Guilty Pleasure: Reflecting on Paranormal Romance
This month I’d like to talk about romance, specifically the paranormal kind. The romance genre is generally accepted as the guiltiest of guilty pleasures. It offers everything one needs for a carefree escape: familiar character types and plot structures, vicarious angst, steamy trysts, and, of course, happy endings. Paranormal romances have the added bonus of supernatural creatures and magic. In the last month, I’ve delved into the genre and I’m here to report on my findings.
Though we call romance books a guilty pleasure, we can’t deny their allure. Come peruse the romance stacks at WPL. You may be surprised at what you find.
--Chelsea
Devil Dog: The Amazing True Story of the Man Who Saved America
By Davis Talbot
Illustrated by Spain Rodriguez
Devil Dog is a fascinating and adventure-filled story of an authentic American hero with the unlikely name of Smedley Darlington Butler. Before you think this is the beginning of a joke, be prepared for a story of a uniquely patriotic man in American history. He was born in 1881 into a prominent blueblood Philadelphia family of politically connected bankers and his father,Thomas Butler, was a powerful congressman. Smedley grew into a wiry, thin but muscled young man weighing 140 pounds and topped off at 5' 9". He dropped out of the prestigious Haverford School and enlisted in the Marines. The Maine was sunk in Havana Harbor and a young Second Lieutenant Smedley Butler began his career as a Marine officer but did not see much action in Cuba. Suddenly, he was in China for the Boxer Rebellion and saw firsthand the horrors of combat. Butler, a teenage leader of men, quickly commanded their respect through his bravery and level-headedness during the march into Peking. The fighting was particularly fierce and in the end, the allied forces, although victorious, were stained with excesses of rape, looting, and executions.
By 1904, Butler was back in Philadelphia, twenty three years old, a veteran of three wars, and a highly decorated Marine officer. He courted and married society belle Ethel Peters and brought her and his children “Snooks” and Smedley, Jr. to the Panama Canal Zone in 1910. He was soon embroiled in an incursion in Nicaragua. His next duty station involved the occupation of Haiti, which was to last more than twenty years, and it was here that Butler’s cynicism of America’s motives started to reach maturity. He felt that his marines were being used as “a glorified bill collecting agency” in America’s colonial wars in the Caribbean.
This narrative is just part of the life of Smedley Butler. His was a life of action, deeply felt beliefs, strong loyalties, and courageous battles, such as cleaning up bootleg Philadelphia, going against Presidential power to defend veterans, and most importantly, blowing the cover of a plot by wealthy American businessmen to overthrow the United States government and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The historic facts in the book are fascinating, Butler is captivating, and the format of the book, to me, provides a satisfying balance between its graphics, text, sidebars, period photographs, poster reproductions, and newspaper reproductions to bring a contemporary feel to a fascinating era in American history and to the life of an important man who seems nearly forgotten. The book contains a bibliography for further reading for those who would like to learn more about this period of U.S. history. As for the title, Devil Dog, and what it means, well...just get the book and you can find out what’s behind that expression. You won’t be sorry.
--Bill
Dr. Eleven: What was it like for you, at the end?
Captain Lonagan: It was exactly like waking up from a dream.
This is the best book I’ve read in some time. It’s one of those stories in which a disparate
group of characters are woven together strand by strand and by the end of the
story, their degrees of separation are magically reduced to a mere whisker of
fate.
An addition to the rapidly expanding canon of dystopian literature, modern
civilization in this novel is taken down by plague; specifically, a
transcontinental flu. The plot opens with the unexpected onstage death of world-famous
actor Arthur Leander and from there ripples back into Arthur’s formative years,
and forward to Year Twenty after the pandemic. The action is propelled through
the lives of a paparazzo-turned-EMT who attempted to save Arthur’s life, a
child actor who happened to be onstage with him at that defining moment,
Arthur’s three wives and old friends, and finally, a wandering troupe of
surviving actors and musicians.
The point of the novel can be summed up in the Star Trek quote that is
emblazoned on the Traveling Symphony’s caravan: “Because survival is
insufficient.” In a world in which everything we know has been destroyed, what
still matters? The author’s answer: art
and humanity. Emily St. John Mandel conveys this opinion through prose that is both
rich and light at the same time, and even though it is clear that every
character is doomed to premature death by modern standards, it is easy to be
reminded of the possibility of experiencing and creating beauty in life, no
matter how soon life may end. Indeed, the most lyrical, elegiac passages describe
the alternate world of the titular Station Eleven, a comic book fantasy invented
and escaped into by Arthur’s first wife Miranda.
So far, my favorite book of the year!
--Christina
