What We're Following: Welcome to Night Vale

         Dinner conversation wandered from the weather to traffic to the Faceless Old Woman to the Sheriff’s Secret Police. That is how I discovered Welcome to Night Vale, a bi-weekly podcast and series of novels written by Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor. It turned out that “The Weather” and “Traffic” are regular segments on the show.
        The show’s premise is as a community-radio program reporting to a small fictional town. While this is a similar conceit to A Prairie Home Companion, Night Vale has more in common with Stephen King’s Derry or Lovecraft’s Arkham than Lake Wobegon. Our host Cecil (played by Cecil Baldwin) reports on mundane goings-on like the opening of the New Old Opera House, a plot to steal the Registry of Middle-School Crushes, or the escape of Antiques.
        Each episode is a self-contained story, so I was glad I didn’t have to catch up on years of backstory to jump into Night Vale. Despite Cecil and guest-stars like Wil Wheaton and Jackson Publick taking us through story arcs (Carlos does eventually return from the Desert Otherworld inside the Dog Park), it seems sometimes as if Night Vale - where screen actor Lee Marvin just turned 30 - will never change.
        Welcome to Night Vale is an absurd and surreal kind of comedy. It has occasionally raised the hair on my arms, to be sure, but I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to replay a segment I missed thanks to my own laughter. I’m glad to have its weirdness in my ears twice a month. If deadpan humor like The Addams Family or A Season of Unfortunate Events is something you enjoy, I suggest you take a trip to Night Vale as soon as you can.

What We're Reading: Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

This blog entry is the first in a series of reviews of items in the J.A. Jones library collections. If you are interested in writing a review for this series, let me know. I'd love to see a variety of voices guest blogging here. Below is Nancy Williard's review of Harper Lee's controversial sequel/early draft of To Kill a Mockingbird that was published this year. Let us know what you thought of this book in the comments--we'd love to talk about it.

And, if you want to read the book, you can find it in our rental book collection near the photocopier on the main floor of the library.

From Nancy Williard:

Aside from the intrigue of seeing what preceded the famous work by Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, this earlier work is a fine story in itself. Jean Louise Finch, formerly “Scout”, is twenty-six, fresh from New York, and viewing her old hometown, Maycomb, Alabama, with the judgmenta
l eye. Through this visit the 1950’s Southern view of race relations is balanced against the more activist “color-blind” perception of the New Yorker that Jean Louise professes. The discussion of race relations is interesting to compare with the justification of Southern culture found in The Help, a more recent book set in the same time period. Scout’s headstrong rejection of Southern manners and sensibilities is as humorous and compelling as it was when Scout wore her overalls to town in To Kill a Mockingbird. Once again, Jean Louise, Scout, causes a social upheaval that involves many of our favorite characters, Calpurnia, Atticus, and Aunt Alexandra, and a new one, Henry “Hank” Clinton, a love interest. Although I found the ending lacking, I was fascinated to see where the seeds for To Kill a Mockingbird began.  What was kept and what was left out?