The Shakespeare Stealer

Gary Blackwood's historical novel for young adults, The Shakespeare Stealer, will be discussed at the Tuesday Night Book Group on September 11 from 7:30 - 8:30 pm. The Shakespeare Stealer has been on the local school summer reading list for a few years now, so the library book group decided to see what area students are reading.
Widge, an orphan in service to a mysterious and scary master, has been commanded to steal William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. By joining the acting troupe at the Globe Theatre, Widge has to decide whether to be loyal to his new actor friends or to steal the play out of fear for punishment at the hands of his master.

Liz Morris' Teaching Guide to the Shakespeare Stealer gives a summary of the plot and questions appropriate for middle-school students.  She recommends the following websites
www.elizabethan.org
www.shakespearesglobe.org
www.stratford.co.uk

If You Like Downton Abbey, read this

If you are addicted to the PBS series 'Downton Abbey', you should read Kate Morton's  The House at Riverton, the story of a grand English manor house told in flashbacks by a 98 year former housemaid recalling her service at Riverton from 1914 to 1924. The story of the house, the aristocratic family and the downstairs staff mirrors the changes in English society during that time. From pre-World War I privilege to the carnage of the Great War and the gradual disappearance of 'in-service' jobs, the story has a mysterious death at Riverton at it's heart.
Recommended for fans of family sagas, all things British, before the wars romance and historical fiction.

I also loved Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden and the author's The Distant Hours is on my 'must read' list. The Forgotten Garden traces a long-held family secret from Australia to Cornwall, from early 20th century to the present day and involves a beautiful book of fairy tales. I have recommended Ms. Morton's books to readers who like family sagas, gothic stories like Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca, and who like the complex plots of Kate Atkinson. The library has the cult of Kates going on with the staff because both Kate Atkinson and Kate Morton are very popular and have allowed the staff to make great reading recommendations to our patrons.

Kate Morton's new book, the Secret Keeper will be released October 16, 2012 and is on order at the library so patrons can now put holds on that book.

The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan

When Ruth was growing up in San Francisco, her mother LuLing believed that Ruth could communicate with LuLing's dead nursemaid, Precious Auntie, who committed suicide when LuLing still lived in China. Ironically, Ruth now makes a living as a ghostwriter, but she calls herself a "book collaborator."  When LuLing develops Alzheimer's, Ruth feels guilty about never reading the Chinese manuscript that LuLing wrote years ago about her childhood and life in wartime China. Ruth has it translated and learns the story of LuLing and Precious Auntie, who was the beautiful daughter of a bonesetter.  Precious Auntie (and LuLing) believe their tragic lives are the result of a family curse that is linked to the discovery of the bones of Peking Man. Publishers Weekly calls The Bonesetter's Daughter "even more polished and provocative" than Amy Tan's most famous book, The Joy Luck Club. If you somehow didn't get around to reading The Bonesetter's Daughter when it was released in 2001, I definitely recommend it.  
 

Pythagoras & Musical Scales

Having finished the incomparable Robert Greenberg's Teaching Company courses The Symphony and How to Listen to and Understand Music, I have moved on to Understanding the Fundamentals of Music (a.k.a music theory.)

One of the cool things I learned was that Pythagoras discovered the ratios between different harmonic intervals.  If you take a string, and another string that is twice the length of the first string, and pluck both of them, you've got an octave. In fact, that shorter string is vibrating twice as fast as the longer string.  If you take a string that is 1.5 times (or 0.75 times, either way) as long as that first string, when you pluck those you've got a perfect fifth - for example, a C and a G (which sound really good together). To read more about this, check out this site. 

It gets cooler.  Play a note, starting with an F, then a note a perfect fifth above that, and so on until 7 notes have been played. Then put all of of those notes within the same octave: you've got the white keys on a piano.  During the Renaissance, people tried stacking even more perfect fifths on, and found that the 13th pitch was the same as the first.  That gave us the white AND black keys on a piano. For a better explanation of this than I can offer, see Wikipedia's article on Pythagorean Tuning.

A Killing in the Hills

Long Black Veil, recorded by Lefty Frizzell in the late 50’s, is my favorite country song.  

It includes murder, adultery, a miscarriage of justice, and eternal mourning.  What more could you want?  Despite the fact that  songwriter Danny Dill was inspired by a newspaper story about the murder of a priest in New Jersey,  in my heart of hearts I know this song should have been  written about a small town in the Shenandoah Valley. This song resonates with me - I don’t care if I’m listening to recordings by Springsteen, the Chieftains and Mick Jagger, Johnny Cash, Dave Matthews, or Lefty himself.

The same feeling applies to novels and mysteries with a strong sense of place, where the location is a character.  Sharyn McCrumb’s Ballad Series is a prime example. Her earlier books (including The Rosewood Casket, She Walks These Hills and If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O) convinced me that my ancestors from Scotland must have passed along the same rivers and hills and sang the same songs.  Adriana Trigiani’s Big Stone Gap novels and Margaret Maron’s Deborah Knott series (starting with The Bootlegger’s Daughter) strike the same chord. 

Julia Keller’s A Killing in the Hills portrays a small town in West Virginia as vividly as a segment on 60 Minutes discussing rural poverty, prescription drug abuse, and the deadly popularity of hillbilly heroin.  Ms. Keller, however, reminds readers that people are born and raised in small mountain towns, choose to remain there, or even return there after living elsewhere.  Being isolated may no longer be a safeguard against the evils of modern life, but her main characters are fighting the good fight and struggling to understand how good people can do bad things.  I usually don’t read the blurbs on the back of books, but I totally support the comment by author Karin Slaughter: “Julia Keller is that rare talent who combines gripping suspense, a fabulous sense of place, and nuanced characters you can’t wait to come back to.  A must-read.”

S.Bakos