Book Report

Or new Library Board President Andrew Taylor has instituted an interesting and fun book-sharing piece for Board meetings. Last evening Ed Van Gemert (Associate Director of UW Libraries) shared a few of his favorites (as he said being a librarian he couldn't just share one).

Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story by Timothy B. Tyson, a UW-Madison professor. The book was selected for the Common Book program and offered for reading to all UW students in the Letters & Sciences Honors Program.

From Publishers Weekly

"In this outstanding personal history, Tyson, a professor of African-American studies who's white, unflinchingly examines the civil rights struggle in the South. The book focuses on the murder of a young black man, Henry Marrow, in 1970, a tragedy that dramatically widened the racial gap in the author's hometown of Oxford, N.C. Tyson portrays the killing and its aftermath from multiple perspectives, including that of his contemporary, 10-year-old self; his progressive Methodist pastor father, who strove to lead his parishioners to overcome their prejudices; members of the disempowered black community; one of the killers; and his older self, who comes to Oxford with a historian's eye."

The Last Day of the War by Judith Claire Mitchell. The 2007 selection for the Common Book Program.

From Booklist

"Mitchell's novel is based on her friend's great-aunt's letters describing her work as a YMCA volunteer in France in 1919, where and when she met an Armenian who had lost his family. It is the story of a Jewish girl from St. Louis and an Armenian American soldier at the end of World War I. The protagonist is 18-year-old Yael Weiss, who passes herself off as Yale White, a 25-year-old Methodist, so she can work at the YMCA soldiers' canteen in Paris. The soldier she follows to France is the son of immigrants living in Providence, Rhode Island. He is a member of Erinyes, an underground organization devoted to avenging the massacres of Armenians in 1915. But it is the succinct passages scattered throughout the book that make it exceptional. For instance, "Some Jews took the names of their tribes. Cohen, Levi. Wealthy Jews purchased beautiful names. Lillenfeld (field of lilies). Poor Jews had to accept humiliating names. Gross (fat)." This eloquent first novel encompasses the full spectrum of joy and torment that is the human condition. George Cohen"

Time and Again by Jack Finney

Midwest Book Review

Blend mystery and science fiction with a romance which travels through time and you have a haunting story of a man transported back in time to fall in love with a beautiful woman of yesteryear. A fine, moving story is related by avid reader Campbell Scott in this compelling production.

Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books by Maureen Corrigan. A book about reading books by a book reviewer. Has an intersting and eclectic list of recommended books.

Nine Horses: Poems by Billy Collins