Odyssey Online

…with the 4th of July holiday upon us, it would seem like a good long weekend to spend reading and thinking about the American experience. Thinking about what it means to be American. Years ago I taught English in Maine and up there in Bangor I had a colleague who, unhappy with his son’s high school education, was designing an American Lit course for him. He’d tell me about what he was weighing and considering for his boy’s reading at lunch, and while I don’t remember a lot about this reading list I do remember it was going to start with the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and conclude with the Autobiography of Malcolm X. Remembering this just the other day I thought these two books would work nicely by themselves as the basis for American thinking…

…whether the young man ever did the reading, I have no idea. Happy July 4th from Odyssey Online and there will be more books to consider next week!

…as the world’s attention stays on the tumultous events in Iran, here are three more of our newest titles on Iranian history and the current government:

• Understanding Iran by Jerrold Green, Frederic Wehrey, and Charles Wolf Jr.
• History of Modern Iran by Ervand Abrahamian
• Iran: A Country Study (Library of Congress “Country Study” series) Ed. Helen Chapin Metz

…Annie Leibovitz is one of the best known photo-journalists over really the last forty years (she has many famous photographs, especially her portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono) and she has recently published a memoir titled At Work.  She’s an important and interesting part of American cultural heritage, and her book is worth reading…

…any time spent reading about or thinking about Duke Ellington is time well spent, and there is a fine new biography of Ellington titled Backstory in Blue by John Fass Morton. Very positive review of this book in a recent Harpers, which not only praised it as a study of Duke’s life and work but as a study of the power of recorded music and what recorded music means…

Given the events unfolding in Iran, here are a sampling of titles about Iran, and the lives lived by Iranian people, that may be helpful in understanding all that is happening:

• A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind by Michael Axworthy
• Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope by Shirin Ebadi with Azadeh Moaveni
• That Kind of Sleep (poetry) by Susan Atefat Peckham
• Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni
• Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

…the other day in my bibliographic wanderings I typed “letters” into Encore (our jazzy new keyword search) and was rewarded with a list of recent acquisitions in collected and selected letters titles. Books of correspondence. It gives one pause to think about writing letters, the role that letter writing once held in people’s lives, and contrast that with the more ethereal-ephemeral (inconsequential?) electronic personal correspondence people conduct on blackberries. Perhaps a few days given over to reading letters might be fine June medicine?  Anyway, among our recent acquisitions in books of letters are:

• Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder edited by Bill Morgan
• Letters from Black America edited by Pamela Newkirk
• Letters from Barcelona: An American Woman in Revolution and Civil War edited by Gerd-Rainer Horn
• Selected Letters of Florence Kelley edited by Kathryn Kish Sklar and Beverly Wilson Palmer
• Letters of Ted Hughes edited by Christopher Reid

Also, in 2006 there was a reissue of the Letters of E.B. White. I have been told that White took the same pains with is correspondence that he did with his professional writing (in thinking about his essays one can see how he probably didn’t perceive much of a difference) and so for a volume to really study the craft of letter writing, this would be a good start.

…one of the most controversial figures, and a man who is becoming really a lightning rod for the George W. Bush administration, is former Vice President Dick Cheney.  He is someone who generates wildly different intrepretations of his actions and intentions.  We have a number of biographies of the man, and here are two that paint very different portraits of Mr. Cheney–Cheney: the Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President by Stephen Hayes, and Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency by Barton Gellman. Read ’em and decide…

Each year the North Country Library System sponsors a North Country Reads program, which features a book discussion. This year’s title was Chris Bohjalian’s Skeletons at the Feast. It’s a skillfully crafted novel set in eastern Germany during the Soviet advance through Germany during World War Two, and is about such topics as basic as love and war…

…from an anonymous book-reviewer, praise for The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs.  The book uses the knitting club image to describe the interweaving of a number of women, and is a fine read…much recommended…

…A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly is a lovely book, a book about family, and is set in the Adirondacks, perfect for this list!