Alpine Branch Library
School’s Out–GAME DAY–in Alpine!
Posted in Alpine Branch Library, Alpine-Children's Events on January 29th, 2010 by Wendi – Be the first to commentIn Other Rooms, Other Wonders
Posted in Alpine Branch Library, Alpine-Book Reviews on January 20th, 2010 by Alpine – Be the first to commentIn Other Rooms, Other Wonders
Daniyal Mueenudin
W.W. Norton and Company (2009), 247 pp.
Daniyal Mueenudin’s debut title suggests a book that will force readers to step far outside their lives and enter unfamiliar worlds. Indeed perhaps the greatest reward in reading In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is gaining entrance to the largely unfamiliar, nearly dysfunctional world of contemporary Pakistan, a culture so stratified and so deadened to its own corruption that its inner-workings may well fascinate many American readers. Mueenudin, a Pakistani-born, American-educated newcomer on the literary scene, has garnered wide critical praise and a National Book Award nomination for this group of eight linked stories. The book is beautifully written and culturally enlightening, though the stories themselves may often prove to keep American readers too distant from its characters and events and sometimes struggles to bring closure to the individual stories. The characters are well crafted and identifiable, though the patterns of their lives may seem largely alien. The vision granted of the vivid and unflinching portraits of Pakistani culture—from its wealthiest landowners to their lowliest servants—can, for readers interested in places and people beyond their own immediate frame of reference, make up for the lack of closure and the grand scale of the collection.
The stories are all linked in one fashion or another to one of its principle characters, wealthy landowner K.K. Harouni. Whether exploring Harouni himself as his once vast landholdings are slowly sold off to low bidders in the effort to maintain his luxurious lifestyle or centering on the tales of his servants and managers, the linked stories eventually allow readers to recognize that everyone within Pakistan may share similar linkages. These stories are connected by association to Harouni and, more importantly, by themes that focus on bartering and greed and manipulation, by the sexual politics of advancement for women and the power hunger exhibited by those who can touch the fringes of wealth. It is not a collection of stories that assembles to form an alternative sort of novel, rather the stories offer the reader, as the title suggests, glimpses into rooms they have never inhabited. The Pakistan that Mueenudin introduces us to is one where corruption and near chaos exist at every social level, where middle managers skim profits from their employers, women attempt to sleep their way off village streets and into the manor house, where the educated and the powerful are often bored and harm themselves and others by their attempts to resolve boredom, and the peasants often mimic the wealthy they serve. While the stories sometimes fail to complete a storytelling arc that is comforting to American readers, the characters and their sometimes desperate measure to better their living conditions prove fascinating and likely universal. For literary readers who recognize the role essential elements of Pakistani culture will play in the West’s inevitable future interdependency within Pakistani politics, the book can prove particularly fulfilling.
Mueenudin sees his own culture with astonishing clarity (the author has returned to Pakistan after earning degrees from Dartmouth and Yale to run a family farm). Importantly, he refuses to be overtly charitable nor chastising with any of his characters. Nearly all seem deeply flawed individuals, characters whose very flaws may arise either from the expected “back-scratching” reality of their deeply stratified culture or by elemental human envy and desire for advancement. The tale Mueenudin tells is larger than any of these individual characters, larger than Harouni, larger perhaps even than Pakistan. While some Western readers may feel kept at arm’s length from the events that unfold, they will find themselves thinking about the world Mueenudin portrays long after they close the final story.
Indie Fiction Picks 2009
Posted in Alpine Branch Library on December 22nd, 2009 by Wendi – 1 CommentHot Reads for Cold Nights
Indie Fiction Picks 2009
The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale
The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker
The Arms Maker of Berlin by Dan Fesperman
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin
Benny and Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke
The Blue Notebook by James Levine
Border Songs by Jim Lynch
The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall
The City & the City by China Mieville
The Confederate General Rides North by Amanda Gable
Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells
The Cutting by James Hayman
The Dark Horse by Craig Johnson
The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Buchanan
A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd
The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Stracham
East of the Sun by Julia Gregson
The Elephant Keeper by Christopher Nicholson
Everything Matters by Ron Currie, Jr.
