Nonfiction Book Reviews

A while ago, Stephanie from Rocket Scientist tagged me to write about my job, and hopefully come up with a list of things that the “average Joe” wouldn’t know about their local library.  Since I have never worked at any other library, and I am not actually a librarian myself (see below), I’m going to list out six things that happen to be true for our library, but I make no promises for any other library. With that in mind, here we go:

1) When we first process a paperback book, we put vinyl on the cover to help protect it.  It is ordinary vinyl (we buy it from a local store, actually) and is normally used to line the bottom of people’s kitchen cabinets.  Clear and strong, we use it to make our paperbacks last longer.  If you’re really rough with your paperbacks, you could easily do this at home to your own books.

2) We put thin metal strips (think roughly the shape and size of spaghetti noodles) in between two pages in the middle of each book.  This security strip is then activated, and the book is put on the shelf.  If someone tries to walk out the front door without checking out first, the strip sets off the security gates.  Most of the time when the gates go off, it’s because the employees at the front desk have simply forgotten to desensitize a book, but either way, the patron has to come back to the desk to get cleared.  Otherwise, we call the police.  Which really isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, promise.

3) Not all library employees are created equal.  There is not a single person working at the circulation desk at my library who has any sort of library degree.  The only education requirement to work at the circ desk at our library is a high school diploma.  The reference desk is a whole other story.  There, two out of the three ladies has a Masters in Library Science, and the third one has a Bachelors, and is working on her Masters.  This is why we send all questions to the reference desk - they’re smarter than we are.

There is a debate in the library world as to whether or not a regular clerk like me should be called a librarian.  I have no library training, and no degree.  It’s like the secretary at the sheriff’s office calling herself a cop because she’s in the office with other cops all day long.  It doesn’t mean she actually knows how to be one. But on the other hand, it’s hard to figure out what to call me if not librarian - circ clerk works, but most people don’t know, off hand, what that means.  So the debate rages on.

4) The bigger a library, the more specialized each position is.  If you’re interested in working at a library, then you’ll want to consider what exactly is drawing you to it: Is it the idea of being away from patrons, just working on the computer and cataloging items?  Or do you want to be out and about, answering questions, helping patrons, etc?  In a really small library, one person does both, so if you’re interested in that, you’d want to find a job in a small town.

5) Each book in our computer system gets a code: tanfn, for example, stands for

T - junk code - doesn’t mean anything
A - adult book (as opposed to a child, junior, or young adult book)
N - non
F - fiction
N - new

tapbsf is adult paperback science fiction. tafn is adult fiction new. As strange as it sounds, I actually think in code - one time I found a book labeled tafn instead of tanfn, and instead of thinking, “Oh no, we’ve got a nonfiction book labeled as a fiction book” I thought, “Oh no, we’ve got a tanfn labeled as a tafn!” Which is a good sign I need a vacation.

6) If a book is lost or damaged, we only charge the cost of the item - what we paid for it ourselves, or if it was donated, what the cost would be to replace it. Despite what some patrons think, we do not make money off them. I had to explain this to a guy just the other day. He said that the library was a money making operation, and I told him that there were certainly a lot of people who would wish that were true, but it definitely wasn’t.

Well, I hope I didn’t put anyone to sleep. I don’t know how much wild and new information I brought up here, but hopefully this gives you a little better idea of how a library works. I’ll be happy to answer any questions I can, so feel free to leave a comment below!

Havs

There is an old saying, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor, Unwavering Hope proves it.

Here’s the lowdown:

A busload of college students were driving home from doing banquet work in another city when they were struck by a truck, killing five out of the nine people inside. One of the survivors, Laura Van Ryn, was thrown 50 feet and it was touch and go for a while as to whether she’d live or not.  She lapsed into a deep coma, and the family had no idea if she’d ever wake up.

