THE OPEN BOOK

Born to Run : A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall

Ever wonder about those people who can just run and run for hours and miles? How do they do it?

Born to Run is a fascinating book that combines science, anthropology, inspiration and unique characters. MacDougall, an ultra runner, learns about a tribe in the Cooper Canyons of Mexico, the Tarahumara. They are able to run for miles and miles, all day long with little rest and little in the way of footwear. What secret do they have that other runners lack?

MacDougall, along with Caballo Blanco, a loner who lives among the Tarahumara, begins to learn about their way of life and how running fits into it. MacDougall meets doctors and anthropologists who believe humans were born to run.  The human body is engineered to run for long distances, to run down food.  Barefoot Ted introduces the wonders of barefoot running, and how fancy cushiony running sneakers might be doing more harm then good. Humans are made to run barefoot. It is the most efficient and natural way to run.
For anyone interested in the psyche of athletes, the philosophy of running, or just looking for a page turner, Born to Run will provide that and more. It might even get you running.

Submitted by Maura Deedy

Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton

When a relationship ends, what remains along with memories are the physical objects: the ephemera, gifts, and gestures of love. This original graphic novel tells the love story of Lenore, a cake writer for the New York Times and Harold, a photographer, through their emails, postcards and small gifts. Organized as an auction catalog, you’ll be captivated by how you start to get to know the couple and how their relationship formed. The progress of the artifacts is linear, and the descriptions are factual. Yet, Shapton relieves the giddiness of a new relationship, the hope of possibility for the future , and the heaviness of sorrow when it all ends. It’s slightly voyeuristic, allowing the reader a glimpse of the in-box to snoop around, into the drawers and shelves to view their objects.
It’s a refreshing new take on a familiar story.

Submitted by Maura Deedy

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

This is a quietly moving book about fragile lives in a small Colorado town that intersect in unexpected ways.   The story follows a school teacher with two young boys who are hurt and baffled when their mother leaves, a  pregnant teenager and the unlikely elderly brothers who take her in.   Haruf’s writing is spare, but beautiful, leaving the reader space to imagine the hurt that all his characters must grapple with.  But even with so much trouble, the story is never depressing.   There is no a fairy tale ending, but life never has one anyway.  And Haruf gives us a satisfying conclusion, with the hope that these characters we have come to care about will find their way in a rearranged world.

Submitted by Linda Avellar

True Evil by Greg Iles
Grace Fennell is dying of cancer, yet she tells her sister, FBI agent Alex Morse that she suspects her husband Bill of killing her. Initially skeptical, Alex begins to see a pattern of fatalities among the wealthy clients of unscrupulous divorce lawyer Andrew Rusk. Eventually, Alex begins to uncover the unholy alliance between Mr. Rusk and Dr. Eldon Tarver. Why pay a hefty divorce settlement and risk a protracted legal battle or the risk of losing custody if you can dispose of your spouse and make it look like an illness? Dr. Tarver genetically engineers certain carcinogenic viruses, then injects them into his victims to make it appear that they die of ordinary cancer…

It’s a battle of wits between agent Morse and Dr. Tarver, with the life of Dr. Chris Shepard, the latest victim hanging in the balance.

Submitted by Tom LaSalle

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

Sexy vampires? Check.

High school romance? Check.

Page turning action? Check.

Surely you’ve heard about Twilight, the vampire series that has captivated the minds of teens all over. Bella, a young woman moves to a damp Pacific Northwest town and meets a beautiful and mysterious young man, Edward. She is quickly intoxicated by him, attracted with his beauty, grace and intelligence. Turns out, Edward is equally intoxicated by her. One teeny tiny detail: Edward is a vampire.

Twilight reads like Bella’s journal, as every encounter and conversation is obsessively detailed. While this slows down the action a bit, teens will savor Bella’s analytical nature and Edward’s romanticism and dreamy qualities. Parents will appreciate the squeaky clean teens (no drugs, no foul language) and for a love story between teens, no sex.

Meyer’s writing is fairly basic and her adjectives are repetitive. More lore about vampires would have made this a richer read. But for a quick fun read; you can’t go wrong with /Twilight/.

Come discuss Twilight at the Adult Book Discussion on May 12, 2009.

Submitted by Maura Deedy

Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan

This well-written love story entwines historical fiction and fantasy. Michael Devan, an ambitious young man serving Lord William Walshingham during the late years of Elizabethan reign, is trying to find “a secret player” who influences Queen Elizabeth’s decisions and muddles English politics. He falls in love with the beautiful Ann Montrose, who is not who she seems, and who suddenly disappears without a trace.

