Persepolis July 28, 2008

Jennifer says:

Yes, it’s a “graphic novel”. But don’t miss this intimate, searing autobiography just because it comes fully illustrated, panel cartoon style, with portrayals of the author and her family, friends, and relatives. Caricature is a skill Ms. Satrapi perfected in post-Islamic revolution Iran, while she sat in class in her hijab, silently lampooning her teachers in the margins of her notebooks. This book, like Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, offers a human perspective on Iran that is missing from most news stories. In Persepolis the perspective is that of a girl child. Satrapi grows up before our eyes as her life changes inexorably through the upheaval in her homeland. If you have never read a graphic novel, Persepolis should be your first, especially if you enjoy reading autobiographies.

A Pioneer’s Search for an Ideal Home: A Book of Personal Memoirs July 28, 2008

Deborah says:

After seeing this book in a display case at the Lynden Library, I decided to read it to become more acquainted with local history.  I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.  The book is a memoir of Phoebe Judson, the founder of Lynden.  She was over seventy years of age when she wrote her story and ninety-five when it was published.  The history is indeed very interesting, but the strength, sense of humor and bravery of this woman was astonishing.  Her memoirs begin in Vermillion, Ohio where she began a trip across the country, with her family, in a wagon train to the Puget Sound area.   I read the book and enjoyed the photograph at the end of the book.  This week I read in the paper that a monument will be made of Phoebe Judson and her husband Holden Judson.  I am glad the monument will be made and I will appreciate it all the more after reading her memoirs.

A Pioneer’s Search for an Ideal Home: A Book of Personal Memoirs by Phoebe Goodell Judson

Charles Fort, The Man Who Invented the Supernatural June 11, 2008

Philiyra says:

Charles Fort, The Man Who Invented the Supernatural by Jim Steinmeyer is a fascinating biography of the man who brought us tales of unexplained and perhaps unexplainable phenomena.

The story of the Mary Celeste. The tale of Kasper Hauser, who was stabbed in a snowy field with no other tracks but his own, and no murder weapon.

Frogs, fish, stones, and blood falling from clear blue skies.

Charles Fort spent years of his life collecting these tales, years in the New York Public Library and the British Museum. He published four books on these phenomena, and for the most part, they were ignored by the general public.

The Fortean Society was created by Tiffany Thayer in 1930. But it wasn’t until after Fort’s death that the Society devolved into a conspiracy theorist’s haven, exactly the sort of thing Fort was not.

Jim Steinmeyer intersperses his book with selections from Fort’s autobiography to bring us the man himself and his thoughts as well as the thoughts of his contemporaries.

H.G. Wells said Fort was “One of the most damnable bores who ever cut scraps from out-of-the-way newspapers.

Fort’s friend Theodore Dreiser called him, “The most fascinating literary figure since Poe.

Which is the truth? Read Charles Fort and make up your own mind.

But the facts speak for themselves.