Causing a Scene is a catalog of the public pranks performed and perpetrated by Improv Everywhere, the group behind the No-Pants Subway Ride and Freeze in Place at Grand Central Station pranks, as well as the greatest prank ever pulled at a Public Library: Who Ya Gonna Call?

The book chronicles some of their more high-profile antics, and contains details about organization and aftermath, as well as interviews with key players and tips for pulling off some large-scale street theater of your own. Read this book to find out what happens when 80 pranksters dressed in khaki pants and blue polo shirts gradually make their way into a Best Buy store, to explore the consequences of creating a time-loop in a Starbucks, and to see whether a cabbie can be persuaded to unite two star-crossed lovers who keep narrowly missing each other. You’ll also find out how easy it is for a deceased author (in this case Anton Chekov) to read from his work at the local bookstore.

There’s a point to all this prankery. The Improv Everywhere crew bring people together with their performances, and create communities on subway cars, in reading rooms, and in stores where there were previously only collections of strangers. The greatest example of this, also discussed in the book, is the Rob prank at a Knicks game in which a prankster-fan who got himself intentionally and obviously lost in the stadium was eventually guided back to the correct seat by an entire section of screaming fans. If you’re looking for some great ideas for public theater, or you want to read about some great social moments that grew out of planned pranks, check out Causing a Scene by the Improv Everywhere agents.

John Jewitt – Savage Branch

On the tiny island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, a bruised and battered housekeeper, America Gonzalez, "is in the middle of her life," down on hands and knees, scrubbing yet another hotel toilet at La Casa de Frances. Her abusive lover, Correa, has taken their wayward teen-aged daughter, Rosalinda, following a vicious confrontation, and now, after fifteen years of negotiating between violence and love, America seizes a wild opportunity: a vacationing American family, in need of a full-time nanny, offers her the chance of lifetime.

In America’s Dream, author Esmeralda Santiago offers two gifts as a fiction writer: dialogue as piquant as America’s own asopao, and the spellbinding voice of the storyteller. We hear America’s struggle to comprehend, not only American largesse in the wealthy suburb of Westchester, New York, but our own self-serving colloquialisms: a ‘play date’ for the privileged Leverett children, for instance, is bewildering, and not something the nurturing America, who has so much love to offer, can truly understand or see the necessity for when you are a mother.

As well, America is lonely and homesick, but as time passes she allows herself tentative happiness — especially when she visits her Americanized cousins in the Bronx. She will have to stay alert though. In a powerful showdown, America’s tenacity, courage, and love for her new life will be put to a heart-stopping test.

Readers will relish this tale of a naïve yet observant young woman making an emotional break from one culture for the vast uncertainty of another.

Aimee Zuccarini – East Columbia Branch

"There are some people with a gift for conviction — a talent for cutting a line through the jumbled phenomena of world affairs and saying, I’m in: this is my position. All of the Litvinoffs had it to some extent. It was a genetic thing, perhaps."

The Litvinoffs of New York have always prided themselves on being radically chic and believers of many causes. Joel, the patriarch and the family’s unifying force, is a lawyer famous for defending accused terrorists and radicals. His wife of 40 years is Audrey, an Englishwoman who is vividly described as a "middle-aged termagant." Their daughter Karla, a social worker trapped in a slightly disappointing marriage, feels unattractive and bears patiently her mother’s wisecracks about her weight. Their younger daughter Rosa is flirting with Orthodox Judaism and goes after it in such an awkward, charming way in spite of ridicule from her parents, who are contemptuous of any organized religion.

When Joel suffers a massive heart attack, the women in his life struggle to redefine themselves and their relationship with each other. Heller has the gift of letting her characters, faults and all, come alive and interact with the reader. The Litvinoff women are fascinating in a weird way — the kind of dinner guests who will stare you down and argue all the way to dessert. Audrey muses in one poignant scene: "How had she ended up like this, imprisoned in the role of a harridan? Her anger had become a part of her. It was a knotted thicket in her gut, too dense to be cut down and too deeply entrenched in the loamy soil of her disappointments to be uprooted."

The Believers is Zoe Heller at her best — witty, intelligent, acerbic and funny. Heller may not be known for her lovable characters, but they surely are memorable. Her novel What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal, about an obsessive English teacher, became a movie. She believed that the "point of fiction is not to offer moral avatars but to engage with people whose politics or points of view are unpleasant or contradictory." Be prepared to be entertained with this book. I surely was.

Cristina J. Lozare – Central Library

It’s Harry Potter — without Voldemort. It’s Middle Earth — without hobbits. It’s Narnia — without any hint of wonder or metaphorical salvation. It’s every fantasy ever written, but it’s not.

