Today’s book show on The Point was a discussion on banned and censored books, as we celebrated Banned Books Week. Mindy was away today, so Sean Corcoran joined us as host, along with Peter Abrahams, and Jill Erickson. Below is the list of the titles we discussed, and if you missed the show you can always listen online at WCAI! And here is a link to the Maya Angelou poem Those Who Ban Books

Peter’s Picks

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Jill’s Picks

Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read by Robert P. Doyle

Obscene in the Extreme: the burning and banning of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath by Rick Wartzman

120 Banned Books: censorship histories of world literature

Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: from Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq by Fernando Báez

Fahrenheit 451, 60th Anniversary Edition by Ray Bradbury with a new introduction by Neil Gaiman

Note from one of our listeners, which we didn’t have time to read on air:

“Thank you for taking up this topic that touches us all more often than one might suppose! As a former librarian and a bookseller, I have found some parents anxious about the content of some books. And grandparents are ten times as anxious! And sometimes I felt a parent would feel deeply uncomfortable with the values put across in the book or series. For these matters, I developed two prescriptions: first, books are like hotpads. They let readers pick up hot topics without getting burned. Second, read the book as a chance to discuss the values with your child. Ask them what they think of the choices a character makes, or if they’ve ever been in a similar situation, or seen it happen. Finally, after years of making hourly choices about what books to stock and which titles to recommend to whom, I realized that tastes and needs are so varied that parents and grandparents need worry little. When it comes to books, kids only pick up what they can carry. Carol”

We had such a fun time this morning talking about Science Fiction books on The Point with Mindy Todd. Joining us once again, was Vicky Titcomb of Titcomb’s Bookshop located in East Sandwich. I am quite sure we could easily spend a year talking about nothing but Science Fiction, as it is such a rich and varied genre. If you missed the show you can listen online at capeandislands.org. By the way, I was remiss in not letting everyone know that we have a Science Fiction Book Club that meets at the library. Their next meeting will be at 7:00 PM on Monday, August 31st when they will be discussing Lexicon by Max Barry.

Jill’s Picks

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

“All Summer In A Day” short story by Ray Bradbury, collected in The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology This story can also be found in Twice 22, which includes two story collections The Golden Apples of the Sun and A Medicine for Melancholy.

What Makes This Book So Great by Jo Walton

In Other Worlds: SF and the human imagination by Margaret Atwood

“Science Fiction” essay by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. included in Wampeters Foma & Granfalloons (Opinions) and Library of America’s Novels & Stories 1950-1962 by Kurt Vonnegut.

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

Brave New Words: the Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction edited by Jeff Prucher

Vicky’s Picks

Pilgrimage: the book of the people and The People: no different flesh by Zenna Henderson. Nice article about Zenna Henderson written by Jo Walton.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Bees by Laline Paull

The Passage by Justin Cronin

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Listener Picks

The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov

Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson

Wool by Hugh Howey (part of the Silo Series)

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

Larry Niven novels, Ringworld Series is part of the Tales of Known Space

The Passage and The Twelve by Justin Cronin

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The John Carter of Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Stranger in a Strange Land and the Future History series by Robert Heinlein

Ender’s Game series by Orson Scott Card

Great fun this morning with Mindy Todd and Vicky Titcomb on The Point with Mindy Todd, as we discussed great books for summer from novels to food to gardening. Below are the books we mentioned, as well as books mentioned by our listeners. Have you got a favorite summer read? Let us know! You can e-mail info@falmouthpubliclibrary.org and I’ll add your suggestion to our list. Miss the show? You can listen online!

Mindy’s Picks

The Italian Wife by Ann Hood

Woof: a Bowser and Birdie novel by Spencer Quinn

What the Dog Knows: the science and wonder of working dogs by Cat Warren

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant

Inside the O’Briens by Lisa Genova

Jill’s Picks

The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein. You can see photographs of Gertrude Stein (one of which is attached to this blog) and read about her time at MBL here, and you can read John Ashbery’s article about Gertrude Stein here.

