Books

Author John Houghton sets his novel Rough Magicke in northwest Indiana, in the fictional county of Annandale originally created by classic Hoosier author Meredith Nicholson in the novel The House of a Thousand Candles - the locale corresponds pretty closely to the city of Culver, Indiana, a town nestled in around Lake Maxinkuckee, south of Valparaiso and South Bend.

Our protagonist is Father Jonathan Mears -- the chaplain of the fictional Annandale Military Academy (modeled after real-life Culver Academy), an establishment he graduated from himself years before, along with his brother Dan. The Mears family are generations-old residents of Annandale, though their old family homestead burned down a few decades ago.

Continue reading "Book Review - Rough Magicke"

23 year-old Presidential Aide Wes Holloway gets shot in the face during an attempted presidental assasination, and President Manning's best friend Ron Boyle gets killed. Eight years later -- after the President has left office and is touring the speaking circuit with Wes still in tow -- Wes spots Ron Boyle, very much alive, backstage in the president's green room at a Malaysian engagement. And suddenly Wes has a chance to find out what really happened on the day that bullets destroyed his face and wrecked his nerve. Delving deep in the records from the Presidential Library, Wes finds a mystery to unravel involving the intelligence community that protects them and a 200-year-old plot involving the Freemasons, and discovers his lost backbone at the same time.

The Book of Fate
by Brad Meltzer

Continue reading "The Book of Fate"

The American Library Association celebrates Banned Books Week on the last week of September each year, to reminds Americans not to take the precious democratic freedom of reading for granted.

Banned Books Week (BBW) celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

The Top 10 List of Most Frequently Challenged Books

The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000

The Indianapolis Marion-County Public Library has a discussion night planned for the week, and Adults and teens are invited to vote throughout the month at library branches for their favorite banned book during Banned Books Week. The most popular book will be selected for a book discussion.

Banned Book Week Discussion
Date: Thursday, Sep. 28, 2006
Time: 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Location: Brightwood Branch
Location Group: East
Age Level: Adults, Teen (12-17)

Google Book Search is partnering with the American Library Association to help people find and read books that have been banned -- Google provides searchable indexes of copyrighted books, and some full texts for books that are out of copyright... and also links to libraries that have the books available to loan.

National early-education organization Jumpstart is hosting Read for the Record, a one-day event to set the mark for the largest shared reading experience ever.

Be part of the world record for the number of children reading the same book in a single day with an adult—come to the zoo with your kids on August 24 and join families across the country in reading the campaign's official book, The Little Engine that Could. While you're there, stop by the Pearson Education ABC Book-making Event, where your kids can personalize a book to take home.

This event is about more than hitting a benchmark for a world record; it's about sharing the "I Think I Can" message of this classic book with children who need additional support and development in their earliest educational years. Jumpstart currently provides one-on-one attention to more than 10,000 preschool children to help them build the language, literary, and social skills they need when entering kindergarten—giving them a great foundation for their lifelong schooling.

The nationwide Read for the Record event is sponsored by Pearson Education, Penguin, Starbucks, American Eagle Outfitters, and The TODAY Show. Pearson Education and Penguin have employees here in Indianapolis who will be staffing the Read for the Record event at the Zoo.

When: August 24, 1:00 p.m.
Where: Indianapolis Zoo
Book: The Little Engine that Could
Learn more and register to participate: readfortherecord.org

On August 7, 1930, the courthouse square in Marion, Indiana was the location of one of the most shocking events in the town's history -- the lynching of two young black men who were dragged from the city jail and brutally beaten before being hung from a tree in the square. A third young man escaped being lynched to tell the tale. Because of him, and because of an infamous photo of the scene showing hundreds of perpetrators and spectators viewing the crime, (a photo that was sold by the thousands in the days after) the event has never been forgotten, although it is spoken of rarely and with trepidation amongst the residents of the town. Journalist Cynthia Carr, who grew up in Marion and who's family has a long history there, set out to examine that event, the history of race relations in Indiana that led up to it, and the unspoken resonance from it that has haunted the town every since.

Continue reading "Book Review: Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America"

I hate throwing in the towel on books. I feel guilty if I can't get through one, and I will struggle to the end of even the most difficult stuff. And I wanted to like Stakeout on Millennium Drive; I really did. It is, after all, a book set in Indianapolis, by a native writer, Ian Woollen. We just don't have enough of those, so I was hoping to write a glowing review of a "must read" book. He even sent the book to IndyScribe so we could review it. It's a murder mystery, and I love those.

Continue reading "Stakeout on Millennium Drive"

The latest selection in the "One Book, One City" program, sponsored by the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library and the Office of the Mayor, is Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale. This book was adapted into the screenplay for the 2002 movie of the same name, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

The Library's website hosts a downloadable discussion guide (66 KB .pdf), whose last three pages are specific to this title. The rest of that document is basic info on how to organize and lead a book group.

See the 25 finalists (out of 270+ entries) for the One Book, One City program, and read the official announcement.

Several members of the IndyScribe team have been perusing Indianapolis and Indiana literature during research for the writing we're doing, and for education and entertainment about the city we live in. Since we've been passing books around between us, I thought it might help us (and maybe you) to put together a list of books that have a Circle City connection.

Continue reading "Books about Indianapolis and Indiana"

When I first moved to Indy a few years ago I wanted to get a book about the history of the city to help me get to know my new home town. I wanted to scratch under the surface and learn more about how the city became what it is today.

I was more than a little disappointed when I started my search for an Indianapolis history book; it seemed that every one I found was focused on the history of the Indianapolis 500. It appeared the city didn't have a history separate from the famous race.

Continue reading "Book Review: Indianapolis Then and Now"

From January 14-16, the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library will hold the first of its 2005 book sales at the Library Services Center on 24th and Meridian.

Continue reading "Event: Library Book Sale"

Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles are a collection of scenes from life on a newly colonized Mars, with a few glimpses back toward a war-shattered Earth. Written in 1950, these tales tell of the initial landings and early colonization from 1999-2005, and the effects of some of those actions 20 years later.

Continue reading "Book Review: The Martian Chronicles"

Indiana Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities, and Other Offbeat Stuff, by local media celebrity Dick Wolfsie. You'll enjoy this book even if you don't live in Indiana -- and you'll definitely enjoy it if you do. Packed with the odd and unusual, this book was filled with surprises even for me, and I've lived in Indiana for almost 20 years. Strange things you'll see along the road, folks who collect or build weird stuff, bizarre legends and history... Dick Wolfsie explains them all with both wit and respect, and turns in a first-rate book that you should have with you on any daytrip you take around the Hoosier state.

One Book, One City is an annual city-wide book discussion program organized by the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library and the City of Indianapolis. The goal is to promote a city zeitgeist of reading and discussion by picking an annual book selection from a long list of titles suggested by Indianapolis residents.

In 2004, the program's third year, residents were asked to suggest books following a theme: representing either "America's Finest Hour" or "America's Darkest Hour."

Continue reading "One Book, One City"