Books into TV Series: you can borrow both from the library

Mysteries rely on the setting to engage the reader - from country house to gritty urban locales to exotic places around the world, readers travel with their favorite detectives. Here are several dark and moody police procedural series that take place in northern England that have been turned into equally engaging television series.

'Vera,' based on the novels by Ann Cleeves, starring the irascible, but highly effective, police detective Vera Stanhope. Vera unflinchingly solves crimes in the windy chill of beautiful Northumberland, UK.

'DCI Banks,' another blunt and edgy police detective, comes to life based on the books by Peter Robinson. Banks solves crimes from the windswept and rainy moors of Yorkshire to the urban areas of Leeds.

Away from the wild moors and urban projects of Northern England, we go to the beautiful university city of Oxford to follow another character whose TV life became more well known than the books.
'Endeavour' imagines the early life of Inspector Morse, the Oxfordshire detective created by Colin Dexter.

The more whimsical comedy-drama, 'Midsomer Murders' is the long-running television series based on Caroline Graham's mysteries. There are more episodes of the television show by far than there ever were of Ms. Graham's books. Ms. Graham's and Mr. Dexter's books are out of print and hard to find, but well worth it if you can track them down.

Off to Scotland for the 'Shetland' series based on the novels of Ann Cleeves: 'Red Bones,' 'Raven Black,' 'Blue Lightening,' 'Dead Water.' Again the beautiful, but at times slightly menacing, landscape and weather makes a perfect backdrop for these mysteries.

To Sweden for more grey, windswept landscapes and a moody detective with 'issues', watch 'Wallander' based on the novels by Henning Mankell.

From mysteries to non-fiction and an urban setting, try 'Call the Midwife' based on the biography of an English midwife in post-war London, written by Jennifer Worth.

On a lighter note, try 'Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries' based on the Phryne Fisher mysteries by Kerry Greenwood. The intrepid Australian Flapper solves crimes in post World War I Melbourne. The costumes and Victorian architecture are fantastic in this tv series.

Related Resources: Some of these books and movies can be found in our library catalog and some can be found on our downloadable resources listed on our All Things E page.

The 'Shetland' series by Ann Cleeves is now available as a downloadable audiobook from Hoopla. The 'Vera' tv series is also available on Hoopla now. Music from the 'Inspector Morse' series is available on Hoopla.
Several of Henning Mankell's books, 'Call the Midwife' and Ann Cleeves' and Peter Robinson's books are also available on 'eLibraryNJ.'

Simultaneous Reading is against My Reading Rules

If you have ever read one of my earlier posts, you know I have strictly enforced Reading Rules.  At the moment, however, I am reverting to bad habits.  Not reading more than one book at a time or becoming distracted halfway through a book are Rules I have been ignoring. Here is my current reading list:

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman:  (Hoopla e-audio) To say that Ove is set in his ways is an understatement. The man is set in cement at the beginning of the story.  Listening to Ove has made me miss a very dear, very curmudgeonly patron who died several years ago.  I can almost hear John’s voice instead of the excellent narrator.

Home Sweet Home by April Smith:  (OverDrive eBook)  This book is set in South Dakota during the days when Joseph McCarthy’s hunt for communists and communist sympathizers turned neighbors against neighbors and made everyone seem somehow suspicious.  It is loosely based on actual events and a well-known libel trial.  The details of life in South Dakota, surviving natural disasters on a cattle ranch, made the story even more interesting.  The earlier story from the 50s and 60s ties into events in the mid-1980s.

Washington’s Farewell: the Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations by John Avlon:   (OverDrive eBook)  Washington’s Farewell, when he announced that he was done serving as President and wanted to retire, as opposed to his first farewell from military service, was referred to and frequently quoted during the recent election.  It seemed time to refresh my memory and revisit Washington’s words, thoughtfully provided in an appendix.  The political scene was as frantic and frenetic then as it is now.  It was interesting to see the Founding Fathers jostling and evolving as the founding words had to be put into action and process.  I had forgotten that the Farewell was published in a newspaper and not presented as a speech.

Swimming Lessons by Mary Alice Monroe: (OverDrive eBook)  As a cat is easily distracted by shiny toys, I was distracted by a book by one of my favorite beach authors.  I enjoyed wrapping up in a blanket while visiting some familiar places in South Carolina, seeing some old friends, and catching up on the continuing struggles of loggerhead turtles.  I needed warm breezes from the ocean to relax after Ove’s frostiness, snow storms and floods in the heartland, and political firestorms when New York was still the capital city.

I may have already told this embarrassing story, but years ago I put down the book I was reading to make a cup of tea.  When I started reading again I was about twenty pages along before I realized I was reading the wrong book.  Somehow I hadn’t realized the characters had changed and I was in the middle of the Bataan Death March.  This is why I need to focus on one book at a time and not to try to juggle reading, listening, mixing fiction and non-fiction, and time traveling.  Reading Rules exist for a reason.

