Book Discussion Group, Saturday, December 3, 2016, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Carl Fredrik Backman is a Swedish novelist and blogger. He was born in 1981 in Helsingborg, Sweden, in 1981, and grew up there. He briefly studied comparative religion in college, but dropped out to become a truck driver. While he was still working as a truck driver, he was contacted by the owner of a free newspaper, Xtra, to write an article for that publication. After that, he wrote that article, he wrote several more for Xtra and then started to write as a freelancer for other publications. He published his first novel, A Man Called Ove, in 2012 in Sweden. Its  US release was in 2014. Backman has also written a nonfiction book, Things My Son Needs to Know About the World, which was released the same day as Ove in 2012, and two more novels, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry (2013), and Britt-Marie Was Here (2014).Source.

Click this link for a brief magazine interview with Backman, and if you read Swedish, click this link to visit Fredrik Backman's blog.

Ove—The Movie

The movie version of A Man Called Ove was released in Sweden in 2015, and an English-subtitled version started touring the US about a month ago. Below is the official trailer.

Book Discussion Group, Saturday, November 5, 2016, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

How to Be Both by Ali Smith

Ali Smith seems publicity-shy than is normal in the age of social media, so this biography is lifted wholesale from Wikipedia:

Ali Smith was born August 1962 in Inverness, Scotland. She was born to working-class parents, raised in a council house in Inverness and now lives in Cambridge. She studied at the University of Aberdeen and then at Newnham College, Cambridge, for a PhD that she never finished. She worked as a lecturer at University of Strathclyde until she fell ill with CFS/ME. Following this she became a full-time writer and now writes for The Guardian, The Scotsman, and the Times Literary Supplement. Openly gay, she lives in Cambridge with her partner filmmaker Sarah Wood.

In 2007 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

In 2009, she donated the short story "Last" (previously published in the Manchester Review Online) to Oxfam's "Ox-Tales" project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the Fire collection.

Smith was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to literature.

This is the only YouTube video I could find where Ali Smith talks at all about How to Be Both. It was produced for the 2014 Costa Book Awards for which How to Be Both won in the Novel category.



Ali Smith has written an article in The Guardian, "He looked like the finest man who ever lived," in which she discusses in more depth how Francesco del Cossa's image of March in the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoia served as a jumping-off place for How to Be Both.

The figure of March from the Palazzo Schifanoia

Painting in Fresco

The full March panel from Schifanoia

Painting in Tempera on Wood

Del Cossa's St. Lucy from the National Gallery in London

Musical Accompaniment from Sylvie Vartan

This is the French singer from the 1960s who so intrigued George and H.

Book Discussion Meeting, Saturday October 1, 2016, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

Mislaid by Nell Zink

Virginia Tidewater Region

Biography of Nell Zink (cribbed wholesale from Wikipedia)

Nell Zink  was born in 1964 in California and raised in rural Virginia. She attended Stuart Hall School and the College of William and Mary, where she earned a B.A. in Philosophy. In 1993, while living in West Philadelphia, Zink founded a zine called Animal Review, which ran until 1997 and "featured submissions and interviews with punk musicians about their pets, from King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp writing about his rabbit Beaton Bunnerius Bun, to Jon Langford, of British punk band The Mekons, discussing his loach fish." Zink has worked as a secretary at Colgate-Palmolive, and as a technical writer in Tel Aviv. Zink moved to Germany in May 2000, eventually earning a PhD in Media Studies from the University of Tübingen. She worked as a contributor for the daily newspaper in Tübingen, Schwäbisches Tagblatt, and later as a translator for Zeitenspiegel agency.

Zink has been married twice. On May 8, 1990, she married Benjamin Alexander Burck in a "very simple civil ceremony" at the Henrico County Courthouse in Richmond, Virginia. She later married the Israeli composer and poet Zohar Eitan.

After fifteen years spent writing fiction exclusively for a single pen pal, the Israeli postmodernist Avner Shats, Zink caught the attention of Jonathan Franzen with a "brazen" letter promoting the work of the German ornithologist Martin Schneider-Jacoby. The two writers began a correspondence, and Franzen was surprised to learn that Zink had no published literary work. Zink began to create work for Franzen.

In early 2012, Zink sent Franzen her collected manuscripts. Franzen tried unsuccessfully to interest publishers in her work. It was Franzen's agent who finally negotiated a six-figure publishing deal for Zink's Mislaid. Meanwhile, The Wallcreeper, "about a bird-loving American couple that moves to Europe and becomes, basically, eco-terrorists" (Keith Gessen), was published independently in the United States in 2014. Her third novel, Nicotine, is due out next month.

In the video below, Nell Zink discusses The Wallcreeper and Mislaid for a French television program. The interview is in English.

Only Tangentially Related

While researching material related to Mislaid for this blog, I heard Nell Zink say she grew up in "Tidewater Virginia." Apparently, this is not a town, but a region (which also includes parts of Maryland and North Carolina). My search also turned up this video of a sales pitch from an older Virginia gentleman, which is highlighted as an example of the Virginia Tidewater accent. I recognize this accent from my high school Home-Ec teacher, who was from Virginia. Note only that the accent is "non-rhotic," which means that r's are pronounced before but not after vowels, as is common for most southern accents, but "ou" is pronounced as "oo" as in some Canadian accents. This is what I remember as being most distinctive about my teacher's accent. Apparently, this accent is dying out. Embedding has been disabled for this video, so you'll have to click on the link if you're curious. Please note that this video is used simply as an example of the Virginia Tidewater accent, and no endorsement of buying swampland is implied.

Book Discussion, Saturday, September 10, 2016, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

Meet the Author

Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954. His family moved to England in 1960 when his father was invited to be a research fellow at the National Institute of Oceanography. This assignment was only supposed to be for a couple of years but kept getting extended, and Ishiguro didn't return to Japan at all until 30 years later. He attended a grammar school for boys in Surrey, the University of Kent in Canterbury, and a postgraduate creative writing course at the University of East Anglia. While attending university, Ishiguro worked as a social worker in Glasgow, and then after graduating in London. He is married to a social worker, Lorna, and they have a daughter, Naomi.

In 1982, after publication of his first novel, A Pale View of  Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro was named one of the "20 Best of Young British Writers" by Granta. He has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction four times, and his third novel, The Remains of the Day, won that prize for 1989. The Readers Roundtable has featured two of Ishiguro's books, The Remains of the Day in 1997, the second book ever read by the Readers Roundtable, and Never Let Me Go in 2007, one of the first books I read after joining the group. Both of these novels were made into movies.

In a conversation on a talk show from Toronto, Kazuo Ishiguro talks about his latest novel, The Buried Giant, his first novel in ten years.



Part 2 of this interview is also available on YouTube, as is a video interview conducted by The Wall Street Journal. If you have time, follow the links for more info. Of particular interest, in the WSJ interview, Ishiguro talks about the spare English dialect that he came up with for the characters in The Buried Giant.

Themes and Questions

I was going to do a lot of research about the post-Arthurian setting of the novel, as well as the themes and questions raised in The Buried Giant, but the more I read the more questions I had, so I'm just going to highlight some of the major topics we might want to talk about.

Memory and Forgetting

Modern research has indicated that forgetting is a necessary part of remembering, getting rid of conflicting memories in order to organize old memories and form new ones.  It is even suggested that you can intentionally dump unhappy memories. But should you? How can you dump unhappy memories without destroying associated good memories? How can you learn from your mistakes if you're always erasing them from memory?

How does this work in a marriage or a family? Among your family and friends, do you ever find yourself saying, like Beatrice, "If that's how you've remembered it, (insert name), let it be the way it was." How does it work in a community? Are the residents of Axl and Beatrice's community really forgetful, or do they just have different memory priorities than Axl and Beatrice? Is it possible that humans have done things so horrible that even God wants to forget about them?

