the secret that their daughter's boyfriend and Kim's best friend is hiding from them.

Nan O'Stewart was inspired to write this book because of his own memories of searching for a missing person when he was seventeen. According to novelist M.J. Rose's blog, Backstory, that pivotal event informed several of his novels--Snow Angels and Wish You Were Here.  

This is psychological exploration of the emotions searchers feel as they learn to cope with the loss of loved one. 

The tone of the novel is staid; it's not a suspense thriller. Even if its the work of a skilled writer, it lacks some closure. Some questions about Kim's disappearance are never answered. 

Read more:
M.J. Rose's Backstory in which Nan O'Stewart discusses a continuing motif in his work:
http://mjroseblog.typepad.com/backstory/2008/11/stewart-onans-backstory.html

New Uses for Antarctic sea sponges

Dendrilla membranosa


This type of Antarctic sea sponge, Dendrilla Membranosa, could save humans from infections like the drug-resistant bacteria like MSRA. Scientists have isolated the compound, Darwinolide, from the sponge which has the abilitiy to kill 98% of MSRA.

What She Knew By Gilly Macmillan

Rachel deeply regrets letting her eight-year-old  run ahead of her while walking in the woods. Ben Finch disappears, leaving almost no clues except his clothing, which was found near a pond. 

Britain's CID know this case is serious after a detective finds the child's clothing. Macmillan details the police procedure expertly and poignantly sifts the mother's sorrow.

Jim, who is assigned the case by a hard-nosed boss, really wants to move up the ranks of the CID; this case, if its handled right, could help him do that. 

Unfortunately for him, the press conference at the start of the investigation is a disaster. Rachel, the boy's mother, goes off message. She unwittingly does everything under the sun to make herself look guilty.

Macmillan spends a great deal of effort making other key players look suspicious. Rachel's sister, Nicky, seems unstable as does the teaching assistant at Ben's school. Someone despises Rachel enough to send bricks through her windows and smash her milk bottles on her front step. But is this the person who took Ben? 

Rachel was trying to allow Ben independence when she let him run ahead on their walk. Now, Rachel finds herself rethinking that decision--as well as everything in her life--because nothing is as it seems. 

Technological scavenger hunts

Lexington Public Library will host a technological scavenger hunt called BattleKasters. Youth will be able to use their smartphones to visit beacons throughout the city. The game is based on Alane Adam's book, The Red Sun. 

The book is aimed at middle school readers. What a terrific way to encourage literacy!

Adams' book features a twelve-year-old hero and Norse gods. 


http://www.hypable.com/alane-adams-red-sun-battlekasters-interview/

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

People in crisis mode are interesting. Jenna, the protagonist of this debut novel, is definitely in trouble. She has just lost her five-year-old son in a hit-in-run accident. In response, Jenna attempts to restart her life by moving to a remote village in Wales.


Two detectives, Ray and Kate, are slipping in a maelstrom of their own making. Both want to find the hit-and-run-driver who killed Jenna's child, even if they solve the crime off the books. Though each are seeing other people, they are increasingly drawn to each other.

Kate remind Ray of his old self, the kind that cared more about getting the bad guy than getting promoted. Meanwhile, in remote Penfach, Wales, Jenna and Patrick, a local veterinarian, fall in love. 

Jenna's life seems to be improving until she finds a strange message in the sandy beach near her cottage.

Not to give anything away, but Part 2 of the novel is completely startling. In a rush, readers are given a new point-of-view and a new version of events. 

Jenna's sad history unfolds revealing a different picture of the accident. Ian's cruel manipulation of Jenna and her quiet aquiescence is painful to watch.  

A thriller of first rate quality ensues as Jenna struggles to free herself from Ian's cruelty.

Random House has sent me an advance reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

Firebird by Susana Kearsley

Though she wants to hide her supernatural gifts, Nicola finds that increasingly difficult to do. When a woman tries to sell a Russian relic in the art and antiquities gallery where she works, Nicola feels motivated to use her psychometric abilities.

Holding the relic in her hands, Nicola knows the woman's story is true; the relic has been a gift from the Empress Catherine of Russia handed down through generations of the woman's family. 

Proving the provenance of the wooden object, however, is much more of a challenge. Nicola contacts an old boyfriend, Rob, who has even more sophisticated psychic abilities. He can see past events in his mind merely by visiting a place. 

Working together, Rob and Nicola learn Anna's story, the woman who had originally been gifted with the firebird. 

What they witness is startling and heart-breaking. When the English force the Jacobites to flee Scotland, Anna's relatives send her to a convent in Ypres for safekeeping. Betrayed by a girl she befriended a the convent, Anna flees to Calais where she faces even more spies.