- S. Bakos 

To find ebooks to borrow, go to our All Things E page for Hoopla, eLibraryNJ and more downloadable resources.

Notorious RBG: the Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

My Yearly Biography Reading, or maybe not...

I am not a biography person so I was busy congratulating myself on reading my annual biography, autobiography or memoir.  I had finished Notorious RBG: the Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, before I realized that it is cataloged in 347.7326 (Law, Supreme Court), not BIO GIN.  That is the charm of selecting downloadable books from OverDrive or Hoopla – I look at what is new and available and don’t consider any classification system.  Now, in keeping with my self-inflicted reading requirements, I still owe myself a biography.

Reading Notorious RBG is an adventure.  The authors, Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik, mix and match narrative, photographs, documents, cartoons and fan art.   The book has something for everyone, including a shout out to opera buffs.  The court decisions and legal briefs are described with enough detail to inform without overwhelming.  One particular decision involving voting rights, Shelby County v. Holder, has been mentioned almost daily on news programs during this election cycle so I was pleased to learn more about the background.  Perhaps the biggest surprise is the love story between RBG and her husband.   His final letter to her is heartbreaking.  Notorious RGB is a wonderful combination, mixing details about her ground-breaking legal career with enough personal information to make the woman in the formidable black robes more human.

Before the end of 2016 I must choose a biography or autobiography to read.  Books about the Kennedy family are still being published at a rapid rate, with the Roosevelts running a close second.  Alexander Hamilton is trendy and interest in Lincoln never fades.  I tend to avoid movie stars and anything too sensational – serial killers are definitely not an option.  Please send any recommendations through comments.

- S. Bakos

Related sources:

New York Times review of Notorious RBG, the life and times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmen and Shana Knizhnik (2015)

Vogue review of Notorious RBG, '15 Things I Learned About Ruth Bader Ginsburg From Notorious RBG'

Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent

So Many Books, So Little Time

Working at the library we are obviously surrounded by books. With many returned books come book suggestions. With book suggestions come more book suggestions and sometimes even movie suggestions. Many times patrons tell us,

 “You have to read this book. It’s the best I’ve ever read!”

If I have read the book and enjoyed it, a lively discussion ensues. If I read the book and did not care for it, I invoke my two favorite comments:

1.) It’s well written :) Hopefully his/her next novel’s material will be more to my liking.
2.) I wanted to like the book but…

Just ask my book club friends they will tell you I use the first comment frequently during our monthly discussions.

If I have not read the book and it sounds appealing, I place it on my Goodreads app. Currently I have 172 books on my ToRead list within the app. I just need 172 weeks to read them all! So really I shouldn’t be looking for additional books to read, but I just can’t help myself.
Sometimes a book is quietly returned without any fanfare. I wonder if the book was finished, liked, disliked…

Last Thursday, Dinner with Edward: the Story of an Unexpected Friendship by Isabel Vincent (2016) was returned. As I went to reshelve this new nonfiction book, I read the back cover: a memoir of food, NYC, and friendship - what could be better? I had to give it a try. Ignoring my reading lists, I took the book home. During the course of my busy weekend, I read the book with the not-too-long and not-too-short chapters and fell in love with the book and with Edward. Each chapter begins with a menu for their weekly dinner that will be consumed when Isabel visits her friend Edward on Roosevelt Island. Each menu sounds wonderful. My only wish would be that the author had included recipes as so many of my favorite cozy mystery writers do. A cocktail and “catching up” discussion are always part of each chapter as well as some background allowing us to understand Edward and Isabel's current discussion.

Although fiction, A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson remind me of this sweet story. When asked for my current favorite, I will suggest Dinner with Edward.

~ Ann-Marie Sieczka
August 10, 2016

Post-daylight Savings Monday Blues, but 3 Good Books Save the Day

Forgive me for ranting for a few sentences before I get to the book portion of this post.  It is Monday.  It is not just any Monday, however.  It is the Monday after Halloween so everyone is carefully avoiding the candy in the staff room.  It is the Monday after the end of Daylight Savings so everyone is already cranky anticipating the drive home in the dark.  Also, for me, it is the day to retrieve the October statistics, download the bank statement, and check the bills to be paid.   This is too much pressure for one day – especially Monday.  On a positive note, I have just finished reading three really, really good books.  Does this qualify as a trifecta, Triple Crown, hat trick, or bases loaded?  Or, is it just good luck? 

When I first saw the title of The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks I thought of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and, of course, had to find a recording.  The secret chord in the title is the same secret chord that “… David played and it pleased the Lord.”  The narrator is Natan, David’s prophet and confidant.  The story, from David’s youth through the end of his reign, is filled with family, battles, power, betrayal, love, loss, music, more battles, and spiritual visions.  As David’s biographer, Natan sees David as both a great king and a flawed man.  Geraldine Brooks has also written Year of Wonders and People of the Book.  She remains in my top five favorite list.