Resorting to Murder: holiday mysteries edited by Martin Edwards (part of the British Library Crime Classics)

The Cornish Coast Murder by John Bude (part of the British Library Crime Classics)

Seaside Dreams by Melissa Foster (series is Love in Bloom: Seaside Summers) Set in Wellfleet.

Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness by Jennifer Tseng

Big Gay Ice Cream: saucy stories & frozen treats: going all the way with ice cream by Bryan Petroff and Douglas Quint with Rebecca Flint Marx

The Backyard Bartender: 55 cool summer cocktails by Nicole Aloni

Vacation: we’re going to the ocean Poems by David L. Harrison, illustrations by Rob Shepperson

The Wild Braid: a poet reflects on a century in the garden by Stanley Kunitz with Genine Lentine

The Writer’s Garden: how gardens inspired our best-loved authors by Jackie Bennett, photography by Richard Hanson

Lost in Translation: an illustrated compendium of untranslatable words from around the world by Ella Frances Sanders

Vicky’s Picks

The Martian by Andy Weir

Natchez Burning and The Bone Tree by Greg Iles

The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton

The Rocks by Peter Nichols

Circling the Sun by Paula McLain

Still Life by Louise Penny

New England Open House Cookbook: 300 recipes inspired by the bounty of New England by Sarah Leah Chase

In Cod We Trust: from sea to shore, the celebrated cuisine of coastal Massachusetts by Heather Atwood

An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

The Forget Me Not Summer by Leila Howland

Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley

Listener Picks

Above Us Only Sky by Michele Young-Stone

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Poems from the Pond: 107 years of words and wisdom, the writing of Peggy Freydburg edited by Laurie David

What a delight it was this morning to hear Peter Abrahams talk about baseball! Mindy and I were both impressed by the depth of his knowledge and his love of the game. If you missed the show this morning, listen in tonight at 7 PM on WCAI, 90.1 or listen online. Thanks also to all of our listeners who called in with their favorite baseball books! I’m convinced we could easily do twelve months of baseball shows, the literature is so rich.

Peter’s Picks

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

The Wrong Stuff by Bill Lee

Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinov

The Catcher Was a Spy by Michael Dawidoff

Sandy Koufax by Jane Leavy

A Whole Different Ball Game by Marvin Miller

Where Nobody Knows Your Name by John Feinstein

Pedro by Pedro Martinez with Michael Silverman

Ball Four by Jim Bouton

Jill’s Picks

Baseball Trick by Scott Corbett

Bats at the Ballgame by Brian Lies

Take Me Out to the Yakyu by Aaron Meshon

Girl Wonder: a baseball story in nine innings by Deborah Hopkinson with pictures by Terry Widener

Baseball: a literary anthology edited by Nicholas Dawidoff

“American Fiction” in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, vol. 4

You Know Me Al by Ring W. Lardner

The Fan by Peter Abrahams

The Last Best League by Jim Collins

The Top of His Game: the best sportswriting of W. C. Heinz, edited by Bill Littlefield

Baseball Haiku: American and Japanese Haiku and Senryu on Baseball edited with translations by Cor van den Heuvel & Nanae Tamura

Listener’s Picks

Anything by Roger Angell, especially Season Ticket and Once More Around the Park: a baseball reader

The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams and John Underwood

Sixty Feet, Six Inches by Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson

Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Dinosaur Bob and his Adventures with the Family Lazardo by William Joyce

High Heat: the secret history of the fast ball by Tim Wendel

Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville: a lifelong passion for baseball by Stephen Jay Gould

Bottom of the 33rd: hope, redemption, and baseball’s longest game by Dan Barry

Independence Day by Richard Ford. This novel is part of a series of novels about Frank Bascombe.

1. The Sportswriter (Vintage, 1986)

Once promising fiction writer turned sports reporter Frank Bascombe tries to avoid coping with his son’s death by distracting himself with extramarital affairs.

2. Independence Day (Knopf, 1995)

Frank, divorced and working in real estate, takes his difficult teenage son on a trip to two sports halls of fame during the Fourth of July weekend.

