Hilda C. Landers Library & Archives

American Gods by Neil Gaiman is an absolutely wonderful book that will keep you gripped until the end. It’s strongest point is its wonderful characters, whether they be based off ancient gods or of Gaiman’s own creation. Even characters with nothing more than a few pages of focus get fully fleshed out and feel more real than the characters most books spend chapters trying to establish. On the downside, the book is very long and tends to meander a bit. Still, this is an excellent book and a modern classic.

Availability: USMAI
Submitted by: Kevin Koeser
Rating: Must Read

If your favorite part of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye was Holden Caulfield complaining about phonies then this is the book for you. Franny also likes to complain about phonies, specifically phonies in academia. These are the only works that Salinger that I have read, so I am assuming that everything he writes is focused on phonies. He should really try expanding onto new topics, but I guess he’s dead by now.

Anyway the book is split into two parts. The first part is, as I said, Franny complaining to her college boyfriend about phonies as he rambles on about some paper he wrote. The second part is Zooey taking a bath while talking to his mom, and then talking to Franny about stuff since she is depressed.

If you like Salinger’s style of writing and storytelling then you’ll probably really enjoy Franny and Zooey, but otherwise it’s a little hard to get into.

Availability: SMCM
Review Submitted by: Kenneth Benjes, Lifeguard
Recommendation: Recommended with Reservations

The SMCM Library’s Summer Reading Program will begin on June 1 and  end on August 15, 2011.

The Summer Reading program is open to all members of the SMCM Library community including students, staff, faculty, alumni and residents of the Tri-County area (St. Mary’s, Calvert and Charles.) You can read anything you want as long as a copy is available at the SMCM Library or via USMAI. To get points you must post a review on the blog.

See About Summer Reading for more information.

Thanks to all the readers who posted reviews on our first Summer Reading blog. Don’t forget to pick up your prizes!

I am rarely one for nonfiction travel narratives, but I am always happy to make an exception for Bill Bryson. Notes From a Small Island follows Bryson as he takes one final tour around Great Britain before he moves with his family to his home country of the United States. This book gives us history, culture, and personal anecdotes, both “present” and remembered to make us feel that we are there with him on his trip. But even with his great ability to capture the people and the landscape of wherever he is traveling to, I will read anything by Bryson because I know he will make me laugh out loud. Small Island was no exception. From his nightmare first landlord to the Manchester society for animals to the perils of Scottish Brogue, every point of Bryson’s travels is told with a dry humor that is absolutely irresistible. This is an easy read, and well worth the trip.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Lauren Grey
Rating: Highly Recommended                                                                         

I have found that after a while, Austen’s works show similar characteristics again and again with plots that are often simple enough to make any summary seem quite dull. For instance, Emma follows its heroine as she sets up matches through the town, falls in and out of love herself, until eventually settling with the man she loves most. But even though the plot does not scream adventure, this Austen novel is well worth the read because of the characters.

From Mrs. Elton, the mysterious wife brought to town by the clergyman, to Miss Bates who literally talks for pages, to Mr. Knightly, one of my favorite Austen hero’s, to Emma herself, whose naïvety to the world and blunders would seem off-putting in many, but charming in her, this novel is full of characters that you will fall in love with, or love to hate. Emma’s world at Highbury is brought so much to life, that you really hate to leave the people after the last page.

Availability: SMCM
Review Submitted by: Lauren Grey
Rating: Highly Recommended                                                                         

Although I have not warmed to Alexander McCall Smith’s other fiction series, I relish each new installment in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. In fact, after reading the first few books in the series out of order I purchased all of the books then on the market and read them in order, even rereading the ones I had already completed. I keep them all with the expectation that I’ll want to read them again some day.

The Double Comfort Safari Club follows McCall Smith’s usual framework of unfolding a handful of dilemmas for Precious Ramotswe to resolve with her usual blend of common sense and insight into human nature. Although Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni does not figure prominently in this installment, wicked Violet Sephotho is back and again up to no good. Grace Makutsi (and her talking shoes) finds herself facing a potentially-tragic development regarding her fiance Phuti Radiphuti. The title references a detective agency case where Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi find themselves a bit at odds with nature once they leave Gaborone and travel to a rugged area of Botswana to locate a safari guide.

