Upcoming Event

It was brought to my attention that I only write about books written for teens and younger.  That makes sense, as that is the department in which I work.  Also, this is the vast majority of what I read.  I challenge anyone who has never done so to read outside of their normal reading patterns.  I try to do that myself upon occasion as well, but as a representative of the Youth Services department, I mostly share the kids or YA books.  And they are some great books.

I feel that a great story is a great story and the only reason for labels are for younger people.  You don't want your average 2nd grader reading The Hunger Games, for example.  Adults should, in my opinion, read from whatever section of the library or bookstore that they want.  Author Maureen Johnson says it nicely in this video.

Speaking of authors, we have a few of them coming to our library in May.

These authors, all Indiana residents, are also all writers of Young Adult fiction. Their writing styles and backgrounds are as diverse as their books. I invite you to come and hear what they have to say, and maybe even read something new. Did I mention there will be refreshments?

~ Jennifer Frye
OCPL Youth Services Program Coordinator

Shared Reads: The Luxury of Daydreams by Amy McVay Abbott

            I ordered the book The Luxury of Daydreams by Amy McVay Abbott (WestBow Press, 2011) on the recommendation of a Patron and began reading it as soon as I was through with Thomas Pynchon. It was a quick and easy ready, as opposed to Pynchon who was a massive struggle, and I have to say I enjoyed it quite a lot.

            The book is a collection of short essays. The topics are easily relatable but deceptively rich. The author has a fine eye for place detail. Her coupling of Three Dog Night’s Joy to the World with the year 1971 will immediately connect with anyone who remembers 1971, even as a child, and with this one stroke she does far better than Pynchon did in placing the Reader in that particular year. I know a trip to the Dog ‘n Suds will resonate with many Hoosiers as my own husband sometimes waxes nostalgic about family trips to the Indianapolis Dog ‘n Suds after church on Sundays when he was a kid. She achieves similar transmission more universally with the phrase “TaB Float” and by somehow summoning Gaines-Burgers from the depths of memory.

            McVay Abbott is a Hoosier by birth and by choice and many of the most evocative essays center around her childhood growing up in rural northeast Indiana. These essays will give the Reader a true sense of Midwest morality and the sort of qualities that make for a virtuous Citizen without at all being preachy or condescending. The author makes her religious affiliations clear but not ponderously so and her essay on St. Peter is interesting and though provoking.

            The one essay that nags at this reader is The Pizza Boy where the author encounters the 18-year-old son of a friend from church who had died three years before. The author reveals that, “Upon her death, I promised Neil I would look out for him, and I have not.” The author confesses the she “lost her spiritual center for a while” and had left that particular church. The passage is made more unsettling five chapters later when in an essay titled Cleaning Her House where she reflects on how she and some other younger women had been cleaning the friend’s house when the call came that she had died. She writes of the jobs that were considered the purview of the older women of the Church, including attending to the “funeral dinners” and delegating tasks but now the younger women had lost “One of their own” and the tasks rightfully belong to them now even as we the Reader already knows she will end up leaving this Church a year later. 

            While reading this I, for a moment, wished I had been part of a group of people who would come clean my house while I was dying, just as other parts had made me wish that I had grown up as part of a close, loving family in a supportive, stable community, but then I thought I would much rather have someone who would honor her promise to look in on the young son I would be leaving behind and offer him whatever comfort I could, maybe include him in a family activity, have him over for a family meal, even if that promise had been made out of “fear” but I applaud McVay Abbott’s courage in writing this pair of essays.

            McVay Abbott is a disarmingly gentle writer. She includes an essay about three “embarrassing” stories her father likes to tell about her and ends it with, “My only recourse for this is to tell horribly embarrassing stories about my own child,” which she never does.

