It’s the Time of the Season for … Solving Mysteries
by Chelsea Bennett, Reference Department
Treetops, aflame. The air, crisp. Bonfires, hot cider, plaid shirts as far as the eye can see: classic signs of winter. Here’s one more timeless association for you: whodunits. Whether you’re into the classics, the creepies, or the cozies, winter is the perfect time of year to shroud yourself in Mystery.
Publishing professional Valerie Peterson divides the Mystery genre into four main types, and many subgenres. She starts with the types: Hard-Boiled (moody detectives and femmes fatales), Soft-Boiled (similar, but less explicitly violent or sexy), Cozy (Miss Marple and her descendants), and Procedural (thorough analysis of cops and crimes). Within those types, you may find any combination of hijinks and capers, amateur sleuths, local flavor, daunting puzzles, gritty detectives, historical figures, cats, romance, and more. [1]
Unless you simply “hate being titillated,” there’s bound to be a Mystery out there for you. Below, I’ve listed some of the genre’s best-loved authors, both classic and modern. Since mystery writers love to stick with their characters, I’ll sometimes include a character or series name rather than a book title.
(Quick note: some Mysteries have more intense content than others, especially if they cross into Thriller territory. If you’re concerned about potential triggers, check out a site like www.doesthedogdie.com, which helps you steer clear of certain content. You can also check out our blog post about cozy mysteries!)
Jennifer Finney Boylan – Long Black Veil
K. Chesterton – Catholic priest and amateur detective Father Brown stars in 53 of Chesterton’s short stories.* Netflix has the BBC’s adaptation.
Agatha Christie – Christie’s 75 novels run the gamut from fun and cozy to truly chilling. Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, her two most famous characters, each appear in dozens of works. And Then There Were None is a must-read, but Christie named Ordeal by Innocence and Crooked House as her favorites among her own books.*
Mary Higgins Clark –Where Are the Children?; A Stranger Is Watching; Loves Music, Loves to Dance
Harlan Coben – Tell No One; The Woods; Fool Me Once; the overlapping Myron Bolitar and Mickey Bolitar series (a sports agent and his nephew)
Wilkie Collins –The Law and the Lady; The Moonstone; The Woman in White
Michael Connelly – Harry Bosch series. This bestselling police procedural series forms the basis for Amazon’s TV series, Bosch.
Deborah Crombie – Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James series (Scotland Yard)
Colin Dexter –Inspector Morse series (a senior criminal investigator who loves Wagner, cryptic crossword puzzles, and cask ale)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The character of Sherlock Holmes needs no introduction. Doyle’s non-Sherlockian mysteries include The Mystery of Cloomber, and short stories such as “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement.” *
Barry Eisler – Eisler is a former covert CIA operative, a trained lawyer, and a black belt martial artist. His three series each feature a different hero: assassin John Rain, black ops soldier Ben Treven, and SVU detective Livia Lone.
James Ellroy – The L.A. Quartet (The Black Dahlia; The Big Nowhere; L.A. Confidential; White Jazz)
Dashiell Hammett – Because of The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, and a host of series and short stories, The New York Times eulogized Hammett as “the dean of the… ‘hard-boiled’ school of detective fiction.”*
Kellye Garrett – Hollywood Homicide
Tess Gerritsen – The Bone Garden
Lamar Giles – Overturned (YA)
Alexia Gordon – The Gethsemane Brown Mysteries (an African-American classical musician)
Sue Grafton – Famous for her Alphabet Mystery series (A is for Alibi, etc.), Grafton passed away after completing Y is for Yesterday. “[As] far as we in the family are concerned, the alphabet now ends at Y,” wrote Grafton’s daughter. [2]
Carl Hiaasen – “America’s finest satirical novelist” is a “laugh-out-loud funny and thoroughly entertaining” “master of the revenge fantasy.” [3] Try Tourist Season, Strip Tease, Skin Tight, or Double Whammy for a taste of his madcap, Florida-based mysteries.
