Dianaworld: An Obsession by Edward White
The 1990s was the decade of tabloid queens, blonde and doomed, despised and beloved in equal measure. To wait in line at the grocery store was to be besieged with a chronicle of the tragedies, disasters, scandals, and dietary minutiae of these women’s lives, dissected for public consumption alongside the impulse-purchase bait of Twix bars and Mentos. Among the reigning superstars of the tabloid universe, Diana Spencer, better known as Princess Di, was true royalty. Even before her death in 1997, in the car accident that resulted when her driver lost control while speeding in flight from the paparazzi who hounded her everywhere, Diana was the stuff of legend, a global cultural phenomenon. But since nothing elevates a woman’s status quite like a sudden, sensational, untimely demise, with her death, the cult of Princess Di mounted to unprecedented levels of rabid devotion. As the “People’s Princess,” Diana has been exalted as a friend to the common man and a champion of human rights, as blessed mother, fashion icon, protectress of the vulnerable, a troubled soul and camp idol. Her followers have even rallied for the ill-fated Princess’s canonization to sainthood. It is this mutability, as biographer Edward White writes in Dianaworld, that makes Diana’s celebrity so singular. Both in life and in her long afterlife, she has been everything to everyone, the landing site for an enormous multiplicity of cultural meanings, fantasies, conspiracy theories, and fascinations. White’s book is not a traditional biography, its aim not to dredge the “Real Diana” up and out from the welter of diverse – and often contradictory – roles she has played in the public imagination. Instead, Dianaworld is a panoramic guide to Diana Mania itself––easily the single leading cause of anglophilia since the Beatles.
For those intrigued by the cult of (female) celebrity, the Royal Family, ‘90s nostalgia, and the tribulations of modern-day sainthood.
Intraterrestrials: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth by Karen Lloyd
The Mole People is a 1956 sci-fi horror film about the discovery of a society of albino Sumerians, the last survivors of an apocalyptic Mesopotamian flood, who have been living underground for millennia. To harvest the mushrooms that provide the core of their necessarily limited subterranean diet, the albino elite maintains a population of hunchbacked, goggle-eyed humanoid mutants in chattel slavery. Though the enslaved mutants are called “mole people,” they do not look particularly like moles; apart from their unwieldy clawed paw-hands, they have a far more reptilian mien. It is with mixed feelings that I must report that Intraterrestrials in no way concerns mole people coerced to pluck fungi within the chasms of a hollow earth. Author Karen Lloyd is a biologist – a microbial biogeochemist, to be exact – and so her focus is on less fictional, but no less alien, subsurface denizens. Deep beneath the soil, at the bottom of the ocean, inside Andean volcanoes, and encased within the arctic ice reside a plethora of single-celled microorganisms, many of whom have only recently been identified. These creatures are hardcore extremists: some live in boiling water, others in pure acid, others still in bleach. They can live for thousands of years without seeming alive at all. And as Lloyd effuses in her infectiously enthusiastic prose, these tiny creatures have much to teach us about the nature of life, from how it came into being here on earth, to how it might develop on other planets. Although Intraterrestrials reads like an adventurer’s travelogue, following Lloyd from one far-flung realm to the next as she quests after her microbial quarry, for all the excitement, the book compromises none of its scientific seriousness. You’ll be so enthralled, you won’t even miss the mole people.
For fans of weird nature, microbes, high-octane popular science, Robert Macfarlane’s Underland: A Deep Time Journey, and not-so-hollow earth theories.
Twentieth Century Ghosts is a great selection of short stories, including the one that was adapted into the film Black Phone.
My favorite short story so far has been You Will Hear The Locust Sing which draws inspirations from Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, involving a young man’s transformation into a Locust due to living near an atomic bomb site.
-Samantha, Development Director
The Lost Dresses of Italy is a lovely historical fiction focusing on Victorian poet Christina Rossetti and her family. It’s an immersive Italian setting and I’m learning about the Pre-Raphaelites in a very entertaining way.