What does Querig, the dragon, represent? By the end of the book, do you believe that it was the mist from her that was really causing the widespread forgetfulness? Who wanted to kill her and who wanted to keep her alive and why? Do you find the use of mythical creatures as an explanation for real-world phenomena jarring or does it fit in with the spirit of the age it represents?

The Legend of King Arthur

The first thing you find out when researching "the real King Arthur," is that there very likely was no such person. No mention of him is found in any historical chronicle until a single line in a history from 830 A.D. The legend doesn't appear in anything resembling its current form until 200 years after that, and it has been told and retold and reworked constantly from that time, its form depending on the sensibilities of the people doing the retelling. In some of the Arthur stories, Sir Gawain appears as the oldest male relative (nephew) of Arthur and therefore his heir-apparent. What is Sir Gawain heir to in The Buried Giant? How well does he uphold the tradition of Camelot?

The story of King Arthur's court, as it first appears in the middle ages, has become a story of distinctly medieval character and contains many anachronisms, in particular the code of chivalry, which didn't exist in the time that the story of Arthur purports to represent. By the time the tradition reached the current era, though, a medieval person would have a hard time recognizing their own era as it had been transformed through the retelling over the ages. In a BBC series available on YouTube, Terry Jones of Monty Python, a Medieval History major at Oxford before his Python incarnation, explains what are the myths about the middle ages and what is the historical reality.

Critical Opinions

I don't read reviews of books until after I've finished the book, in order to avoid spoilers, so if you feel the same way, avoid reading these until after you've finished The Buried Giant.

Loved it: Tom Holland, a historian, writing in The Guardian.

Admired it Greatly but Didn't Love it: Fantasy writer Neil Gaiman in The New York Times.

Thought It a Failure: Book critic James Wood at The New Yorker.

Book Discussion, Saturday, August 6, 2016, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Who is Elena Ferrante?

In one respect, my task this month was a lot easier than in previous months. I didn't have to trawl the internet looking up biographical information about Elena Ferrante. It turns out that "Elena Ferrante" is the pseudonym of a writer who has guarded his/her identity successfully and carefully in spite of wide success in Italy and abroad. In a way, though, that made my task more complicated, because volumes have been written about who this mystery writer might be.

As an intro, here's a video of a woman with a pleasant British accent talking about Elena Ferrante as a writer.



Ferrante has permitted some interviews (via email). I am linking to one from The New Yorker and to a two-part interview from Vanity Fair, part 1 and part 2. There also seems to be more controversy online about the covers for the English translations of Ferrante's Neapolitan novels as there is about the author's real identity. The crux of the controversy is: Why do such serious novels have covers that resemble those of mass-market romance novels? Here is an example of a typical article from Quartz, a business magazine published by Atlantic Media.

Before her four Neapolitan novels, of which My Brilliant Friend is the first, Ferrante wrote two other novels, "Troublesome Love," and "Days of Abandonment," which have been made into movies (in Italian, of course).

Benvenuti a Napoli

The rough neighborhood in Naples where the fictional Elena grows up is as strong an element of the story as the individual characters. The city of Naples was founded  by around 470 B.C. by the Greeks, and it has been under the dominion, variously, of the Romans, French, Spanish, Austrians, in addition to the Italians. It's historic center is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Even the schlocky tourist-trap kinds of districts,  with their narrow cobblestone alleys, shops and stalls at street level, and living quarters (with balconies) above, are thought to be the closest living representation of what an ancient Roman city looked like.

Apparently, New Year's fireworks are still a big deal in Naples. Keep in mind that this is just in a residential district and not any kind of official display.



As in all of Italy, food is an important part of social life in Naples. In My Brilliant Friend, Elena and her friends are constantly going to the local pizzeria. In fact, the oldest known pizzeria in the world is in Naples.

Antica Pizzeria Port'Alba, Founded in 1830

In case you're interested, here's how Neapolitan pizza is made. All you need is a wood-fired oven that gets up to 800+ degrees.