Five weeks come and go, and Laura slowly made progress.  Finally, she’s in good enough shape to start talking coherently, and do things like eating, exercising, etc.  As a part of the therapy, the physical therapist asked Laura to write her name. She scrawled across the page:

W-H-I-T-N-E-Y

Turns out, in the car wreck, there were two girls who didn’t know each other very well, but who looked strangely similar. The purse for Laura Van Ryn landed next to Whitney Cerak, and the first responders to the scene took one look at the driver’s license and identified Whitney as being Laura.

So Whitney’s family had a funeral (closed casket - the parents never looked at their daughter’s body upon their own request), gave away her clothing, and in general did their best to move on, all while their daughter was really in a hospital room in a deep coma.

And then there were Laura’s parents, loving and caring for someone who they thought was their daughter, and when they noticed small anomalies like her teeth being different, they attributed it all to the accident. “The force of the accident must have pushed her teeth that way,” they told themselves.

When Laura mumbled, “False parents” and pointed to her dad, her dad got huffy and thought, “False! I put you through college and have loved you and fed you and done everything I could for you. Why are you calling me a false dad?”

It wasn’t until Whitney became mentally quicker and more agile did the truth come out. It was confirmed with dental records. That day, the family of the Van Ryn’s went home to grieve the death of their daughter, and the Ceraks were called to find out that their daughter was raised from the dead.

Overall, it was one of the most interesting stories I think I have ever heard. It’s an amazing testament to the human mind, where an entire family could spend five weeks with a complete stranger they had never met, and yet believe the entire time that it was their daughter.

So yes, it was an interesting story, but for anyone who is not a born-again Christian, the book will make you uncomfortable. Both families are born-again Christians - both fathers work as pastors. The daughters were both going to a Christian college. Every page has some reference to scriptures, singing gospel songs, praying, etc. The entire book revolves around giving praise to Jesus, having a relationship with Jesus, praying to Jesus…You get the picture.

So if you’re born-again Christian, you’ll absolutely love this book. It will be an affirmation of your testimony, and you’ll come away from it with a stronger faith than ever.

If you’re another religion, or atheist, I suggest you skip this book. The constant references to Jesus will be too big of a distraction for you to enjoy it.

I give Mistaken Identity 4 out of 5 stars. The writing style was a bit simplistic and it didn’t end up being one of my favorites, but it certainly had an interesting plotline.

Hava

PS In case you’re in the mood for some real fiction, make sure to check out a fellow Today.com blog called Fiction Book Blog.  It’s written by a coworker of mine from my local library - when he found out that you could write about books and get paid for it, he got excited and asked for the website address to apply.  Now, he’s covering the other end of the spectrum: Fiction.  If you want variety in your reviews, you couldn’t ask for a better complement to my blog than his.

I have to confess: I’ve never read a single Nicholas Sparks book. I own the movie The Notebook, and only found out by pure chance a couple of weeks ago that it was based on a Nicholas Sparks book. I had no clue. I check out a lot of Nicholas Sparks books to patrons, and quite frankly, all of the titles just run together in my mind. I had never paid attention to the fact that one of them was named The Notebook. A keen eye for details, I have not.

So why did I read Three Weeks With My Brother by Nicholas and Micah Sparks? Well, I was wandering about Barnes and Noble with my husband, and for once, I was waiting for him to finish reading a book before we could go. (Needless to say, it’s usually the other way around). I wandered over to the biography section, and there was Three Weeks With My Brother. I was surprised. I hadn’t realized that Nicholas Sparks had written anything but fiction. I picked the book up and started reading.

And just loved it. I was laughing (quietly, of course - heaven forbid I get kicked out of B&N!) just a few pages in. He has an excellent writing style, which after I thought about it, realized it only made sense. The guy makes his living by writing. If his writing style left something to be desired, I rather think he wouldn’t be on the New York Times Bestseller list regularly.

