After Hours event

Another successful "After Hours" event featuring the Dewey Divas took place last Monday, June 20th, 2011. With more than 80 people in attendance, the atmosphere was electric.

The Bishop's Man

The Bishop's Main by Linden MacIntyre: I facilitated a book club discussion using this work. Most people struggled with some aspects of the story line, but all were in agreement that this was a brilliant piece of Canadian literature.

One of my personal favourite parts of the book was the author's skill in demonstrating Father MacAskill's alcoholic decline. By having MacAskill act as the narrator, the reader was kept in denial, and didn't recognize the main character's decline. At one point, it becomes glaringly evident to the reader that MacAskill isn't coping well. I remember the shock I felt when I realized that he was an ancoholic. At the same time, I realized that there were plenty of hints preceding this point, but I didn't put it together. He was such a good person and I made allowances, just as the community was compensating for him.

This is a deftly written, provocative, funny and haunting work.

The publisher's blurb:
The year is 1993 and Father Duncan MacAskill stands at a small Cape Breton fishing harbour a few miles from where he grew up. Enjoying the timeless sight of a father and son piloting a boat, Duncan takes a moment's rest from his worries. But he does not yet know that his already strained faith is about to be tested by his interactions with a troubled boy, 18-year-old Danny MacKay.

Known to fellow priests as the "Exorcist" because of his special role as clean-up man for the Bishop of Antigonish, Duncan has a talent for coolly reassigning deviant priests while ensuring minimal fuss from victims and their families. It has been a lonely vocation, but Duncan is generally satisfied that his work is a necessary defense of the church. All this changes when lawyers and a policeman snoop too close for the bishop's comfort. Duncan is assigned a parish in the remote Cape Breton community of Creignish and told to wait it out.

This is not the first time Duncan has been sent away for knowing too much: decades ago, the displeased bishop sent a more idealistic Duncan to Honduras for voicing suspicions about a revered priest. It was there that Duncan first tasted forbidden love, with the beautiful Jacinta. It was also there that he met the courageous Father Alfonso, who taught him more about spiritual devotion than he had ever known back home. But when an act of violence in Honduras shook Duncan to his core, he returned home a changed man, willing to quietly execute the bishop's commands.

Now, decades later in Cape Breton, Duncan claims to his concerned sister Effie that isolation is his preference. But when several women seek to befriend him, along with some long-estranged friends, Duncan is alternately tempted and unnerved by their attentions. Drink becomes his only solace.

Attempting to distract himself with parish work, Duncan takes an interest in troubled young Danny, whose good-hearted father sells Duncan a boat he names The Jacinta. To Duncan's alarm, he discovers that the boy once spent time with an errant priest who had been dispatched by Duncan himself to Port Hood. Duncan begins to ask questions, dreading the answers. When tragedy strikes, he knows that he must act. But will his actions be those of a good priest, or an all too flawed man?

Winner of the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Linden MacIntyre's searing The Bishop's Man is an unforgettable and complex character study of a deeply conflicted man at the precipice of his life. Can we ever be certain of an individual's guilt or innocence? Is violence ever justified? Can any act of contrition redeem our own complicity?

The Post Mistress

Postmistress, by Sarah Blake
I waited for close to a year to read this book, so I did so with much anticipation. I had heard good things about it and I was hoping for something as engaging as The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Instead, I found this work unsatisfying and contrived.

Here is the publisher's blurb:
In 1940, Iris James is the postmistress in coastal Franklin, Massachusetts. Iris knows more about the townspeople than she will ever say, and believes her job is to deliver secrets. Yet one day she does the unthinkable: slips a letter into her pocket, reads it, and doesn't deliver it.

Meanwhile, Frankie Bard broadcasts from overseas with Edward R. Murrow. Her dispatches beg listeners to pay heed as the Nazis bomb London nightly. Most of the townspeople of Franklin think the war can't touch them. But both Iris and Frankie know better...

"The Postmistress" is a tale of two worlds-one shattered by violence, the other willfully na?ve-and of two women whose job is to deliver the news, yet who find themselves unable to do so. Through their eyes, and the eyes of everyday people caught in history's tide, it examines how stories are told, and how the fact of war is borne even through everyday life.


The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein
A heart-wrenching but deeply heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope--a captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life . . . as only a dog could tell it

Secret Shoppers: Service Lessons for Libraries

This presentation was given during OLA's Super Conference 2011. This year's them was Collaboration.

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Secret Shoppers: Service Lessons for Libraries

View more presentations from Rebecca Jones.

Sara's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

This book was a disappointment (I'm sick with a cold and I'm not mincing words).

I have to admit that initially, I enjoyed the way it stylistically jumped between two stories: one based in 1942 and the other in 2002. I was also pleased to see that the author (or publisher, more likely) represented the 1942 story by using a type font and formatting typical of that era.

The 1942 story, based on the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, is horrific. I didn't know about this event and I found it terribly disturbing. Within a few alternating chapters, the book quickly its appeal and I began to skim read. I gave up on the book when it became evident that de Rosnay was unable to sustain the book's initial structure. At some point, the book was told only for the 2002 perspective.

I couldn't help but think of Blindness by Jose Saramago. This book also described unimaginable horrific, but Saramago was a master and made Blindness a literary work that was a joy to read, and altered one's view of the world. De Rosnay is not in the same league -- not even playing the same game as Saramgo. So again, the book was a disappointment and I wouldn't recommend it.

Here is the publisher's blurb:
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.

Mistress of Nothing

I was rather disappointed in this book. As a GG winner, I expected more and after reading The Help, I expected more tension, more depth by this work. Instead, the book seemed to languish, and I was glad when it ended.

Publisher's blurb:
Lady Duff Gordon is the toast of Victorian London society. But when her debilitating tuberculosis means exile, she and her devoted lady''s maid, Sally, set sail for Egypt. It is Sally who describes, with a mixture of wonder and trepidation, the odd menage (marshalled by the resourceful Omar) that travels down the Nile to a new life in Luxor. When Lady Duff Gordon undoes her stays and takes to native dress, throwing herself into weekly salons, language lessons and excursions to the tombs, Sally too adapts to a new world, which affords her heady and heartfelt freedoms never known before. But freedom is a luxury that a maid can ill-afford, and when Sally grasps more than her status entitles her to, she is brutally reminded that she is mistress of nothing.

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

This book was a nice surprise and a real departure from my typical reading. I was amazed at the level of suspense the author could create in a domestic situation discussing quotidien life. I was impressed. I've alrady started The Mistress of Nothing that features a servant in the 1860s, so it will be interesting to compare.

The publisher's blurb:
Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, who's always taken orders quietly, but lately she's unable to hold her bitterness back. Her friend Minny has never held her tongue but now must somehow keep secrets about her employer that leave her speechless. White socialite Skeeter just graduated college. She's full of ambition, but without a husband, she's considered a failure. Together, these seemingly different women join together to write a tell-all book about work as a black maid in the South, that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town.