For a little atmosphere, listen to Neapolitan-style music as performed by artists from all over the world.



Naples has it's own dialect, Napulitano, which Ferrante refers to often in My Brilliant Friend. For an idea of how it differs from standard Italian, the table in the middle of this Wikipedia page has the Lord's Prayer in a couple of variants of Neapolitan, a couple of variants of Sicilian, standard Italian, and Latin. You may have wondered if Ferrante actually writes in dialect when a character is speaking in dialect. As Ann Goldstein, Ferrante's one and only English translator explains in the video below, the answer is no.

Michele Zagaria, boss of the Casalesi Clan, arrested in 2011

Naples even has it's own crime mob, the Camorra, as represented by Don Achille in My Brilliant Friend. The Camorra is as old, if not older than the Sicilian Mafia, and more powerful in Europe. It is a much more clannish and horizontally structured organization than the more vertically integrated and hierarchical Mafia. In looking for videos on YouTube, most of them were too gruesome for my taste, but here's a pretty good story told in Vanity Fair.

Book Discussion, Saturday, July 9, 2016, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald

Helen and Mable

Helen MacDonald was born in Chertsey, Surrey, England in 1970. She received a BA in English Literature from New Hall, University of Cambridge, in 1993. From 1995-1999, she worked in falcon conservation, including at breeding projects in Wales and apparently also in Saudi Arabia. In 1999, she received a MPhil in the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, and between 2000 and when the book begins in 2007, she worked variously as a freelance writer, poet, College Research Fellow and a teacher.

Helen and her father

H is for Hawk is more than a book about falconry, however. MacDonald's sudden passion for getting and training a goshawk was triggered by the death of her beloved father, press photographer Alasdair MacDonald in 2007. H is for Hawk is as much about loss, grieving, and humanity as it is about training a hawk. It also contains a mini-biography of T.H. White.

In 2014, Helen MacDonald was awarded the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction for H is for Hawk.

More about Hawks and Falconry

 To help you with your raptor identification, here's a silhouette chart. Unfortunately, it doesn't contain a goshawk silhouette.

For additional raptor identification help, here's a short slide show.



For help with training your falcon, here's a list of books on the topic available at the San Leandro Library.

1. Falconry today by Samson, Jack, Publication Date 1976, Call Number 799.23 SAM
    
2. Falconry and hawking byGlasier, Phillip, Publication Date 1998,Call Number 799.232 GLASIER
    
3. Falcons and falconry by Illingworth, Frank, Publication Date 1969, Call Number 799.23 ILL
    
4. Falconry : the essential guide by Wright, Steve, Publication Date 2006, Call Number 799.232 WRIGHT
    
5. A rage for falcons by Bodio, Stephen, Publication Date 1984, Call Number 799.23 BODIO
    
6. The goshawk by White, T. H. (Terence Hanbury), Publication Date 1951, Call Number 799.23 WHI
    
7. Falcon fever : a falconer in the twenty-first century by Gallagher, Tim, Publication Date 2008, Call Number 799.232 GALLAGHER

Book Discussion Group, Saturday, June 4, 2016, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

According to Sue Monk Kidd's official biography, she was born and raised in Sylvester Georgia [in 1948], graduated from Texas Christian University in 1970 and later took creative writing courses at Emory University and Anderson College, as well as studying at Sewanee, Bread Loaf, and other writers conferences. Kidd's earlier published work was mainly essays about her journey from evangelical Christianity to feminist theology.  When she was in her 40s, she began writing fiction, winning the South Carolina Fellowship in Literature and the 1996 Poets & Writers Exchange Program in Fiction. Her short stories appeared in TriQuarterly, Nimrod, and other literary journals and received a Katherine Anne Porter award and citations in Best American Short Stories’ 100 Distinguished Stories. Her first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, spent more than 2½ years on the New York Times bestseller list, sold more than 6 million copies in the U.S. and 8 million copies worldwide, received many awards, and was made into a movie in 2008.

