Berkeley Heights Public Library Book Blog

The Probable Future

2012-01-31T14:40:00.004-05:00

The book group will discuss The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman this Friday. Generations of women in the Sparrow family have woken up on their 13th birthday with a magical gift. Thirteen-year old Stella can foresee how people will die; her mother Jenny dreams the dreams of other people at night; and her grandmother Elinor knows when she is told a lie.

When Stella asks her father to warn a woman she sees about her murder, he becomes a murder suspect himself. The ensuing media frenzy in Boston sends Jenny and Stella back home to the village of Unity, whose dark past is entangled with the Sparrow women's history.

Alice Hoffman gave a long interview to Jennifer Morgan Gray about The Probable Future. Publisher's Weekly also had an interview on the book. Discussion questions are available at ReadingGroupGuides. The New York Times also published a couple of reviews, one by Janet Maslin and one by Janice Nimura.

Mystery Series Worth Reading

2012-01-25T11:29:00.002-05:00

Sometimes a book series starts with a bang, ends in a whimper and dodders around in the interim, but readers are loyal and will wait out a few weak entries if they like the characters and setting and mood. Looking at my reading journal for 2011, I noticed that I read several continuations of mystery series that have mostly stayed strong from the first book. For "cozy" mystery fans, I recommend Susan Wittig Albert's China Bayles series, set in Texas and featuring herb-growing sleuth China Bayles. In Mourning Gloria (2011), the series is at top form. For fans of the British cozy, try Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce series. This series is sometimes classified for teen readers, but it is suitable for all ages. Flavia is really a pretty obnoxious pre-teen sleuth, but lovable in her own quirky way. Speaking of quirky, try Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May series. Set in London, two old friends in the police "Peculiar Crimes Unit" solve mysteries with their unconventional methods and treasure trove of cerebral trivia about London's history. Chris Evan's Good Thief's Guide to (insert city name here) series never fails to entertain. His good thief/narrator's adventures remind me of the caper movies so popular in the 1950's and '60's. Topkapi, Charade etc.
On the darker side of mystery series, I can always count on Jacqueline Winspeare's Maisie Dobbs series and Louise Penny's Inspector Armand Gamache series.

Teach Yourself to Knit

2012-01-24T11:49:00.007-05:00

1. You need needles and yarn. Since 50 million people make stuff out of yarn, it's very possible that you could borrow some. Eventually you will need to go to the knitting shops in Chatham, Madison or Westfield or to Michael's in Watchung.

2. Judy of YouTube will show you, very slowly, and over and over again if you like, how to cast on and how to do the knit stitch.

3. Once you have got those basics down, try the purl stitch, how to add a new ball of yarn and how to bind off.

4. The Knitting Answer Book will teach you how to fix your mistakes. Yarn Harlot will teach you that it's OK to just fudge it. (But please, do not iron a piece knitted out of plastic yarn!)

5. Make a scarf (a.k.a. proof that you can knit.)

6. Check out the library's extensive collection of knitting books in the room behind the circulation desk. (It is OK to go back there. Even if it's just to get a glimpse of the book elevator instead of looking at the knitting books.)

Making the Internet Easier to Use on the Kindle Fire

2012-01-21T14:19:00.006-05:00

The other evening I was helping a patron who wanted to learn how to download eBooks to her Kindle Fire. Not only did she want to download the eBooks to her Fire, she wanted to use the web browser on her Fire to check them out. But eLibraryNJ.com is so graphics-heavy we could never get it to finish loading on the Fire.

If you are having problems like this, or even if your fingers just always click on the wrong thing when you're on the Internet, consider changing your Kindle Fire's settings to show you the mobile version of web sites:

Go to the "Web" tab on the home page.
Tap the symbol at the bottom of the screen that looks like a box with 3 lines in it.
Tap Settings.
Scroll your finger from the bottom of the screen to the top until you see "Desktop or mobile view" down at the bottom.
Tap "Desktop or mobile view"
Tap the circle to the right of Mobile: Optimize for mobile view

Voila! After you follow these steps, and go to eLibraryNJ in your Fire's browser, you will see the much simplified mobile version of the site.

Ten Most Circulated 10 Biographies of 2011

2012-01-18T10:28:00.004-05:00

Yesterday's post about BHPL's top-circulating nonfiction of 2011 did not include books shelved in the library's biography section. It's an interesting group of books about presidents, aristocrats, and entertainers, plus a few perennial favorites.