I can’t testify myself that his fiction writing style is fantastic, but I can his memoir writing style. His parents were unique in their child-raising techniques, to say the least. The following is a little long, but I think captures the childhood of Nicholas and his older brother, Micah, quite well:

On the first day of kindergarten, Mom walked with Micah to the bus stop; from there forward, he walked by himself. Within a week, he told my mom that some older girls, 7th grade or thereabouts but huge to a kindergartener, had cornered him in the junkyard and taken his milk money. Then they threatened him; they said that if he didn’t bring them a nickel every day, they were going to hurt him.

“They said they’re going to beat me up bad,” Micah cried.

There are a number of ways a parent could handle such a situation. My mom could have started walking him to school regularly, for instance, or walked with him one day, confronted the girls, and threatened to call the police if another incident occurred…Not my mom. Instead, after Micah told his story, she rose from the table and…when she returned, she was carrying an old Roy Rogers lunchbox; rusty and dented, it had been her younger brother’s years before.

“We’ll put your lunch in this tomorrow, instead of a brown bag,” she said, and if they try to take your money, just wind up and hit ‘em with it. Like this…”

Cocking her arm like a lion tamer, she began swinging the lunchbox in wide arcs, demonstrating while my brother sat at the table watching.

The next day, my six-year-old brother marched off to school with his hand-me-down lunchbox. And just as they’d threatened, the girls surrounded him when he wouldn’t give them his nickel. When the first one charged, he did exactly as my mom had told him.

In our bedroom that night, Micah related to me what happened.

“I swung with everything I had,” he said.

“Weren’t you scared?”

With his lips pressed together, he nodded. “But I kept swinging and hitting them until they ran away crying.”

The girls, I might add, never bothered him again.
~Page 25 - 26 of Three Weeks With My Brother

Yup, the mother actually showed her son (a kindergartener) how to beat up a group of 7th graders, and more amazingly still, he succeeded.  The parents were big fans of the Tough Love School of Parenting.

They were…relaxed, I guess is the kindest way to put it, in their parenting style. They gave their kids BB guns, which Nicholas (they called him Nicky as a child) and Micah used with wild abandon until the sheriff came and took them away. To console the children, the parents then gave them a bow and arrow set, with real arrows. None of the wussy plastic shafts and bunted tips for them. The kids played with that until (you guessed it) the sheriff came and took that away too. They came a little too close to killing other people one too many times.

So where does the three weeks part come in? Well, in 2002, Nicholas and Micah embark on a trip around in the world, which lasts for three weeks. It’s quite an adventure, and Nicholas always starts the chapter out in present time, and then jumps back in history to their childhood. It is their autobiography, not just a story about those three weeks in 2002. And I do mean “their” - really, it’s an autobiography of the whole Sparks family, with the emphasis on Nicholas and Micah.

I cried hard and laughed a lot too - it is one of the best autobiographies that I have ever read. Even if you’ve never read a lick of Sparks’ writing and have no interest in learning more about him (hmmm…sounds familiar) if you like autobiographies, you’ll love this book. Heck, if you just love a good story, you’ll love this book.

I’m giving it a rare 5 out of 5 stars. Thanks for the amazing book, Nicky. I just might have to read one of your fiction books someday…

Havs

When I first read Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich, I wasn’t overly impressed by it, but rather pegged it as a mindless read, good for a summer afternoon at the beach.  It was more of an escapism book than you’d normally find in the nonfiction section, that’s for sure.

I had picked it up because I saw advertisements for the movie 21 (it’s based on the book) and figured it’d be fun to read.  What was surprising to me (although it shouldn’t have been, looking back on it) was the fact that the book is mostly fiction.

First, the plot: Basically, Ben Mezrich meets a guy at a party (Kevin Lewis) who says he has an amazing story to tell, and he wants Ben to tell it in a book.  Ben gets this kind of thing all the time as a writer so he really didn’t expect much, but to humor him, he agreed to listen.