In this volume, as with all the previous installments, McCall Smith intersperses his story lines with simple observations about the strengths and foibles of humanity and life in general. I suspect that if McCall Smith ever released a “Precious Ramotswe’s Guidebook for Life,” it would be an overnight best-seller.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Mary Hall
Rating: Highly Recommended

Operation Wandering Soul takes place mostly in a Los Angeles hospital. It’s located in a poor section of the city, where most of the patients coming in have no money and were brought in due to injuries received while committing crimes. The main focus is on the pediatrics ward. The doctor is a man named Richard Kraft who takes care of a small group of patients that range from a child born without a face, to a girl who is losing her leg due to a mysterious disease, to a 12-year-old boy aging 3x faster than normal. Dr. Kraft is slowly becoming disenchanted in the world around him. He lived all over the world when he was a child and, to be honest, he hasn’t been happy since he moved to America.

In Dr. Kraft’s opinion, this is a world in which adults do more harm to children than good, including himself. It’s a world which would have been better if children were led away to live by themselves rather than living the lives they have now. Powers emphasizes this point by including moments in history and in stories in which adults harmed children and how they were better off without them. It starts off with the evacuation of all the children in London during WWII where a lot of the children were taking to “safe places”: temporary homes in which they were forced into labor, assaulted, and even beaten. A short chapter by chapter summary of Peter Pan was included to show how peaceful the world might be if there were no adults. He even included the Children’s Crusade and wrote about their unfortunate fate at the hands of the Turks.

The book climaxes when the children of the pediatrics ward want to put on a play. In this play, a pied piper leads all the children from a village away to a better place. All the children, that is, except three: the fast-aging child, the boy without a face, and the girl without a leg. The most emotional part is that all the children involved play themselves.

I recommend this book with reservations because you have to be willing to put effort into this book to understand and enjoy it. You can’t just fly right through without thinking about what you are reading or you will miss key points. I had a hard time finishing it because it was long and it was just overall difficult to read. I may give this book another try later on.

Availability: SMCM
Review Submitted by: Marissa Parlock
Rating: Recommended with Reservations                                                    

With the Old Breed is not only the best of all the war memoirs I’ve read this summer but it’s also the only one that I’ve ever read that belongs in the same league as William Manchester’s Goodbye Darkness. Sledge, who was a mortarman with the 1st Marine Division, is terribly graphic in portraying the reality of combat at Peleliu and Okinawa, where Marines fought in the midst of rotting maggot-infested corpses and atrocities were committed by both sides. But sugar-coating the true nature of those campaigns would have done a disservice to those who fought them.

With the Old Breed is on the required professional reading list issued by the Commandant of the Marine Corps. I was initially puzzled as to why the book, which is revered in the Corps, was on the section of the list recommended for senior enlisted personnel and captains rather than the section recommending books for junior enlisted and lieutenants. I think the answer is because of the book’s focus on leadership in the crucible of combat: those whom Sledge respected (particularly his company commander, Captain Andrew Haldane) and those whom he felt failed their Marines.

I’m intrigued by one observation that Sledge makes about Japanese strategy on Peleliu. He notes repeatedly that Peleliu was where the Japanese, who previously had tried to repel American landings at the waterline, changed their strategy and withdrew to interior defensive positions which forced American troops to carry the fight inland. However, earlier this summer I reviewed a book on the U.S. Army campaign at Biak, New Guinea, where the Japanese commander had withdrawn his troops to defensive positions in ridges and coral caves and turned what was expected to be a several-day campaign into one that lasted about three months. I’m curious as to whether Marine planners were aware of what the U.S. Army units had experienced on Biak only a few months earlier.

Sledge, who became a college professor after he left the Corps, writes well and his observations about humanity and combat seem as timely today as they were in 1944 or in 1981 when the book was first published. Once you finish With the Old Breed, you may also wish to read the sequel, China Marine, detailing the several months that Sledge spent in China disarming Japanese troops after the Japanese surrender. I read China Marine prior to reading With the Old Breed and I wish I had read them in the correct chronological sequence.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Mary Hall
Rating: Highly Recommended                                                                         

Marissa Parlock has won the monthly prize drawing for July.

Submit a review in August to be eligible for the our next drawing. Don’t forget prizes are available for all participants who submit a review between June 1 and August 15.

*** There may only be five days left but it’s not too late to send in a review. ***

1. Submit one review and win a mini puzzle.
2. Submit three reviews and win a set of postcards.
3. Submit five reviews and win a poster from Unshelved.
4. Submit seven reviews and win a refrigerator magnet.
5. Submit 10 reviews and win a bag of library swag.
6. Monthly prize drawings.