So, how to define The Magicians by Lev Grossman? It certainly borrows from those heavy hitters of the fantasy genre, but stubbornly remains its own creation. A complete lack of a sense of the fantastical, however, keeps this coming of age novel firmly grounded. Reading fantasy is, to some extent, about escaping the everyday world. Instead, The Magicians imports all our anxieties and conundrums into another reality. 

Quentin Coldwater is a miserable teenager who becomes a fairly miserable young man. He has little direction in his life, drifting meaninglessly. The thrill of attending a secret school for magic and being a star pupil means little to him. He succeeds mostly because that’s what he does. He makes friends and develops a love affair, but none of it seems to matter.  When he discovers that the Narnia-like world of Fillory is real, Quentin can’t even appreciate it because he’s too busy throwing a tantrum. 

Despite the dismal main character, The Magicians is well written and embraces its literary lights. A post-modern fantasy of sorts, the plot is not driven by the quest or winning a crown. Quentin doesn’t grow up to save the world because of his wondrous talents. Life doesn’t come wrapped neatly in a bow for you to unwrap when the time is right. Figuring out that life, that sneaky devil, is found in the details is a hard lesson for Quentin to learn.

Not the average fantasy by any means, but definitely worth reading.

A 2010 Adult Summer Reading Club recommendation

Kristen Blount – Administration Office

Meet Miranda, a mostly-average 12 year old girl living in late ‘70s New York. Her favorite book, bar none, is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle*. She carries a worn, much loved copy with her everywhere, compulsively re-reading it.

The big news in Miranda’s life is that her mom’s going to be a participant on the $20,000 Pyramid (with Dick Clark!). Otherwise, Miranda goes to school, falls in and out with her friends, and copes with preteen life. Miranda is the narrator of When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, and she has a great voice. You keep reading because you like listening to her tell this spare, erratic story.

And it is an odd little story indeed, written in an almost journal style, to a mysterious "you." Amid the relative normality of middle school life, Miranda receives anonymous, cryptic notes and a variety of things go missing. Meanwhile, there’s the laughing man, who lives under the mailbox on the corner and kicks at the traffic. Clearly, something a little off-beat is going on, and clues lay thick upon the ground.

When all the clues finally came together, I had a "light-bulb" moment — a flash where all the seemingly unrelated bits melded into one terrific whole. Strangely enough, it’s Miranda’s ever-present book (one of my own childhood favorites) that provides the solution.

*If you aren’t familiar with A Wrinkle in Time, you may miss many references in Stead’s book. L’Engle’s award-winning novel offers a beautiful look at family, friendship, and trust as it follows teenage Meg and her younger brother Charles Wallace when they go to rescue their physicist father from another dimension. Technically a science fiction story, it’s a literary gem full of intriguing characters, a driving plot, and an underlying message about how the smallest voices can sometimes wield the most power.

Editor’s Note: When You Reach Me has won the John Newbery Medal for 2010! More information here.

Kristen Blount – Administration Office

Novelist Jill Ciment’s characters Ruth and Alex are 45-years-married New Yorkers with a mass of aches and pains: hearing aid batteries, jumping nerve syndrome, and thick-lensed trifocals. Nevertheless, they remain sharp as tacks, partly because Ruth (a retired literature teacher) is never without her portable Chekhov, and Alex (an artist) stays busy on an important retrospective: illuminating every single page of his once subversively sexy wife’s FBI file. Addtionally, they often think in tandem. For example, when on a winter weekend, their beloved octogenarian dachshund, Dorothy, slips a disc, they are already out the door with leash and blanket, battling insane uptown traffic with fierce single-mindedness: get Dorothy to the vet’s emergency room.

Never mind that this weekend in particular is the one where their “sun-flooded” co-op hits the New York Times real estate listings with its million-dollar asking price, or that in post 9/11 Manhattan, a gasoline truck with a suspicious driver named Pamir seems to be “stuck” in the Midtown Tunnel. This event sends Fox Newsworthy sound-biters into a moronic frenzy of television coverage, debate, and polling: Isn’t Muslim really a language? Do terrorists take drugs? And, what can a forensic expert with training in paranormal activity and “badly applied lipstick” tell us about your run-of-the-mill jihadist?

Soon, the FBI has Pamir surrounded in a Bed, Bath and Beyond, while a frantic bidding war ensues over Alex and Ruth’s apartment, and Dorothy’s tail is put to the ultimate test.

Love, faith, and the significance of a canine “wee-wee pad” make Jill Ciment’s Heroic Measures not only a small but elegant time-bomb of surprising suspense, but, at long last, a book without a lab on the cover.

A 2010 Adult Summer Reading Club recommendation

Aimee Zuccarini – East Columbia Branch

An American sex symbol is found floating in the Hudson River and the newspapers are reporting that it’s a murder. A famous author known for his detective series claims he will get to the bottom of the mystery. Is this another episode of Castle? No, it’s the true story of the murder of Mary Rogers, and Edgar Allan Poe’s attempt to solve the crime.