Kevin told him a story that would be unbelievable to the average person: He was recruited as an MIT student, to learn how to count cards and play blackjack.  He was then sent to Las Vegas and other gambling cities to win the backers (the ones supplying the bankroll) the big bucks.  He got a cut of what he made, and became very rich because of this lifestyle.

All of that is actually true.  What’s not true is the embellishments that Ben Mezrich added to make the book more “readable,” as he put it.  In an interview with the Boston Globe, Mezrich said, “Every word on the page isn’t supposed to be fact-checkable.”  He also said, “The idea that the story is true is more important than being able to prove that it’s true.”

That really, no really bugged me.  I read a nonfiction book, expecting it to be *ahem* nonfiction.  I know, a real shocker there.  There was a laundry list of items that were completely made up (click on the link to the interview above if you’re interested) and then a whole other list of items that were exaggerated, changed, and warped in order for the book to be more “readable.”

Ben Mezrich did manage to achieve his goal of being more readable - his book became a New York Times bestseller.  I don’t like the methods used to achieve that goal though. I’ve never been a fan of the saying, “The ends justify the means,” and this was no exception.

I give Bringing Down the House 1.5 out of 5 stars, and I’m putting Ben Mezrich on my blacklist of authors.  I will never pick up one of his books again.  If you’re wanting some real information on Las Vegas, make sure to head on over to my friend’s blog, Living in Las Vegas.  It’s guaranteed 100% nonfiction.

Hava

I know this is a little late, considering I’ve been blogging here for several weeks now, but I figured this was the start of my first full month at Today, and I wanted to talk a little about why I chose nonfiction as my blog subject.

I actually work at the local library, and when I first started there this past August, I was a fiction reader to the bitter end.  Sure, I had read an occasional nonfiction book, but I remember telling people that nonfiction books were “boring” and that I liked reading fiction because it had plot lines!

The first book to really make me see how wrong I was, was Three Cups of Tea, a book about a guy named Greg Mortenson who went to Afghanistan to climb K2, ends up getting lost (twice!), and finally wanders into a local village on the verge of death.  The villagers saved his life (he almost froze and starved to death) and as he was recuperating, he asked to be shown around the village.

They did so, and as they walked around, he realized that there wasn’t a school.  He asked where the school was located, and they hemmed and hawwed - they really didn’t want to tell him.  They finally gave in, and took him around the corner to see this group of children out in the open, writing on the ground with sticks.  They were quiet, concentrating, and there were no adults in sight.  He was in shock.  He was trying to imagine a group of kids in America, let loose outside and told to go do homework without any adult supervision.  His imagination failed him.  That would never happen in America.

He decided right then and there that he wanted to help build a school in this village.  He had no idea what he just got himself into!  He built that school, and then built hundreds of others.  He’s done absolutely amazing work in Afghanistan, and some of the surrounding countries too.  It was a captivating look at this man’s life, and how he was able to affect so many people’s lives, when at many times during his life, he was actually homeless and completely broke!  I finished the book with a can-do spirit, and a real feeling of “Wow!  That was an amazing book!!!”  And just like that, I was hooked.

I quickly started reading only nonfiction books, and found that I loved a large variety of them.  Some of my favorites are the 921’s - that’s library speak for autobiographies and biographies. (In the Dewey decimal system, all of the auto/biographies are in the 921 section, and at our library, there are whole ROWS of books dedicated to just that decimal.)  I also enjoy cookbooks (I like reading cookbooks.  The strange thing is, I don’t particularly like to cook, although I love to eat.  Hmm….) I love political stuff, and just for kicks and grins, an occasional paranormal story too!  I think you’ll find that my tastes are pretty varied, so hopefully we can find some books in common.

If you’ve read a great nonfiction book that you think I should read and review, please leave a comment on this or any of my posts - I’d love to hear from you.

I’m very excited to be onboard here at Today, and I look forward to many years of bragging about my latest find in the nonfiction world!

Havs