-Gia, Children’s Room
April is Poetry Month, and to celebrate, I humbly offer for your consideration two recently published poetry collections from contemporary poets. When was the last time you read a book of poems? Who reads poetry nowadays, anyway? My thinking is, perhaps we should. Poetry stirs my mind to soften, to move from thought to thought with greater fluidity and heightened curiosity, a more generous receptivity to the subtler whisperings of things. I suspect such a thaw could be good for us.
Primordial by Mai Der Vang
Mai Der Vang’s previous collection, Yellow Rain (2021), for which she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, stitched together declassified government documents, victim testimony, and medical reports along strands of spare, bracing verse to construct an incisive poetic indictment of the chemical weapons attacks reported by the Hmong people – and denied by the U.S. government – in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. With Primordial, Vang returns to the war-scarred forest of Vietnam and Laos, this time to document the plight of another of its inhabitants: the critically endangered saola. A goat-sized ungulate resembling an antelope but in fact more closely related to cows, the saola is elusive enough that the last-known photograph of the creature was taken in 2013. Because of its rarity as well as its graceful, solitary nature, it is also known as the Asian unicorn. Treading carefully to avoid exploiting the saola as a metaphor in the manufacture of human-centered meaning, Vang places the animal’s precipitous decline to the edge of extinction alongside the cultural precarity of the Hmong, tracing these dual dispossessions to reveal how the fates human and nonhuman victims of military violence interweave. That Vang is herself the daughter of Hmong refugees, and was in the midst of a difficult pregnancy while writing Primordial, lends her poems a special force and poignancy as meditations on mothering in an age of collective trauma, the solemn beauty of nursing life in a world within which so much has been lost and goes on disappearing.
The Opening Ritual by G.C. Waldrep
It doesn’t exactly sound like high praise to say that a poem tastes like dust, but if you can imagine the how the dust in some silent, long-disused country church sparkles in muted polychrome as the day’s first light filters through it, and how that dust contains the shed cells of all the creatures who have stood within this space, how it cycled through their lungs; if you can imagine how the dust has trembled with the voices of these creatures, then the poems in G.C. Waldrep’s The Opening Ritual taste like dust, and what I mean is that a tincture of the sacred sifts through them. And if we are speaking of the sacred, then it’s worth noting that many of these poems were written during Waldrep’s tenure as Artist-in-Residence at Acadia. You can tell he was there: they are poems of yearning for crags, lichen, loam, ice. Addressing a bracket fungus, Waldrep asks, “Is it possible / that your experience / is a form of joy? / Or a word for joy, / in an unspeakable / tongue.” Waldrep is listening for the answers, and I want to know them, too.
In the spring, the staff here at PFL turn our thoughts to reading (which is maybe not surprising, because it’s at the top of most of our minds all year round). Check out the list below to see the titles we are turning to as we brave late spring storms and look for flowers peeking through.
“Listening again.”
Jamie Attenberg
We Could Be Rats by Emily Austin
“So well written!”
The Ragpicker King by Cassandra Clare
“We just picked up our copy of and we’re fighting over who gets to read it first!”
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
“A great audiobook and fun addition to the Hunger Games series.”
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
John Muir: To the Heart of Solitude written and illustrated by Lomig
The Favorites by Layne Fargo
“One of the most propulsive audiobooks (with a talented full-cast) that I’ve ever listened to! Highly recommend.”
Emily Fridlund
Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff
“I’m a latecomer to the Groff fan club, but now that I’ve arrived, I am here to stay.”
Feminism Against Progress by Mary Harrington
“A snappy polemic calling into question the liberatory potentials of technology.”
Twentieth Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
Dead Money by Jakob Kerr
“An entertaining ride.”
Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
“April PFL Book Group pick!”
The Lost Dresses of Italy by M.A. McLaughlin
Twist by Colum McCann
“A literary and philosophical thriller with a fascinating setting.”