            In an essay titled Working on Christmas Eve, McVay Abbott writes about her then-boyfriend, now husband, working three jobs as he saved up enough money to attend Graduate School focusing on a third-shift rotation cleaning surgical suites at a hospital. The moral of the essay how much more they all appreciate life as “a full professor at a small, private arts university,” and that the, “victory is much sweeter savored over the memory of toil and hard work as a third-shift janitor.” Admirable, but in the essay we learn that her boyfriend had left Indiana to come to Florida to be with her just a month after his father was killed in an auto accident that left his mother gravely injured and the Reader is left with the feeling that there is a much more interesting story here than the easy homily the author chose.

            We do know the mother-in-law survived the crash as there is an essay about her death titled Requiem and Release which contains a particular peeve in which the author uses the word ‘delicious’ as a descriptor twice in the space of two sentences. Her mother-in-law “cooked delicious meals for us,” and once the author, “eagerly ate two huge helpings of her delicious pot roast.” Here is an instance where the author needs to stretch in order to show, not tell us. The Reader should be able to taste the food and be able to identify the qualities that made it so delicious, not just rely on the author’s word that it was.

            A much bigger issue I have is the author, or her publishers, used the hook that, “After a thirty-year career and eighteen years of mothering, she was at a loss and her child a thousand miles away.” Now I can understand McVay Abbott’s reluctance to delve into the highly personal, or the potentially embarrassing, when it comes to her husband or son. Perhaps she feels it is their stories, not hers, to tell. What this Reader has a more difficult time with is how Amy McVay Abbott really kind of side-steps around her own story.

            We know that McVay Abbott eventually found these life changes liberating and that they encouraged her to once again find a voice that she had shelved in favor of more immediate needs, but we also know from the text that the author also experienced something of a “dark night of the soul” and about this I would like to read more. This Reader is curious about how her sense of self was affected when three long-standing pillars of her identity, job, parenthood, and the Church, were disrupted with the job disappearing and her son moving a thousand miles away to attend college and the cumulative crises that caused her to question, if not her faith exactly, then at least the placement of that faith, and the processes she used to adapt to these changes. This Reader would like to know more about the corporate world she moved in for thirty years beyond the vague “sales” that the author gives us. I would like to know more about why the author decided to move to Florida after grad school, what it was like and what she did there. I would like to know why her son chose to attend college so far from home and how the author adjusted from having a child living under her roof full-time to one that just comes back for Christmas and summer breaks. The author teases us with tantalizing glimpses but never delves into these larger life issues but with this book under her belt, with its emphasis on childhood and passages, maybe she will give as more in her next book and that’s more of chance than I’m giving Thomas Pynchon.

            In all, I found this book to be something of a palate cleanser, easy to read and easy to like. I also think many more people would also find it enjoyable for its insights and memories and the refreshing good humor and sincerity found within.

This book is available for checkout in the Indiana section of the Owen County Public Library’s Vault. Check it out and discover the considerable pleasures to be found in The Luxury of Daydreams.

~ Laura Wilkerson
   Genealogy Department

Shared Reads: Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

                It was a Patron who extracted a promise to me to read Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon (Penguin Press, 2009).

“Isn’t Thomas Pynchon supposed to be this great author?” He asked.

“I think so.” I hazarded, knowing Thomas Pynchon to be a famous, well-respected author as opposed to an infamous, disreputable one.

“Well, I started reading this,” he said, holding up a copy of Inherent Vice, “and I just couldn’t finish it. It got maybe a quarter of the way through before I gave up. You read it and tell me if it’s as awful as I think it is.” Thus began months of avoiding reading Thomas Pynchon. Even when I ran into the adjective “Pynchonesque” used twice in one week, surely a sign from the Heavens, I avoided reading Thomas Pynchon. Finally, my conscious continually nagging at me, I picked up Inherent Vice and began to read. I don’t know exactly how awful the Patron thinks it is but it is pretty bad.

The Protagonist of this novel is a stoner PI named Doc Sportello who shares a duplex office building in Los Angeles with a Doctor Feelgood named Dr. Buddy Tubeside; just one example of the absurd, unbelievable names the absurd, unbelievable characters sport throughout the book.  A little more than halfway through I began to suspect the entire story might just turn out to be the fantasy life of an autistic child.

