New books!

What a dirty trick. I was hoping it'd stay cold and rainy so nobody has any post-break spring fever. So much for that.

At least the colorful pages of Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes is keeping me distracted. I mentioned it in a blog post a few months back and have finally finished reading it. It's a fascinating book!

It's actually a collection of essays about the suburb as a form of American community and the many ways in which it influences -- and is influenced by -- the "typical" American lifestyle and habits. There's one terrific essay, for instance, about malls and how they came to be, how they're designed and built, and their roles in suburban life. Other essays look at various types of suburbs, how suburbs have influenced American art and been influenced by American architecture (ever seen a Cape Cod-style home in the New Mexico desert? It's very odd), and how the suburbs are changing in response to shifting American habits and preferences.

One especially engrossing essay discussed "big-box reuse." For instance -- and I assume it's happened to your hometown; it definitely happened to mine -- Wal-Mart suddenly started building brand-new SuperCenters about a decade ago, and in the process abandoned most of its older, smaller stores. Similar things have occurred with other companies, like K-Mart, Target, and restaurant chains. What happens to those empty shells after they've been replaced by their larger and shinier descendants? Most of them are torn down, of course, to make way for other businesses, but in America's small towns, it's not uncommon for those empty spaces to remain standing for years on end, simply because those towns are too small to attract the interest of a company wealthy enough to buy the property and dismantle the building. Instead, many towns have opted to raise money in order to convert those buildings for other uses. Some old Wal-Marts have become museums, farmers' markets, or -- as in the case of one in my own hometown -- a small-business incubator where local businesses can rent booths that they can use as offices or to sell their goods to curious shoppers. It's a weird mix of flea market, office building, and county fair, but is tremendously popular.

Yes, I admit it. I come from a suburb. So do most of you, so nyehhhh. Anyway, I highly recommend it for art freaks and community planners alike, as well as anyone who's curious about how certain aspects of our society are examined and analyzed through various lenses.

Since this post has appeared on a Wednesday, I'm sure you know what it means: Wednesday Half-Post! I'm off to Massachusetts tomorrow for the last Academic Bowl regional competition, and things should normalize (for the most part) from here on out.

I said a few weeks back that I'd do a New Book Cart Day so you all are up to date on the new books (fiction and art-related, anyway -- we'll hear from the other librarians about their subject areas in a few weeks) that have been coming in. We've got an exciting crop this year; 2009 and 2010 are proving to be fantastic years in publishing!

Without further ado, the greatest hits:

Horns by Joe Hill
The author of last year's terrific The Heart-Shaped Box is back with Horns, a weird little story about a guy who wakes up one day and discovers that he has grown ... yes, wait for it ... horns. Why? Who knows? But there's more to the story: this guy is kind of busy being blamed for the grisly murder of his childhood sweetheart (which he didn't do), and the horns give him a mysterious power that forces people to tell their secrets. The Heart-Shaped Box made a splash last year for its sheer creepiness; it seems Joe's in fine form for his sophomore novel.

Subway Art by Martha Cooper
This is a big book. It's also quite lovely; showcasing some of NYC's best train-car graffiti, Subway Art is quite an education in how spray paint can be used so incredibly deftly that you're left wondering whether that stuff actually came out of a can. You also learn a little more about the history of graffiti on subway cars, and how creative vandals in other countries -- Germany, for example, which has long been known for its exemplary graffiti -- have adopted techniques and models first pioneered in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. You come away completely fascinated and with a new appreciation for the paint encrusting most of the walls facing the northbound Red Line on the Metro.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.
Little needs to be said about this one, I suppose. Better hurry and check it out before anyone realizes that we've got it here -- once word gets out, it's all over.

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (not quite available yet)
Along with its sequel, Catching Fire, this book follows in the footsteps of such luminaries as Running Man and Death Race 2000. Set in a postapocalyptic future, the entity that has supplanted the United States and controls several territories demands tribute in the form of two children from each territory who must participate in a televised fight to the death. Sort of a combination of American Gladiators and Survivor with a bunch of UFC thrown in, this practice brings up a lot of questions about reality television and what its logical end might actually be.

Heresy by S.J. Parris
I guess this could be referred to as a period piece: in 16th-Century England, Queen Elizabeth I has been excommunicated by the Pope for refusing to allow the Church of England to rejoin the Catholic Church. As a result, her spymaster, Francis Walsingham, has informers planted all over the country, keeping their ears to the ground for any possible threats to the Queen. This novel centers around one of those informers, a disliked leader of Oxford, and his participation in a historic debate (which actually happened) with a guy who has a heretical idea: the cosmos has no center, and all the stars we see are actually suns seen from a great distance, with planets of their own. In other words, he was born about four centuries too early. However, the debate isn't the only thing going on; a serial killer is on the loose, and the mystery only deepens the further in you get. It's a nice mix of historical accuracy and fiction; a few characters never existed, and neither did the murders, but everything else actually occurred.

First Contact, Or, It's Later than You Think by Evan Mandery
A ... frankly bizarre book, to put it mildly. The plot reminds me of Thomas Pynchon or David Foster Wallace: The aliens have landed, and they look like Orthodox Jews who have a taste for Woody Allen. A clueless Republican president (ahem) plans a kosher state dinner, but a huge misunderstanding leads to a bunch of American nuclear weapons taking off for the aliens' homeworld. Of course, it's up to the protagonist, an attaché to the president, and his new alien pal to save both worlds from irrevocable war. In a really funny way, of course.

Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw
Indonesia in the 1960s was, much like the United States, undergoing major upheaval. This is the story of a young man whose father is arrested by Communist soldiers and imprisoned; the young man must travel to Jakarta and find out what happened to his father. Along the way, he shanghais a female American professor who knew his father as a child, and they develop an inexplicable bond as they wander through the streets of a nation in the process of tearing itself apart.

The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson by Jerome Charyn
A writer known for his interesting takes on life in various periods of American history, Charyn takes on Emily Dickinson. A complex task by any measure, he pulls it off in exactly her voice as she works through her relationship with her father (who admired her for her intellectual companionship, but condescended to her gender), her family, and her dog. It's extraordinarily well-written; the voice in the novel is very nearly consanguineous with the voice in Dickinson's poems. She was a fascinating woman with a rich inner life and unbridled creativity, and this novel allows you to imagine something much closer to what the inside of her head may have been like. Thumbs up!

Okay, that's it for this week. Until next week!