the Library Channel

Image by ellenmac11, used under the Creative Commons license.

What would you ordinarily expect to happen when a journalist from the Los Angeles Times walks past a homeless man? Probably very little. But in journalist Steve Lopez’s case, a lot happened. And the events that unfolded from a chance meeting between Lopez and Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a homeless man in L.A.’s Skid Row who possesses both musical talent and mental complications, is the subject of The Soloist.

In the coming months you’re going to be hearing a lot about The Soloist. This year’s book in common is a deeply personal story of an “unlikely” friendship (to borrow the book cover’s word). It is also a piece of commentary that covers such diverse topics as the place of the arts in a society, the role of journalism in informing a population about their world, the issues homeless people face (in L.A., though the same issues appear in other cities as well — the current issue of the News & Review has the following story from a woman who was homeless in Chico), and the most effective methods for treating mental problems in a society’s members. As a result, this book touches upon a whole range of different disciplines — whether you are majoring in journalism, psychology, social work, music, or are just curious about Lopez’s experiences with Nathaniel, this book will touch upon your life and experiences from some angle.

We have The Soloist in the Meriam Library, and the Butte County Public Library also has copies of both the book and the audiobook recording. The DVD of the movie based upon the book, starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jamie Foxx, will be released in August of this year.

Contributed by Aaron Bowen

Image by Geoff Livingston, used under the Creative Commons license.

White, M.D. (2009). Watchmen and philosophy: A Rorschach test. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.

You watched the movie this weekend. Now check out the ideas that went into it. Now in the Meriam Library, Watchmen and philosophy offers insights from different scholars on the philosophical concepts that went into the original graphic novel and then into the film. The chapters in this book examine such questions as how best to exercise checks and balances over those who wield power, whether one can justify murdering millions in order to save billions, or what challenges a superhero faces as s/he tries to live a normal life in public (a topic which, as it turns out, is also discussed in another book, The psychology of superheroes). If you enjoyed the movie or the graphic novel, be sure to check out this new addition to the library!

Contributed by Aaron Bowen

Nolan, M. (2008). Love on the racks: A history of American romance comics. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc.

Picture a scene on a seaside boardwalk, where the morning sun begins to burn the previous night’s fog away. As the grey lifts and gives way to a pale blue, two figures stand a few paces apart, facing each other, gazing into each other’s eyes. They rush together into a deep, prolonged embrace. One says to the other (in a comic book speech bubble) “Oh, darling… I’ve missed you so much!” A box of text just above this scene reads “We hadn’t seen each other in years, but I knew from this moment on, we would be together forever.” A small tag in the lower right of the scene says “The end.”

Ok, I just made all that up. But this scene could end any of the romance comics Michelle Nolan writes about in Love on The Racks, available in the Meriam Library. Written in very readable and clear language, this book traces the history of the romance genre of comic books from its rise in the 1940s to its relative disappearance in the 1970s. As Nolan says,

For the better part of three decades, romance comics were an American institution. They were the first genre of comic books to deal with “real-life” situations instead of flying men and women, impossibly accurate gunfighters, glamorous gangsters, space explorers, jungle heroes and heroines, vampires and zombies, anthropomorphic animals, and the like.

“Real-life,” of course, demands quotes, because the vast majority of these romance stories published in comics were contrived (and often banal) fantasies. They could have happened, but they almost never did. Or if they did develop… real-life love affairs would have been far more complex than most comic book stories could, or would, convey. Romance comics dealt with, at best, unlikely vignettes and circumstances. But that, of course, was part of what made them fun.

Not only is it fascinating to read about the genre itself, but it is also fascinating to see the ties between these comics and American popular sensibilities. As Nolan says, these comics are in many ways the graphic equivalent of romance and pulp novels, which even today (for better or worse), represent a huge area of consumption among contemporary readers. Throughout the book, Nolan also gets into the types of characters that are typically portrayed in this genre of comic – the tall, dark, handsome hero, the lithe heroine, the damsel in distress, the high school sweethearts – and considers the different sociocultural and stereotypical sentiments these characters represent. And yes, she gets into the issues of censorship and freedom of expression in these works.

Drawing from an extensive list of romance comics, Nolan presents a fascinating history of this genre – just in time for Valentines day

Contributed by Aaron Bowen

Satrapi, M. (2003). Persepolis. Paris, France: L’Association.

“I think that the language of comics is universal and international. The feelings can be understood by everyone, no matter which culture they are from. A person laughing or crying means the same thing everywhere in the end,” Marjane Satrapi tells Quantara, a German website promoting cultural dialogue between Western and Middle Eastern countries. And there is plenty of laughing and crying in her graphic novel Persepolis (available here in the Meriam Library).

