Book Reviews
Released between 1910-1941, the 40 adventure novels in this series feature a young inventor named Tom Swift, who lives in a small town in upstate New York.
With this first novel, see what William Faulkner was like before he became the guardian of Yoknapatawpha County and perhaps the greatest of all American novelists.
This novel is quite unique in the Tarzan canon as it is the only one that makes reference to the Great War. The novel, though written in 1919 and published in book form in 1920, is set in 1914.
In the years following World War I, much of the literature on both sides of the Atlantic was strongly anti-war in sentiment. The enthusiasm and idealism that people felt when war was declared soon soured in the trenches.
Unlike previous wars, World War I was an unraveling of the social contract and the expectations of civilized behavior, an erosion of the ideas of what combatants may do in war.
As the year comes to a close, our librarians wanted to share their favorite books, movies, television series, and music that either came out in the past year, or that we just discovered in 2014. Every one of these items is available in the Kansas City Public Library collection.
Take a look; maybe you'll find a new favorite that's outside of your comfort zone!
Sit back with some nog, pick up one of these books, and rediscover the joys of the season.
And then maybe take a BB gun to your neighbor's inflatable winter wonderland in the front lawn...
Those of you who have been reading my classic mystery blogs must be scratching your heads about now. Mickey Spillane — Classics — what gives? And no doubt there are those who would agree with some of the scholars of the mystery field, who charged that Spillane had debased what had become a much more literary form thanks to the efforts of Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald.
I would argue, though, that one need only look at the early work of Dashiell Hammett, even up to his first novel, Red Harvest, to find work very similar to Spillane’s. Hammett, as you know, was the man credited with lifting hard-boiled fiction out of the pulps and into the academy.
The admitted master of this subgenre was John Dickson Carr, who wrote several mystery novels that might be classified as “locked-room” mysteries.
In 1935's The Hollow Man — also known by its American title, The Three Coffins — we have the epitome of the locked-room mystery. Not only is the book the exemplar of the type, but a whole chapter in the book (“Chapter 17: The Locked Room Lecture”) is devoted to a lecture by Carr’s main detective, Dr. Gideon Fell, on the topic of “locked room” murders. The novel is the sixth Gideon Fell novel out of a total of twenty-three.
At the beginning of the Twentieth century, the United States enjoyed an economic boom along with a rise in the anarchy movement leading to the assassination of a President.
Scott Miller—in The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century—looks at the assassination of President William McKinley as it relates to the events of his presidency. Parallel to the account of the McKinley murder is the life story of Leon Czolgosz who killed the President.
Looking for an interesting new book to add to your fall reading list? Then consider The Drop by Dennis Lehane.
Set to be released on September 2, 2014, The Drop is part love story, part crime novel, part mystery, and part faith-based fiction. Add in a lonely bartender, the Chechen mafia, an abused puppy, a vengeful ex-con, a rogue cop, a sketchy bar owner, and a mentally unbalanced woman and your picture of The Drop begins to form.
Some say that The Long Goodbye is too loosely constructed, and too sentimental, and they may be right. But Chandler was never much for tight plotting, but could scarcely be beat in setting up a scene and for the crispness of his language.
When it comes to reading mystery series, I generally follow a simple procedure: Start with the third or fourth book in the series and then work back at some later point if the author grabs me.
I know what you must be thinking – how does Greek tragedy fit into my ongoing blog series about classic mysteries? Well, I admit, it’s something of a stretch, but April is National Poetry Month, and I strongly advise readers to find some great poetry out there.
As the library’s humorous 2014 Adult Winter Reading Program draws to a close, here’s one last comical book to add to your reading list - Texts From Bennett by Mac Lethal.