In St. Petersburg, Anna is adopted by a kind man to whom she has never revealed her true identity. She becomes Anna Niktovna ("Nobody")  to protect her Scottish relatives. 

After Anna takes a job in St. Petersburg, as a lady's companion. At this new household, Anna becomes intrigued by rakish Mr. Edmund O'Leary, a relative of her employer.

Kearsley relates an epic, powerful love story about the courage to assert one's own identity in the midst of political turmoil. 

This novel is well-researched and employs fully developed characters.


If you enjoy The Firebird, you may also enjoy Paullina Simon's The Bronze Horseman.

The Edgars

On April 28, 2016, Mystery Writers of America announced the winners of the 2016 Edgar Allan Poe Awards. Let Me Die In His Footsteps by Lori Roy was awarded "best novel."

Best first novel by an American author went to Viet Thahn Nguyen for his novel, The Sympathizer.

Best paperback original went to Lou Berney's The Long and Faraway Gone. 

http://www.theedgars.com/2016EdgarWinners.pdf

http://theedgars.com/nominees.html

Pie by Sarah Weeks

When Alice's Aunt Polly dies suddenly, Alice's world crumbles. The two had always enjoyed a close relationship and spent hours baking pies in Aunt Polly's pie shop. 

To her surprise, Aunt Polly bequeaths her disagreeable cat, Lardo, to her. The secret pie crust that has made the town famous goes, incredibly, to Lardo! But who would leave a pie crust recipe to a cat!

In the meantime, someone breaks into Aunt Polly's pie shop that is appropriately named Pie. The whole pie shop is damaged. Alice and Charlie try to solve the mystery of the pie shop break-in as well as the strange recipe bequeathment.

While solving these mysteries, Alice also attempts to figure out who she is and why her mother acts the way she does.

This is a delightful story for young readers who enjoy humor and small town mysteries.  

www.sarahweeks.com

Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma

This dark novel is a stand-out for its superb characterization and its exciting narrative pace.

Unlike most superheroes, Ruby is supremely narcissistic. While at first she merely seems to be able to get boys to like her and dominate others, her powers begin to wreak havoc.

Chloe slowly realizes her sister has a strange connection to the Ashokan reservoir. Years ago, the Ashokan reservoir was built to give New York a water drinking supply. In the process, however, nine towns, including Olive, were intentionally flooded.

Townspeople were given plenty of warning but some refused to leave. 

Ruby displays the same kind of arrogance; treating her mother, friends, and boyfriends with disdain. None of the local cops will ticket her. Her workplace looks the other way when she pinches candy.


Despite her unsavory qualities, Ruby will do anything to protect her little sister, Chloe, even if it means becoming involved in supernatural activities.


Nova Ren Suma's website:
http://novaren.com/

My Beautiful Broken Brain: a Netflix documentary

After a young woman has a stroke, cerebral hemorrhage, she has a hard time adjusting to everyday life. Her vision is distorted in one eye, giving her surreal-like  visions. Her reading and writing abilities are impacted. 

Before her stroke she was a film producer in England. Perhaps this is why she's determined to record her entire experience on film.Though she may never recover completely, Lotje discovers an  inner strength she didn't have before.

A visual letter she sent to David Lynch prompts him to become a co-producer of the film, along with Sophie Robinson.

This is a must-see inspriation story for anyone who enjoys documentaries about life-changing events.

William Krueger explains why he visits libraries in out-of-the way places

Why Libraries?

Tomorrow, I’ll drive almost three hundred miles to present a program at a library in Ponca, Nebraska, a town with a population of less than a thousand people. At a recent signing, a guy who’d seen the event calendar on my website asked me, as if I was crazy, “Why would a New York Times bestselling author bother to go to a small burg like that?” The line of people waiting to have books signed was long, so I gave him a quick, rather flip answer: “Because they asked me.”

Really, it’s a question that deserves a more considered response.

These days I do about a hundred book events every year. A very large percentage take place in small libraries in rural communities. Towns with names like Vinton, Black River Falls, Spirit Lake, Eagle Butte, Hallock. Places most of you have never heard of and most generally with populations less than five thousand. Places that take me several hours to reach, often by backroads. Although I have a pretty good following and reputation, it’s not uncommon to discover that some of the folks who are there have never heard of me before. They come because having a real live author at their library is an event as rare as a two-headed calf.