In The Beautiful Cigar Girl, Daniel Stashower captures New York’s political climate of 1841. "The beautiful cigar girl" is Mary Rogers, a sales clerk and local celebrity — many of New York’s famous men frequent the cigar store for a glimpse of her. Mary’s behavior made her a darling of the media and her death precipitated a call for reform. Also present is Edgar Allan Poe, a once famous writer for the literary magazines, now looking for his next story. Although considered brilliant, his brutally honest book reviews and erratic behavior have alienated him from society. 

I enjoyed The Beautiful Cigar Girl because of the mystery. Who did kill Mary Rogers? And why? In The Mystery of Marie Roget, Poe attempts to answer these questions through deductive reasoning. I equally enjoyed the story’s history, as well as the author’s inclusion of Poe’s biography. Stashower tells Poe’s story, from his turbulent childhood though his untimely death in Baltimore. The telling of Poe’s life is critical to both the mystery and the reason why he would care so much about writing Mary Roger’s story.  In some way, they are kindred spirits, each bent on the same destination.

Robert Bates – Glenwood Branch

I don’t usually read memoirs, especially ones about recovery. I don’t watch docudramas about medical or emotional trauma either. I tend to become horrified and depressed, instead of edified and entertained. However, Cooking & Screaming: Finding My Own Recipe for Recovery found its way onto my reading stack…I think it was a combination of the clever title and bold cover. This fascinating and honest book might even have converted me into reading other memoirs (but not watching them).

Just before graduating from UC Berkeley at age 21, author Adrienne Kane suffered a major stroke. In this memoir, Kane recounts the frustrations of physical therapy and her gradual reintroduction to independence. As she takes the reader through her road to recovery, she mixes family anecdotes, California atmosphere, and medical prognoses into an upbeat concoction, all about a strong-willed woman facing life’s challenges.

Each chapter begins with a recipe, which relates somehow to the chapter’s theme. The first chapter opens with a pasta and zucchini dish (which I have copied to try myself) from Kane’s college days. Throughout the book, recipes vary in complexity from basic spaghetti sauce to a duck dinner made in memory of Julia Child. It was fascinating to see how each recipe reflected an important chapter in the author’s recovery.

Kane discovers her passion for food and feeding people as she copes with her disabilities. Cooking and sharing her thoughts about food come to define her vocation, almost by accident. This was a delightful read…the author’s voice is highly personal, the topic astounding on many levels, and the meals mouthwatering-ly inspiring.

Kristen Blount – Administration Office

The Eternal, Sonic Youth’s 16th studio album, marks their departure from Geffen Records, the band’s label for 18 years. The Eternal was recorded with bassist Mark Ibold, formerly of Pavement, with whom the band had previously toured. Also for the first time, Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, and Lee Ranaldo share lead vocals — and quite well I might add, especially on the tracks "What We Know" and "Leaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso)."

"Antenna" and "What We Know" are my two favorite tracks on the album. When I first listened to "Antenna" I thought there was some strange jet flying over my apartment. I paused the song, looked out my window and saw nothing. Seconds later I realized that it was just an effect used in the song. "What We Know" is one of the album’s catchiest and more accessible tracks; it has a great chorus using Gordon and Ranaldo’s harmonized vocals.

What I find amazing about this album is that even though Sonic Youth has been recording music for more than 20 years, and certain members are approaching the age of 60, they still can create some of the loudest, most intense, and original music to date. Even more compelling is the fact that every album they have released over the past 10 years has consistently been of exceptional quality.

Sonic Youth broke new ground on 1988’s Daydream Nation, and 27 years later they show that they still have the chops to put most modern rock acts to shame. They will eternally be the kings of alternative music.

Mike Dwyre – East Columbia Branch

The Luxe by Anna Godbersen is heady young adult fiction that is not only intriguing and delectable, but sly.

Intriguing for the story itself: The world of late Victorian New York society at its most repressed and crustiest tier provides the setting in which the recently impoverished Holland sisters, Elizabeth and Diana, are both victims of their own superior status.

Delectable for the four star-crossed lovers: Godbersen has borrowed a bit from Austen and even Shakespeare, yet her characters breathe with teen angst, passion and surprising sex appeal.

Finally, The Luxe is a sly read. Female readers who may eschew historical fiction like the most tasteless low-fat snacks will be gobbling up the author’s fresh, modern narrative. They will quickly forget they have settled into an era of "rule followers and tea sippers" mainly because this addictive page-turner, set during a time of gas lamps, horse drawn carriages and Fifth Avenue mansions exploding with backstairs secrets, is not so different from today’s amoral obsession with wealth and beauty.

Think Gossip Girl meets The Age of Innocence, and you will have a fresh and sparkling twist on an often withered genre.

Aimee Zuccarini -  East Columbia Branch