Part autobiography and part chronicle of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Satrapi presents the transitions that took place in her life as she grew up in Iran in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Drawn with a detailed but cartoonish style, she offers a personal account of how the Revolution affected her, such as being made to wear the veil and cover up any interest she had in Western pop culture, and how it affected her family and friends, some of whom were made political prisoners or sent away to avoid being caught up in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s.

Marjane being interviewed in 2006. Image by GobberGo, used under the Creative Commons license.

As the Quantara article notes,

Satrapi… tells her own story. She does not claim to speak for an entire generation. But the impact of her story is due to the fact that so many Iranians who grew up in Iran in the 70s and 80s can identify with it.

But “Persepolis” has aroused interest and mixed feelings among a readership far wider than just her fellow Iranians. This is because the story is so vivid it allows even outsiders an understanding – if not of the complexity of the events depicted, then at least of the dramatic social and political upheaval in Iran’s recent history.

The novel in fact garnered a wide enough audience that it was made into a movie in 2007, with Sean Penn and Catherine Deneuve lending their voices to different characters. Satrapi’s original art remains the lens through which the movie characters come to life, as may be seen in the film’s posters and stills:

The film has received press in The New York Times and on MSNBC. At the end of the MSNBC article, Satrapi reiterates her goal for both the novel and the movie:

If for one second you can say, “This is a human being just like myself,” this is when my goal is reached. … The use of the humor is something that was very amazing to me. Because to me, humor is the height of understanding. Anywhere in the world we cry for the same reason. We cry because our father is dead, or our mother is sick. We don’t laugh for the same reason. If we laugh together, it’s as if we’ve touched each other’s spirit. We showed this movie in Japan, and people laugh at the same time as the French do, as the Americans do, as the Swiss, as in Germany. … It gives me some hope actually.

Contributed by Aaron Bowen

Tomine, A. (2002). Summer Blonde. Montreal, Canada: Drawn and Quarterly.

If you’re looking for a comic about superheros fighting bad guys, Summer Blonde isn’t for you. But if you would find a collection of stories about real people — some of whom are less than completely likable but all of whom are complex, three-dimensional, and realistic — this is a graphic novel you will appreciate. It is available here in the Meriam Library.

Image by brattletheater, used under the Creative Commons license.

Tomine, pictured above, began publishing his stories under the title Optic Nerve at age 16 in Sacramento. His work was soon picked up by Canadian publisher Drawn and Quarterly, which has since periodically re-released some of his work from Optic Nerve, including Summer Blonde.

Tomine’s stories are haunting. Members of the 20-something crowd will see pieces of themselves in his drawings. As Andrew Arnold writes in Time,

[Tomine] tells stories that feel more like short exposures of ordinary people’s lives, rather than plot-heavy adventures or overt comedy. These stories don’t begin and end so much as fade in and out. Tomine explores nuance of character as revealed by life’s more typical crises: losing a job, having an annoying neighbor or flirting with someone you shouldn’t.

Drawn in black and white with a clear, precise style, Tomine’s art underscores the situations in which he puts his characters, from dimly lit street corners to groups of compatriots around glowing TV screens. Through these views, Tomine presents sometimes joyous, sometimes unnerving, and always powerful vignettes from his characters lives.

Contributed by Aaron Bowen

Hensel, J. (2004). After the Wall: Confessions from an East German Childhood
and the Life the Came Next. New York: Public Affairs.

Where were you when the Berlin Wall fell? How old were you? Do you remember people talking about it?

Jana Hensel was 13 on November 9, 1989, the day the Wall came down. She wrote After the Wall to describe a life in transition, from her life as a young citizen of East Germany to a teenager of a newly reunified Germany. As she puts it,

The Wall fell and left our world utterly confused. We were just becoming teenagers when suddenly everything started spinning around us. We were too young to understand what was happening, and too old not to understand that big changes were in the making (p. 163).

But she refrains from offering a formulaic interpretation of how good or bad life in East Germany was, or how good or bad things have been since then. Instead she offers a straightforward account of the changes she experienced. In so doing she adds new dimension to standard accounts of life in East Germany and later reunified Germany. She writes that

After the Wall, we soon forgot what everyday life in [East Germany] was like, with all its unheroic moments and ordinary days. We repressed our actual experiences and replaced them with a series of strange, larger than life anecdotes that didn’t really have anything to do with what our lives had been like. The fact that we began exchanging such stories ourselves shows how much we had internalized the West German take on our history. We had forgotten how to tell our own life stories in our own way, instead adopting an alien tone and perspective (p. 25).