Patricia Highsmith – Strangers on a Train; Deep Water; The Glass Cell; The Talented Mr. Ripley
Tony Hillerman – Leaphorn & Chee series (Navajo Tribal Police)
Joe Ide – IQ series (an unconventional, unofficial detective)
P. D. James – Death Comes to Pemberly; Adam Dalgliesh series (Scotland Yard)
Iris Johansen – Eve Duncan series (a forensic sculptor)
Ausma Zehanat Khan – The Unquiet Dead
Laurie R. King – Mary Russell series (a teenage girl who becomes Sherlock Holmes’ apprentice)
Attica Locke – Jay Porter series (a struggling Texas lawyer)
Sujata Massey –Perveen Mistry series (historical fiction; India’s first female lawyer)
John Mortimer – Horace Rumpole is “an ageing London barrister who defends any and all clients.” [4]
Abir Mukherjee – Sam Wyndham (Scotland Yard, historical fiction)
Jo Nesbø – Brilliant and troubled, Harry Hole (pronounced Hoo-leh) comes from Oslo, Norway, but his work takes him around the world. The series has been translated into English out of order; Hole first appears in The Bat.*
Leonardo Padura – The Mario Conde quartet is on Netflix as the Four Seasons in Havana miniseries.*
Sara Paretsky – Fierce, independent, and sharp, private detective V. I. Warshawski (Victoria) specializes in white-collar crime.
Louise Penny – Chief Inspector Gamache (character-driven, set in provincial Quebec)*
Dr. Kwei Quartey – Darko Dawson (a detective in Ghana)
Marcie Rendon – Murder on the Red River
Tess Sharpe – Far from You (YA)
George Simenon – Simenon’s legendary detective Jules Maigret has been portrayed by a wide range of actors, from Shakespearean stars (Charles Laughton) to slapstick comics (Rowan Atkinson). But why not picture him for yourself? He appears in 76 novels and 28 short stories.
Dwayne Alexander Smith – Forty Acres; The Unkind Hours
Sherry Thomas – Lady Sherlock series
Stephanie Tromley – Trouble Is a Friend of Mine (YA)
Nicola Upson – Josephine Tey (British theatre in the 1930s)
Randy Wayne White – Doc Ford series (a marine biologist / ex-CIA)
Sources:
* indicates quotations and stats were taken from Wikipedia pages about the authors and/or their works
- https://www.thebalancecareers.com/hard-boiled-to-cozy-types-of-mystery-novels-2800057
- https://www.courier-journal.com/story/entertainment/books/2017/12/29/sue-grafton-author-dies/990605001/
- http://www.carlhiaasen.com/
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/779522.Rumpole_of_the_Bailey
- https://bookriot.com/2018/02/22/read-harder-mystery-by-a-person-of-color-or-lgbtq-author/
Advertisements
Grandfather Frost
by Lindsay Roseberry, Reference Department
Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden
The Russians got used to not celebrating Christmas during the Soviet years; they celebrated New Year’s Day just like we celebrate Christmas. Luckily for them there was a legendary figure who fit the bill as a Santa Claus figure to help celebrate New Year, and now also Christmas. He’s known as Grandfather Frost (definitely not to be confused with Frosty the Snowman). In Russian, he’s called Ded Moroz, “d’ed” being Grandfather, “moroz” being frost. He is often accompanied by his granddaughter, the Snow Maiden. In Russian Snegurochka (just FIY – sneg is the Russian word for snow.) And truly these are not modern figures made to help celebrate (and sell) a modern Christmas holiday. They are ancient mythological figures.
Grandfather Frost predates Christianity. In the pagan days, before the Russian tsar sent out envoys to compare the various religions in the area and chose the Greek Orthodox Church (choosing to differentiate their own version as Russian Orthodox), the peasants worshiped nature. Frost and snow were very important in their lives, so they made a name for the frost lord. He is a winter wizard who brought the frost and snow and he could be helpful if treated nicely, but vindictive if treated badly. Winter was a powerful figure in Russia; just look at what happened to both Napoleon and Hitler…
Troika
Frost is considered to be around 2,500 years old. He usually wears a long red wool or fur robe and boots, but no belt. He has a long bushy beard and sometimes wears a wreath of holly and sometimes a hat similar to our Santa Claus. He has also been shown wearing a crown. And he has powers. He often carries a staff which he might use for magic spells and to help him walk through the snow drifts. He doesn’t travel down chimneys either, he comes in through the front door. He travels around in a troika; that’s a carriage driven by three horses (troika means three in Russian…). Even though there are caribou in some parts of Russia, they are not widespread enough for the legend of flying reindeer. Though his troikas have been known to fly as well.
