Travel Writing/True Crime

Attendance:

Holley W. – Emmet O’Neal

Richard G. – Central Fiction

Jonathan N. – Avondale

Elizabeth S. – JCLC

Maura D. – Trussville

Today, Systems Librarian extraordinaire Elizabeth S. visited to share with us some of the exciting features of Sierra, the upgrade to our Millennium system coming later this fall.

Our next meeting will be on August 14, 2013 at 9am at the Emmet O’Neal Library.  The topic of discussion will be fantasy…graphic novels are also welcome!  This morning we had a dual discussion of true crime and travel writing.

Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris

A travelogue/comedy hybrid that is classic Sedaris: sardonic, biting, and profoundly funny for the thick skinned.  Not for the faint of heart as Sedaris skewers many social conventions.  I listened to the audio narrated by Sedaris himself and I demand that no one other than Sedaris EVER narrate his audiobooks…a truly stellar performance!

Holley, Emmet O’Neal

The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean by Philip Caputo
This book is not scheduled for publication until July 16, 2013 (Henry Holt and Co, 9780805094466, $28.00) but I have been enchanted with it ever since I first read the review.  Here is the book description from Amazon: 

One of America’s most respected writers takes an epic journey across America, Airstream in tow, and asks everyday Americans what unites and divides a country as endlessly diverse as it is large.

Standing on a wind-scoured island off the Alaskan coast, Philip Caputo marveled that its Inupiat Eskimo schoolchildren pledge allegiance to the same flag as the children of Cuban immigrants in Key West, six thousand miles away. And a question began to take shape: How does the United States, peopled by every race on earth, remain united? Caputo resolved that one day he’d drive from the nation’s southernmost point to the northernmost point reachable by road, talking to everyday Americans about their lives and asking how they would answer his question.

So it was that in 2011, in an America more divided than in living memory, Caputo, his wife, and their two English setters made their way in a truck and classic trailer (hereafter known as “Fred” and “Ethel”) from Key West, Florida, to Deadhorse, Alaska, covering 16,000 miles. He spoke to everyone from a West Virginia couple saving souls to a Native American shaman and taco entrepreneur. What he found is a story that will entertain and inspire readers as much as it informs them about the state of today’s United States, the glue that holds us all together, and the conflicts that could cause us to pull apart.
Holley, Emmet O’Neal

Way Off the Road: Discovering the Peculiar Charms of Small Town America by Bill Geist
Talking about Philip Caputo’s new book made me remember how much I enjoyed this little gem several years ago.  You may remember author Bill Geist as a celebrated roving correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning.  In Way Off the Road, we follow Geist as he takes a rollicking look at some small-town Americans and their offbeat ways of life.  One of the small towns Mr. Geist visits is Scottsboro, Alabama for a stop at the Unclaimed Baggage Center!
Holley, Emmet O’Neal

A Death in Italy: The Definitive Account of the Amanda Knox Case by John Follain
Jon, Avondale

Portrait of a Monster: Joran van der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery by Lisa Pulitzer and Cole Thompson
Jon, Avondale

Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed by Patricia Cornwell
Jon, Avondale

Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of by Harold Schechter
Jon, Avondale

GENERAL DISCUSSION:

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
Erik Larson—author of #1 bestseller In the Garden of Beasts—intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction. (Amazon)

The Outside Man: A Novel by Richard North Patterson (A fictionalized account of the 1977 murder of Mountain Brook resident Virginia Simpson--more info here and here.)
The outside man is society lawyer Adam Shaw. A northerner in a southern town jealous of its secrets, he finds the dead body of his best friend's wealthy wife -- and his friend is missing.

In a world where wealthy people will stop at nothing to maintain a genteel image, Shaw must gamble his career, his marriage, and his very life in a passionate quest for the real murderer -- and learn the shocking truth about his own past and future. (Amazon)  

Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America by Sharon Davies

It was among the most notorious criminal cases of its day. On August 11, 1921, in Birmingham, Alabama, a Methodist minister named Edwin Stephenson shot and killed a Catholic priest, James Coyle, in broad daylight and in front of numerous witnesses. The killer's motive?  The priest had married Stephenson's eighteen-year-old daughter Ruth to Pedro Gussman, a Puerto Rican migrant and practicing Catholic.