While searching for Ann, Devan discovers the presence of a magical court, and learns about a secret pact that young Elizabeth made with the Fairy Queen Invidiana years ago. The fairy court is a shadowy reflection of the real Elizabethan court, complete with courtiers’ competitions, intrigues and betrayals.

Midnight Never Come is a rich tale, with a perfect blend of historical detail and fantasy.

Submitted by Yelena Klompus

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

by Muriel Barbery (Author), Alison Anderson (Translator)

L’Elégance du Hérisson , or The Elegance of the Hedgehog, translated from the French, is about two extraordinary people, a concierge and a girl of twelve, who lives in the building where the concierge works. The concierge is very intelligent and highly cultured, but takes great pains to hide it.  The girl is super smart, and is planning on committing suicide on her 13^th birthday because she is so disillusioned with her family and the people that surround her.  The two stories run parallel to each other, until the day the two meet and become friends. The effect of the narration of this tale is very humorous and enlightening. Truly a wonderful book.

Submitted by Melanie Lauer

Writing as Richard Stark, the late Donald Westlake produced a series of crime noir novels that focused on the working lives of career criminals. In Lemons Never Lie, he gives us a detailed look at how Alan Grofield, an actor and two-bit drama producer, finances his life on the stage by pulling off heists. Grofield travels to Vegas to plan a job with several other robbers, but as soon as he gets off the plane, he gets a bad omen. And once he hears the details of the robbery, he backs out, not wanting to get involved with men who are vicious and careless.

But before he can get home, he becomes the victim of a robbery and assault himself. He returns to his failing small town theater and busies himself with the mundane tasks of getting ready for another season of summer stock, only to be dragged back into the lives of the robbers he wanted to escape. Determined to get revenge on the psycho gang leader that beat him and terrorized his wife, Grofield figures out a clever scheme to track down the trigger happy crook.

You won’t find any Ocean’s 11-type glamour here. The fascination of the Stark novels lies in the details of the schemes and the motives of the criminals. Grofield isn’t a madman or a genius criminal. He’s just a guy who finances his first love—acting—through crime. We get a detailed look at his home life, which centers around his adoring wife and the humdrum details of putting together a backwoods theater production. But Grofield doesn’t hesitate to crack a head or bury a knife in his enemy’s back. It’s all part of the job.

What makes Lemons Never Lie so engrossing is its very lack of glamour. The characters come across as real as anybody you’d pass on the street. And, sometimes, just as scary.

submitted by Gary Giannelli

The Outlander by Gil Adamson

A young woman has just killed her husband and flees into the Canadian wilderness with his vengeful twin brothers in hot pursuit.  Gil Adamson establishes that in the first few lines of this riveting book.   The reason she has killed him doesn’t unfold until much later, but from the beginning we are rooting for her to escape.    Mary Boulton, the young widow,  (who the author almost always refers to as ‘the widow’) must use all her resources to outwit her pursuers and survive as she heads deeper into the mountains.  But the widow is also pursued by voices in her head, and must wrestle with her own demons while trying to stay alive.    Adamson’s writing is beautiful, her descriptions evocative and the story never slows down.   She keeps the reader enthralled until the satisfying end.

Submitted by Linda Avellar

Diliwar, a young taxi driver, picks up a fare in his home town of Yukubi, Afghanistan on December 1, 2002 never to return. Five days later he is dead of injuries suffered at the hands of prison guards at Bagram Air Force base, a former Soviet prison serving as a U.S. detention center for suspected terrorists. This ominous fact is established in the first few chilling minutes of Taxi to the Dark Side.

American filmmaker Alex Gibney’s 2007 Academy award-winning documentary details our country’s ‘war on terror’ in a foreign land. Gibney powerfully presents one young man’s horrific fate to effectively illustrate the abuses committed by the Bush Administration. It could be argued that the wartime practice of “extrajudicial holding,” detaining individuals suspected of “violent associations” without any formal charges is a legitimate response to the nature of war itself.

But in this film one can see how this approach, coupled with the expansion of “executive powers” created by the events of 9/11, and the failure of our military’s top brass to instill in its soldiers a necessary respect for the guidelines of the Geneva Convention, lead us as a nation to grapple with the later cruelties of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. An absolutely riveting glimpse of the conduct of war and its consequences. Don’t miss it. Available in the Library’s DVD collection.  Rated R.

Submitted by Carolyn Aucella