3. The Lay of the Land (Knopf, 2006)

Frank’s second marriage, isn’t working out. Sally abandons Frank for her thought-to-be-dead first husband, Frank undergoes treatment for prostate cancer. This novel’s action unfolds during the week before Thanksgiving 2000.

4. Let Me Be Frank With You (Ecco, 2014)

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Frank Bascombe travels to the site of his former home on the shore, visits his ex-wife, who is suffering with Parkinson’s, and meets a dying former friend.

We don’t know if it was because everyone was snowed in or because you all really love classics, but we had more calls and e-mails today than we have ever had for any other book show that we’ve done! Thanks for your many, many suggestions! If you missed the show you can listen to the rebroadcast tonight at 7:00 PM on WCAI 90.1 FM, or listen online at capeandislands.org. Here are my picks, Janet Gardner‘s picks, and your picks!  We continue our rotating guests on the book show, and it was lots of fun to talk books today with Janet. Here also is a link to the 100 Week Project that The Guardian is doing.

Here is an e-mail from a listener that didn’t make it to the air, but sounds like a great combo of books. “One summer long ago I read Herman Hesse’ Steppenwolf followed by Dostoyevski The Idiot followed by Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and it seemed they were meant to be read as a trilogy as I believed they were all 3 about the same struggle humans have with their thinking side vs. feeling sides and their animal vs civilized sides.  I think everyone should read the 3 together!!!!”

Jill’s Picks

Genrefied Classics: a guide to reading interests in classic literature by Tina Froulund

Lost Classics edited by Michael Ondaatje, Michael Redhill, Esta Spalding, and Linda Spalding

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, Penguin Books, General Editor, Christopher Prendergast

Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright

Bachelor Brothers’ Bed & Breakfast by Bill Richardson

Classics for Pleasure by Michael Dirda

The Modern Library: the 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950 By Colm Tóibín and Carmen Callil

Ulysses by James Joyce

The Graphic Canon edited by Russ Kick

Library of America editions of Louisa May Alcott and Laura Ingalls Wilder And if you’d like to read Katherine A. Powers article about the Little House LOA books it’s called ”Darkness on the Prairie.” .

Janet’s Picks

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

Books she brought but didn’t get to:

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Walden by Thoreau

The Collected Stories of Edgar Allan Poe

Listener Picks

Jane Austen

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Lad: a dog by Albert Payson Terhune (and his other dog stories)

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (particularly the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

11/22/63 by Stephen King

Dead Zone by Stephen King

The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton

This House of Sky: landscapes of a western mind by Ivan Doig

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Me Before You by Jo Jo Moyes

W. H. Auden poem as recited in Four Weddings and a Funeral

Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

The Shining Tide by Win Brooks

Mayflower: a story of courage, community, and war by Nathaniel Philbrick

Natty Bumpo series by James Fenimore Cooper

Outermost House by Henry Beston

Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham

The Divine Comedy by Dante

This morning on The Point with Mindy Todd, Mindy, Jill Erickson, Head of Reference & Adult Services at FPL, and Sara Hines of Eight Cousins Books talked about the books they most loved reading in 2014. Thanks for all the listener choices as well! If you have a book you loved this year, send us an email at info@falmouthpubliclibrary.org and we’ll add it to our list. Miss the show? You can listen online at capeandislands.org.

Mindy’s Picks

To Be a Friend is Fatal: the fight to save the Iraqis America left behind by Kirk W. Johnson

On Pluto: inside the mind of Alzheimer’s by Greg O’Brien

War of the Whales: a true story by Joshua Horowitz

The Long Haul: the future of New England’s fisheries by the staff of WCAI public radio

Jill’s Picks

Plum(b) by Kim Triedman

Permissionby Katie Peterson

The Albertine Workout by Anne Carson

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

The Art of Asking or how I learned to stop worrying and let people help by Amanda Palmer

Letters of Note: an eclectic collection of correspondence deserving of a wider audience compiled by Shaun Usher

