Book of the Week (December 18, 2006)

On the New Book Shelf
Call Number: LC 1756 .P47 2006

College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Coeds, then and now
By Lynn Peril

Publisher Book Description: The author of Pink Think takes on a twentieth-century icon: the college girl.A geek who wears glasses? Or a sex kitten in a teddy? This is the dual vision of the college girl, the unique American archetype born when the age-old conflict over educating women was finally laid to rest. College was a place where women found self-esteem, and yet images in popular culture reflected a lingering distrust of the educated woman. Thus such lofty cultural expressions as Sex Kittens Go to College (1960) and a raft of naughty pictorials in men's magazines.

As in Pink Think, Lynn Peril combines women's history and popular culture—peppered with delightful examples of femoribilia from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1970s—in an intelligent and witty study of the college girl, the first woman to take that socially controversial step toward educational equity.

Book of the Week (December 11, 2006)

On the New Book Shelf

Call Number: PS 129 .L56 2006

Double Lives: American Writers' Friendships

by Richard Lingeman

Publisher's book description: Writers know they’re taking a risk when they befriend other writers. No matter how deep their mutual affection or genuine their admiration, there’s bound to be rivalry–and of course the danger that secrets and intimacies may end up in print. And yet, writers have always been irrevocably drawn to each other. In this insightful new book, veteran biographer Richard Lingeman explores the passions and betrayals that have enlivened the most significant, most fruitful friendships in American letters.From the unlikely pairing of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville to the kinetic Beat threesome of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Neal Cassady, American writers have formed friendships of high intensity, fierce competition, and extreme need. Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston revered each other’s work but fell out when they tried to collaborate on a doomed play. Henry James could never forgive Edith Wharton her success in the literary marketplace–much as he enjoyed cadging trips in her chauffeur-driven car. Theodore Dreiser and H. L. Mencken loved nothing better than exchanging acid barbs over steins of German beer, but neither could tolerate being criticized by the other. Yet all these friendships endured for years and yielded treasure troves of letters, essays, and thinly veiled fictional portraits. In Double Lives, Lingeman explores friendships that span the centuries, straddle both coasts, and take in every gender combination. Mark Twain and William Dean Howells were co-curmudgeons who shared a sense of humor and a deep streak of generosity. Willa Cather had the great good fortune to encounter the older Yankee writer Sarah Orne Jewett at the precise moment when Cather was ready to embrace her own professional and sexual identity. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway met in Paris while both were in their twenties, became fast friends for the worst reasons (Fitzgerald needed heroes, Hemingway admirers), and spent the next fifteen years disappointing each other. As Lingeman so deftly shows, this trajectory is all too common: the seesaw of fortune has challenged many of these rich and volatile friendships. Double Lives is that rare literary treat–a melding of life and letters that is at once brilliantly revealing and absolutely irresistible. In capturing the heartbeat and heartbreak of our most fascinating writerly relationships, Lingeman has fashioned a sparkling, multifaceted gem.

Book of the Week (December 4, 2006)

A Young Adult Book on the New Book Shelf
Call Number: PZ7 .M9416 Dai 2006

When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said. Welcome to the summer that D.J. Schwenk of Red Bend, Wisconsin, learns to talk, and ends up having an awful lot of stuff to say. In Dairy Queen, an extraordinary debut novel full of humor, football, and dairy farming, Catherine Gilbert Murdock introduces one of the most likable young adult heroines to come along in quite some time. Grandpa Schwenk was a dairy farmer, and D.J.'s ex-football coach father was one, too, until he messed up his hip moving the manure spreader. With her dad injured, her mom always at work, and her football star brothers off at college and not speaking to the rest of the family, it falls to D.J. to run the struggling farm as best she can, including the five a.m. milking of all thirty-two cows by hand. If that wasn't enough to deal with, the Huge Family Fight over Christmas may mean she'll never see her brothers again. Dutiful D.J. takes it all in stride — until she decides to try out for her high school football team, her best friend, Amber, starts acting strange, and she falls in love with the opposing team's quarterback, whom she just happens to be training. Murdock's care and craft come through in every aspect of this book: the spot-on dialogue that is laugh-out-loud funny and always rings true; the stress and hard work of life on a dairy farm; the tough training, body aches, and anguish of high school football; and perhaps most important, the humor, heartache, and messiness of learning to open up to family and friends. Publisher's Book Description