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Staff Review: The Man Who Loved Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman

A video posted by Carnegie-Stout Public Library (@carnegiestout) on Mar 21, 2016 at 12:46pm PDT

I come from a family of book lovers, but it isn't often that we all love the same book. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers happens to be one of the few. Paul Hoffman's biography of the prolific and eccentric mathematician Paul Erdős is a fascinating read, even for someone like me who finds math a less than engaging topic. Reading about Erdős and his colleagues in this book, I was able to understand how a person could devote their life to a pursuit of mathematical truth.

I also recommend checking out Feynman by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick, a graphic novel biography of the equally eccentric physicist Richard Feynman.

~Sarah, Adult Services

Victorian Survival is Just Weird

I enjoyed the article "125 years of a LEGACY: Local artists, aficionados celebrate Grant Wood" by Tia Carol Jones in yesterday’s Telegraph Herald. Here's some more info.

On February 18, 1942, a few days after Grant Wood died, the TH described how years earlier the Carnegie-Stout Public Library Board purchased The Appraisal for $350 and Victorian Survival for $800.

At that time in 1934, the article says, the library board also had the opportunity to purchase Wood's satirical painting, Daughters of Revolution, but they decided it was too controversial, and actor Edward G. Robinson ended up buying it.

While The Appraisal below doesn't seem controversial, the library board might not have known that the woman holding the chicken in the painting was actually a man, Cedar Rapids gallery director Ed Rowan.

The other painting, Victorian Survival, was one of Grant Wood's favorites. He would only sell it to the library board if they agreed in advance to lend it back to him for future exhibitions. Thankfully, they agreed.

There are different theories about Victorian Survival. The main one seems to be that the old-fashioned lady resents the new-fangled telephone. But could it be the other way around? Is she trying to hide her fondness for it?

Art professor R. Tripp Evans puts it this way in his 2010 biography of Grant Wood:

Lying in shadow behind Aunt Tillie, whose concealed right hand itself indicates a note of treachery, the telephone is more accomplice than opponent--an offstage voice, whispering something salacious (and apparently mortifying) into Aunt Tillie's overscaled ear.

I agree with Tim Olson's assessment, "Victorian Survival is just weird." Weird and cool! And we're so lucky to have it in Dubuque!

~Mike, Adult Services

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Note:

Grant Wood visited Dubuque several times. Here's an announcement of one visit from the TH arts column, "'Mid Pallettes and Clefs," from March 6, 1932:

I wonder if this irregular column, which sometimes was signed by "Be-Be," might have been written by John Mulgrew, the original "Jazbo of Old Dubuque."

Staff Review: An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine

An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine is a novel like no other I have read. The book kept calling to me from the library shelf, so I finally picked it up. Rifling through it, I saw exotic references to writers, composers, artists, and philosophers, people like W.G. Sebald, Fernando Pessoa, Javier Marias, Michel Foucault, and dozens of others. Not your everyday novel. The author appears to have read vast galaxies of books.

The story is brought to you in the first person by the unnecessary woman of the title, Aaliya, a 72-year-old solitary, long divorced, who worked all her life in a bookstore. For many of those years she also translated books into Arabic: books by Leo Tolstoy, Roberto Bolano, Italo Calvino, Knut Hamsun, Jose Saramago, and over thirty more. At the start of each year, she enjoys the quiet thrill of selecting the coming year's translation. Once the translation is finished, she boxes it up; it goes unseen and unknown by the world. Her manuscripts fill cartons and rooms.

Her highbrow literary tastes form the skeletal structure of the book. She weaves anecdotes about books and authors through her musings about her own life: her work, her habits, her "impotent insect" of an ex-husband, the manner in which she acquired her AK-47, her less than loving relationship with her mother, the suicide of her best friend.

Aaliya's colorful, acerbic, highly-opinionated narration brings Beirut, her hometown, to vivid life in all its splendor and catastrophe, for she has lived through long years of Civil War and sectarian strife (hence the bedside AK-47). Aaliya certainly knows her own mind yet she also questions a lot, she doesn't suffer fools gladly, and she definitely does not mince words.

An Unnecessary Woman is a journey through the carefully examined life of a highly intelligent and peppery woman, an outwardly unremarkable woman who has lived her whole life for the love of literature, language, music, art, and ideas. And, as a bonus, the novel ends on a genuinely uplifting note.

~Ann, Adult Services

A Prophecy, A Quest and A Fatal Flaw: One Adult's Case for Reading Kid Lit

  

 
If you haven’t been reading kids' books, you are missing out. The drama, complexity and humor of many juvenile fiction books make for great reads, no matter your age. As a die-hard Harry Potter fan, and one who was well into adulthood when they were first published, I learned that a good story can simply be a good story. It is said that J.K. Rowling did not write Harry Potter as a kids' book on purpose; she was just telling the story of a boy wizard. The characters mature in her seven-book series, and we often see that similar arc in other juvenile fiction series. These stories grow in depth and maturity the further we get. 

Once I had read all the HP books, I was in search of more – the same magic, drama and sincerity that I found reading Rowling’s work. There are tons of great books to explore, many of which, I've found, share these compelling characteristics:

• It seems like most of the time, good wins over evil -- mostly. But we do see sadness, we even see death. Such is real life. But still, most of these tales are full of heart and hope. 
• They are real page-turners. They are written to keep you engrossed in the story. There are prophecies and quests and characters learning about their strengths and their fatal flaws.
• You might even learn something! Riordan’s Percy Jackson books are full of mythological characters that – though tweaked for these stories -- are actually based on the myths we were supposed to read in high school and college.
• You won’t get much swearing or any R-rated stuff here. These books are squeaky clean. 
• You want adventure? You got it! These are some crazy stories and will keep you on the edge of   your seat.
• If you are feeling generous, you can totally share these with the kids in your life. Listening to audio books of kids' lit is a near-daily activity in my household. Better yet, check out the book too and listen as you read along. It’s a very good way to help see how challenging words are spelled – especially in the Percy Jackson/mythology books.
• Stop by the Kids Desk or the Recommendations Desk to learn more about the many great tales of adventure.

Classic Lit vs. Lusty Wenches

Recently the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald posted a "Throwback Thursday" article from March 11, 1951 about the then Dubuque County Attorney, John L. Duffy, ordering the confiscation of a few books from the library in conjunction with an obscenity case.

The article can be accessed via microfilm at the library and soon you will be able to search articles digitally.  Thanks to a old Google project, you can read the first page of the article here and the second page here.

The obscenity case was picked up in Time magazine and published in the April 2, 1951 edition.  You can come to the library and read the article; we have bound copies of Time magazine going back to 1936.

One of the books cited in the news article and Time magazine happens to be our April 17, 2016 book discussion selection, A Stretch on the River by Dubuque's own Richard Bissell. Bissell's book was selected along with three French and English classics so the grand jury would have "something to make comparisons with."  In 1951, A Stretch on the River was on a restricted list at the library and not given out to children. Today anyone with a library card can check out a copy. There are several different covers of the book out there; the one to the left seems to be from 1959.  If this was the 1951 cover, you can imagine why it might have been considered "obscene."  

Bissell himself commented on the case in his book "My Life on the Mississippi or why I'm not Mark Twain"


If you are interested in more of Richard Bissell's works, you can place a hold on many of his items here.  

Our microfilm room is available anytime the library is open. We have a large collection of Dubuque newspapers on film, a few as far back as 1836.  Stop by the Recommendations Desk for help finding a Bissell book, and come to the Reference area to browse magazines and newspapers both past and present.  

~ Amy, Adult Services.