Booklists: suggested reading

 

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Alex Awards 2006: Booktalks

 

Booktalks prepared as part of the June 2006 Alex Awards Program

 

Midnight at the Dragon Café by Judy Fong Bates

 

In a small Canadian town, Su-Jen’s father anxiously awaits the arrival of his daughter and wife from China.  Su-Jen and her mother imagine that life in Canada will be easier than living in Hong Kong. After all, the family now owns a restaurant—that means they will be important in the town.  Arriving in Canada, Su-Jen is surprised by all the lo-fons (white faces), the bitter cold, and the unpopulated streets.  Her mother is bitterly disappointed by the shabby restaurant, the quiet town, the elderly husband she scarcely knows and the absence of other Chinese speaking people.  How can they possible be happy in such an unwelcoming place?

Su-Jen adapts quickly to her new life, including a new “Canadian” name.  A neighbor suggests Annie, after Annie Oakley.  Besides all the blonde hair and blue eyed people, Annie has never seen anyone with freckles before—she is shocked and wonders if freckles are some kind of skin disease.  Annie is fascinated by everything new but her mother seems resigned to a life of filling sugar and napkin dispensers in the restaurant. 

Then Annie’s half-brother, Lee-Kung, appears to help with the restaurant.  He is charming, handsome, and sophisticated—a far cry from his hardworking, self sacrificing father.  Lee-Kung and his stepmother, both trapped in unhappy lives, turn to each other while Annie’s father turns a blind eye, working longer hours to support his family.   Secrets, traditions, and tragedies affect each family member as life in China becomes a faint memory while they learn to survive in Canada.

 - Judy Sasges

 

Upstate by Kalisha Buckhanon

“Baby, the first thing I need to know from you is do you believe I killed my father?”  These are the first words 17 year old Antonio writes to his girlfriend, Natasha.  He is in prison for murder; desperately lonely and hoping to hold on to the one positive part of his past.  She is in high school, at first content to wait for her man and then restless to escape her life in Harlem.

Through the 1990’s, the two communicate through letters.  Antonio dreams of marrying Natasha.  A house, job and children are his goals, his hopes for the future.  Natasha, a good student, is offered the chance to travel and attend college.  She loves Antonio and knows he needs her.  What should she do?  As the two teens mature and face adult challenges, their relationship is tested in unexpected ways.  Share the sad, angry, hopeful and very true to life letters written by Antonio and Natasha in Upstate by Kalisha Buckhanon.

- Judy Sasges

 

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Fat Charlie Nancy, who is no longer fat, is living a comfortable workaholic life in London, until his estranged father, Mr. Nancy, aka the god Anansi, dies suddenly in Florida, while singing passionate karaoke rendition of “I Am What I Am” to a buxom blonde.
 
Following the funeral, Fat Charlie’s life is turned upside down as he discovers his father’s identity as the trickster god & rebellious spirit. Buried family secrets are resurrected and magic returns to Charlie’s life, whether he likes it or not. Spider, affable provocateur and, Fat Charlie’s previously unknown brother, becomes a part of Fat Charlie’s life. In his attempts to show Charlie how to lighten up and have some fun, Spider steals his fiancée, causes Fat Charlie to lose his job, become wanted for embezzlement and suspected of murder. Fat Charlie tries to draw on some of the family magic to get rid of Spider which unleashes animistic magical forces and Anansi’s enemy Tiger.

Ages ago, Anansi tricked Tiger and gained possession of the world’s stories and incurred Tiger’s bloodthirsty wrath. Fat Charlie and Spider must call on the family’s trickster strength to survive the wrath of the malevolent Tiger and his various evil forms. Will Fat Charlie’s life ever be normal again?

This book about the power of stories is a powerfully entertaining story and packed with Ghosts, African Folk Tales, Gods, Murder, Magic, True Love, Myths, Folklore, Ancient Grudges, Horror, and Comedy.  This is a  scary, hysterically funny and fast-paced followup to American Gods.

Top 3 Reasons to Read Anansi Boys

3. Will make those suffering from the most virulent arachnophobia reconsider their phobia options and those currently without any form of arachnophobia to reconsider their phobia options.
2. Spew alert required (no eating or drinking while reading)  – proves Gaiman could really be the funnier half the Good Omens literary team.