With stories that are frequently enjoyable, potentially disillusioning, and always enlightening, Hensel reclaims these accounts of life in East Germany from foreign reinterpretations, and offers an account of what life was like after the Wall was torn down.

Contributed by Aaron Bowen

Silva, P.J. (2007). How to write a lot: A practical guide to productive academic writing. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

This is an excellent book, and will be particularly useful for your upcoming paper. And the paper after that. And, in fact, everything you write in college.

How to Write a Lot presents a useful, practical approach to writing. Not that it’s wildly groundbreaking – it’s not. In many ways it states the obvious. But what it does do is pull a clear methodology for writing together – motivating yourself to write, and writing clearly and efficiently. It serves as a one-stop resource for managing this whole process. And it is a short book written in a clear, straightforward, easily understood style. You can read it in a day or two, and then use the strategies it presents to earn back the time you spend reading it by finishing your paper ahead of time.

Paul J. Silva is a psychologist and tends to draw his examples of the writing process from the psychology field, but his approach to writing is easily applied to other fields. Silva also writes for an audience of graduate students and professors, but again, his approach may be applied to undergraduate papers just as easily as to graduate research. In short, for anyone who feels bogged down / hampered / frustrated / etc by the process of writing, this book presents some useful, practical strategies for alleviating that frustration and producing the writing you need to produce.

Contributed by Aaron Bowen

William Gibson has long been one of my favorite authors. Certainly I find him a talented writer, but my favorite aspect of his work is his futurism – his thought on how different technologies affect our social world. He is best known for Neuromancer (1984), a book that saw the first use of the word “cyberspace” and envisioned the Internet six years before the net was released to the general public.

Something of a sequel to Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country weaves three independent stories together – one of a journalist investigating digital art, one of a Chinese-Cuban racketeer who transfers stolen government secrets stored on the hard drives of iPods, and one of a U.S. Intelligence agent tracking the stolen data to find out who is taking it and what it is being used for. These parallel plots are woven together for an original, unexpected conclusion.

While I must say that I find it a bit less engaging than previous Gibson novels, Spook Country is still a fast paced, enjoyable read with a slick post-modern style. Its 84 chapters rarely take more than five or six pages apiece, thus making the book feel like it is constantly being updated – almost like reading a string of blog posts. And while the book touches upon different subjects affecting our contemporary globalized world, the topic I found most interesting was Gibson’s commentary on the loss of privacy that comes with being wired digitally. For example, consider this interaction between the journalist and a character (ridiculously) named Hubertus Bigend:

Her phone rang in her purse. It was still attached to the scrambler. How would that work if it were anyone other than Bigend? She answered. “Hello?”

“Just checking,” said Bigend, and suddenly she didn’t want to tell him about Sarah.

A reaction to her sense of his ubiquity, if not yet actual then potential. Once he was established in your life, he’d be there, in some way no ordinary person, no ordinary boss, eve, could be. Once she accepted him, past a certain point, there was always going to be the possibility of him ringing up to say “Just checking,” before she could even ask who was calling. Did she want that? Could she afford not to?

While the idea that someone could just be in contact at any time for whatever reason is hardly comforting, Gibson is alluding to a real phenomenon that can occur when someone bases a part of his or her life on a digital network. For some this loss of privacy is worth it. Putting details of one’s life on a social network, for example, necessarily sacrifices some privacy, but many people are willing to accept that loss in order to connect to their friends. The extent to which people are willing to sacrifice privacy in a networked environment thus becomes an open question – a question that has served as the topic of such books as Privacy at Risk and World Without Secrets.

Because it is a well crafted, enjoyable read, and because it poses contemporary topics such as digital privacy to its reader, I recommend Spook Country for anyone interested in a novel that reflects real-world issues.

Contributed by Aaron Bowen

Tired of reading so many scholarly journal articles? Does the idea of spending a quiet weekend at home with the latest Stephen King novel appeal to you? If the answer to either of those questions is “yes!” check out the library’s collection of popular books. On the second floor opposite the Copy Center you’ll find an assortment of current fiction and nonfiction, chosen to (hopefully) satisfy the leisure reading interests of students, faculty and staff. Mysteries, literary fiction, historical fiction, and science fiction are all represented. And if you enjoy reading nonfiction, you’ll find that there, too. Read about a California winery in The House of Mondavi: the Rise & Fall of an American Wine Dynasty or get the dish on Princess Di in Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles. Try out a few recipes from Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Cooking or Giada De Laurentiis’ Giada’s Family Dinners. Take a trip to ancient Egypt with Michelle Moran in Nefertiti: A Novel.

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