Worst-Case Scenario Handbook,

There are two ‘first lines’ that will always capture my attention: “In a bunker deep beneath Wolf’s Lair…” and “Do not attempt to undertake any of the activities described in this book yourself!”

That’s exactly the way The Worst-Case Scenario Handbook begins. The requisite next line - “The publishers, authors and experts disclaim any liability” sends a thrill up my spine, but when it is followed by “…we urge you to obey all laws and respect all rights,” I’m hooked.

I’ll never encounter most (any?) of the scenarios outlined in the book, but thanks to Piven and Borgenicht, I at least have an idea how to ram another car (page 34), deal with a charging bull (page 64), identify a bomb (page 94), and survive if my parachute fails to open (page 137). That last is actually plausible, since I hope to treat myself to a jump every ten years, but I’ll have the problem of wrestling the tandem instructor to cushion the impact.

These are short pieces, nicely illustrated with line drawings and diagrams, and brief enough to consult if and when you encounter the named situation. The downside is that you have to keep the book with you at all times and be prepared to ask the charging bull to wait a moment while you refresh your memory. Do you a) stand still b) lie down, or c) wave a piece of cloth and toss it away from yourself? (In case you don’t have time to run to the library and check the book out with the bull on your heels, the answer is c.)

Piven and Borgenicht followed this book with survival books on travel, golf, holidays, and dating & sex. We’ve got them classified as humor, and spread out into the various Dewey classifications, so there isn’t a single place you can go to if you take your significant other to a Caribbean golf resort for Christmas, but have to escape killer bees by jumping in a Dumpster.

Still, for people like me who are constantly on the lookout for danger and planning heroic escapes, this is a great resource. Who knows, maybe I’ll stay calm enough to actually use their advice instead of Robert Heinlein’s:

When in danger or in doubt
Run in circles, scream and shout

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Starting Out in the Evening, by Brian Morton

In the 1940s and ’50s, there was a vibrant culture of Jewish intellectuals writing, arguing, competing for limited attention spans and print space. With McCarthyism, the inevitability of illness and death, and the lure of Hollywood money, this culture died out. Now a struggling survivor, a veteran of those times, is brought to life in Starting Out in the Evening.

Leonard Schiller is old, in failing health, and mostly alone. His wife died many years before, and he lives on in the apartment they shared, recollecting his jealousies and triumphs, nursing his heart, and writing one final book that will probably never be read. He wheedles just enough reviewing jobs to keep himself fed and clothed, but his reputation has vanished along with his peers and the now out-of-print books that brought him some notice in his heyday.

His daughter Ariel is in her forties, and has decided she wants to have a child before it’s ‘too late’. She is uncertain about the man she lives with (who doesn’t want children), and finds herself catching up with a former lover who may father her child but may not be relationship material. Ariel is a self-centered aerobics teacher who has a hard enough time organizing her classes, let alone preparing for a baby, and Leonard despairs (to himself) of her pointless life.

Then 24-year old graduate student Heather Wolfe turns up on Schiller’s doorstep. She believes her recent discovery of his books is a profound moment in her life, and wants to bring her treasure to the world through her own planned thesis. She visits Leonard repeatedly, bringing energy, change, and intellectual vigor back into his life. She takes him to literary parties, introduces him to a new generation of editors, and champions his books. Her sincere admiration for Leonard is like a drug to the old man, and for a time he is back in the thick of the criticism, polemics, and backbiting that brought him fulfillment in his younger days. He also begins entertaining images of his cherished stories back in print, discussed in literature classes, and available to readers everywhere. But he also begins to see a price on that engagement, one he’s not sure he wants to pay.

Morton does an incredible job of creating these characters as individuals. They feel real enough to be your crotchety old neighbor, your ditzy aerobics teacher, or that dynamic student who drove you crazy in school. But he also makes them sympathetic, delving into the thoughts and emotions that drive them. Like Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short stories about those times and people, it is intimate, loving, and unsparing. This is fiction that embodies the purpose of fiction - showing us characters who reveal our selves through a different lens.