Rabbit Island, by Elvira Navarro
“Fever-dream short fiction from a contemporary Spanish surrealist writer, heavy on both strangeness and social conscience.”
The Antidote by Karen Russell
“Excellent!”
A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America by Richard Slotkin
“April PFL Book Group pick!”
Yellow Rain by Mai Der Vang
“Poet’s reckoning with the chemical weapons testing inflicted on the Hmong people by the US government during the Vietnam War.”
High school senior Lemon Ziegler is in a tough spot; she desperately wants to leave her small Pennsylvania town to go to college, but she can’t because she’s been chosen to continue her family’s secret business of faking lake monster (Old Lucy) sightings. Loyal to cantankerous Pappap, and aware that the town’s economy might collapse if Old Lucy ceases to appear, she resigns herself to a life of periodically donning the Old Lucy costume and appearing in Lake Lokakoma. When animals and people start going missing, Lemon knows for certain that it’s not the work of Old Lucy and vows to find out what’s really happening with the help of her best friends, Troy and Darrin, and Amelia, a mysterious gossip who’s new to Devil’s Elbow. This is a fun creature feature with a little romance in the mix thanks to Troy and Lemon’s slow realization that they are far more than friends. The characters are likable, and the monster’s threat to the town, its residents, and Lemon’s friends and family keep the book moving quickly. Wolverton pulls the ‘Jaws’ tactic of hiding the monster until it must be revealed which compliments an on-going conspiracy theory theme. A Misfortune of Lake Monsters will especially appeal to fans of cryptids, Roger Corman, and ‘Stranger Things’.
While discussing family history with Miss Mary, I learned that her grandmother Irene had diaries from her younger years, including during WW2, and she had turned some of them into a book several years ago. Based on what she had told me about this fascinating woman, I knew I needed to read this book.
Fire Burn begins in 1939 in Latvia, Irene’s home country, and takes readers on a journey with Irene from an idyllic life where the war seems to have no existence, to the extreme hardships and constant fear that soon become daily life. Readers get a glimpse of what Irene, and the people in her life, experienced over the course of the war. The book is organized in four sections – Latvia as she knew it before the war came to her home country, Latvia under Soviet rule, life in Germany during the war (where she moved to escape the Red Terror of Soviet rule), and life in Germany after the Allies arrived and the war ended.
Most of what I’ve read, seen or heard about WW2 usually revolves around the politics or military of the war. Reading about the experiences of this woman and her family, friends, and coworkers, provides a very different perspective. Readers see how Irene’s life changes and how she deals with the various challenges – a difficult relationship with her mother, sexism at work, the difficulties in finding food, the constant fear of bombings, her grief and anger at the destruction of both life and culture, her mental and physical reactions to her experiences, and the humor she and others found in some situations. Throughout the book, readers see Irene’s intelligent and spirited personality as she makes difficult choices and finds ways to survive each day.
While this can be a difficult read, it is an important contribution to our historical knowledge. Irene did not know the full scope of the war at the time she was experiencing it, though she does reference rumors of horrors beyond what she already knew about. Through her memoir we have a better idea of how terrible, chaotic, and confusing the war was for the average person who was simply trying to survive each day without fully understanding why the war was even happening, or the politics and military strategies that were in play.
Fire Burn is available in the Minerva catalog in two libraries. After reading it you’ll likely want to know more about this amazing woman, so be sure to stop by the Children’s Room to chat with Miss Mary about her fascinating grandmother (I have her permission to suggest this :-).
