Presidential Elections and Dubuque

It's not every day the President of the United States visits Dubuque, but every eight years or so we find ourselves a destination on the campaign trail for reelection. Our last visit was by President George W. Bush in May of 2004. Other incumbent presidents who have visited Dubuque include Jimmy Carter in 1979, Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, Theodore Roosevelt in 1903, and William McKinley in 1899. John F. Kennedy visited Dubuque, too, but in 1956, five years before being sworn in as President.

Today President Obama will be speaking at the Alliant Energy Amphitheater at the Star Brewery. If you're curious about what's happening, but stuck at work or home, you can follow the action on Twitter, where professional journalists and average people will share their observations with the world. Subscription or no, you can follow the Telegraph Herald's updates on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/TelegraphHerald or follow the general chatter by searching for tweets tagged #ObamaIA

Tags are a useful way to follow many current topics, especially when an official tag has been established, but you can also search Twitter for general keywords.

Besides Twitter, your public library is a great place to find information about presidential campaigns. Blogger John Nichols, after he covered the Iowa Caucuses here in 2008 for The Nation, argued that Barack Obama's presidency actually started at Carnegie-Stout Public Library in Dubuque.

Paul Ryan,
Vice Presidential Candidate

And more recently, a librarian in Janesville, Wisconsin, made an important contribution to a New Yorker article on Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan. Ryan Lizza, Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, told this story to Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air:

You know, one of the most impressive things about Janesville, which is a really nice little town, is the library. They've got this fantastic library, and they have a little room at the library in Janesville devoted to the history of Janesville.

And when I went in to see a librarian and told her I was writing about Paul Ryan, and I wanted to learn about the history of the town and the history of his family, she stopped, and she said: Oh, Paul Ryan, I was a librarian at his high school. He was so popular. You know, I loved him.

And she was very proud to take me into the Janesville room and started pulling out his high school yearbooks and showing me, you know, the prom pictures and the class president pictures and all the rest. And then you get to one page in his senior yearbook, and, you know, as I guess a lot of seniors have, they had a senior survey. And Paul Ryan, in the senior survey, was voted by his classmates the biggest brownnoser. So that's how I found that out. His former librarian showed me his yearbook.

So what better place to learn about the campaigns than where a lot of the action is going down, at public libraries?

But seriously, if you're looking to read more about United States Presidential Elections, Carnegie-Stout has the books for you. Below are a few titles, but we also recommend searching the catalog for these keywords:
Presidents -- United States -- Election
Presidents -- United States -- Nomination
Political Campaigns -- United States

Selecting a President by Eleanor Clift & Matthew Spieler (324.973 CLI)

Why Iowa?: how caucuses and sequential elections improve the presidential nominating process by David Redlawsk (324.2777 RED, Iowa Books)

Tension City: inside the Presidential debates, from Kennedy-Nixon to Obama-McCain by James Lehrer (324.73 LEH) This title was the topic of a staff review, click here to read more.

Books and Music

Everyone is a little bit different when it comes to reading. Maybe you have a favorite chair to curl up in with a good book. Maybe you like to read for an hour before sleep each night. Maybe you reread an old favorite every year.

Personally, I like to have music playing. To be honest, I have music playing almost constantly, but when it comes to reading, I'm particular. When I reread Jane Eyre, I like to put on classical piano, or when I read the Beka Cooper series by Tamora Pierce, I had Sara Bareilles' Kaleidoscope Heart on repeat.

Sometimes it's a careful match for tone and mood, and sometimes the music becomes entangled with the memories of the book I was reading at the time. Like when a song comes on the radio and you try to remember which car ad you heard it on first, but more pleasant.

Sometimes an author will provide you with a soundtrack. Jodi Picoult's Sing You Home comes with a recording of original music. On her website, you can see the songs E.L. James listened to while writing her popular 50 Shades trilogy, and now EMI will be releasing albums of classical music to enjoy while you read 50 Shades of Grey.

If you've never seen them, you should check out Flavorwire's Literary Mixtape posts. These clever posts imagine what a favorite fictional character might have on their ipod, and cover a diversity of literature from Arya Stark to Moby Dick (yes, the white whale). And if the 50 Shades fans don't yet have enough musical variety, you might enjoy checking out Flavorwire's Mixtape for Lady Chatterley.

Similarly, blogger and journalist Maria Popova pairs a literary quote with a piece of music on her blog, Literary Jukebox.

Sometimes musicians find their inspiration in literature. You may've heard of the wizard rock or wrock movement. These bands formed around their love of the Harry Potter series. With band names like Harry and the Potters or The Whomping Willows, these readers share their love through their creativity.