In 2002, a tradition was started between Finland and Russia where Father Christmas (or Santa Claus) crossed the border to greet Ded Moroz. They hand out gifts to all, the crowd of children dance and then they all go inside and have fun. We know that this Santa Summit was still taking place in 2016. Perhaps it still is.
The Snow Maiden is not as old a character as Grandfather Frost. She first appeared in a collection of folktales published in the 1860s by Alexander Afanasyev. He eventually collected three volumes of Russian folktales. No one knows if the story of the snow maiden goes back further, though, since he was the first to collect the stories. In her tale, she longs to be able to love her foster parents but has no heart since she is made of snow. She is granted a heart by her mother and father but melts away as she joins other children jumping over the fire. Grandfather Frost is considered her grandfather and the two of them bring joy and beauty to the snowy Russian winter.
Ded Moroz house in Veliky Ustyug
In 1998, the Moscow Mayor proposed to officially make Veliky Ustyug the residence of Ded Moroz, The residence, which is a resort promoted as his estate, is a major tourist attraction. The town also has a post office there that answers children’s mail to Ded Moroz. Between 2003 and 2010, the post office in Veliky Ustyug received nearly 2,000,000 letters from all over Russia and worldwide. On January 7, 2008, Vladimir Putin visited the estate for the Russian Orthodox Christmas Eve celebration.
Santa Claus made some inroads in Russia during the 1990s, but Russia’s resurgence has brought a renewed emphasis on the basic Slavic character of Ded Moroz. The Russian Federation has even sponsored classes about Ded Moroz every December. People playing Ded Moroz and Snegurochka now typically make appearances at children’s parties during the winter holiday season, distributing presents and fighting off the wicked witch, Baba Yaga, who children are told wants to steal their gifts.
In November and December 2010, Ded Moroz was even one of the candidates in the running for consideration as a mascot for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Further Reading:
Read the rest of this entry
Little Known (but AMAZING) Graphic Novels
By Lon Maxwell, Reference Department
Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Sequential Art; call it what you want it is still one of the hottest collections in libraries and book stores. The greatest thing is that you can find wonderful reads at your reading level and every level below you. You could probably go the other way, but some of the content of the teen and adults graphic novels are a little much for our younger readers. I am lucky enough to have a kid in the children’s section and one in the teen’s section so I get exposed to a lot of great comic books passing through our house and stuff I might of missed is thrust into my face (often literally) with an exuberant “Read this, Dad!” on a regular basis. Whether it’s collected volumes of individual issues, manga volumes from overseas, or new purpose written stories, these books are showing up in every library for every age group and here are some of the best you might miss.
In the Children’s Library:
There are a plethora of options for everyone in the children’s section. There are the standard Pokémon and superhero books and some graphic novels based on mythology that are all good, but there are also some hidden gems with the power to delight all ages.
Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet Series is a favorite for all ages. This bildungsroman tells Emily and her brother’s story as they travel worlds, fight elves and search for their mother. It is remarkably evocative and pulls no punches, despite being written with children primarily in mind. It will only take ten pages before you realize this series may require tissues.
Judd Winick’s HiLo Series was originally designed to be an all-ages comic that he could use to show kids his work. The alien boy who came to earth tale really does appeal to all ages as Winick uses his gift for storytelling to create a story for all
Scott Chantler’s The Three Thieves series is one of the best series of fantasy comics I’ve ever read. The story keeps making you think you know what’s going on only to take another unexpected twist. This comic has heart and pathos as well as action and wonderful characters.
Rapunzel’s Revenge and Calamity Jack by Shannon and Dean Hale is a western fantasy meets steampunk fairytale mashup. The couple that brought you some of the outrageously popular Squirrel Girl storylines has a series of their own. Rapunzel and Jack are far more different than you’ve ever seen them before and the changes make them more interesting.