Doc Sportello comes off like a man unstuck in time and it was a big maddening trying to figure out exactly when this novel is supposed to take place. The jacket blurb situates the action at “the tail end of the psychedelic 60s” while the Boston Globe places the action in the Spring of 1970. However, events are mentioned that don’t take place until 1971 and late in the book Sportello receives a check and a message instructing him to be on the lookout for, “your exclusive invitation to the Grand Opening of the new and totally reconceptualized Kismet Lounge and Casino, sometime in the spring of 1972.” 

Still, the timeline remains fuzzy. A character tells Sportello that he’s just read for a part on The Brady Bunch where Jan’s a brunette, an episode that first aired January 5, 1971 and he gets into a prolonged discussion of a Gilligan’s Island episode that aired the night before and new ring Ginger was sporting in it when Gilligan’s Island was cancelled in 1967. At one point it was mentioned that the trial of Charles Manson was about to start when the Manson trial opened July 24, 1970.

Pynchon uses references meant to evoke an era but they are too general to really evoke anything specific. Sure, a person might get the Archie’s 1969 hit Sugar, Sugar stuck in their heads just like they might get It’s a Long Way to Tipperary or Bitter Sweet Symphony stuck in their heads but it just isn’t evocative of California circa 1971. A fleeting mention of Thai Stick, a phrase this Reader hasn’t heard used since 1979, does more to capture the flavor of an era than all the outlandish made-up lyrics and tortured acronyms with which the author litters his prose. That the author sometimes drops in a phrase to the effect of, “like it was done back then,” at the end of a sentence just further serves to yank the already struggling Reader right out of the narrative flow.

The use of Charles Manson is quite illustrative. Manson casts a shadow over the narrative representing the dark side of Hippiedom and the impending end of an era but Manson would have been more effective if bolstered by Altamont and any of the other perceived Hippie Freak Serial Killers such as Herbert Mullin and the Zodiac who were springing up like weeds among the flower children and cast such a haze around California in the late sixties and early seventies. Manson didn’t stand alone.

Another annoying literary tic is a tendency toward futurism. Early on Sportello’s Aunt Reet, a real estate agent, waxes rhapsodic about the future potential of computers while another of the marginal detective’s marginal acquaintances has been conveniently given a computer that can access all sorts of records, including hospital admissions. Another acquaintance shows off his new remote control to his black and white television while the entire novel ends with Sportello musing about a future with telephones in automobiles and dashboard computers.

Inherent Vice is cast as a mystery but there really isn’t much mystery to it.  Sportello often wanders off in a marijuana induced haze and the effects of the herb on such an experienced user such as Sportello also rings false as do the random characters who all feel compelled for no good reason to lay pages of exposition on the PI. Then there are a smattering of cringe-worthy sex scenes that seem heavily influenced by the film version of Terry Southern’s Candy. There are a couple of instances where Sportello is conveniently knocked out and others where mystical visions and remembrances of Ouija Boards past take him where he needs to be. Add to that a ship that smuggles Heroin while also running a posh drug rehab clinic, possibly in cahoots with the LAPD and soon the Reader feels as Sportello must have when someone laced his joint with PCP.

There are a couple of pages where Sportello mentions how this could bring down the administration of California’s Governor, Ronald Reagan only to have another character rip him for even allowing the sacred name of Reagan to pass through his lips. For a moment the Reader can imagine a novel where all the Golden Fang nonsense does relate back to Ronald Reagan and his California Kitchen Cabinet, including the completely perverse Alfred Bloomingdale, but, alas, this is not the novel Thomas Pynchon chose to write. Instead we have a convoluted tale of law enforcement officials consensually overdosing a drug addict with pure heroin and then inexplicably taking him to a hospital to revive him in the nick of time in order for the now presumed deceased addict to act as a mole in various organizations law enforcement entities had an interest in all while letting the supposedly dead drug addict remain in the area playing gigs.

