Heard Any Good Books Lately December 2022, Transcript

The content of this program is intended for people who are blind and print impaired.

Hello and welcome to our December 2022 edition of “Heard Any Good Books Lately?” a program from the North Carolina Reading Service. I’m George Douglas. This program is brought to you by the Friends of the North Carolina Library for the Blind, an organization of citizens, volunteers and patrons all interested in supporting the library and the services it provides. The Friends group was founded in 1989 and now has more than 300 members across North Carolina. If you would like to join the Friends group yourself, we’ll have information on how to do that later in the program.

This program is all about books, with special emphasis on those available from the State Library of North Carolina – Accessible Books and Library Services. The library has more than 86,000 titles in its collection. Books and magazines are available in large print, Braille and talking books as well. 

The library also has more than 11-thousand patrons across the state. If you are not a patron but are interested in becoming one, I’ll have more information at the end of this program.

This month we will take a look at some of the most popular books checked out in the month of November at the State Library of North Carolina - Accessible Books and Library Services.

 
We were dreamers: an immigrant superhero origin story by Simu Liu
Marvel's newest recruit shares his own inspiring and unexpected origin story, from China to the bright lights of Hollywood. An immigrant who battles everything from parental expectations to cultural stereotypes, Simu Liu struggles to forge a path for himself, rising from the ashes of a failed accounting career (yes, you read that right) to become Shang-Chi.

Our story begins in the city of Harbin, where Simu's parents have left him in the care of his grandparents while they seek to build a future for themselves in Canada. One day, a mysterious stranger shows up at the door; it's Simu's father, who whisks him away from the only home he had ever known and to the land of opportunity and maple syrup. 

 Life in the new world, however, is not all that it was cracked up to be; Simu's new guardians lack the gentle touch of his grandparents, resulting in harsh words and hurt feelings. His parents, on the other hand, find their new son emotionally distant and difficult to relate to - although they are related by blood, they are separated by culture, language, and values. 

 As Simu grows up, he plays the part of the pious son well; he gets A's, crushes national math competitions, and makes his parents proud. But as time goes on, he grows increasingly disillusioned with the expectations placed on his shoulders and finds it harder and harder to keep up the charade. 

 Barely a year out of college, his life hits rock bottom when he is laid off from his first job as an accountant. Unemployed, riddled with shame and with nothing left to lose, Simu finds an ad on Craigslist that will send him on a wildly unexpected journey, into the mysterious world of show business. 

 Through a swath of rejections and comical mishaps, it is ultimately Simu's determination to carve out a path for himself that leads him to not only succeed as an actor, but also open the door to reconciling with his parents. After all, the courage to pursue his ambitions at all costs is something that he inherited from his parents, who themselves defied impossible odds in order to come to Canada.

 We Were Dreamers is more than a celebrity memoir - it's a story about growing up between cultures, finding your family, and becoming the master of your own extraordinary circumstance.

Blood and Moonlight by Erin Beaty
A girl uncovers her own secrets while chasing a serial killer in a fantasy city.
Catrin is the assistant to Magister Thomas, the head architect of the wondrous Holy Sanctum in the city of Collis. While inspecting scaffolds at night, Cat hears a scream and follows the sound only to find a gruesome murder scene. The Comte de Montcuir assigns Simon, a handsome, young distant relation of his, to investigate. 
As a witness, Cat hides some information because the murdered girl visited Magister Thomas earlier that evening, and she doesn’t want to give his political enemies leverage. In the course of investigating, Cat starts to uncover her own past and things that may make her uniquely qualified to hunt the killer. As more sex workers are brutally killed, Cat, Simon, and his Montcuir cousins develop a profile of the killer—a profile that fits multiple people close to Cat. 
Plenty of clues and red herrings keep her (and readers) guessing. The romantic storylines gain tension as Cat must decide whom to trust. The “madness” of the killer is clearly separated from mental illness, and diversity in the presentation of mental illness is emphasized. Racially, most characters read as White; there’s an in-universe diversity storyline related to an isolationist nocturnal sect some believe to have magic. The story ends with high-stakes action and long-reaching consequences.