So why spend all this time and energy, which might be channeled instead into writing more books, visiting places that are barely even dots on a map? Part of it is, in fact, the flip answer I gave the guy in the signing line: I do it because I’m invited, and I have a difficult time saying no. Part of it is that I usually ask for an honorarium. It’s a pretty modest amount, all things considered, and I donate every cent of it to the Native community in Minnesota. Part of it is that I can never resist an opportunity to talk about myself. 

But at heart, the reason is that I believe there’s no better mechanism for ensuring a free and democratic society than our public libraries.

Libraries are nothing less than the archives of our culture. These are the places that house the books that guide us to an understanding of who we were and where we came from, help us make sense of who we are now, and maybe point the way to who we might become. When our libraries and librarians are gone, with them goes everything we are as a people.

Free and open access to knowledge is an essential right in a democracy. Keeping our libraries alive and vital is as important to our freedom as anything spelled out in our Constitution.

So I drive thousands of miles every year and hope that in this way, maybe I’m helping the health of libraries, maybe giving back a little of what, over my lifetime, they’ve given me. But I confess, that another reason I go is that an event at a rural library is often accompanied by a potluck supper. And who can resist a good Midwest potluck?

http://williamkentkrueger.com/blog/why-libraries/

Chantal Reviews: The World Before Us by Aislinn Hunter

Chantal Reviews: The World Before Us by Aislinn Hunter: As a teenager, Jane lost a child in her charge, Lily, and her life has never been the same. After the incident in t he woods, Jane's l...

continued

The World Before Us, Part 2 (continued)

After making a spectacle of herself by slapping an author she hardly knows, Jane flees to a bed and breakfast near Ingleside. The ghosts know what she's doing:

This, we thought, is how you reinvent yourself. This is how you disappear.

Going off the map and pretending to be someone else, Jane works on her old thesis topic. Instead of just researching the asylum's record taking, she wants to solve the mystery of N., the Victorian girl who disappeared.

While researching the Farrington records and the Whitmore's records, she embarks on an hasty affair with a younger man, a gardener working on the restoration of Ingleside. 

Though this book is ostensibly about missing persons, it's not really a suspenseful thriller; its a thoughtful, lyrical book that explores how trauma in someone's past can paralyze and destroy their present. 

For more books with themes that involve missing children, try Gilly Macmillan's What She Knew, Kate Hamer's The Girl in the Red Coat, or Amanda Eyre Ward's How to be Lost.


For another narrative set in England about ghosts and museums, try Kate Mosse's The Taxidermist's Daughter.

The World Before Us by Aislinn Hunter

As a teenager, Jane lost a child in her charge, Lily, and her life has never been the same. After the incident in t he woods, Jane's life is divided into "before" and "after."

In graduate school, Jane is interested in the strange disappearance of a girl from a nearby Victorian lunatic asylum. Strangely, the girl disappears nearly one hundred years before but in the same woods where Lily disappeared. 

The other two escapees from the asylum are found, but the girl, named N. is never found. No records exist for N. which intrigues Jane.

Hunter stretched the boundaries of fiction with her point-of-view choices. Since Jane is an archivist for the Chester Museum, disembodied voices or ghosts are drawn to her. Readers get to hear these voices who remember some faces and incidents from their past but not their names.

Will these voices lead Jane to find out what happened to Lily and N.?

Wherever Jane goes she's an outsider. She does nothing to assert herself until she slaps a man who has affronted her. The man happens to be the father of the Lily, William Eliot.

(continued)

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I put a lot of thought and time into this blog. I review mostly women's fiction that has a supernatural or gothic bent but I review other genres too.

Happy reading!

The Book of Speculation by Erica Swyler

The novel is a book lover's dream. A bookseller sends Simon a vintage book in the mail. The book, Peabody's Menagerie, has information about Simon's relatives who used to work as circus performers.

Simon comes from a long line of "mermaids," women who are able to hold their breath for a preternaturally long length of time. Simon's grandmother and mother were both "mermaids" who tragically ended their lives.

While Simon's sister, Enola, insists that the women were simply sad, Simon believes something sinister is involved.

After being let go from his library position, Simon becomes obsessed with repairing his childhood home. The home, on the edge of cliff, is in danger of being condemned.

While the contemporary story has its interesting moments, the backstory is much more enthralling. Amos, a feral and mute boy, finds comfort and success in Peabody's traveling circus in eighteenth-century America.

Just as soon as Madame Rhzhkoza claims him as her assistant and son, he falls for Evangeline, a "mermaid," employed by Peabody.  Like Simon she is a "breath holder," who can hold her breath for an inordinate amount of time. 

Simon begins to wonder if the circus's past has effected his family's future. Did Madame Rhzhkoza's curse doom the female members of him family and possibly himself?


If you like this book you may also enjoy Menagerie by Rachel Vincent.