-Karen, Children’s Room
Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack by Willa Hammitt Brown
Legend has it that the giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan was born in Michigan, or Minnesota, or Wisconsin, or perhaps even our very own Bangor, Maine. Determining the birthplace of a mythical entity can be a tricky business, needless to say. Wherever he may hail from, since 1959 the axe-wielding, buffalo-check-sporting, ox-befriending folk hero has made Bangor his home, in the form of a 31-foot-tall fiberglass likeness. Although Bangor’s specimen is no longer the tallest of the Bunyan statues – that honor belongs to the 49-foot Klamath, CA Bunyan – having now examined many of these giant lumberjack effigies, I can attest that our homegrown specimen is by far the most deviously leering. If he were to approach me on the street after dark, I would cross to the other side at a speedy clip. According to Willa Hammitt Brown, early public opinion on lumberjacks was similarly trepidatious. As she writes in her new book Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack, lumberjacks have not always been the idealized paragons of rugged but kindhearted, quintessentially American manhood that today roam the wildernesses of our pop-cultural imagination. That image is, for all its retro charm, a nostalgic anachronism. When lumberjacks first arrived on the scene to fell the North Woods of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, they were widely despised as dangerous transients. Brown peels back the cheerful folklore to examine the historical realities of the “jacks,” with a savvy eye trained to the economic, colonial, and class dimensions that shaped both the fact and the fiction of this American icon.
For fans of Americana, cultural studies, folklore, and myth-busting.
Hot Date! Sweet & Savory Recipes Celebrating the Date, from Party Food to Everyday Feasts by Rawaan Alkhatib
Once, in what feels like a different lifetime, long ago and far away, I was dubious of the date. I could not be convinced that it was, in fact, a fruit, and not the egg casing of some alien cockroach. It reminded me of drab items passed off as dessert by health food shops, and the California Raisins figurines with which I avoid eye contact at flea markets, and those conspicuously quasi-fancy appetizers garnering “oohs” and “ahhs” from partygoers during wedding reception scenes in romantic comedy films I would never watch by choice but have had forced upon me by relatives with tastes not at all resembling my own. None of this held much appeal. Then, in my mid-twenties, I put my doubts aside and tried a date. It was like a conversion experience. How could I have been so very, very wrong? Having swallowed my pride I am today a shameless date evangelist, forever promoting the wrinkled, unassuming drupe’s power to improve one’s diet and one’s life. It is in this spirit that I present you with Rawaan Alkhatib’s Hot Date!, a bright and beautifully illustrated love song of a cookbook dedicated to all things dates. Beyond its plethora of recipes for dawn-to-dusk date-centered daily menus, Hot Date! offers a comprehensive review of date lore and date history, date shopping tips and date science. But be warned: you may never want to eat anything else again.
For fans of dates, as well as date skeptics. One day you, too, will join us…
Between Two Sounds is a moving graphic look at experimental composer Arvo Pärt’s musical path from his Estonian childhood to his eventual emigration due to his refusal to change his music to fit the political landscape. The book examines the role musicians played in Estonia’s national identity, while exploring the role religion and philosophy played in Pärt’s personal life. The illustrations are grey-toned and sparse, and adequately convey the bleakness of the mid- twentieth century political environment. They also, impressively, help to translate Pärt’s musical achievements into visual cues, allowing the reader to differentiate between noise and silence. An excellent tribute to the man who gave us Für Alina, a hauntingly beautiful example of his tintinnabuli sound.
-Sarah, Reference
The central character of North Woods is a house; a yellow house in the woods of Western Massachusetts that has been there for centuries. The residents of the house, which at times include Puritan lovers escaping their oppressive community, an orchardist and his insular twin daughters, a runaway slave, a nature painter obsessing over a complicated relationship with a writer, a mountain lion hoarding kills, and a broad host of insects, seeds, and ghosts, come and go, but the house holds steady through the years. If all of this sounds disconnected and hard to piece together, you would be happy to find yourself wrong. The threads of all those lives weave together and intersect in surprising and poignant ways, and Mason deftly transverses disparate periods and voices throughout history in truly fascinating ways.
With a plot reminiscent of the sprawling scope of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and the naturalist heart of Richard Powers’ The Overstory, this book will needle its way into your consciousness and make you think about this history of your own home, family, and place in the natural world. This is my favorite thing I’ve read so far this year.
-Hannah, Program and Outreach Manager
North Woods is one of the February titles of the PFL Book Group.