Kidd’s second novel, The Mermaid Chair, has sold well over a million copies since its publication by Viking in 2005, reaching #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and remaining on the hardcover and paperback lists for nine months, also nominated for and receiving awards, and made into a television movie by Lifetime. The Invention of Wings, Kidd’s third novel was published January 7, 2014 by Viking to wide critical acclaim. It debuted on the New York Times bestseller list at #1 and remained on the hardcover fiction list for over six months. It has sold over a million copies and been translated into 20 languages thus far. The winner of several literary awards, including the SIBA Book Award, the novel was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0.

Kidd serves on the Writers Council for Poets & Writers, Inc.  She lives in Southwest Florida with her husband, Sandy.

Sue Monk Kidd discusses The Invention of Wings at the Florida Book Awards:

 

The History Behind the Historical Fiction

The Grimke Sisters

Sarah Moore Grimke

Angelina Emily Grimke

The story of the abolitionist, feminist Grimke sisters, as told in The Invention of Wings is actually fairly close to the historical record, although Kidd admits to having tweaked the timeline somewhat. The character of Hetty (Handful) was based upon a real-life Hetty who was given to Sarah, as in the story, but the real-life Hetty actually died shortly after being given to Sarah, so the character in the book is entirely fictional.

One interesting connected story that was not referred to in the book is that one of their brothers had three mix-raced sons, and after that brother's death, the sisters brought their brother's sons up north to receive an education.

Denmark Vesey

The freed slave, Denmark Vesey, was a real historic character, born in the Virgin Islands around 1767, he was brought to Charleston by his master, a sea captain, won $1500 in a lottery, and used his winnings to purchase his freedom and that of his first wife and their children. The rebellion planned by Vesey and described in the book, was the most ambitious of the planned slave rebellions in its scope. It was inspired by the revolution in Haiti in 1791 and scheduled to take place on Bastille Day (July 14) 1822, though the plan was betrayed before it could be put into action.

Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Charleston

The congregation of African American freedmen and slaves that Handful attended in The Invention of Wings was most likely based on Emanuel AME Church, a congregation that Denmark Vesey helped to found. The church building housing the congregation was burned down in 1822 after Vesey's rebellion. The congregation rebuilt the church for a while, but was outlawed in 1834 and forced to meet in secret. After the Civil War, the church building was rebuilt (picture at left) with help in part from Robert Vesey, one of Denmark Vesey's sons. That building was destroyed by an earthquake in 1886 and rebuilt on its present site in 1891. The congregation sadly was thrust into the limelight again on June 17, 2105, when a racist young white man, Dylan Roof, entered the church on a pretext of joining evening prayer services and then proceeded to shoot and kill nine members of the congregation.

Stories Told in Pictures

Sue Monk Kidd states that in creating the character Charlotte and her story quilt, she was inspired by the Bible quilts of Harriet Powers, an African American folk artist from rural Georgia, born a slave in 1837. Harriet Powers technique was influenced by the appliqué style of the Fon people of what is now the country of Benin, and Kidd created Charlotte as a descendant of the Fon. Here is an example of Fon  appliqué from Benin.

This appliqué also reminds me of the Royal Palace in Abomey, Benin. The walls of the palace are decorated with bas-relief sculptures of sun-baked clay that tell the stories of the Fon kings who lived in the palace at the height of their people's power.

 

Book Discussion Group, Saturday, May 7, 2016, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

From Hanna Kent's biography at her official website:

Hannah Kent is a Melbourne-based writer, born in Adelaide in 1985. Her first novel, Burial Rites, has been translated into over twenty languages and was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize) and the Guardian First Book Award. It won the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, the Indie Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year and the Victorian Premier's People's Choice Award, and has most recently been longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Hannah is also the co-founder and publishing director of Australian literary journal Kill Your Darlings. She is currently writing her second novel. 

In the following video, Hannah Kent tells how Burial Rites grew out of her experiences as an exchange student in Iceland.