The entire novel lacks depth and nuance, not to mention cohesion, and there is no better example of this than our hero, Doc Sportello. Living on the Beach in a surfer’s Mecca, Sportello’s love of surfing, which we never see him indulge in, and esoteric surf music, which unfortunately we do, comes off as unbelievable as the young D.A. he’s dating and her Ally McBeal length suits. 

    

Inherent Vice is supposedly part of a “literary triptych” that includes The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) and Vineland (1990) but for this Reader Inherent Vice must stand or fall on its own merits and those merits are such that they disincline me from further exploration of Mr. Pynchon’s oeuvre but that me and you might have a different opinion. Inherent Vice is available at the Owen County Public Library. Check it out!

~ Laura Wilkerson

   Genealogy Department, OCPL

Some Great Young Adult Books

This is not a "Top 10" or anything of the sort, just a few books that I read, and enjoyed in the past few months, all of which can be found here at the library.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor

"Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged      strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. 
In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low. 
And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war. 
Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.
When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?"  ~ From the author's website.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a well imagined, well executed story that is not only beautifully written, but captures the reader making it nearly impossible to put down.   The ending will have you wishing desperately for the next book in what is slated to be a trilogy.


The Name of the Star, by Maureen Johnson 

While we are on 'first books of a series', let me introduce you to the Shades of London, new series from acclaimed author (and Twitter phenomenon) Maureen Johnson.   

"The day Louisiana teenager Rory Deveaux arrives in London marks a memorable occasion. For Rory, it’s the start of a new life at a London boarding school. But for many, this will be remembered as the day a series of brutal murders broke out across the city, gruesome crimes mimicking the horrific Jack the Ripper events of more than a century ago.
Soon “Rippermania” takes hold of modern-day London, and the police are left with few leads and no witnesses. Except one. Rory spotted the man police believe to be the prime suspect. But she is the only one who saw him. Even her roommate, who was walking with her at the time, didn’t notice the mysterious man. So why can only Rory see him? And more urgently, why has Rory become his next target? In this edge-of-your-seat thriller, full of suspense, humor, and romance, Rory will learn the truth about the secret ghost police of London and discover her own shocking abilities." ~From the author's website.

The Name of the Star was full of surprises and believable characters.  Emotions run the gamut from laughter to tears and nail-biting tension.  Johnson has a knack for making you feel what each character is feeling.  

Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

"Budding designer Lola Nolan doesn't believe in fashion . . . she believes in costume. The more expressive the outfit - more sparkly, more fun, more wild - the better. But even though Lola's style is outrageous, she's a devoted daughter and friend with some big plans for the future. And everything is pretty perfect (right down to her hot rocker boyfriend) until the dreaded Bell twins, Calliope and Cricket, return to the neighborhood.

When Cricket - a gifted inventor - steps out from his twin sister's shadow and back into Lola's life, she must finally reconcile a lifetime of feelings for the boy next door."

Lola and the Boy Next Door is at times fun, and heartbreaking at others.  It is a good old-fashioned love story with many modern twists.  It is so easy to picture Lola and Cricket helping Lola's Dad baking pies for a big order, and traveling about San Francisco that I almost feel like I've been there.  

Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George

Last one, for today, is a retelling of the Brothers Grimm tale The Worn-Out Dancing Shoes.  Also known widely as The Twelve Dancing Princesses, it is the story of twelve royal sisters who are compelled to dance their shoes to tatters each night, though they are locked in their room, and the young soldier who eventually unlocks their secret. 

The author has built on the original story and given it a history, folklore, and depth all its own.  The mysterious underground kingdom where the princesses dance the night away with their pale other-worldly princes is given realism, as is the cause and cruelty of their curse.  

In the main character Galen, George has given us one of my favorite heroes.  He is a soldier with tragedy in his past, yet he is not only handsome and brave, but also witty, clever, and handy with a set of knitting needles.  Historically, apparently, it was common for men, especially soldiers to knit.  Often knitting his own socks and scarves and things was the only way a soldier kept warm and dry.  The author even includes knitting patterns in the back of the book, as well as on her website. 