Sharon Davies's Rising Road resurrects the murder of Father Coyle and the trial of his killer. As Davies reveals with novelistic richness, Stephenson's crime laid bare the most potent bigotries of the age: a hatred not only of blacks, but of Catholics and "foreigners" as well. In one of the case's most unexpected turns, the minister hired future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black to lead his defense. Though regarded later in life as a civil rights champion, in 1921 Black was just months away from donning the robes of the Ku Klux Klan, the secret order that financed Stephenson's defense. Entering a plea of temporary insanity, Black defended the minister on claims that the Catholics had robbed Ruth away from her true Protestant faith, and that her Puerto Rican husband was actually black.

Placing the story in social and historical context, Davies brings this heinous crime and its aftermath back to life, in a brilliant and engrossing examination of the wages of prejudice and a trial that shook the nation at the height of Jim Crow. (Amazon)

Bad Lands: A Tourist on the Axis of Evil by Tony Wheeler
In an age of plastic knives on planes, Tony Wheeler can make the extraordinary claim of having visited all the rogue countries currently on newsreaders' lips. Bad Lands is a witty first-hand account of his travels through some of the most repressive and dangerous regimes in the world: Afghanistan, Albania, Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Saudi Arabia. Taking into account each country's attitude to human rights, terrorism and foreign policy, he asks 'what makes a country truly evil?' and 'how bad is really bad?' - all the while engaging with a colorful cast of locals and hapless tour guides, ruminating on history and debunking popular myths. Written by the founder of Lonely Planet, this fascinating account of life in these closed-off countries will appeal to anyone with an interest in the state of the world today. (Amazon)

Wicked North Alabama by Jacquelyn Procter Reeves
Thoughts of Alabama invite images of Confederate jasmine and fertile cotton fields, sweet iced tea and southern hospitality. But even in paradise, evil sometimes creeps in. Some of the stories captured within the pages of this book are well known to the good folks of North Alabama; others are less familiar. The scandals of Lincoln's brother- in-law, the reign of terror created by Huntsville's Southwest Molester, the Decatur man who buried his wife's dismembered body under the fishpond and the beautiful Black Widow of Hazel Green- all of these stories and more are well researched and masterfully written by Huntsville author Jacquelyn Procter Reeves. True-crime fans will appreciate this treasury of stories spanning nearly two hundred years of North Alabama history. (Amazon)

The Birmingham Horrors by William Stanley Hoole (Weld article here)
Being a complete and accurate account of Richard R. Hawes's murder of his wife, Emma, and daughters, May and Irene in Birmingham, Alabama, on December 3-4, 1888

The Last Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari by Paul Theroux
Following the success of the acclaimed Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and The Great Railway Bazaar, The Last Train to Zona Verde is an ode to the last African journey of the world's most celebrated travel writer.

“Happy again, back in the kingdom of light,” writes Paul Theroux as he sets out on a new journey through the continent he knows and loves best. Theroux first came to Africa as a twenty-two-year-old Peace Corps volunteer, and the pull of the vast land never left him. Now he returns, after fifty years on the road, to explore the little-traveled territory of western Africa and to take stock both of the place and of himself.

His odyssey takes him northward from Cape Town, through South Africa and Namibia, then on into Angola, wishing to head farther still until he reaches the end of the line. Journeying alone through the greenest continent, Theroux encounters a world increasingly removed from both the itineraries of tourists and the hopes of postcolonial independence movements. Leaving the Cape Town townships, traversing the Namibian bush, passing the browsing cattle of the great sunbaked heartland of the savanna, Theroux crosses “the Red Line” into a different Africa: “the improvised, slapped-together Africa of tumbled fences and cooking fires, of mud and thatch,” of heat and poverty, and of roadblocks, mobs, and anarchy. After 2,500 arduous miles, he comes to the end of his journey in more ways than one, a decision he chronicles with typically unsparing honesty in a chapter called “What Am I Doing Here?”

Vivid, witty, and beautifully evocative, The Last Train to Zona Verde is a fitting final African adventure from the writer whose gimlet eye and effortless prose have brought the world to generations of readers. (Amazon)

The Dark Side of Disney: Utterly Unauthorized Tips, Tricks, and Scams for Your WDW Vacation by Leonard Kinsey
Maura, Trussville

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant
It’s the late 1990s in the Russian Far East. An Amur tiger has turned the tables and is hunting people. Usually, it’s the other way round, but that’s rare, as hunters know to stay away from tigers. But someone has upset the code of the taiga and angered a tiger, an animal known for its capacity for revenge upon any creature that does it harm. Who’s guilty here? The tiger? Or a person? And how can you tell? John Vaillant marshals the facts well, and creates such a detailed portrait of this exotic back of beyond you feel you are there with the frightened people as well as the tiger.
Richard, BPL Central - Fiction