My book groups read Starting Out in the Evening several years ago, and it still occasionally comes up in our discussions. I handsell our Gab Bag version to local book groups, and have had a lot of positive feedback about this quiet piece. A 2007 film starring Frank Langella was released on the art house circuit, and from all accounts the translation to screen kept the book’s approach intact. I’m on hold for the DVD (thanks, Cheryl), but hope to take time to reread this marvelous book.

Check the WRL Catalogue for individual copies

Check for the Gab Bag

Check for the film edition

This Glorious Struggle, by Edward Lengel

It isn’t hard to find George Washington hagiographies. Starting with Mason Locke Weems and the legendary cherry tree, writers have treated Washington as superhuman and above reproach. That is not to imply that he isn’t a great man - his resolve to walk away from the Presidency is probably the best example of his rectitude - but he was not the man many historians would have us admire.

A spate of recent revisionist biographies has done a great deal to open the private Washington up to the public. Books about his relationships with the people around him, about his adroit political maneuvering, even about his spirituality, have made Washington the man more approachable to people who admire his public legacy. With Edward Lengel’s This Glorious Struggle, readers now have the opportunity to hear from the man himself.

Lengel, who is the Associate Editor of the George Washington Papers (which are housed at the University of Virginia), took on a monumental task. Washington wrote 140,000 letters between 1776 and 1782, to friends, family, members of the Continental Congress, admirers, and even opponents. (His terse note to General Thomas Conway, who was trying to have Washington removed from his command, is a masterpiece of understatement.) Lengel excerpts a very few of these letters, selecting the best examples of Washington’s correspondence and putting them in a book that runs fewer than 300 pages. We see Washington in his courageous public mode, inspiring and exhorting the Army. We get reports of the battles he led, and frustrated pleas for increased support from the colonies. We read his affectionate and wistful letters to his wife, and those that admit doubt and failure to his brother.

Lengel has transcribed the letters as they were written - punctuation and spelling idiosyncrasies included, and added minimal commentary that places each letter in its historical and personal context. As an editor, he allows Washington to speak for himself, and the voice we hear has more meaning than all the elementary school tales of his prowess.

We sometimes forget that the people of ‘history’ were flesh-and-blood, filled with uncertainty, and doubting the choices they have made. Many people view history as a series of inevitable events, as if Washington simply walked around waiting for an appointment with Cornwallis at Yorktown. Books like This Glorious Struggle put the lie to that notion. They remind us that we too are living forward into history, and that the consequences of our individual and collective decisions have ramifications for generations to come.

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Red Letter Christians, by Tony Campolo

This post reflects only my views, not those of the library or of Mr. Campolo

When I was growing up, my family was active in the Catholic Church. Post-Vatican II, we had the whole liberal nine yards - folksinging Masses, youth groups, mission programs, political and civil rights activism. My family was made up of Christians who practiced Catholicism; my theological understanding was based on a vision of Matthew 25:40 (’whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me’). At some point during my teens, though, the term ‘Christian’ seemed to mutate into a different vision articulated by pasty-faced white Southern men who demonized everyone who wasn’t a pasty-faced white Southern men - or who didn’t give money to their churches and vote Republican. The idea that the faithful would be snatched up and everyone else left to fight in the ruins seemed to become the dominant theology of public life and policy. Mainstream churches seemed to back away from their social justice ministries and present inarticulate speakers to apologize for their work (Keep in mind I was in my teens, and tended to see everything as black and white). Put the word ‘evangelical’ in front of anything, and I immediately distrusted it.

Fast forward too many years. I turn on The Colbert Report, and there’s a guy presenting himself as an ‘evangelical’ plumping his book. I felt sorry for the guy, having seen Colbert subtly eviscerate many self-important hypocrites. Imagine my surprise when the guy, whose name is Tony Campolo, responded eloquently and simply to Colbert’s sallies, turning every assumption about evangelical Christians on its head. ‘Don’t hate the gays, because God loves them. Remember that to be pro-life you also have to support the living - even those that are supposed to be your enemies. The physical world around you matters to God.’ I wrote down the title of his book and ordered it as soon as possible.

In a series of thoughtful essays, Campolo lays out what it means to be a Red Letter Christian - one who looks first to the teachings of Jesus for guidance in living a meaningful spiritual life. Then he removes the electoral considerations, saying emphatically that God does not belong to any political party or support one side or the other on any issue. Sections on global, social, economic, and government dig into the complex issues that face us as Americans, as Christians, and as humans. Over and over, Campolo calls for equal treatment - for the poor, for the despised, for the ignored. He provides only one simple solution, calling on people to get past their selfishness and identity politics and put their spirituality into practice. Turns out that’s not so simple.

Although the individual sections are short, this is not a fast read. Campolo sums up difficult issues by highlighting the discrepancy between what the Bible tells us is good and what the world tells us is good. I don’t agree with every premise Campolo accepts, or believe every source he cites. What brings me up short as a reader is the need to contemplate how cynicism, high expectations, and low effort shortchange this country and faith of all kinds. Then I have to figure out what to do - or not do - with those thoughts.

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Wild Trees, by Richard Preston

What is it about coastal redwoods that would inspire people to risk their lives to be near them? For starters, this type of redwood is located in only a few areas, but those are nearly inaccessible to all but the most dedicated bushwhackers. It is impossible to see the trees in their entirety, so a combination of imagination and rigorous measurement is required to assess their true size. They support an abundance of flora and fauna (even plankton) in an unexpected place. And they are the largest living things in the world. (OK, there’s a honey mushroom fungus in Oregon that is technically bigger, but no one’s organizing trips to see it…) But what kind of oddballs, misfits, and romantics would embark on arduous trips to find and study these giant trees?

For Steve Sillett, it started as a rebellious and incredibly dumb free climb that uncovered a new world. For Michael Taylor, a childhood trip introduced him to the trees, which became first a hobby, then an obsession. Marie Antoine’s risk-taking youth evolved into a desire to study rare plants found in the canopies of these tall trees. Arborists Scott Altenhoff and Kevin Hillery took on the job of teaching ’skywalking’ to the climbers, equipping them to ascend the trees then move among the branches in a kind of ballet. These, and the other people in the tiny community of canopy scientists, learned by the seat of their climbing saddles. All of them bring a love of the trees, incredible athletic ability, and a desire to learn to their vocation.

Their experiences were not without cost. Relationships suffered, job opportunities were set aside, expensive equipment purchased by sacrificing necessities. The searchers only looked in places deemed inaccessible by logging companies, fighting through tangled bushes and poison oak in often fruitless searches. Michael Taylor’s fear of heights tortured him even as he told other climbers where to find bigger trees. The dangers inherent in climbing were amplified by inattention and possibly self-destructive impulses. These stories provide motion and drama while clearly keeping the giant trees at the center of the book.

The trees themselves? If you have ever visited Muir Woods National Monument in California, you may have seen a popular tourist attraction - the coastal redwood measuring 285 feet tall, or about the height of the United States Capitol Building. A member of this community discovered the tallest tree in the world, called Stratosphere Giant. It stands 370 feet tall (as high as a 35 story building) and is estimated to be 2,000 years old. An incredible series of drawings in the book depicts a small segment of a tree called Iluvatar, which has 220 trunks growing from its main trunk in an astonishing maze that dwarfs the humans. As both living organisms and habitats, these trees are incredibly complex, perhaps beyond our understanding.

In Encounters with the Archdruid, John McPhee writes about the philosophical divide between conservationists who want to maintain pristine wilderness and land managers who say everyone should have recreational access to those wild places. The people Richard Preston writes about have made that decision for themselves. To avoid divulging locations of the trees, the climbers and scientists go to great lengths, even approaching from different directions so they don’t leave trails. For me, it is enough to know that the trees are there and that people who respect and love them are serving as their stewards - I don’t need to see them to understand their value. Long may they stand.

