American Widow by Alissa Torres and Sungyoon Choi

On September 10, 2001, Eddie Torres started a new job at the World Trade Center. The next day, he said goodbye to his 7-months-pregnant wife, Alissa, and headed out the door. 658 employees of Cantor Fitzgerald died in the North Tower. Eddie was one of them, although he hadn't yet signed his employment contract. This is Alissa's memoir of the aftermath of 9/11: the shock, the grief, the bureaucracy, widowhood, birth and motherhood.

Sungyoon Choi's artwork is somewhat similar to Alison Bechdel's realistic style in Fun Home; black and white with turquoise shading. A quick read.

After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson

Since I work in teen services at the public library, it would help if I cared more than I do about popular culture. I love teen literature, but I watch no tv, almost no movies and I listen to folk, blues and world beat music almost exclusively. Then a novel like After Tupac and D Foster comes into my hands and gets me searching out YouTube rap videos.

I had heard of Tupac Shakur, of course. He died in 1996 but his collection of poetry, The Rose That Grew From Concrete, is still popular with teens. Now I've watched a couple of his music videos (Brenda's Got a Baby; Dear Mama) and I have a better understanding of the world of Woodson's novel.

We never learn the name of the narrator, who tells how she and her best friend, Neeka, became fast friends with D Foster when they were 11 years old. "The summer before D Foster's real mama came and took her away, Tupac wasn't dead yet." The girls call themselves 'Three the Hard Way' and relate strongly to Tupac and his music. "By the time her mama came and got her and she took one last walk on out of our lives, I felt like we'd grown up and grown old and lived a hundred lives in those few years that we knew her."

Neeka appears to have a crush on D, although this interpretation relies on very subtle clues because the narrator is unaware of it. One of Neeka's older brothers, Tash, is flamboyantly gay and calls himself a sister. Tash is in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Themes of intolerance and injustice are central to the story.

The main readership for this novel is probably girls in Grade 5 to 7, but this is a novel I will also recommend to older teens and adults. Anyone who enjoys a bittersweet coming-of-age story with insights into the complexities of human behaviour.

My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy by Andrea Askowitz

Don't let the title scare you away. This is one funny book and you don't have to be a lesbian or ever been pregnant to enjoy it. I concur with reviewers who have compared Askowitz's writing to David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs. This book is also along the lines of Everybody Into the Pool by Beth Lisick and Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress by Susan Jane Gilman.

I've chosen this excerpt because watermelon is one of my favourite foods:

Week 34, Day 3

I bump into a guy I know at the grocery store. He says, "Wow, does it feel like you've got a watermelon under your shirt?"

I say, "Yeah, especially at night, trying to sleep."

We do our shopping, and then he's in front of me at the checkout line. He says, "Does it feel like you have a watermelon under your shirt?" I think he doesn't know what else to say.

I say, "You can say that again!"

I buy a watermelon. Some women can't eat one piece of chocolate or they'll eat the whole box. I have this problem with watermelon. I go home and eat the whole thing. I know watermelons come in different sizes, but no watermelon is a single serving. Right now, I feel like I have a watermelon under my shirt.

Check out Askowitz's website for lots more.

The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau by Dan Yaccarino

We watched The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau (1966-1976) on television every week when I was growing up, so I was pleased to discover a picture book biography of the man. The text is minimal, but it covers the highlights of Cousteau's brilliant career.

Bright colours, simple shapes and heavy line drawings give a retro feel to Yaccarino's illustrations.

Each spread has a quote from Cousteau; this was my favourite aspect of the book. "If we were logical, the future would be bleak indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope, and we can work."

Hand Luggage: A Memoir in Verse by P.K. Page

P.K. Page was born in England in 1916 and then immigrated with her family to Red Deer, Alberta, in 1919. She has won a Governor General's Award for poetry and has travelled extensively with her husband, William Irwin, who was a diplomat. Her memoir has a delightful cadence and employs language and rhyme in playful ways.

"But in my classroom, Canadian voices --

hard r's and flat a's, a prairie language --

were teaching me tolerance, telling me something.

This vocal chasm divided my childhood.

Talking across it, a tightrope talker,

corrected at home, corrected in classrooms:

wawteh, wadder -- the wryness of words!"

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

'Near novel' and 'story-cycle' are the terms I've heard used for books like Olive Kitteridge. It's a collection of connected short stories that, when taken together, form a novel. Elizabeth Strout's near novel is set in a small town on the coast of Maine. Her stories deal with the big things -- death and love -- as well as the small details of our existence.

Olive Kitteridge is the one constant character in these stories. I took a dislike to her in the first story and was uncertain about continuing the book as a result. I'm glad that I gave her another chance because I grew to appreciate this cranky, no-nonsense math teacher. In "Basket of Trips," Olive stands next to a woman named Molly as they both wait outside the church after a funeral. Molly says of the new widow, "Such a nice woman. It isn't right." Olive thinks this is a stupid thing to say. "Stupid -- this assumption people have, that things should somehow be right. But she finally answers, 'She's a nice woman, it's true.' "

In "A Little Burst," at her son's wedding, Olive thinks about the different perfumes women are wearing, "including one that all day has smelled like that bug spray Off!" I have smelled that very same perfume and wonder how anyone can find it attractive.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

A central character in this suspenseful novel is the once grand house of the Ayres family, Hundreds Hall, now falling apart. I was reminded of Penge in Maurice. Mrs. Ayres and her adult children, Roderick and Caroline, live in poverty at Hundreds Hall. They maintain their upper class snobbery, however. The time period is just after the second World War.

Dr. Faraday's first visit to the house was back when he was a child. His mother was once a nursemaid there. As an adult, he is called to the house when medical attention is required and the Ayres' regular doctor is unavailable. After that, he becomes entwined in the lives of the Ayres and the disturbing goings-on at Hundreds Hall. The tension builds slowly. The use of Dr. Faraday as narrator helps to put the brakes on melodrama because he dismisses the possibility of ghosts or poltergeists. Yet events get stranger and more sinister and harder for Faraday to explain away.

All of Waters previous novels have had lesbian content but you won't find any in this one. You will find a supernatural thriller of high literary quality.

Note added November 2, 2009: I saw Sarah Waters interviewed by Bill Richardson at the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival a couple of weeks ago. What a fabulous session! The venue was large and it was sold out - lesbians everywhere! Waters said that in spite of the total lack of lesbian content in The Little Stranger, readers were finding it in the book anyway. The lesbian is represented by Dr. Faraday (a man) for some; for others, it is the house itself. Richardson said he was sure that Caroline Ayres was the dyke. Waters doesn't mind this sort of interpretation of her work, being used to doing the same thing in her own reading.