Far Bright Star by Robert Olmstead
Fear the Worst by Lincwood Barclay
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child
A Happy Marriage by Rafael Yglesias
How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely
In This Way I Was Saved by Brian DeLeeuw
Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea
The Lace Makers of Glenmara by Heather Barbieri
Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel
The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan
The Promised World by Lisa Tucker
Red to Black by Alex Dryden
Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
Shimmer by Eric Barnes
The Signal by Ron Carlson
So Happy Together by Maryann McFadden
Some Dream for Fools by Faiza Guene
South of Broad by Pat Conroy
Spooner by Pete Dexter
The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro, Chuck Hogan
Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo
This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd
Under This Unbroken Sky by Shandi Mitchell
Undone by Karin Slaughter
Velva Jean Learns to Drive by Jennifer Niven
Waiting for Columbus by Thomas Trofimuk
Wanting by Richard Flanagan
The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf
The Wet Nurse’s Tale by Erica Eisdorfer
While I’m Falling by Laura Moriarity
You or Someone Like You by Chandler Burr
Novels by Wyoming authors
Posted in Alpine Branch Library on December 22nd, 2009 by Wendi – Be the first to commentBelow Zero (2009)
Three Weeks to Say Goodbye (2008)
Blue Heaven (2008)
Blood Trail (2008)
Free Fire (2007)
In Plain Sight (2006)
Trophy Hunt (2004)
Winterkill (2003)
Savage Run (2003)
Open Season (2001)
Margaret Coel
The Drowning Man (2006)
Eye of the Wolf (2005)
Wife of Moon (2004)
Killing Raven (2003)
The Shadow Dancer (2002)
The Thunder Keeper (2001)
The Spirit Woman (2000)
Kathleen O’Neal Gear & W. Michael Gear
People of the Thunder (2009)
The Betrayal (2008)
Series: The First North Americans
(15 titles)
Series: In Me (3 titles)
Raising Abel (2002)
Dark Inheritance (2001)
Anasazi Mysteries (3 titles)
Mark Spragg
An Unfinished Life (2004)
The Fruit of Stone (2002)
Any novel by a Wyoming author
Reading Group Choices
Posted in Alpine Branch Library on December 22nd, 2009 by Alpine – Be the first to commentReading Group Choices 2010
31 Hours by Masha Hamilton
Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos
Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga
The Book of Dahlia by Elisa Albert
The Condition by Jennifer Haigh
The Courtier’s Secret by Donna Russo Morin
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles
Decision and Destiny by DaVa Gantt
The Devlin Diary by Christi Phillips
Dragon House by John Shors
The End by Salvatore Scibona
Every Last Cuckoo by Kate Maloy
The Florist’s Daughter by Patricia Hampl
The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
The Given Day by Dennis Lehane
Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy
The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss
Henry’s Sisters by Cathy Lamb
Home Repair by Liz Rosenberg
I See You Everywhere by Julia Glass
In a Perfect World by Laura Kasischke
The Last Summer of Her Life by Jean Page
The Laws of Harmony by Judith Hendricks
The Little Book by Selden Edwards
The Longshot by Katie Kitamura
The Love of Her Life by Harriet Evans
Maynard and Jennica by Rudolph Delson
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
Now & Then by Jacqueline Sheehan
Of Men and Their Mothers by Mameve Medwed
Once in a Blue Moon by Eileen Goudge
One Week in December by Holly Chamberlin
Real Life and Liars by Kristina Riggle
The Return by Victoria Hislop
The Sari Shop Widow by Shobhan Bantwal
The Scent of Sake by Joyce Lebra
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos
A Thread of Truth by Marie Bostwick
Time is a River by Mary Alice Monroe
Two Rivers by T. Greenwood
The Visibles by Sara Shepard
The Well and Mine by Gin Phillips
While My Sister Sleeps by Barbara Delinsky
With Violets by Elizabeth Robards
Booklist Editors’ Choice Fiction
Posted in Alpine Branch Library on December 22nd, 2009 by Alpine – Be the first to commentBooklist Editors’ Choice
Fiction
Awarded 01/09
American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
The Black Tower by Louis Baynard
Come With Me to Babylon by Paul M. Levitt
Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories by Steven Millhauser
Driftless by David Rhodes
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
Esther’s Inheritance by Sandor Marai
Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx
The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
The Given Day by Dennis Lehane
House of Widows by Askold Melnyczuk
Indignation by Philip Roth
Kieron Smith, boy by James Kelman
The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
Lush Life by Richard Price
A Mercy by Toni Morrison
A Partisan’s Daughter by Louis de Bernieres
People of the Whale by Linda Hogan
The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
The Red Scarf by Kate Furnivall
Three Girls and Their Brother by Theresa Rebeck
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike