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The Alchemyst, by Michael Scott

I stumbled across this great Young Adult fantasy book and could not put it down. Scott, like Rick Riordan of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, takes ancient myth and folklore and puts it smack in the middle of contemporary America with an exciting and humorous result.

This story starts with 15-year-old twins Josh and Sophie Newman working at their summer jobs – Sophie in a coffee shop and Josh across the street in a bookstore owned by Nick Fleming and his wife. One day four men arrive at the bookstore and, as Josh says at the end of chapter one, “the world would never be the same.”

Turns out Nick Fleming is really six-hundred-year-old alchemyst Nicholas Flamel. He and his wife, Perenelle, have been taking an elixir for eternal life for several centuries and hiding from Dr. John Dee, a wicked former student of Flamel’s.

Dee steals from Flamel the book of Abraham the Mage, the most powerful book that has ever existed, except for a few pages that Josh grabbed at the last minute. As he exits the store, Dee also kidnaps Perenelle.

As Flamel sets off to recover the book and his wife with the twins in tow, he tells them that Dee has aligned himself with the Dark Elders who want to remake the world back as it was in the ancient past – with all humans serving as slaves – or food.

On Flamel’s side is Scatty, the warrior maiden Scathach; Hekate, the goddess with three faces; and Josh and Sophie – who may be the ones the ancient book prophesied would either save or destroy the world.

It’s a fast-paced adventure from start to finish – with a sequel on the way. Scott’s second book in The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series, Magician, is due in June.

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A Day, a Dog, by Gabrielle Vincent

In Les Miserables, it took Victor Hugo 1400 pages and Lord knows how many words to tell his story of cruelty, suffering, endurance, and redemption. In this masterpiece of sequential art, Gabrielle Vincent accomplishes the same thing in 60 wordless pages.

A Day, a Dog tells a simple story entirely through bold charcoal sketches that are miracles of expressiveness. It is marketed as a children’s picture book, but unless your child can handle Camus, it’s probably better to wait. The first page shocks: a dog is tossed onto a lonely road from the window of a car. What follows evokes feelings of pity and horror worthy of Greek drama. The dog races after the car as it speeds away, falling farther behind until he is no more than a speck with a tail, as seen by the uncaring people who have abandoned him. In blind hope, the pooch bounds into the road after the next car to come by, causing a terrible accident. Lost amid the chaos, the dog barks, cowers, lifts his leg against a tire, and finally slinks away. His miserable day continues in an epic journey along a deserted beach and through the alleys of an ugly city until, at last, he finds a friend in a boy who seems to be abandoned, too.

There isn’t an artist alive who can match Gabrielle Vincent’s sensitive rendering of animals. In a few confident lines, she nails the lift of a dogs’s ears, the droop of his tail, the set of his back, which are exactly those of dogs we have known and loved. Vincent, who is Belgian, also created the wonderful Ernest and Celestine books, which tell the adventures of a bluff bear who is the doting guardian (or single dad?) of an adorable, emotional mouse.

I passed a copy of A Day, a Dog around the office yesterday, and there were gasps, cries of “no!” and some tears. The last page makes me think of a line from Jane and Michael Stern’s book about dog breeders, Dog Eat Dog. A man who had just adopted a puppy asked them, “Do you know the difference between a dog and a human? A dog sees his god every day.”

Check the WRL catalog for A Day, a Dog

Deep Dish, by Mary Kay Andrews

Mary Kay Andrews (best-selling author of Hissy Fit and Savannah Breeze) creates another fun, romantic story in Deep Dish.

In one corner is Gina Foxton, the chef for Fresh Start, a public television cooking show. She promotes using natural ingredients and making traditional Southern recipes healthier. She’s in a bind because her ex-boyfriend/producer has screwed up her sponsorship with a local grocery chain – she’ll be out of a job if another sponsor doesn’t step up.