Background Information on Icelandic History and Language

Follow this link to a timeline of Icelandic history, which lends some insight into the tangle of overlapping jurisdictions and the necessity to quarter Agnes Magnúsdóttir at Jón Jónsson's farm while an official determination was made as to who was going to execute her and how.

There was a brief discussion of the Icelandic alphabet and pronunciation at the beginning of the book, at least in the hardcover version. Here is a link to a page on the Icelandic language that provides a more detailed

A Story of Cold, Dark, Long Winters and Isolation

Shoreline at Illugastaðir

This would be the area of the north Icelandic coast near where Natan Ketilsson's farm was located.

Sod construction on Icelandic farm

Row of sod-constructed buildings in winter

Typical Icelandic badstofa (communal sleeping quarters)

Farm families were pretty much confined to quarters during the height of the Icelandic winter.

Agnes Magnúsdóttir?

This is a photo floating around the internet which purports to be Agnes Magnúsdóttir, but I cannot find any verification of that.

The site where Agnes Magnúsdóttir and Friðrik Sigurðsson were beheaded

Grave marker of Friðrik Sigurðsson and Agnes Magnúsdóttir

Agnes and Friðrik were originally buried in an unmarked grave, but they were later re-interred, and this grave marker was placed.

Book Discussion Meeting, Saturday April 2, 2016, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore

Wes Moore (L) and Wes Moore (R)

Two boys named "Wes Moore" were born in Baltimore within  a year of each other. One would go on to work for the State Department; the other would wind up in prison for life, convicted of murder.

The author Wes Moore's story is covered in detail in The Other Wes Moore up until he is a graduate of Valley Forge Military Academy and on the point of becoming a college student and a military officer. His website notes that he went on to graduate as a Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins university in 2001 and then went on to become a Rhodes Scholar  studying International Relations at Oxford University.

After college, Wes Moore completed his military service, serving as a paratrooper and a captain in the army. He did a combat tour in Afghanistan. He talks about his military experience in the TED Talk video below.



After completing his military service, Wes Moore "then served as a White House fel­low to Sec­re­tary of State Con­deleezza Rice. He serves on the board of the Iraq Afghanistan Vet­er­ans of Amer­ica (IAVA), The Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity, and founded an orga­ni­za­tion called STAND! that works with Bal­ti­more youth involved in the crim­i­nal jus­tice system."

According to Wes Moore's website, a portion of the proceeds from The Other Wes Moore go to City Year, an education-oriented volunteer project for young adults from ages 17-24, and the US Dream Academy, an after-school and mentoring program for at-risk youngsters, especially the children of incarcerated parents.

Book Discussion Meeting, Saturday, March 5, 2016, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

 

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, The Big Read selection for 2016

In Robert McCrum's 2014 article on The Maltese Falcon for a series by The Guardian on the 100 all-time best crime fiction books, he quotes Raymond Chandler, creator of the Philip Marlowe detective series:

...“He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.” He also gave his characters a distinctive language and convincing motivations in a genre that had grown stereotyped, flaccid and uninvolving.

The Maltese Falcon is the Hammett novel that jumps from the pages of its genre and into literature. It’s the book that introduces Sam Spade, the private detective who seduced a generation of readers, leading directly to Philip Marlowe. Dorothy Parker, never a pushover, confessed herself “in a daze of love” such as she had not known in literature “since I encountered Sir Lancelot” and claimed to have read the novel some 30 or 40 times.  

Perhaps The Maltese Falcon is most widely known through the 1941 classic movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor, but there were two prior movie incarnations of the novel.

The first movie version of The Maltese Falcon was filmed in 1931 and is somewhat racier due to having been made prior to the Hayes Code, which regulated "morality" in movies. Some critics have rated this movie as equal, if not superior, to the familiar 1941 version.

The second movie version of The Maltese Falcon was made in 1936, starring Bette Davis, and renamed "Satan Met a Lady," and according to critics, sometimes seems as much a comedy as a crime story.

I was able to locate a short documentary about the life of Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon, on YouTube.