My Favorite Things by Maira Kalman

Sara’s Picks

Compulsion by Martina Boone

Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley

Misadventures of the Family Fletcher by Dana Levy

The Great Greene Heist: saving the school, one con at a time by Varian Johnson

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

It’s Complicated: the social lives of networked teens by Danah Boyd

Absolutely Truly by Heather Vogel Frederick

The Farmer and the Clown by Marla Frazee

Listener Picks

Love’s Attraction by David Adams Cleveland

Falling Out of Time by David Grossman

How About Never … Is Never Good for You?: my life in cartoons By Bob Mankoff

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Lock In by John Scazi

We had such a fun time with author Peter Abrahams this morning as Mindy, Peter, and I talked about mysteries. Thanks to all of you who called in with your mystery suggestions! Below are our picks, as well as all the listener picks.

Peter’s Picks

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler

Maigret at the Gai-Moulin by Georges Simenon

The Chill by Ross Macdonald

Underground Man by Ross Macdonald

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

Jill’s Picks

Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey

The Awdrey-Gore Legacy by Edward Gorey

The Art of the English Murder by Lucy Worsley

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

The Sculptress by Minette Walters

December Heat by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak

Book of Poisons: a guide for writers by Serita Stevens and Anne Bannon (part of the Howdunit Series)

Listener Picks

The Resistance Man: a Bruno Chief of Police Novel by Martin Walker

A Cat Was Involved: a Chet and Bernie Mystery by Peter Abrahams

Louise Penny mysteries set in Canada

Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

Erle Stanley Gardner’s old Perry Mason mysteries

Sue Grafton’s Alphabet Mysteries

The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson

The Gap in the Curtain by John Buchan

Ross MacDonald, Margaret Millar, Patricia Highsmith, Lars Kepler, Val McDermid

Today was Melanie Lauwer’s final time on “The Point”.  She is moving on to a new place to start a new phase of her life.  We will miss her and her great contributions to the book discussions each month.  So to mark the occasion, and to send her off on a high note, we wanted to talk about funny books (even though we feel like crying).  The show will be rebroadcast tonight at 7 PM on 90.1 FM WCAI or listen to the podscast on capeandislands.org. 

Next month, local mystery author Peter Abrahams, aka Spencer Quinn, will join Mindy and me to talk about mystery books. 

Funny Books

Melanie’s Picks

Encyclopedia of Jewish Humor: From Biblical Times to the Modern Age by Henry D. Spalding

The Snark Bible by Lawrence Dorfman

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant by Roz Chast

I Hate Everyone … Starting with Me by Joan Rivers

Braindroppings by George Carlin

The Comedy Bible: From Stand-Up to Sitcom – The Comedy’s Writer’s Ultimate How-To Guide by Judy Carter

A Prairie Home Companion Pretty Good Joke Book (5th edition) by Garrison Keillor

Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

How Right You Are, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Not mentioned but pretty funny!

Twitter: The Comic (The Book) by Mike Rosenthal (@VectorBelly)

Jill’s Picks

The Zombie Survival Guide: complete protection from the living dead by Max Brooks

One for the Books by Joe Queenan

An Encyclopedia of Modern American Humor edited by Bennett Cerf (1954)

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

How About Never – Is Never Good for You: my life in cartoons by Bob Mankoff

Kids Books

17 Things I’m Not Allowed to do Anymore by Jenny Offill & Nancy Carpenter

11 Experiments That Failed by Jenny Offill & Nancy Carpenter

Wicked Big Toddlah by Kevin Hawkes

Not Enough Time For …

This is Ridiculous This is Amazing by Jason Good

How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley

Everything I Need to Know I Learned From a Little Golden Book by Diane Muldrow

Confessions of the World’s Best Father by Dave Engledow

The 50 Funniest American Writers: an anthology of humor from Mark Twain to The Onion *according to Andy Borowitz

Russell Baker’s Book of American Humor edited by Russell Baker

This morning on The Point with Mindy Todd we discussed summer reading choices, including Jill & Melanie’s suggestions, as well as a couple of listener suggestions.