GENERAL DISCUSSION:

Richard’s book about killer tigers reminded the group of The Maneaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures by John Henry Patterson AND the movie adapted from those adventures, The Ghost and the Darkness.
When the British government undertook the construction of the Uganda Railway through East Africa in 1898, harsh criticism from the press, tremendous amounts of money spent, and rebelliousness of the workers turned out to be the least of the government’s worries. Their biggest obstacle came in the form of two ravenous lions with a taste for human flesh, terrorizing the 35,000 laborers building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River.

 After killing more than one hundred-thirty people over the course of nine months, the lions completely halted construction, as the workers were too afraid to continue. Colonel John Henry Patterson, the chief engineer overseeing the project, then took matters into his own hands. An inexperienced hunter at the time, but a courageous and clever man, he took on the beasts and single-handedly brought an end to their nine-month reign of terror.

Patterson’s true account of his gripping and terrifying adventures confronting the lions and overseeing the project termed “The Lunatic Line,” while tackling countless other obstacles, is a must for anyone looking for a thrilling read. With over 100 original photos of the East African lands, native tribes, and wild animals, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo is a true hunting classic. (Amazon)

The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell

Sarah Vowell travels through the American past and, in doing so, investigates the dusty, bumpy roads of her own life. In this insightful and funny collection of personal stories Vowell -- widely hailed for her inimitable stories on public radio's This American Life -- ponders a number of curious questions: Why is she happiest when visiting the sites of bloody struggles like Salem or Gettysburg? Why do people always inappropriately compare themselves to Rosa Parks? Why is a bad life in sunny California so much worse than a bad life anywhere else? What is it about the Zen of foul shots? And, in the title piece, why must doubt and internal arguments haunt the sleepless nights of the true patriot?

Her essays confront a wide range of subjects, themes, icons, and historical moments: Ike, Teddy Roosevelt, and Bill Clinton; Canadian Mounties and German filmmakers; Tom Cruise and Buffy the Vampire Slayer; twins and nerds; the Gettysburg Address, the State of the Union, and George W. Bush's inauguration.

The result is a teeming and engrossing book, capturing Vowell's memorable wit and her keen social commentary. (Amazon)

We also talked about expose-type books from members of various service industries:

Free For All: Oddballs,Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library by Don BorchertNot long ago, the public library was a place for the bookish, the eggheaded, and the studious—often seeking refuge from a loud, irrational, crude, outside world.  Today, libraries have become free-for-all entertainment complexes filled with rowdy teens, deviants, drugs, and even sex toys. Lockdowns and chaperones are often necessary.

What happened?

Don Borchert was a short-order cook, door-to-door salesman, telemarketer, and Christmas-tree-chopper before landing a job in a California library. He never could have predicted his encounters with the colorful kooks, touching adolescents, threatening bullies, and tricksters who fill the pages of this hilarious memoir.

In Free for All, Borchert offers readers a ringside seat for the unlikely spectacle of mayhem and absurdity that is business as usual at the public library. You’ll see cops bust drug dealers who’ve set up shop in the men’s restroom, witness a burka-wearing employee suffer a curse-ridden nervous breakdown, and meet a lonely, neglected kid who grew up in the library and still sends postcards to his surrogate parents—the librarians.  In fact, from the first page of this comic debut to the last, you’ll learn everything about the world of the modern-day library that you never expected. (Amazon)

The World’s Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette’s, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family by Josh Hanagarne
An inspiring story of how a Mormon kid with Tourette’s found salvation in books and weight-lifting

Josh Hanagarne couldn’t be invisible if he tried. Although he wouldn’t officially be diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome until his freshman year of high school, Josh was six years old and onstage in a school Thanksgiving play when he first began exhibiting symptoms. By the time he was twenty, the young Mormon had reached his towering adult height of 6’7” when—while serving on a mission for the Church of Latter Day Saints—his Tourette’s tics escalated to nightmarish levels.

Determined to conquer his affliction, Josh underwent everything from quack remedies to lethargy-inducing drug regimes to Botox injections that paralyzed his vocal cords and left him voiceless for three years. Undeterred, Josh persevered to marry and earn a degree in Library Science. At last, an eccentric, autistic strongman—and former Air Force Tech Sergeant and guard at an Iraqi prison—taught Josh how to “throttle” his tics into submission through strength-training.