Note:  I forgot to sign this, as I usually do.  Oops.  
~ Jennifer Frye: Youth Services Program Coordinator

Spencer and the Rose Parade

                Few people watching the fantastic pageantry of the annual Rose Parade yesterday would connect the event to Spencer, Indiana but without one particular Spencerian, Calvin Fletcher Jr., there would be no Orange Grove Avenue to parade down.

Calvin Fletcher Jr. was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on September 30, 1826. He was of eleven children; nine sons and two daughters, born to Calvin Fletcher Sr. and his wife, Sarah Hill. Calvin Jr. graduated from the County Seminary in Indianapolis and then spent three years at Brown University in Rhode Island before returning to Indiana and taking up the life of a farmer.

Fletcher Jr. married in Emily Beeler in 1849 and for the next twenty years the couple resided in Marion County where Fletcher Jr. worked as a farmer, stock-trader and nurseryman and busied himself establishing statewide agricultural and horticultural societies.

During the Civil War, Emily worked as a nurse while Calvin worked building badly needed turnpikes in Indiana. After the war he became involved with the syndicate that Indianapolis & Vincennes Railroad. It was while acting as contractor and agent for General Ambrose Burnside on this project when he first became acquainted with Owen County and in June, 1869 he moved here permanently, building a beautiful white stucco mansion for his family in the town of Spencer.

In 1873 the Fletchers were attending a dinner party at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Elliot in Indianapolis when Mrs. Elliot began complaining that the unusually harsh winter had killed all her prize caladium. Others at the party joined in with complaints about the cold weather exacerbating various aches and pains when Mrs. Thomas suggested that they should all up and move to California. In fact, Mrs. Thomas proclaimed, if no one wanted to go with her she would go on her own.

The others at the party decided Mrs. Thomas was onto something and in the Spring of 1873 the group drafted an agreement to purchase a thousand acres in Southern California where they planned to grow wheat, plant vineyards, hedges and build nurseries in anticipation of the group emigrating there.

The financial panic of 1873 delayed the implementation of these plans but in November, 1873 the group formed the San Gabriel Orange Grove Association and purchased 4,000 acres of prime valley land. Calvin Fletcher Jr., was named Chief Surveyor and on January 27, 1874 divided lots were sold in parcels of 15, 30 and 60 acres with the smallest investors being allowed first choice of lots. It was Calvin Fletcher Jr. who gave Orange Grove Avenue its name. It was Dr. Thomas Elliot who found Pasadena's permanent name, asking a friend for an appropriate Chippewa phrase with the friend coming up with Pasadena, a loose translation that stands for “Crown of the Valley.” Calvin Fletcher Jr. also planned the water works in Pasadena, standing in the rain for an entire day plotting flow charts to make sure that water would “flow toward the mountains.” In 1889 community leaders decided to stage a small village fete which has become a massive American tradition. Owners of local resorts teamed with members of the elite Valley Hunt Club to decorate their buggies with flowers and parade down Orange Grove Avenue to a town wide picnic and then send photos of the event to friends and family back East in order to show those shivering souls that even in the dead of winter Pasadena could cover the town, and everything in it, in roses.

Calvin Fletcher Jr. and his family never moved to Pasadena. In September of 1874 the Fletcher Family sailed for Europe where they stayed for the next three years while Calvin Fletcher worked on problems of aquaculture in small ponds. In 1877 he returned with his family to his mansion in Spencer which boasted 40 rooms and 18-inch thick walls and gorgeous grounds planted with Tamarack trees and a formal maze hedge to the south of the home.

Calvin Fletcher Sr. had once recorded in his diary that his namesake son had been acting “rash as usual” and even called in a phrenologist who felt the bumps on the boy's head and declared him “calculated to be a businessman.” By the late 1880s the younger Fletcher had run into financial difficulties and talked about turning his impressive Spencer home into a Sanitarium to capitalize on the natural mineral springs that ran through the property but nothing ever came of the plan.

