The Glass Castle

by Jeannette Walls


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Perhaps the two top defining moments of Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle come from the book’s first two scenes. First, an adult Jeannette hides in her cab as she sees her mom rummage through a dumpster in New York City. Second, as the actual story begins in flashback, a three-year old Jeannette suffers burns as she attempts to boil hot dogs. Everything that happens between the hot dog incident and the dumpster diving is pretty much the same. And all because Jeannette Walls grew up in dysfunctional family. Her father, although capable of intellectual pursuits, remains a drunk. Her mother abhors the idea of raising a family and decides to live in her own little world of painting and writing. In response, Jeannette and her three siblings learn to fend for themselves with mixed results at the end of the book.


It would be a natural response after reading The Glass Castle to enter a discussion on who was the worse parent, the mom or dad. But what made Jeannette Walls’ memoir enjoyable to me was the fact the children acknowledged their parents' behavior and acknowledge the fact that if they were to be happy, they would have to leave the household and pursue their own lives at a tender age. And I was still amazed at the end of the book that the children still maintained a semblance of a relationship with mom and dad. Walls tells a good story here.

Flash Fiction Forward-80 Short Stories

Edited by James Thomas and Robert Shapard




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Editors James Thomas and Robert Shapard put together this anthology of 80 very short stories. For them, a flash fiction cannot be more than 750 words in length, has to be about more than a trivial topic, and should be memorable. Unfortunately, I’ve completed this book, and I can’t remember more than a handful of the stories. On the whole, most of them fail especially in this third requirement. Of those that succeed, “Rose”, by John Biguenet, is a sad and unsettling portrait of a grieving man and his discovery of a hidden album that brings back an unpleasant memory; “Reviving Pater,” by John Goulet, describes an odd clan and their unusual Halloween tradition; and in “Geometry Can Fail Us,” by Barbara Jacksha, a man learns more than he wishes about his new wife’s feelings for him after a near-accident. I also liked “00:02:36:58” by Bayard Godsave, about a silly teen prank that affects one of its participants in a different way years later; and Michael Martone’s “Diagnostic Drift”, a heartbreaking story about a young couple’s four miscarriages. The nice thing about reading flash fiction is that the mediocre stories are easily skipped through, while the good ones are a delight to read again and again.

Rule the Web: How To Do Anything and Everything on The Internet—Better, Faster, Easier

by Mark Frauenfelder


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I, the Computer Lab Guy, recently attended a technology conference that talked about how teenagers are easily embracing the Internet. Whether it’s video games, instant messaging, or researching their high school papers on their favorite search engine, teens are the demographic with the most natural inclination for the web.


For the rest of us who may not be as Internet savvy, there’s Mark Frauenfelder’s Rule the Web. As the founder of the popular webblog Boingboing, Frauenfelder is well-versed on the Internet and cultures generated by its use. He delivers each chapter in topical fashion. Internet users of all skill levels can learn about blogging, podcasting, planning their next vacation, researching health and wellness issues, and new technologies.


So, before approaching that tech-saturated teen for Internet help, pick up Frauenfelder’s book. It’s a very good Internet reference tool.

Our August book discussion group

Eight people attended our August book club, a discussion of Michael Chabon's short novel, The Final Solution, which concerns an old man (Sherlock Holmes, though he's never named) and a young Jewish refugee in England in 1944. The boy owns a parrot, which goes missing in the midst of murder, and Holmes takes the case.

Our readers marveled at the writing, though many found the story and the characters a little thin. This title has been selected for the United We Read program in Kansas City. Watch for other opportunities to participate in a discussion of it at the library.

Book Discussion from early July

The West Wyandotte library hosted yet another book discussion group at Scooter's CoffeeHouse at The Legends. For July, about ten people attend the discussion on Cormac McCarthy's "The Road."

Click on the picture below for a slide show of the discussion.

Join us in August when we discuss Michael Chabon's The Final Solution.

Traveling The Road with BookFix

Join us at Scooter's CoffeeHouse at the Legends on Thursday, July 5th for our next book talk group.






We'll discuss The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

The Blizzard Voices

by Ted Kooser

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This new reprint of a 1986 collection by previous US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser is made up entirely of brief monologues by imaginary survivors of the very real blizzard of 1888, which killed "two hundred or more / in Dakota Territory / Nebraska and Kansas." Plenty of these pieces tell about those deaths--people found frozen to fences or dug out of the snow--but many more concern survival, one party that followed "a row / of dead sunflower stalks" to safety, another that guided someone through the storm by posting children at the door to bang on pots and pans. Several are about children sheltered overnight in the schoolhouse, since the storm struck during afternoon school hours.



The monologues are presented in the simple, direct verse that the poet is known for. Poetry-phobes will have no trouble enjoying the book. Each poem is titled either "A Man's Voice" or "A Woman's Voice," and the collection has even been presented successfully on stage.