Today, Josh is a librarian in the main branch of Salt Lake City’s public library and founder of a popular blog about books and weight lifting—and the proud father of four-year-old Max, who has already started to show his own symptoms of Tourette’s.

The World’s Strongest Librarian illuminates the mysteries of this little-understood disorder, as well as the very different worlds of strongman training and modern libraries. With humor and candor, this unlikely hero traces his journey to overcome his disability— and navigate his wavering Mormon faith—to find love and create a life worth living.

Heads in Beds:  A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality by Jacob Tomsky
In the tradition of Kitchen Confidential and Waiter Rant, a rollicking, eye-opening, fantastically indiscreet memoir of a life spent (and misspent) in the hotel industry.

Jacob Tomsky never intended to go into the hotel business. As a new college graduate, armed only with a philosophy degree and a singular lack of career direction, he became a valet parker for a large luxury hotel in New Orleans. Yet, rising fast through the ranks, he ended up working in “hospitality” for more than a decade, doing everything from supervising the housekeeping department to manning the front desk at an upscale Manhattan hotel. He’s checked you in, checked you out, separated your white panties from the white bed sheets, parked your car, tasted your room-service meals, cleaned your toilet, denied you a late checkout, given you a wake-up call, eaten M&Ms out of your minibar, laughed at your jokes, and taken your money. In Heads in Beds he pulls back the curtain to expose the crazy and compelling reality of a multi-billion-dollar industry we think we know.

Heads in Beds is a funny, authentic, and irreverent chronicle of the highs and lows of hotel life, told by a keenly observant insider who’s seen it all. Prepare to be amused, shocked, and amazed as he spills the unwritten code of the bellhops, the antics that go on in the valet parking garage, the housekeeping department’s dirty little secrets—not to mention the shameless activities of the guests, who are rarely on their best behavior. Prepare to be moved, too, by his candor about what it’s like to toil in a highly demanding service industry at the luxury level, where people expect to get what they pay for (and often a whole lot more). Employees are poorly paid and frequently abused by coworkers and guests alike, and maintaining a semblance of sanity is a daily challenge.

Along his journey Tomsky also reveals the secrets of the industry, offering easy ways to get what you need from your hotel without any hassle. This book (and a timely proffered twenty-dollar bill) will help you score late checkouts and upgrades, get free stuff galore, and make that pay-per-view charge magically disappear. Thanks to him you’ll know how to get the very best service from any business that makes its money from putting heads in beds. Or, at the very least, you will keep the bellmen from taking your luggage into the camera-free back office and bashing it against the wall repeatedly. (Amazon)

Cruising Attitude: Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama, and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 Feet by Heather PooleReal-life flight attendant Heather Poole has written a charming and funny insider’s account of life and work in the not-always-friendly skies. Cruising Attitude is a Coffee, Tea, or Me? for the 21st century, as the author parlays her fifteen years of flight experience into a delightful account of crazy airline passengers and crew drama, of overcrowded crashpads in “Crew Gardens” Queens and finding love at 35,000 feet. The popular author of “Galley Gossip,” a weekly column for AOL’s award-winning travel website Gadling.com, Poole not only shares great stories, but also explains the ins and outs of flying, as seen from the flight attendant’s jump seat. (Amazon)

Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip—Confessions of a Cynical Waiter by Steve DublanicaAccording to The Waiter, 80 percent of customers are nice people just looking for something to eat. The remaining 20 percent, however, are socially maladjusted psychopaths.

Eye-opening, outrageous, and unabashed—replete with tales of customer stupidity, arrogant misbehavior, and unseen tidbits of human grace in the most unlikely places—Waiter Rant presents the server's unique point of view, revealing surefire secrets to getting good service, proper tipping etiquette, and ways to ensure that your waiter won't spit on your food. (Amazon)

Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress by Debra Ginsberg
A veteran waitress dishes up a spicy and robust account of life as it really exists behind kitchen doors.

Part memoir, part social commentary, part guide to how to behave when dining out, Debra Ginsberg's book takes readers on her twentyyear journey as a waitress at a soap-operatic Italian restaurant, an exclusive five-star dining club, the dingiest of diners, and more. While chronicling her evolution as a writer, Ginsberg takes a behind-the-scenes look at restaurant life-revealing that yes, when pushed, a server will spit in food, and, no, that's not really decaf you're getting-and how most people in this business are in a constant state of waiting to do something else. (Amazon)