1. Proves Neil Gaiman is a (transplanted) American God.

- Ann Theis

 

As Simple As Snow by Gregory Galloway

Everything about As Simple as Snow is a mystery, wrapped in a code, tied to a piece of string hanging from a tree like a strange fruit; from the the narrator, a teenage boy who is never identified, to the mysterious girl he falls in love with (Anna Cayne likes to write obituaries of people who aren't dead and manages to turns the narrator's world upside down, inside out and sideways), to the circumstances of Anna's disappearance, which resonates through the town.  The narrator sums it up nicely:

"This is what I know happened, or think happened. I fell in love with a girl, and then she left, and later she tried to come back, or I thought she did, and I went after her. It should have been simple but in the end it could not have been more complicated, and maybe that was the whole point to begin with, but if love is true and still leaves you lonely, what good does it do? I started going over everything again, thinking I might find a way to her, wherever she was, or at least figure out what to do with all the things she left behind."  (page 3)

-Charli Osborne

 

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
What does it really mean to be human?

Kathy H. is a carer in a recovery center.  Her patients are donors.  Of kidneys, of liver pieces, of lungs.   Eventually a donor has given all that can be given and reaches a state of “complete.”  One day she will become a donor, too.  That’s the path that she will follow.  But why?  What’s going on here?

Kathy reminisces about her childhood.  She spent her school years at Hailsham, out in the English countryside.  Is it really a school or is it an orphanage?  We’re not quite sure what this place is because the students never speak of home, of parents, or of family.  Instead, they’re encouraged to express themselves in the arts.  They must do everything possible to maintain their good health, which means that they must never smoke.  A rule that isn’t so unusual, but at Hailsham it’s taken quite seriously. 

As Kathy recounts her childhood, it becomes clear that she knows something now that she didn’t know then.   And as readers, we are as innocent as the students at Hailsham.  And as they learn about themselves, we learn what society has become in this parallel universe that the author has created. 

What does it really mean to be human?  Find out in this story of ethics and horror.

- Terry Beck

 

Gils All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez

 

          Perhaps it is the cover that whispers promises of a dementedly good time – a large hairy eyeball growing out of a diner.  Perhaps it is the dedication – “To Me, because I wrote it.”  Perhaps it is because I am a fan of roadside diners in my backroads travels.  Perhaps because one of the heroines is an overweight waitress to whom I could relate.  Who knows?  By now, fans of highbrow, thinking literature know this may not be the book for them.  I caution you not to doze off because you don’t know what kind of person may be sitting in this room with you.  Score this one high for its older teen raunchiness appeal.
It begins.  “In the middle of nowhere, along a quiet stretch of road, the diner dreamt of the hungry dead.  And of two men.  Well, not men exactly.”  And thus readers are introduced to good ole boys, the Duke of Werewolves and the Earl of Vampires.  We’ll refer to them as Duke and Earl, two travelers whose truck run out of gas.  Duke is large, hairy and sports a monstrous gut that barely makes it behind the steering wheel.    Earl is pale and stringy with an “unsuccessful comb-over” hair job.  They are the bickering odd couple heroes of this tale.   Although the scent of zombies is in the air, the twosome take refuge in a nearby diner.  Their hostess, Loretta, is a frazzled blonde in a soiled apron.   “Cellulite rolled down her legs in flapping waves with each step.”  But besides hash, Loretta slings a shotgun with which she takes out approaching zombies.  What a woman.  So how could any self-respecting vampire not fall in love.  Loretta, also known as Cathy, notes in her research that Rockwood has a “rich and colorful history of the unnatural…phenomena such as the day all the cats in town lost their tails or the night that lasted three weeks.”  Someone or something is looking to drive her out of the diner.  And she’s not leaving without a fight.
          And who is responsible for the awakening of the undead, ghouls, and other nefarious forces?  It’s two teens, of course.  Mistress Lilith, also known as Tammy, and her not too bright sacrificial lamb of a boyfriend, Chad.  Hormone driven Chad thinks Tammy’s witchcraft is more like Jedi mind control and is cool.  Gore, blood, and a fight to the death with the eyeball on the cover closes the portal to the underworld.  Lilith known as Tammy is dispatched to an explosive and fitting end involving pulp, slime, lumps and more gore.  True love overcomes all and the world is saved.  Our two travelers, a new girlfriend, and a spectral dog (yes, ghost dogs will always be the best friends for good “people” set forth down the road of life together.  Some readers will hope for a sequel.  Some of them may be sitting in this room.

- Jennifer Gallant

 

The Necessary Beggar by Susan Palwick

Think about the word “refugee”, what comes to mind  – Darfur . . . Tom Petty? What if you did have to live like a refugee?

Everyone feels like a “stranger in a strange land” sometimes.
Some lands are stranger than others . . .