The Black-Eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin

Years after a horrific crime, Tessie, the only survivor in the "Black-eyed Susan" murders steps forward. She is beginning to doubt that the right person has been convicted for the heinous crime.

Tessie was nearly killed and blinded by a "monster." After the  horrific attack, Tessie suffers memory loss and psychological blindess--a conversion disorder.

Heaberlin unveils the chilling story in back and forth chapters that contrasts events near the time of the crime with its aftershock seventeen years later.

If Tessie does not change her testimony, an innocent man could face the death penalty. Tessie, however, is reluctant to delve into her past. After all, she has her own daughter to protect from the media's harsh glare.


Adding to the tension is the fact that Tessie thinks she is going insane. 

Immediately after the crime she begins to hear the voices of the other Susans in her head. The grown-up Tessie thinks her monster has been planting batches of blacked-eyed susans to traumatize her.

The twist at the end packs a wallop. Heaberlin's latest is for fans of Gillian Flynn, Paula Hawkins and Brunonia Barry. 

Worlds within Worlds in Arcadia by Iain Pears

Shifting points of view do not always work well in fiction, but they work well in this complex tale, Arcadia. 

Pears creates four separate, yet overlapping, stories.
Readers must have patience, however, to see how the four separate threads of the story connect.

The first thread involves Henry Lytten, an Oxford don, who belongs to a writing group that resembles Inklings that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien founded. 

Rosie, who takes care of Lytten's cat, accidently finds a portal to his fantasy world, Anterwold. 

In another thread, several hundred years in the future, scientific researchers on the island of Mull are trying to find a mathematician who has disappeared with time travel technology that could change the world.

This mathematician, Angela Meerson, has disappeared into 1960s Britain. The threads of the story converge when Angela makes the acquaintance of Henry Lytten, the Oxford don responsible for creating Anterworld.

The scientists on Mull, led by Hanslip, consider Angela a criminal, a terrorist, and possibly insane. They send Alex Chang to the past to confront her, never suspecting that Angela and Alex Chang would become allies.

Another thread in the story involves Jay who has briefly seen Rosie through the portal. The people of the pastoral-like Anterwold believe this was foretold in the Story. Jay becomes a student of the well-respected scholar, Henary, largely because of his vision.

Jay and Rosie's story become briefly intertwined but then she disappears. A duplicate copy of herself returns to 1960s England while another version remains in Anterwold.

This complication disturbs Angela Meerson immensely as it could change the course of history; it could, in fact, doom the world to depopulation, nuclear war, and colonization.

Pears has created worlds that are each fascinating and dependent upon the other. His storytelling ability, however, is so great that readers never feel let down when they exit one world and enter another. 

Grace Pettis

Grace Pettis perfectly captures the loneliness and desperation of a small town in Abilene. 

http://www.guidelive.com/music/2016/01/20/one-song-grace-pettis-evokes-small-town-desperation-abilene

This is folk but is it really all that different from Country Western music?


http://www.gracepettis.com/

Journalist to publish a book about social media's effect on teenage girls

Nancy Jo Sales to publish a book (Knopf) about teenage girls and social media. AMERICAN GIRLS: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers will be released February 2016.

Many of these type of books have been published recently.  Sales has spent the last 30 months interviewing 200 teenagers.  

Get in Trouble by Kelly Link

Some of the stories like "The Summer People" involve supernatural beings. In others, such as,"Secret Identity," the characters themselves are off-kilter. 

In "The Summer People" a tough-talking Appalachian girl is indebted to strange, fairy-like creatures called summer people. These are people who may not be immortal but live for generations. Mostly they are unseen but they make demands of their caretakers. The protagonist hears their demands in her head which prevents her from traveling or fulfilling her heart's desires.

"Secret Identity" follows the adventures of a girl named Billie who steals her older sister's identity.  She has been having an Internet affair with an older man whom she hopes to finally meet at a hotel. Coincidentally, the hotel is having a superhero convention in which nearly everyone is dressed in costume. Her correspondent could be in costume; his alias could be fake. He could be anyone. 

Link works two gothic elements into "New Boyfriend"--ghosts and sentient dolls. Immy is jealous of her friend for having one of these robotic dolls called a "ghost boyfriend." Immy, who betrays her friend, is also betrayed.

This is a fascinating collection by an innovative author.

 

Playing With Fire by Tess Gerritsen

Tess Gerritsen's latest novel is about a violin player. Violinist Julia Andsell finds a piece of music in a shop in Italy called the Incendio waltz. Julia is determined to bring the piece to life but the music stirs up decades-old secrets.