In the Teen Section:
Here we find the meat of the graphic novels. Here is most of the manga, almost all of the mainstream DC and Marvel titles, and all the avant-garde books like Maus that have hit such heights of recognition that they sometimes appear on school reading lists. It’s hard to find something that a teen hasn’t already talked up but here are a few options.
Takehiko Inoue and Vagabond tell the fictionalized tale of the life of Miyamoto Musashi. In recounting the tales of the life of one of Japan’s most famous and dangerous samurai, the series does not paint too nice a picture. The art is fantastic, the subject mythical and the story compelling.
Age of Bronze from Eric Shanower is another retelling. In this case it is a graphic version of the Trojan War. Shanower takes the tale back to its roots as sequential pictures on ancient Greek vases and fleshes out the whole story not just the small sliver we know from the Iliad. Best of all, after a long hiatus, this series is finally getting continued.
Superman: True Brit by Kim Johnson and John Cleese bring you the only superhero entry on the list. The man who created some of Monty Python’s best helps to create an Elseworlds man of steel who was brought up in England. At times you’ll think he ended up Clark Dursley.
Makoto Yukimura’s Planetes is the story of space garbage men. It tells the tale of several characters that remove space debris and their goals and personalities. While it is a near future science fiction tale, this series is really a character driven masterpiece.
In the Adult Department:
All those great graphic novels that make the New York Times Review of Books or are mentioned in The Atlantic are here. From the classic old Peanut’s strips through the biographical Persepolis to the big publishing house critical darlings of The Sandman and Fables, they’re over with the adult books.
Blade of the Immortal just became a major, live action motion picture in the last few years but the graphic novel series by Hiroaki Samura is over 25 years old. It takes a common theme, redemption, and tells the hackneyed story in way that makes you still care how it turns out.
Brian K. Vaughn’s We Stand on Guard starts in the year 2112, 300 years after the war of 1812. It tells the story of freedom fighters taking on their technological giant oppressor and doing their best to renew their way of life. The political commentary and twist in the aggressor/defender relationship is truly spectacular.
Abe Sapien from Hellboy and BPRD is a newer edition. Mike Mignola has focused on telling the story of the aquatic amnesiac in his new collection. More than a spin off, it is rather an opportunity to expand on a fan favorite character. A green skinned, gill breathing fleshing out of a great soul.
Valerian is another one that was a movie recently. Luc Besson’s infatuation with this Franco-Belgian comic has influenced his films and caused him to adapt one of the stories into a major motion picture. Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières tell the tale of a galaxy traveling time hopping duo with interesting characterization. The European art style also provides an interesting change for those used to North American or Asian drawing techniques.
The Cartoon History of the Universe is my final entry here. Larry Gonnick uses with and silly art to guide readers on a journey through our semi-mythic prehistory and all the way to the creation of the modern world. His often overlooked works are as informative as they are entertaining.
So while these books aren’t as well known now as I might think they deserve, here’s to hoping that a few of you out there might pick up a book and take up their cause with me. I can guarantee you’ll find something on here that will amuse you.
The Wacky World(s) of Quantum Theory
by Howard Shirley, Teen Department
“If you’re not shocked by quantum theory, you haven’t understood it.”—Niels Bohr, winner of the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics.
“I think I can safely say nobody understands quantum mechanics.”—Richard Feynman, winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics
The Universe is weird. And the closer you look, the weirder it gets.
How weird you say?
Well according to quantum theory:
- We know stuff cannot appear out of nothing (The Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy), but stuff appears out of nothing all the time, but disappears before there is any time for it to be here, so it doesn’t violate the previous law.
- A pure vacuum, empty of all matter, isn’t actually empty (see the above).
- A thing in one place can be changed, and it instantly changes an identical thing in another place, no matter how far apart they are.
- Things can move from one location to another without going through the space in between.
- Things don’t exist as things in specific places but as the possibility of things in different places at once, until you look at them.