Loretta Young will be remembered as the epitome of beauty, elegance, and grace.  Adriana Trigiani captures the glamour, as well as the dark side, of the Hollywood studios by following the fictionalized career of Loretta Young.  All the Stars in the Heavens tells the story of how movies were made before special effects and animation.  She gossips about famous and infamous love affairs.  Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and David Niven appear, disappear and re-appear throughout Miss Young’s life.  Her career takes her from Hollywood movies to success on the radio to the still early days of television.  Her story is not always happy and several of her decisions must be viewed in the context of a different time in this country and very different standards of how movie stars were expected to behave.  I raced through this book.

Sarah Vowell, in Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, describes herself as a “… historian-adjacent, narrative nonfiction wise guy.”  How true!  I recommended this book to a friend by saying that the author’s attitude is flippant and occasionally borders on being disrespectful to the Founding Fathers.  I love it!  I am reviewing history that I had forgotten and receiving a much more comprehensive overview of the participants in the Revolutionary War.  I’m glad that I know the ending in advance or I would be seriously nervous about the outcome.  Comparisons to the current political situation are timely and, at times, too accurate to be funny.  I am looking forward to reading Vowell’s earlier books.

- S. Bakos

Nurses Write!

Two books currently on the New Non-Fiction Shelf are nurses' accounts of what it is like to work in their much admired and appreciated profession. The library  has many books written by doctors about their profession, but  it is harder to find similar autobiographical accounts by nurses or nurse memoirs. I don't know why this is, but I am sure that a statistical look at Amazon or Books in Print would bear me out on this inbalance of health care provider's authorship.* When the local high school students come in to research a profession, which is a perennial assignment, we now have two fascinating new nursing memoirs as well as a few from previous years.

Becoming Nursey: from Code Blues to Code Browns, How to Care for Your Patients and Yourself by Kati Kleber, BSN RN (2014) (@nurseeyeroll on Twitter and the blog NurseEyeRoll.com) (610.73 KLE)
I follow Kati Kleber's Twitter account @nurseeyeroll which I find very amusing. In the last year or so, she has been tweeting about her new memoir 'Becoming Nursey' which is meant to help new nurses understand what it takes to become a nurse after graduating from nursing school. She writes that she could not find any book that helped new nurses make the transition from school to actually practicing nursing. So for anyone interested in the profession, or about to start out, diploma in hand, this book tells not only the practical aspects of nursing, but also the emotional side.

The library also owns a collection of essays by nurses and about nursing:
I Wasn't Strong Like This When I Started Out: True Stories of Becoming a Nurse, edited by Lee Gutkind (2013) (610.73 IWA).
This book would also make a good introduction to anyone interested in the nursing profession.

Books about nursing that have been on the library shelves for a little longer:

Critical care : a new nurse faces death, life, and everything in between by Theresa Brown (2010) (616 BROWN)

Intensive Care, the Story of a Nurse by Echo Heron (1987) (610.73 HERON)

Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth (2002) The PBS TV series is based on this memoir.
(BIO WORTH)


And finally, the classic of nursing theory and practice:

Notes on Nursing by Florence Nightingale (1860) (649.8 NIGHTINGALE)

* My unscientific statistical look at published doctor memoirs versus nurse memoirs bears out my hunch that doctors write about what it takes to become a doctor and what it is like to be a doctor more than nurses write their memoirs.
Amazon search of the terms 'doctor memoirs' (1909) versus 'nurse memoirs' (763)
Google Books search of the terms 'doctor memoirs' (1,020,000) versus 'nurse memoirs' (319,000)
BHPL catalog of books, using the search term 'doctor biography' (51) versus 'nurse biography' (25)

Tuesday book group to discuss 'The Aviator's Wife' and 'Gift from the Sea'

Tuesday, November 12, the library's evening book group will discuss Melanie Benjamin's 'The Aviator's Wife' and Anne Morrow Lindbergh's 'Gift from the Sea.'
'The Aviator's Wife' is the fictionalized account of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's life from the time she met the great aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1927 until his death almost fifty years later. The book brings to life the fact that Mrs. Lindbergh was an accomplished aviator herself and published author. Lindbergh's book 'Gift from the Sea' has been a bestseller and inspiration for women since its publication in 1955. By reading both books, we hope to be able to compare Melanie Benjamin's portrayal of Mrs. Lindbergh with her own words about her life as expressed in 'Gift from the Sea.'

Take a look at our Anne Morrow Lindbergh book discussion Pinterest board for some images of the author's life.


Discussion questions:
Litlover's discussion questions about 'The Aviator's Wife.'