Honey and spice: a novel by Bolu Babalola
So You’re Rivals? And You’re Fake-Dating? Classic.
In her debut romance novel, “Honey and Spice,” Bolu Babalola plays with familiar literary romance tropes to explore questions about gender, sexuality and modern dating.
If she weren’t a writer, Bolu Babalola could be a great cultural anthropologist. Her work is rife with observations that have the richness of field notes. In ethnography, the way she writes would be called thick description — it’s precise, layered and interpretive. In her debut romance novel, “Honey and Spice,” Babalola trains her keen eye and considerable wit on young Black British society.
The setup is straightforward: Kikiola Banjo is in her second year at Whitewell College, where she is a student broadcaster and an aspiring multimedia journalist. Kiki has carved a good life outside the social fray at school. She has her show, “Brown Sugar,” which has long been the glue that holds together the female factions of “Blackwell” (as Whitewell’s eclectic Black communities are collectively known); she has her best friend, roommate and producer, Aminah; and she has her studies. For Kiki, relationships are casual and sex is strictly medicinal, like exercise. Then the handsome and charming transfer student Malakai Korede strides onto campus and threatens to shatter that equilibrium. Malakai seems like trouble to Kiki — he’s slick, the kind of man who’d bring division and heartache to Blackwell — so she dubs him “the Wasteman of Whitewell” on air to warn off her classmates.
But containing Malakai is easier said than done when Kiki and Malakai’s academic tutor pairs them together as partners on a project. Suddenly Kiki’s being spotted around town with a guy she’s dubbed a wasteman? Not good. Even worse, she’s getting to know the real Malakai, who’s actually smart and genuinely sweet. So Kiki and Malakai decide that the best thing to do is to double down, and they forge a strategic fake-dating arrangement that they hope will rehabilitate their reputations within Blackwellian society.

In “Honey and Spice,” Babalola plays with familiar literary romance tropes — hasty first impressions, rivals who become lovers, fake dating — to explore questions about gender and sexuality: How does a modern woman level the dating playing field — by separating feelings from sex and steering clear of relationships? Or is that a retread of a decades-old idea to “date like a man”?
These questions are encapsulated in the novel’s opening scene when Kiki and Malakai first collide as strangers in a dormitory hallway. Malakai is on the way to a potential hookup; Kiki’s just leaving one. In Kiki’s view, her hookup is practical and liberated, meeting her needs without entanglement, but she judges Malakai for his encounter.

Does Kiki’s reaction reflect a gendered hypocrisy? Or do past and present gender inequities demand asymmetrical standards?
Those debates about relationships and gender are the heart of “Honey and Spice,” making it a novel of more sweetness than spice, more contemplation than action. As in Jane Austen’s novels, the narrative centers on the war between individual attraction and social constraints in a complex, contentiously hierarchical society. The true stars of “Honey and Spice” are characterization, banter and sharp social observation, all of which Babalola renders spectacularly. She soars in her rich depictions of intimacy and relationships, in all their grandeur. And Babalola blends the vernacular and rhythms of Black American music with Black British culture, and its fusion of Pan-African influences, making the text even richer.
Few novelists debut with the type of built-in following that Babalola wields. She has developed an audience over the years with her popular online cultural commentary, and “Honey and Spice” comes on the heels of her excellent story collection, “Love in Color.” Expectations for her first full-length novel are high. Sexy, messy and wry, “Honey and Spice” more than delivers.

