Wild Flowering

Honestly, it wasn't premeditated. I'm speaking of my choosing to read the book Wildflower in the midst of our Read on the WILD Side adult summer reading program. While it fits our theme perfectly, it was just coincidental.(What would Freud say?)

Listed as a hot summer read in the Chicago Tribune in early June, this title caught my attention. I confirm it was an engaging, nonfiction read. Love, adventure, murder, the beauty of Africa, the dark side of capitalism all in 200 pages. The author, Mark Seal, wrote about Joan Root in Vanity Fair in August 2006 and it was so popular, he kept writing. His book Wildflower fleshes out the story of Joan and her husband Alan Root. They were reknown in the film world for their wildlife and nature films of the 1970's and 80's. They partnered with great actors to narrate their films, and won an Oscar for best documentary for Mysterious Castles of Clay in 1979.

How I would love to tell you we own their films on dvd but they don't exist. A few select libraries in the U.S. own some titles on VHS. I suspect this might change soon. Julia Roberts is going to be portraying Joan Root in a feature film that is currently in production. A big commercial film may entice the right business person to make the Roots' films into dvds.

In the meantime, savor the nature films we do have in our documentary film section and find the book Wildflower in the biography section.

I haven't read a nonfiction book that I've enjoyed this much in a long time. Please comment if you have one to recommend.

Books - Summer - Life is Sweet

Just in case you're running out of books to read this summer (horrors!) I have a few more suggestions that you might have missed. They are not written by your favorite bestselling authors, but hopefully these authors will become new favorites. One exceptionally entertaining new book is The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. Flavia, an 11-year-old chemistry enthusiast, stumbles over a body in the garden and decides to solve the crime. The story is filled with eccentric characters, including a librarian, a groundskeeper, and Flavia's two older sisters who live to torment her. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe is an intriguing mix of mystery, romance, and a bit of history of the Salem witch trials, told in flashbacks to the 1600's. Reading it reminded me of another good summer read, Thornyhold, by Mary Stewart. And finally, if you happen to be a fan of the classic tale of manners and romance, Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, you won't want to miss Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith. In this version of the story the quiet village of Meryton is plagued with zombies and Elizabeth Bennet must fight them off while dealing with the arrogant Mr. Darcy. Crazy fun!

What new books have you been reading this summer?

Linda Knorr - Readers' Services

A Wild Man of Classical Music

This week's question is from the Wild Men and Women of Classical Music contest, which is one of several contests you'll find on the third floor of the library. The winner of the drawing for this contest will receive a $50 gift card to the Shop & Save. (Prizes will be awarded after Summer Reading ends, on August 2nd.) Here's the question:

This singular American composer lived from 1874 to 1954. The son of a bandmaster, he grew up in Danbury, Connecticut, where he played sports as well as music. Although he made his living in the insurance business, he spent much of his time composing. He wrote symphonies, chamber music, sonatas, and more than 150 songs, including "General William Booth Enters into Heaven." According to Composers since 1900, his "first significant attempt to make use of authentic American materials" was in his Second Symphony, a technique he was to become known for. He was also, according to Jan Swafford:

proclaimed a prophet in discovering on his own, before anyone else, most of the devices associated with musical Modernism: polytonality, polyrhythm, free dissonance, chance and collage effects [etc.]

Although few heard his compositions during his lifetime, his Third Symphony received the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. Other compositions include The Unanswered Question, Central Park in the Dark, Variations on “America,” and Piano Sonata No. 2, "Concord Mass., 1840-60," often referred to as The Concord Sonata.

Is he:

a. Aaron Copland
b. George Gershwin
c. Charles Ives
d. John Philip Sousa

Think you know the answer? Stop by the third floor to fill out an entry and check out our other summer reading contests. Or email us the answer at Readers2@dppl.org. Be sure to include your name and phone number, too.

"I don't believe what I just saw!"

Hall of Fame baseball announcer Jack Buck summed up the magic of baseball with those immortal seven words. At the time, he was describing Kirk Gibson's game-ending (see also:"walk-off") home run that sent the Dodgers to a Game 1 victory over the Oakland Athletics in the 1988 World Series. It is now the height of baseball season: the game's best players and/or fan favorites will all meet each other in St. Louis for the All Star Game next week, and I am actually headed to my first game of the season this weekend (up in Milwaukee!). In my humble opinion there is no better fit for a long summer than the crack of the bat, the thump of catcher's mitt, the search for the next euphoric moment.

My heartstrings have always been tightly wrapped around a rubber ball, covered with a two pieces of leather that have been rubbed with a special mud taken from a secret spot along the Delaware River and hand-stitched 216 times to form a sphere. From the days of being a kid when I would open pack after pack of Topps baseball cards and get a jaw-ache from chewing the accumulation of gum that was included in those packs to the current day where I'm able to watch any ballgame in the country via the internet, baseball has always been my thing.

A major mile marker in my love for baseball occurred when I was 7 years old: the second time I went to see the Natural. My parents, brother, and I attempted to see the Natural one time before, but ended up walking into the wrong theater, where we were treated to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (another moment that altered the course of history for me, but that's a story for another day). The second time around to see the Natural, we managed to find the correct screen and my life was changed (again). For those of you not familiar with the movie, you probably would still know the ending, as it has become deeply interwoven into pop culture. Suffice to say, Roy Hobbs (played by Robert Redford) sends a fly ball into a bank of lights for a home run that wins his team the pennant (I still recommend watching the movie). This piece of cinema is really nothing without Randy Newman's masterfully composed score for that scene: it is the combination of these two that causes my scalp to tingle even 25 years after I first saw it.

What I enjoy about that clip is watching everyone's eyes as they see the one thing they wished for most at that moment come true (well, except maybe the catcher). It is a beautiful thing, a special moment, when someone hits a home run to end the game. I have seen one walk-off home run in my life: it was a minor league game about 15 years ago. Dan Held, the star of the Reading Phillies, cracked a three run homer over the left field fence to end the game in the bottom of the ninth and I was hugging perfect strangers in my excitement. It is a special memory of mine - a Roy Hobbs moment in real life - and its just one in a huge treasure chest of fantastic memories that baseball has already given to me. Every game I watch, every inning, every pitch, I am prepared for the next big play - the passion-filled moment where I put my hands to my head and exclaim, "I don't believe what I just saw!"