Now, all of that is about things that are very, very tiny (add a lot more “very, veries” to that). Things like electrons and photons and all the things that make up all the matter and energy in our Universe. But it’s also therefore about all the big things too—like stars and planets and black holes and even you and me.
Which means that all that little weirdness has some weird implications for the big things, like:
- We might be living in a massive simulation, like a virtual world in a computer (don’t take the red pill!).
- Nothing might exist unless someone observes it.
- OR, everything might exist in all possible combinations of all possible events, all at the same time, but we only experience (and observe) one progression of these (while, presumably, infinite other “us”-es experience all the other versions).
- We (and everything else) are all just parts of one big energy field that “ripples” back and forth through time.
- We could exist alongside a completely invisible, undetectable world with invisible, undetectable living beings, all made out of “dark matter” and “dark energy.”
And none of the above is just another over-the-top Hollywood movie. It’s serious science, all stemming from the basics of quantum theory. And, yes, quantum theory isn’t just wild speculation, but one of the most robustly established concepts in modern science, going back to 1900, proven again and again by experimentation and practical application (you’re looking at one of those applications right now as you use an electronic device to read this blog; if quantum theory were wrong, your electronic device wouldn’t work).
Light photographed as both a particle and a wave by Fabrizio Carbone.
Quantum theory is based on the concept that energy, like matter, is divisible and isolatable into definable, self-contained bits, or quanta. Think of it as a long band of light, seen from a distance. The light looks like one continuous bar. But as you get closer, you can see that the bar is instead made of individual lights separated by gaps. We will call these lights “photons.” Each light in our analogy represents a single “packet” or “quanta” of energy, which cannot be any smaller, but is very much separated from each of the other photons, like particles. That may not be confusing, but what is confusing is that these photons behave both as if they each are individual particles and as if they each are also a continuous wave of energy, like our distant band of light. And if you observe them in one way, they will appear to be particles and not waves, and if you observe them in another way, they will appear to be waves and not particles. They are neither, and they are both, at the same time. And it is from this bit of weirdness that all the other weirdness of the quantum world arises.
It’s heady stuff, but it’s also a lot of fun. If you’re intrigued, come in and search for some of our titles on quantum physics. And don’t worry—they’re written for the layman to understand. So you don’t have to be either Niels Bohr or Richard Feynman to appreciate all that weirdness (but you probably will still be shocked).
*Howard Shirley is the Teen Library Assistant. And no, he doesn’t claim to understand quantum theory, but still enjoys being shocked by it.*
Sources:
- Rocket Science for the Rest of Us by Ben Gilliland (YA 520 GIL)
- Quantifying Matter by Joseph A. Angelo, Jr. (YA 530 ANG)
- The New Encyclopedia of Science: 1 Matter and Energy by John O.E. Clark (YA 503 NEW vol.1)
Internet Safety for Kids
By Katy Searcy, Children’s Department
Let’s talk about the Internet for a minute. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know what I would do without the Internet. We have access to information literally at our fingertips, and it’s absolutely fantastic. I love being able to find answers to the random questions zipping through my head. Of course, I don’t have to list off all the benefits of the Internet, and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you the dangers of the Internet either.
The Internet can be a scary place for anyone. There are creeps and weirdos galore, and who knows whether or not our information is really private? It’s tough enough for many adults to navigate, so it’s no wonder we receive lots of requests for books about Internet safety for kids. Kids use a variety of online services, from social media to games, and each one hosts its own safety concerns. Below are a few basic tips parents can be sure to implement no matter how their kids use the Internet, as well as a list of resources to use for talking about Internet safety with kids:
- Keep the computer in a high-traffic area of your home.
- Establish limits for which online sites kids can visit and for how long.
- Remember that the Internet is mobile, so make sure to monitor cell phones, gaming devices, and laptops.
- Surf the Internet with your children and let them show you what they like to do online.
- Know who is connecting with your children online and set rules for social media, instant messaging, email, online gaming, and using webcams.
- Continually talk with your children about online safety.
The following websites provide more in depth tips and suggestions for talking about Internet safety with children:
- http://www.netsmartz.org/Parents
- A program of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, NetSmartz Workshop provides interactive, age-appropriate resources to help teach children how to be safe online. This website features videos, games, presentations, and other activities for kids ages 5 through 17, as well as guides for parents and educators.