More main stream groups will look to writers of prose when creating their music, or even for their name. Take the group Steely Dan, whose name comes from an *ahem* character in William S. burroughs' Naked Lunch. Or Glen Hansard's Come Away to the Water, which was inspired by The Hunger Games (though Maroon 5 are the performers on the soundtrack).

And of course, the love goes the other way, as anyone familiar with The Rock Bottom Remainders can tell you!

So how about you? Any favorite literary/musical pairings? Or must you have the peace of a silent house to properly enjoy a book?

The Unwritten by Mike Carey & Peter Gross

"This week a co-worker came up to me with a crazed look in her eye and said “Yesterday I was shelving some comics and started flipping through the first volume of The Unwritten. Before I knew it I’d read all five volumes the library owns. When will there be more?” It’s always great to watch someone enjoy something I liked a lot. It’s even more fun when their excitement borders on the maniacal." Andrew, from No Flying, No Tights.

As the co-worker in question, I cannot dispute Andrew's description of my excitement over The Unwritten. I'm still new to graphic novels, and, Andrew's selections for the Graphic Content book discussion are always interesting.  What drew my attention to this particular selection was the very last chapter, which imagines (or exposes, as the story would have it) the life and career of Rudyard Kipling, who, despite being a talented writer in his early days, did not come to fame without the assistance of a mysterious cabal of powerful men who seem to influence - if not determine - the course of  world events. (Mark Twain makes a special guest appearance, too.)

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The full title of the first volume of the on-going series by Mike Carey and Peter Gross is The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity. The Tommy of the title is the main character in a highly popular series of books written by the reclusive author Wilson Taylor. The Tommy Taylor series is modeled on the Harry Potter books (with Tommy as Harry) complete with wizards, wands and made-up Latin spells. The authors give a nod to Rowling's work in the first chapter, which completely won me over to the series.

There is another Tommy in the story, however, the "real" one (perhaps). Tom Taylor, son of Wilson and on whom the character was modeled (or maybe not). Tom has grown up in the spotlight and shadow of his father's fame. With his father's mysterious disappearance after the release of his last book, Tom travels the convention circuit reluctantly, having failed as a musician, actor and author. It is at one of these "TommyCons" that a young woman calling herself Lizzie Hexam publicly casts doubt on Tom's identity and whether or not he is Wilson Taylor's son.

The notion that Tom is a fraud creates an explosive amount of controversy, with a level of emotion only devoted fans can muster. Tom becomes a pariah, and on his way into hiding, is kidnapped by a crazed attacker pretending (or is he?) to be Count Ambrosio, the Lord Voldemort to our Tommy. With all of the internet watching, Tom survives and is suddenly elevated to  messianic status, something that turns out to be nearly as bad as being universally reviled.

But Tom's fortunes are about to change, again. Tom - now doubting his own past - begin looking for answers of his own. The search takes him to his childhood home of Villa Diodati in Switzerland (not coincidentally, this is also where Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein - the novels are filled with these bits of literary trivia and seeming coincidences.) Tom, joined by Lizzie, finds more questions than answers, though, along with a map, a crystal doorknob and more than a few dead bodies. It seems that Tom's activities have caught the attention of some very dangerous people who don't seem to be fans of Tommy Taylor.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this novel are the secrets that are hidden within. Hints and clues are sprinkled throughout for the sharp-eyed reader, allowing us to participate in Tom's search for the truth. Much like our hero, if we look deeper into the story, we can perhaps find out what's really going on. Some of these clues - such as Tommy Taylor's name being printed in blue - might turn out to be nothing (this isn't repeated in the later novels). However others - especially those that feature Tom's pursuer Mr. Pullman and what becomes of objects he touches with his wooden hand - provide excellent foreshadowing.

Sue Morganstern and Mr. Pullman -
The letters that appear in the clay seems to spell
"man made vessel". Hmm.

I went back and re-read the first five volumes in the series not once, but three times, each time searching for further clues, especially in light of what happens in later novels. Of course, sometimes a cigar is only a cigar. Some passing knowledge of literature helps, and I found myself referring to Wikipedia and Google Translate more than a few times during my re-reading. It was well worth it.

The sixth volume in the series, Tommy Taylor and the War of Words, is set for release in October. In the meantime, we'll be talking about The Unwritten at the next Graphic Content book discussion on Tuesday, August 14th at 7:00 p.m. Come join us and find out if, in the words of Count Ambrosio, stories are the only thing worth dying for.

~ Allison, Adult Services