When Calvin Fletcher Jr, died in 1903 the Fletcher Mansion was sold to E. Chubb Fuller, publisher of The Agricultural Epitomist who ran it as an experimental farm with, “a well selected orchard, a vineyard, several gardens and extensive greenhouses.” The farm became renowned for its herd of thoroughbred Portland China pigs, their Shropshire and Highland Blackface sheep, various poultry and waterfowl, Angora goats and 100 of the “finest Scotch collies in America.”

The Fletcher Mansion served as the administrative offices and printing press for the Epitomist untill the venture failed after the death of Mr. Fuller and the property was sold to Gordon B. Tanner who, in turn, sold it to Ephraim T. Barnes. Ironically, Mr. Barnes used the property to establish the largest Dahlia farm in the world, originating over 1,000 new hybrids of the flower whose rhizomes must, in central Indiana, be dug up and stored every winter, becoming known as “The Dahlia King” and “The Luther Burbank of Dahlias.” People came from all over the world to see Mr. Barnes' Dahlia Farm which he named the National Cooperative Show Gardens.

Ephraim T. Barnes died in 1933 after several years of ill health and the Fletcher Mansion went into steep decline. In 1981 it was purchased by Jim and Sally Vance who had originally stated their intentions of restoring the house and using it as a family home but, finding the structure too far gone to salvage, tore it down in October of 1990 in order to build a bigger home for their business. Today the Mansion's footprint is the parking lot for that business, Boston Scientific, a concern that manufactures medical devices.

Back in 1874 an acre in Pasadena would have set you back $100.00, or about $19,000 in inflation adjusted dollars. Maybe the phrenologist and Calvin Fletcher Sr. was right, Calvin Jr. was “calculated to be a businessman,” as even a quarter acre vacant lot in Pasadena would sell for well over $200,000 today but “rash as usual” for not seeing the deal through to its profitable conclusion.

Calvin Fletcher Jr. once stated in response to a direct query that, “the ambition of his life had been to become a fair representative of the average American citizen, which he considers the best standard of manhood in every sense of on earth, as far as his observation extends. He believes firmly that ultimately American ideas will prevail throughout the earth.” So perhaps today while we enjoy the phantasmagorical floats and marching bands as they make their way down Orange Grove Avenue we pause to spare a moment to think of the man responsible for laying out the town and naming the street, Mr. Calvin Fletcher Jr., of Spencer, Indiana and perhaps raise a glass of water in his honor.

Owen County History Book Sale

Just in time for the Holidays the Owen County Historical and Genealogical Society has placed the 1884 and 1994 History of Owen County books on sale now through the end of December. The 1884 History of Owen County, regularly $35.00 is now on sale for $30.00. The 1994 History of Owen County, regularly $45.00, is currently on sale for $40.00. Buy both volumes for $65.00 and save $15.00 off of the regular price. Books are available for purchase in the Genealogy Department of the Owen County Public Library. Cash, checks and money orders accepted. Checks and money orders should be made payable to OCHGS.

November is National Diabetes Month

By Amy Morgan

As someone who has had Type 1 Diabetes for over 21 years, I thought I should mention that November is National Diabetes Month. This is a campaign sponsored by the American Diabetes Association, The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and several other groups to raise awareness about the condition. 

Though some people may not know it, there are actually multiple types of Diabetes. According to the American Diabetes Association’s website, “every 17 seconds, someone is diagnosed with Diabetes,” and there are approximately “26 million children and adults living around the world with Diabetes.”

While many people have Diabetes, there are different types of the condition, each of which is very different and require their own treatments. If you would like to learn more, you can stop by the library to check out our collection of Diabetes books, or go on the web. Three of my favorite websites include www.diabetes.org, which is the official website of the American Diabetes Association; www.jdrf.org, the official page for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation; and www.sixuntilme.com, which is a blog by Kerri Morrone Sparling, who not only grew up with Type 1 Diabetes, but is also a freelance writer and Diabetes Advocate. 

If you would like to know more, feel free to ask. I am by no means a professional, but I can share my experiences.