- http://www.pbs.org/parents/childrenandmedia/
- PBS Parents is a great resource for information about all aspects of child development and early learning, and the “Children and Media” section is especially helpful for talking to kids about online safety. Featuring numerous articles and age-by-age tips for helping children and teens get the most out of media and technology, this website provides information for parents of children ages 3 through 18.
- https://www.commonsensemedia.org/privacy-and-internet-safety
- Common Sense Media is a non-profit organization that provides information and advice to help parents navigate the issues surrounding raising children in the digital age. The website’s extensive FAQ section features questions from real parents that are broken down by age group or topic.
And finally, here’s a list of books we have here at WCPL about Internet safety and security for both kids and parents:
- “Berenstain Bears’ Computer Trouble” (part of 5 Minute Berenstain Bears Stories) (J E BERENSTAIN)
- Savvy Cyber Kids (J E HALPERT)
- What Does It Mean to be Safe? (J E DIORIO)
- Online Privacy (J 005.8 MAR)
- Safe Social Networking (J 006.754 LIN)
- The Smart Girl’s Guide to the Internet: How to Connect with Friends, Find What You Need, and Stay Safe Online (J 006.754083 CIN) American Girl nonfiction
- A Smart Kid’s Guide to Social Networking Online (J 006.754083 JAK)
- Information Insecurity: Privacy Under Siege (YA 323.448 JAN)
- iRules: What Every Tech-Healthy Family Needs to Know About Selfies, Sexting, Gaming, and Growing Up (004.678083 HOF)
- Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (302.2310835 PAL)
- It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens (302.30285 BOY)
- How to Protect Your Children on the Internet: A Roadmap for Parents and Teachers (305.235 SMI)
- Cyber Self-Defense: Expert Advice to Avoid Online Predators, Identity Theft, and Cyberbullying (613.602854678 MOO)
Sources:
The One and Only Flight of the Spruce Goose
By Lon Maxwell, Reference Department
On November 2, 1947 the Hughes H-4 Hercules drifted out of its hanger in Long Beach Harbor at the end of a tow rope pulled by a small boat. The authorities had cleared the water so the massive flying boat could do some taxi tests. Hughes, taking a break from congressional testimony over his government contracts (including the $18 million one for the H-4), decided it was time to get the massive plane out and see how she handled on the water. He invited the press and even the members of the committee he was testifying in front of. The politicos didn’t show, but the press did. The first run was a leisurely 40 knots, the second a much more brisk 90 knots. The plane lined up for a third run; Howard Hughes himself at the controls. The eight propellers spun up to speed. The plane lurched forward. Speed increased, and increased, and increased, and then it happened. The eight story tall Hercules took to the air.
To understand what a momentous event this was you need to understand three factors; the times, the plane, and the man.
The Time:
The early days of America’s involvement in the Second World War were costly, and America hadn’t even declared itself at war. Tons of ships and materials were being sent to the bottom of the Atlantic every month by German U-boats. We needed a way to move a lot of cargo weight a great distance, and to do it quickly. While the ship building industry began to ramp up production to an unequaled pace, some people looked to the skies to transport more. Seaplanes were used far more prevalently than they are now and were far from being a primarily private aviation phenomenon. Military and commercial carriers had sizable seaplanes, carrying upwards of seventy people.
The Man:
Howard Hughes was a man who thought big. He was brash and arrogant, but also pioneering and adventurous. He was born into privilege, but longed for meaning. He sought that in everything from business, to engineering, to Hollywood to flight. He had the arms of the most beautiful women in the world and the envy of the masses, but he longed for the respect of the powerful.
The Plane:
At the intersection of America’s need and Hughes’ ego was the Hercules. The largest seaplane ever built. A wooden gamble for the Hughes Aircraft Company. A five year project that cost millions of dollars, personal relationships, and congressional intervention.