Imagine you live in Gandiffri, a peaceful world bound by powerful spiritual & social beliefs, formidable family ties, and a strong justice system. Then, one of your family members is convicted of a terrible crime and your entire family is forced into exile, able to take only what can be carried.  Your family walks through a blue door on Gandiffri and emerges into chaotic near future Nevada filled with paranoid xenophobia and land in an internment camp for illegal aliens.

Palwick’s The Necessary Beggar takes us on the long journey from  Gandiffri to Nevada and unfolds an intriguing tale about home, true love, justice, faith, change, family ties and other great mysteries.

The voices of family members and some of their new friends in the new land tell the story of the family’s acclimation, easy for some, impossible for others as they are confronted with the mysterious of jello, rocky road ice cream and clowns.  What to give up from the old ways, and what to keep.

Some of the voices that tell the tale:

Darotti, the one responsible for the family’s exile, kills himself, but his ghost lingers and haunts family members as he tries to seek redemption.

Zama, exiled at six, ages and adapts with ease as an American girl, but still wants the Gandiffri custom of the Necessary Beggar to be a part of her wedding ceremony.

Mim-Bim, the mysterious Beetle that came through the Blue Gate with Zama.  Mim-Bim, who desperately and incessantly attempts to communicate something vital to Zama.

- Ann Theis

 

Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres

“This here is Jesus Land' proclaims a sign along the rural Indiana road that young Julia Sheeres and her brother are bicycling.  Surely here in the heartland of Christian faith Julia and her family will experience the grace of a life lived among those dedicated to Christian ideals.  But appearances are very different from the reality that Julia and her adopted African-American brothers, Jason and David, experience.  The boys suffer racial taunts from the community and brutal violence at the hands of their father, a physician.  Julia endures her mother’s disdain and her father’s emotional distance.

In her teens, alcohol and sex become ways for Julia to escape the madness at home.  When Julia and David are sent to a religious reform school in the Dominican Republic, they are physically, emotionally and spiritually abused.  But because they have each other, because they have been each other’s best friend since they were both three years old, they are not broken.

Julia Sheeres writes with the open-hearted compassion that was so lacking among those who raised her and professed to live by Christ’s words.  Jesus Land recounts an extraordinarily painful youth, but is written neither in anger nor for revenge, but with love and respect for the memory of the brother who shared her struggles, her life and her faith in the endurance of love.

- John Sexton

 

My Jim by Nancy Rawles

It is 1884 and Marianne Libre, age 16, is readying herself for a marriage that will take her away from her Nanna Sadie to the far off territory of Nebraska.  Sophie Watson and Marianne, sewing together, make a quilt from scavenged cloth scraps and used family clothes.  As Sophie Watson says, “Gonna put something of myself in there too.  Long as you got something of love to hold on to you know you a person of worth.  Only folks really own theyselves the ones know what they worth.”  And so, Sophie passes on the family history, from slavery to freedom, by telling the story of the artifacts that remain from her life: a knife, a piece of felt from a hat, a shard from a clay bowl, a child’s tooth, one shiny gold button and a corn pipe thick with tar.  
-  Elllen Loughran

 

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Imagine the life of a prominent and very connected gossip columnist—sensational parties, beautiful clothes, and making a living among the richest and most sought-after people on the planet.  Jeannette Walls writes “The Scoop” column for MSNBC.com and spends her days chronicling the antics of Brangelina, Britney Spears and Tom Cruise.  In her remarkable memoir, The Glass Castle, you soon discover that her childhood was far, far different from the glamorous life she now leads.  Growing up with her alcoholic father and unconventional mother was both an adventure and a trial. 

Jeannette Walls’s earliest memory is being on fire. She was three years old cooking unsupervised at the stove when her dress ignited, sending her to the hospital for six weeks.  There she learned the comfort of clean sheets, the satisfaction of three full meals arriving like clockwork, and the sweetness of chewing gum.  What follows is a series of tribulations during which at any moment her family did the “skedaddle” to avoid bill collectors or child services.  Her father often made life difficult, but he was also responsible for the adventure.  Who else could mesmerize a cheetah at the zoo so that it gently licked her hand? Yet, desperately hungry, Jeannette and her sister were scolded after eating a stick of margarine—the only food in the house—because if there was bread available, they wouldn’t be able to butter it. Often heartbreaking, this memoir is ultimately empowering.  Jeannette and her siblings were the resourceful and responsible ones in the family; it’s their strength that enabled them to escape to lives far removed from their childhood.

 - Priscille Dando