On line, I also found a memoir of Dashiell Hammett by his long-time friend and companion, author and playwright Lillian Hellman, from the November 25, 1965 issue of The New York Review of Books.

Book Discussion Meeting, Saturday, February 6, 2016, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell

Paraphrased from Wikipedia:

Daniel Woodrell was born March 4, 1953, in Springfield, Missouri. He grew up in Missouri and dropped out of high school to join the Marines. Later he earned a BA from the University of Kansas and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

He lives in West Plains, Missouri, in the Ozarks (AKA "West Table, Missouri, in his novels), and is married to the novelist Katie Estill
,
Woodrell has set most of his eight novels in the Missouri Ozarks, a landscape which he knew from childhood. He has created novels based on crime, a style he termed "country noir", a phrase which has been adopted by commentators on his work.

In addition to finding readers for his fiction, Woodrell has had two novels adapted for films. Woodrell's second novel, Woe to Live On (1987), was adapted for the 1999 film Ride with the Devil, directed by Ang Lee.

The more recent Winter's Bone (2006) was adapted by writer and director Debra Granik for a film of the same title, released commercially in June 2010 after winning two awards at the Sundance Film Festival, including the Grand Jury Prize for a dramatic film.Several critics called it one of the best films of the year and an American classic, and it received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.

In the interview video below, Daniel Woodrell talks briefly about The Maid's Version and about drawing inspiration for his writing from the people and environs of the Missouri Ozarks.



In the above  interview, Woodrell mentions that the West Table dance hall explosion of 1929 was based on a real dance hall explosion, which took place in West Plains in 1928 and continues to be remembered and memorialized to this day. There are also numerous websites dedicated to keeping the memory of the dead alive. One of the most informative is an archival page from Howell County with newspaper articles of the day chronicling the event. A nonfiction history has also been written by Lin Waterhouse, and she has set up a Facebook page about  her book and about remembering the dead.

Late Post this Month

Due to unforeseen circumstances, posting about this month's book, The Maid's Version, by Daniel Woodrell, will be late this month, but I should have some material up by Friday afternoon (February 5) and hope to see you all on Saturday.

Book Discussion Meeting, Saturday, January 9, 2016, San Leandro Main Library, 2:00 PM

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Born in 1959, Bryan Stevenson grew up in Milton, Delaware, and attended Eastern University (Pennsylvania) and Harvard Law School. In Just Mercy, he tells about his working life, spent mostly in the American South, helping indigent people, especially African American and other minority people already incarcerated or facing trial, to get the kind of legal representation that they are so often denied. He went on to found the Equal Justice Initiative, In the video below, he gives a TED talk about his work This talk raised more than $1 million to fund a campaign to stop the practice of trying and sentencing children as adults.



On Bryan Stevenson's website, you can find a page with pictures and stories of some of the people he mentioned in his book, including Walter McMillan, the man whose unjust trial and imprisonment were at the heart of the story of Just Mercy.

Walter McMillan on the day of his release

Criminal Justice Reform as Hot Topic in Popular Culture

The latest Netflix streaming video binge-watch for the past few weeks has been "Making a Murder," about a man, Steven Avery, who was wrongfully convicted of rape, freed, and right after he filed a wrongful imprisonment lawsuit, was rearrested and charged with the murder of a woman who disappeared while on her way to see him. The Netflix series raises questions about Avery's second conviction. Below is the trailer.



Some of the best consciousness-raising commentary in the past few years has come from British-born comedian, John Oliver, formerly of "The Daily Show" now with his own show, "Last Week Tonight" on HBO. Oliver has used his show as a platform to attack many of the inequities of the American justice system. Below are four segments from just the last six months, attacking serious issues using humor. (Warning, because Oliver is a Brit and his show in on HBO, the outraged analogies can get more than colorful from time to time, especially considering the emotional topics under consideration).

Bail


Public Defenders


Mandatory Minimums


Prisoner Reentry


Here are a couple of older but relevant videos.

Municipal Violations


Elected Judges