The call for a new seaplane went out and amongst the bidders was an audacious project. A plane that could carry multiple tanks, hundreds of troops or huge amounts of supplies. It was so crazy it took Hughes himself to sell the project. By this time it was 1942 and the United States was no longer a sideline player in World War Two. This new design of Hughes’s could revolutionize troop deployment and materiel transport. Best of all, it would be easy on the precious commodities of metal and rubber. The Hughes H-4 Hercules would be made of wood. The press thought it was a huge mistake. The Flying Lumberyard and The Spruce Goose were the mocking names the media gave to what they saw as a colossal waste of money and time. Hughes hated the derisive nicknames, especially the Spruce Goose (especially because it was made mostly of birch). 
It wasn’t actually Hughes’s brainchild alone. Henry J. Kaiser, a builder of Liberty Ships, came up with the initial idea of a flying cargo ship. Kaiser knew very well that he knew more about hydrodynamics than aerodynamics and that to pull off his enormous plan he would need to get an aircraft builder to help. Hughes was just the man. The problems began to pile up almost immediately. Building a plane mostly from wood solved some of the problem but there were still restrictions on strategic wartime materials like aluminum. The other problem was the partnership. Kaiser was from an industry that ran its production up to unheard of levels during the war. Hughes insisted on perfection over punctuality. The frustrations caused Kaiser to pull his support from the project and caused a rift between the two men from then on. It took sixteen months to go from approval to production start.
Five years after the initial approval, in 1947, Hughes still hadn’t gotten his magnum opus off the ground. The Senate Investigating Committee was looking into the project with a very skeptical eye. The war it was supposed to have helped fight had been over for more than two years. Hughes vowed to the committee that he would prove the plane was not a failure or he would “probably leave this country and never come back.” He left the hearings during a recess, went home and flew the plane on what was supposed to have been a taxi test. It reaches an altitude of seventy feet and was aloft for a single mile. This was all Hughes needed to feel that he had vindicated himself. The plane was moved back to its hanger, kept air ready by a crew of 300 employees, then cut to 50 in 1962 and finally just left in its hanger in 1976 after Hughes died.
The plane remains. You could go and see it in Long Beach, California for many years as it passed from one hand to the next several years until it was finally moved to its current home at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in Oregon. It’s on display for all to come and marvel at the folly and the genius and the audacity of one man’s need to be better than everybody else, and it still has the largest wingspan ever created.
Sources:
- Biplanes, Triplanes and Seaplanes, Sharpe, Michael YA 629.13334 SHA
- Flight 100 Years of Aviation, Grant, R.G. 629.13009 GRA
- Howard Hughes His Life and Madness, Bartlett, Donald and Steele, James B Hughes
- Howard Hughes The Secret Life, Higham, Charles B Hughes
- Jane’s Encylopedia of Aviation, Taylor, Michael J. H. ed., R 629.13 JAN
- The Timechart History of Aviation, Lowe & B. Hould Publishers, 629.13009 TIM
- Time Magazine (Vol. 50 No. 19) November 10 1947 p27
- Hughes H-4 Hercules (Spruce Goose) at Military Factory https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail.asp?aircraft_id=349#specs
It’s a Monster Mash!
by Chelsea Bennett, Reference Department
We did the mash.
We did the monster mash.
We did the mash, and it was a book list smash!
That is to say, we think y’all really liked the books we picked out for October’s monstrous book display. We had to refill it with new books several times! In case you missed it – or want to relive it –, here are the books we featured in October 2018.