A heavy dose of Allison Tandy by Jeff Bishop
High school senior Cameron keeps telling himself that he is over Allison Tandy, the ex-girlfriend who broke his heart, but after being prescribed fictional painkiller Delatrix for a basketball injury, he is not so sure. 
After taking the drug, Cam is astounded to find himself conversing with Ally in his bathroom. This should be impossible because she was in a car crash months before and is hospitalized, lying in a coma. While Cam is at first disbelieving, suspecting this is a side effect of the drug, Ally slaps him and he passes out, coming to with a tender cheek, making the encounter feel real. With just two weeks until high school graduation, Cam has to cope not only with the confusion caused by Ally’s ongoing spectral visits, but with pressure from Chevy and Lisa, his best friends, to date again. 
The pair, dubbed The Happy Couple by Cam, even create a dossier of options for him to consider. Is he ready? What do his visits from Ally mean? Cam’s wry first-person narration and witty banter with Ally perfectly match the lighthearted mood of the book. Giving the novel some weight is its thoughtful exploration of the fate of high school relationships after graduation as couples negotiate their commitments. The affluent Illinois suburb setting allows for some exploration of characters’ awareness of relative socio-economic diversity. Cam and Ally are White; Chevy is Black, and Lisa is Jewish.
 
The wreck of the Old 97 by Larry G. Aaron
With Fast Mail train No. 97 an hour behind schedule, locomotive engineer Steve Broady, according to legend, swore to "put her in Spencer on time" or "put her in Hell." Through eyewitness reports and court testimonies, historian Larry Aaron expertly pieces together the events of September 27, 1903, at Danville, Virginia, when the Old 97 plummeted off a forty-five-foot trestle into the ravine below. 

With more twists and turns than the railroad tracks on which the Old 97 ran, this book chronicles the story of one of the most famous train wrecks in American history, as well as the controversy surrounding "The Wreck of the Old 97," that most famous ballad, which secured the Old 97 a place within the annals of American folklore.

The secrets they left behind by Lissa Marie Redmond
Shea O’Connor is 23 but looks 18. That’s why the FBI used her to pose as a high school student to catch a serial killer, a case that left her scarred both physically and emotionally. The case is still under a gag order and Shea is back on boring patrol duty when FBI Agent Bill Walters asks her to work another case for him. Three freshmen college friends all went missing the same night in the little town of Kelly’s Falls, New York. 
Against her better judgment, Shea accepts and is set up as Shea Anderson, a transfer to Harris Community College whose parents were killed in a car accident and whose uncle is the town police chief, Roy Bishop. Since her fake uncle is youngish, unmarried, and unhappy she's interfering in his case, she’s put up in a boardinghouse. Emma Lansing and Olivia Stansfield, two of the missing girls, came from a nice area; the wilder Skyler Santana lived in a trailer park with her alcoholic mother while her drug-dealing boyfriend, Joe Styles, worked on a GED at Harris. 
Shea immediately becomes friends with the missing girls’ buds, Kayla, Jenna, and Maddie. She fends off passes from Joe while recognizing his bad-boy appeal to young girls. Shea has no trouble fitting in and easily gains her new friends’ confidence. But she still suspects that they’re hiding information that could be the key to breaking the case. Even worse, she and Nick Stansfield, the brother who refuses to go back to RIT until Olivia’s found, fall for each other, and she hates herself for deceiving him. Redmond (A Means to an End, 2019, etc.) shows tensions mounting as Shea struggles for answers along with a town united in its resolve to find the missing girls.
A page-turner whose puzzling mystery and psychological drama are rooted in plausible descriptions of teenage angst.

Corrections in ink: a memoir by Blakinger, Keri
An investigative reporter reflects on the time she spent in the prison system for a drug crime.
Growing up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Blakinger was a good student and promising figure skater who had dreams of competing at the highest level. However, her academics and athleticism concealed darker truths: an eating disorder and suicidal tendencies. When her figure-skating partner abruptly quit their doubles team, her skating career collapsed, plunging her into persistent depression, which she tried to address with drugs, eventually turning to heroin. Her habit continued until her senior year at Cornell, when she was arrested for possessing what was falsely reported as “$150,000 of smack.” Following her arrest, Blakinger spent years in the prison system, where she not only got sober, but also received a firsthand education in the savage inhumanity of the American carceral system. 
“Behind bars, there are no rules. Sure, there is a rulebook and there are things you cannot do,” she writes. “But when it matters, no one is watching….All the futility, the small cruelties, the refusal to see us as fully human—it was not a flaw in the system. It was the system.” Upon her release, Blakinger became a journalist whose many reports on incarceration—for the Marshall Project, where she currently works, and previously for the Houston Chronicle and other outlets—have resulted in much-needed reforms. 
Throughout her narrative, the author emphasizes the privileges that enabled her recovery, and she shows her commitment to exposing the practices that make Black and brown prisoners much less likely to succeed. Blakinger’s voice is frank but compassionate, as she lovingly but truthfully owns up to her mistakes. Her deeply researched analysis of the dehumanizing nature of incarceration is trenchant and infused with the passion of her personal experiences. The story moves quickly, populated with characters who are deeply flawed yet often sympathetic. 
A gorgeously written, page-turning memoir about addiction, prison, and privilege.