Jill’s Picks

NON-FICTION

Eighty-Nine Good Novels of the Sea, the Ship, and the Sailor: a list compiled by J. K. Lilly

The Map Thief by Michael Blanding

The Shelf from LEQ to LES: adventures in extreme reading by Phyllis Rose

The Sea Inside by Philip Hoare

Summer: a user’s guide by Suzanne Brown

Tag, Toss, & Run: 40 classic lawn games by Paul Tukey & Victoria Rowell

FICTION

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio translated by Wayne A. Rebhorn (also mentioned in conjunction with The Decameron were Beowulf on the Beach by Jack Murnighan and the article by Joan Acocella called Renaissance Man: a new translation of Boccaccio’s Decameron which appeared in the Nov. 11, 2013 issue of The New Yorker.) There are many other translations of The Decameron if you want to give it try.

Stern Men by Elizabeth Gilbert

Thornyhold by Mary Stewart (It is Chicago Review Press that is reprinting many Mary Stewart titles, part of their Rediscovered Classics series.

Melanie’s Picks

NONFICTION

The Closer by Mariano Rivera and Wayne Coffey

John Wayne: The Life and Legend by Scott Eyman

The Keillor Reader by Garrison Keillor

The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War by Tim Butcher

FICTION

World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters

The Bees Laline Paull

FUN

Project Kid: 100 crafts to make with and for your kids by Amanda Kingloff

Be in a Treehouse by Pete Nelson

Also good (but lack of time this a.m.)

FaceOff thriller stories by wide variety of famous authors, edited by David Baldacci

A Woman’s Shed: Spaces for Women to Create, Write, Make, Grow, Think, and Escape by Gill Heriz

Cooking with Fire by Paula Marcoux

The Oh She Glows Cookbook by Angela Liddon

Listener Picks

Jerry suggested Five Days in London, May 1940

Betsy suggsted Sea of Grass by Conrad Richter and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez.

Today’s show on books having to do with transportation was pre-recorded, but feel free to send us an email with your favorite books about planes, trains, and automobiles at info@falmouthpubliclibrary.org, and we’ll add them to our list! And if you happen to have a copy of Eighty-Nine Good Novels of the Sea, the Ship and the Sailor compiled by J.K. Lilly, let me know!

MELANIE’S PICKS

Auto Biography: a classic car, an outlaw motorhead, and 57 years of the American dream by Earl Swift

The Hemi in the Barn by Tom Cotter

Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum

Around India in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh

The Ice Pilots by Michael Vlessides

Birdmen: the Wright brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the battle to control the skies by Lawrence Goldstone

Boston Below by Joseph R. Votano and Karen E. Hosking

Life is a Wheel: love, death, etc., and a bike ride across America by Bruce Weber

Kids:

Me on the Map by Joan Sweeney

National Geographic Kids Ultimate Globetrotting World Atlas by National Geographic Kids

The Transcontinental Railroad by John Perritano

Henry Ford: Father of the Auto Industry by Josh Gregory

JILL’s PICKS

Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers

Falling Upwards: how we took to the air by Richard Holmes

Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint Exupery, translated from the French by Lewis Galantiere

Pan American Clippers: the golden age of flying boats by James Trautman

Grand Central: how a train station transformed America by Sam Roberts

The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the incredible rivalry that built America’s first subway by Doug Most

Art of the Classic Car by Peter Bodensteiner, Photography by Peter Harholdt

Wheels of Change: how women rode the bicycle to freedom (with a few flat tires along the way) by Sue Macy

Sail Away: stories of escaping to sea edited by Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker

Fifty Places to Sail Before You Die: sailing experts share the world’s greatest destinations by Chris Santella

Wanderlust: a history of walking by Rebecca Solnit

Agatha Christie novels:

Murder on the Orient Express, 4:50 From Paddington, The Mystery of the Blue Train

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith which was made into a terrific film by Alfred Hitchcock.

Picture Books

Go, Dog. Go! By P.D. Eastman

Night Light by Nicholas Blechman

Everything Goes in the Air by Brian Biggs

Shark vs. Train by Chris Barton and Tom Lichtenheld