The titles and links below will direct you to print copies when available. Click on the title to see all available formats, including recorded versions and eBooks.
You can learn more about using eBooks and eAudiobooks on our blog, and contact us if you need assistance. *Restrictions to using Hoopla apply based on your home address.
Subtitled: A Lyrical Articulation of Chronic Pain. Imagine being afflicted with an intense, pervasive headache that doesn’t go away and has no diagnosable cause. That’s what the author has been living with for years. In this unusual book, she explores many aspects of her experience as well as disquisitions on the subject through many lenses including history, literature, sociology, and politics. We get medical reports along the way, as well as descriptions of the many alternative therapies she pursued. Very short chapters, sometimes just one sentence on a page: how much pain can you handle. Because of the novel presentation, and the author’s candor and intelligence, the reading experience is not painful but enlightening.
Young carer Damian is hired to help crotchety old Frankie in her London digs. She’s on crutches, resists aid, but her old friend Nor insists on it. All three are Irish, though Nor was married to a very rich gay Englishman. Damian hangs in there, Frankie starts to tell him her story, and what a story it is: orphaned, turfed out to chilly churchy relatives, married briefly to an older clergyman with (ahem) sexual problems, thrust out in disgrace (her fault?), and then to NYC where she lived with an rising painter and ran a very quirky, successful French restaurant. This historical novel vividly describes the contrasting worlds of provincial Ireland and the heady Bohemian art scene in the ‘60s, as well as the surprising twists and turns of Frankie’s trajectory. Absorbing.
I’m a fierce Monty Python fan and love to get behind the scenes, so this slim book delivered in spades. In 2004 it took a year to get the Broadway show, Spamalot, in shape, and the director, Mike Nichols, did wonders crafting the material from the movie into a brilliant stage-worthy creation. This meant killing many darlings (as the expression goes) along the way. Lots of highs, expected lows—it’s drama, after all—but Idle’s wit hones the narrative beautifully. Then I seized the CD of the show, available at our library, and spent two days on my commute in musical heaven. I bounced into work, looking on the “Bright Side of Life,” a great antidote to the world of woes always lying in wait. Finally, to wrap it all up, watch the original movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, to see those scenes that got cut from the show.
I watched the movie first. It was magnificent. Then I was curious about its origin, this book, and was amazed how closely the film followed it. The plot: after the pope dies, there’s incredible political manipulation among the contenders to the throne, as it were. Cardinal Lomeli is thrust into the position of managing the election, taking risks to uncover dirty secrets. The denouement is a shocker. I must admit that it helped to have the movie in mind as complexities played out on the page. I highly recommend both.
Add a comment to: Neshama’s Choices for April 14