In the other corner is Tate Moody, aka the Tatester, the cook of a hunting, fishing, cooking show on The Southern Outdoors Network called Vittles. He doesn’t understand how a show about catching and cooking off the land has such a large female following. Maybe it’s because he looks so good with his shirt off…

The Cooking Channel executives get an idea to create a televised competition for the single spot on the big network – a “Food Fight” – in which both cooks will be judged in three competitions.

As the competition heats up, so does the attraction between the two stars. Mix in a hair disaster, add a dash of quirky sidekicks, throw in a deserted island adventure and blend with some interesting Southern recipes and you have a delightfully diverting contemporary romance to while away the afternoon.

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The Little Lady Agency, by Hester Browne

Melissa Romney-Jones has mastered the unappreciated art of planning a party, buying the right present, and dressing well. She has used her talents to work in various jobs, but she downplays her contributions and frequently is the one to get canned when companies lay off staff. After the latest administrative job goes down the drain, Melissa meets up with her old etiquette teacher, and in her naiveté accepts a job as an escort. When a client expects more than her entertaining company for lunch, Melissa quits.

She decides to market her organizational talents for her own business, the Little Lady Agency, targeting bachelors and clueless men who need to shop, entertain, and navigate social engagements. She sometimes poses as their girlfriend or fiancée to help the guy out with nagging mother or clinging girlfriend situations – but no hanky-panky. And even though it’s all perfectly legit, she dons a blond wig and a new persona, “Honey,” when she’s working so as not to upset her highly critical (and dysfunctional) family.

The new business starts to thrive, thanks in part to one particular repeat customer, an American executive named Jonathan, who just happens to be running the company she used to work for. When she starts to fall for Jonathan, she wonders if he really likes her – or Honey?

It’s chick lit romance with a British accent and traditional homemaker roles. But where I picked up several titles and put them down again, this one grabbed my attention and kept it there — all the way to the happily ever after ending.

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The Spellman Files, by Lisa Lutz

Chick Lit meets Mystery in this clever debut by Lisa Lutz about Izzy Spellman, 28-year-old private investigator in her family’s firm, Spellman Investigations.

The story is an interesting, entertaining mix of family relationships, mystery, romance, friendships, coming of age… and I didn’t realize it was complicated until I started trying to write about it here. Lutz does a terrific job weaving the pieces together so you understand the timeline and all the different side issues without losing the sense of the story.

The main issue is that Izzy hasn’t had much success with men. And when she meets Daniel Castillo, DDS, she decides this relationship needs to stick. So she lies about what she does for a living (being a teacher seems safer than explaining about being a private investigator). When she can’t avoid it any longer, she introduces him to her parents who on the surface seem very polite to him, but she knows they’re digging for information so they can do a background check as soon as he leaves. It’s just the way they are. She decides it’s just too weird to keep working and living in the same house with her family, so she agrees to do one more job, then she’s quitting the firm and moving out.

In addition to the romantic relationship, Izzy solves a cold case about a missing teenager – a case her parents didn’t think she could solve and as she digs more into the past, a case they implore her to drop.

Then there is the rest of Izzy’s family. There’s her perfect brother David who seems to have a romantic interest in her best friend, her younger sister Rae who enjoys “recreational surveillance” regardless of the danger in following strangers around the city, and Uncle Ray who is determined to drink and gamble as much as possible.

After all the drama is over and the mystery solved, Izzy herself concludes “It could be said that the Spellmans returned to normal after that. However, there was no previous pattern of normalcy to judge it by.”

A second Spellman story is on the library shelves, Curse of the Spellmans. I hope it is as fun, fast-pasted, and quirky as the first one. Fans of Meg Cabot’s Heather Wells (Size 12 is not fat), Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum (One for the Money) or any of Jennifer Crusie’s smart-alecky heroines may enjoy these stories as well.

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