Fiction
- The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd (F ACK)
- The Loch by Steve Alten (F ALT)
- Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter by Nancy Atherton (F ATH)
- Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis (F BAK)
- I’m the Vampire, That’s Why by Michele Bardsley (F BAR)
- Infernal Parade by Clive Barker (F BARKER)
- Oscar Wilde and the Vampire Murders by Gyles Brandreth (F BRA)
- Vampyrrhic by Simon Clark (F CLA)
The Gates by John Connolly (F CON)- Undead and Unwed by Mary Janice Davidson (F DAV)
- The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Keith Donohue (F DONOHUE)
- A Study in Scarlet; The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (F DOYLE)
- Dracula in London by P. N. Elrod, ed. (F DRA)
- Grendel by John Gardner (F GAR)
- Camouflage by Joe Haldeman (F HAL)
- The Monsters of St. Helena by Brooks Hansen (F HAN)
- Sorcerers of the Nightwing by Geoffrey Huntington (F HUN)
- Mazes and Monsters by Rona Jaffe (F JAFFE)
- Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King (F KIN)
- Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein, Book One: Prodigal Son by Dean Koontz (F KOO)
- The Black Swan by Mercedes Lackey (F LAC)
- Chasing the Moon by A. Lee Martinez (F MAR)
- Mothers & Other Monsters by Maureen F. McHugh (F MCHUGH)
- The Moon and the Sun by Vonda N. McIntyre (F MCINTYRE)
You Suck: a love story by Christopher Moore (F MOO)- The Possessions by Sara Flannery Murphy (F MURPHY)
- Monster by Frank Peretti (F PER)
- Relic by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child (F PRE)
- A Monster’s Notes by Laurie Sheck (F SHE)
- The New Annotated Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (F SHELLEY)
- A Winter Haunting by Dan Simmons (F SIM)
- The Terror by Dan Simmons (F SIM)
- Sacred Monster by Donald E. Westlake (F WES)
- Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Ben H. Winters and Jane Austen (F WIN)
- Sustenance by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (F YARBRO)
- Burning Shadows by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (F YARBRO)
Nonfiction
- Great Southern Mysteries by E. Randall Floyd (001.940975 FLO)
American Monsters: a history of monster lore, legends, and sightings in America by Linda S. Godfrey (001.944 GOD)- Abominable Science! Origins of the Yeti, Nessi, and other famous cryptids by Daniel Loxton and Donald R. Prothero (001.944 LOX)
- Sasquatch: legend meets science by Jeff Meldrum (001.944 MEL)
- Cryptozoology A to Z: the encyclopedia of loch monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and other authentic mysteries of nature by Loren Coleman & Jerome Clark (001.94403 COL)
- More Haunted Tennessee by Charles Edwin Price (133.1 PRI)
- True Ghost Stories and Eerie Legends from America’s Most Haunted Neighborhood by David Dominé (133.109 DOM)
- The Haunting of the Presidents: a paranormal history of the U.S. presidency by Joel Martin & William J. Birnes (133.10973 MAR)
- Ghosts of Franklin: Tennessee’s most haunted town by Margie Gould Thessin (133.10973 THE)
- The Bell Tower: the case of Jack the Ripper finally solved in San Francisco by Robert Graysmith (364.15 GRA)
- People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry (364.1523092 PAR)
- Alligators in the Sewer: and 222 other urban legends by Thomas J. Craughwell (398.2 CRA)
Demon in the Woods: tall tales and true from East Tennessee by Charles Edwin Price (398.2 PRI)- Living with the Living Dead: the wisdom of the zombie apocalypse by Greg Garrett (398.21 GAR)
- The Zombie Book: the encyclopedia of the living dead by Nick Redfern with Brad Steiger (398.21 RED)
- The Werewolf Book: the encyclopedia of shape-shifting beings by Brad Steiger (398.24 STE)
- Zombies from History by Geoff Holder (398.45 HOL)
- The Werewolf in Lore and Legend by Montague Summers (398.45 SUM)
- How to Make a Zombie: the real life (and death) science of reanimation and mind control by Frank Swain (398.45 SWA)
- Dragons, Unicorns, and Sea Serpents: a classic study of the evidence for their existence by Charles Gould (398.469 GOU)
- Young Frankenstein: the story of the making of the film by Mel Brooks with Rebecca Keegan (791.4372 BRO)
Doctor Who: Character Encyclopedia by Jason Loborik, Annabel Gibson, and Moray Laing (791.4572 LOB)- Zombies Have Issues by Greg Stones (818 STO)
- The Complete War of the Worlds: Mars’ invasion of Earth from H.G. Wells to Orson Welles by Brian Holmsten & Alex Lubertozzi, editors (823.912 COM)
- Beowulf: a new verse translation by Seamus Heaney, translator (829.3 BEO)
- The Hidden Hitler by Lothar Machtan (B HITLER)