Boomers: the men and women who promised freedom and delivered disaster by Helen Andrews
Baby Boomers (and I confess I am one): prepare to squirm and shake your increasingly arthritic little fists. For here comes essayist Helen Andrews. --Terry Castle 

With two recessions and a botched pandemic under their belt, the Boomers are their children's favorite punching bag. But is the hatred justified? Is the destruction left in their wake their fault or simply the luck of the generational draw?

In Boomers, essayist Helen Andrews addresses the Boomer legacy with scrupulous fairness and biting wit. Following the model of Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians, she profiles six of the Boomers' brightest and best. She shows how Steve Jobs tried to liberate everyone's inner rebel but unleashed our stultifying digital world of social media and the gig economy. How Aaron Sorkin played pied piper to a generation of idealistic wonks. How Camille Paglia corrupted academia while trying to save it. How Jeffrey Sachs, Al Sharpton, and Sonya Sotomayor wanted to empower the oppressed but ended up empowering new oppressors.

Ranging far beyond the usual Beatles and Bill Clinton clichés, Andrews shows how these six Boomers' effect on the world has been tragically and often ironically contrary to their intentions. She reveals the essence of Boomerness: they tried to liberate us, and instead of freedom they left behind chaos.

Razzmatazz by Christopher Moore
Repeat New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore returns to the mean streets of San Francisco in this outrageous follow-up to his madcap novel Noir.
San Francisco, 1947. Bartender Sammy “Two Toes” Tiffin and the rest of the Cookie’s Coffee Irregulars—a ragtag bunch of working mugs last seen in Noir—are on the hustle: they’re trying to open a driving school; shanghai an abusive Swedish stevedore; get Mable, the local madam, and her girls to a Christmas party at the State Hospital without alerting the overzealous head of the S.F.P.D. vice squad; all while Sammy’s girlfriend, Stilton (a.k.a. the Cheese), and her “Wendy the Welder” gal pals are using their wartime shipbuilding skills on a secret project that might be attracting the attention of some government Men in Black. And, oh yeah, someone is murdering the city’s drag kings and club owner Jimmy Vasco is sure she’s next on the list and wants Sammy to find the killer.
Meanwhile, Eddie “Moo Shoes” Shu has been summoned by his Uncle Ho to help save his opium den from Squid Kid Tang, a vicious gangster who is determined to retrieve a priceless relic: an ancient statue of the powerful Rain Dragon that Ho stole from one of the fighting tongs forty years earlier. And if Eddie blows it, he just might call down the wrath of that powerful magical creature on all of Fog City.
Strap yourselves in for a bit of the old razzmatazz, ladies and gentlemen. It’s Christopher Moore time.
Closing

That’s all for this month’s edition of “Heard Any Good Books Lately? I’m George Douglas. I hope you enjoyed it. If you would like more information about how to become a patron of the State Library of North Carolina - Accessible Books and Library Services, simply Google or search for Accessible Books – North Carolina Library – or call toll free -888-388-2460. That’s 888-388-2460.

You can also use the same numbers and website to join the Friends of the NC Library for the Blind. It is that wonderful organization that sponsors this monthly feature on books. 

This program is intended for people who are blind or print impaired. “Heard Any Good Books Lately” will be available right after the broadcast at our website NCReadingService.Org. So long until next time.