Take a stroll to the library with 

THEBOOKJEANIE  

The facade of the Kansas City Public Library parking garage is a testament to the imagination of this city.  Giant book spines, each approximately 25 feet by 9 feet, line an entire city block adjacent to the library. The twenty-two titles, suggested by local readers were constructed of signboard mylar, include Charlotte's Web and To Kill a Mockingbird.  Learn more about this unique structure at:

http://www.kclibrary.org/community-bookshelf

Books to consider:  China

In 1974,  a tiny baby girl, 7 months old, flew from the island of Taipei across the Pacific in the care of a Japan Airlines employee and was handed over to an anxious couple in Michigan who had been waiting months for her arrival. Mei-Ling Wang became Mei-Ling Hopgood, and a few years later this unique and loving American family was completed with two younger brothers adopted from Korea.  Growing up in a suburb of Detroit, Mei-Ling knew she was different from her friends but she was happy and never felt a desire to search for her birth parents.  After graduating from college and accepting a rookie reporter job at the Detroit Free Press,  Mei-Ling received a call from her parents.  Sister Maureen, the Catholic nun whp had helped to arrange her adoption in Taipei 23 years ago, was now living in Detroit and wanted to meet with her.  Over a meal at Maureen's apartment, Mei-Ling heard for the first time about the parents that given her up so long ago.  Maureen offered to write to the hospital where Mei-Ling was born and ask for help in locating her birth parents.  Over the next ten years, Mei-Ling would travel to Taipei several times, alone as well as with her adoptive parents, brothers, and future husband, where she would come to know her birth family, a large complicated chaotic group of relatives eager to embrace Mei-Ling but also fearful of the secrets that she might discover. I was especially fascinated by Mei-Ling's relationship with her seven sisters, one of whom was also adopted and grew up in Switzerland.  Hopgood persists in digging into her family history and with journalistic objectivity she reveals a dark and disturbing side of her family's past without passing judgement.  Being an adopted child myself, I was in tears several times throughout this book as Mei-Ling shared not only the loving relationship she had with her adoptive parents but also the mixture of joy and sadness that she felt upon meeting the troubled woman who gave her up. Hopgood creates a seamless narrative that weaves her own history together with the history of her Chinese family, so skillfully that we can't help but feel that we have been beside her throughout this long complicated journey of discovery.

At about the same time that Mei-Ling Hopgood was becoming acquainted with her birth family in Taipei, Peter Hessler was settling into life in Sichuan Provence, China.  Peter and his fellow Peace Corps volunteer, Adam Meier, had just been assigned to teacher English and American literature at a teacher's college in Fuling, a small city perched on terraced hills overlooking the vast Yangtze River.  Crowds gathered around them to gawk from the time they stepped off the boat - there were no highways or railroad connecting them to the rest of China, only the river.  These two young men were the first Americans to live in this city for over half a century and they were joining only one other foreigner, a German who left shortly after they arrived.  Elegantly written with a subtle sense of humor, Hessler captures the essence of a traditional life undergoing rapid changr, especially in Fuling which is slated for destruction by flooding when the Three Gorges Dam is completed.  Rapidly acquiring enough Chinese for simple communication, Peter wanders the steep narrow streets of the town, tirelessly talking to residents and sampling the often unrecognizable snacks from food stalls.  He introduces us to his students and we learn about their dreams and the barriers that make it difficult to succeed in this poor region.  Hessler's two year journal of his time in Fuling as well as his travels down the Yangtze succeeds in revealing what all good travel writing should: a clearer understanding of not just how we are different, but how much we are alike.

 

On my reading couch. . .
Just acquired a wonderful stack of books including:

A mysterious adventure called Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan that has me hooked already.  News from Heaven by Jennifer Haigh, a favorite author, is a collection of interconnected stories about working people in a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania.  The Dog Stars by Peter Heller looks ahead to a world devastated by a deadly virus and the man who goes searching in his small plane for life outside his small town in Colorado.

Still reading through some new books by first time authors and will hopefully have another interview with one of these authors next month.

Have a wonderful week . . . keep reading!