1. Decision Points by George W. Bush
2. Cleopatra: a Life by Stacy Schiff
3. American Rose : a Nation Laid Bare, the Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee by Karen Abbott
4. Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage by Hazel Rowley
5. Night by Elie Wiesel
6. (tie) Wait for Me! : Memoirs by Deborah Mitford, the Duchess of Devonshire
6. (tie) Growing Up Laughing : My Story and the Story of Funny by Marlo Thomas
8. (tie) This Time Together : Laughter and Reflection by Carol Burnett
8. (tie) A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
10. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller

BHPL's Top 10 Most Popular Titles in 2011

2012-01-17T16:29:00.005-05:00

The 10 most-circulated fiction titles at Berkeley Heights Public Library in 2011:

1. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
2. Room by Emma Donohue
3. Smokin' Seventeen by Janet Evanovich
4. Now You See Her by James Patterson
5. Hell's Corner by David Baldacci
6. (tie) The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
6. (tie) Tick Tock by James Patterson
8. Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult
10. (tie) Don't Blink by James Patterson
10. (tie) Buried Prey by John Sandford

And the 10 most-circulated nonfiction titles in 2011:

1. Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue
2. Kitchen and Bath Ideas published by Better Homes and Gardens
3. Heaven Is For Real by Todd Burpo
4. Mao's Last Dancer by Li Cunxin
5. The Greater Journey : Americans in Paris by David McCullough
6. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
7. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
8. Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
9. Life by Keith Richards
10. I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron

What Kinds of eBooks Does the Library Have?

2012-01-11T20:43:00.007-05:00

Here's a recap of a little of tonight's presentation on library eBooks. As of today there are about 4,000 eBooks that Berkeley Heights residents can download from eLibraryNJ.com. You're limited to 5 at a time, and about 90% of the eBooks have a waitlist today. The eBooks work on Kindle, Nooks, and iPads (among others).

This pie chart is not 100% accurate since some of the books overlap categories and I just used Advanced Search to figure out the different types (not an exact science), but it will give you an idea of what kinds of books are available.

Basically, anything you can check out from the library is what you can expect at eLibraryNJ: nonfiction, romance, mystery/suspense/thriller, other kinds of fiction, children's books. The library's eBooks were all published in the past few years (or a little less recently if it's part of a series that is still popular.) There are a lot of bestsellers, too. However, if you're wondering why we don't have certain bestsellers (like the new Steve Jobs book) it's because we can't get books from Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan.

Also, it's important to sign in before you search. BHPL is buying eBooks for the use of BH residents only, but you will only find those books if you are signed in.

Berkeley Heights Public Library 2011 Annual Report

2012-01-10T00:55:00.002-05:00

By Stephanie Bakos, Library Director

Every January when I start reviewing the previous year my mind starts to spin. Will I morph into Tony DiNozzo from NCIS and start spouting movie titles or will I revert to my years as a Children’s Librarian and think in terms of fairy tales? The winner for 2011 is any easy choice – Clint Eastwood’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Before starting the narrative, here are the basics: *

Total circulation:
54,943 Adult
57,949 Juvenile
34,594 Audio-Visual (including downloadables)
1,791 Juvenile Audio-Visual
1,270 Interlibrary Loan

New patrons: 622

Collection
Titles added: 5,194 Books
1,073 Audio-Visual (DVDs, Audio-books,CDs, etc.)
1,036 Downloadable e-Books and audio-books

*The Children’s Department was closed for 10 weeks, decreasing circulation and purchasing

Ugly is the only adjective to describe what Tropical Storm Irene left behind in the Children’s Department. Instead of celebrating the third anniversary of the renovation, we were hiring a restoration company to pack the books, remove the carpet, sanitize, anti-microbialize, remove drywall, and install large fans and dehumidifiers. It was over two and a half months from the first drop of rain until the second Grand Reopening.

Bad is also sad. BHPL lost two good friends and colleagues. Ginny Lynch, Head of Technical Services, and Stella Blyskal, retired Head of Circulation, died in 2011. Both are greatly missed.

Good, fortunately, outweighs the Ugly. In fact, so much good happened that it is necessary to create the following list:

Strategic Plan: The Board of Trustees, with input from focus groups, created and implemented a plan for the next three years.

Environmental Commission: In the spirit of cooperation, BHPL and the EC combined forces in April to provide adult and children’s programs focusing in environmental issues.

Meeting Room: Jay Morgan completed the project necessary to become an Eagle Scout by improving the Meeting Room. BHPL now has more seating space and freshly painted walls.

Downloads: Although this area of library service continues to evolve, BHPL offers both e-book and audio-book downloads. This is a growing collection, accessible online.

Boopsie: Boopsie is wonderful! In late 2011 BHPL’s Android app became available, followed by the Apple app in early 2012. Patrons can now use their smart phones to access BHPL’s collection, databases with apps, reserve books,
check your account, and view the calendar.

Volunteers: Over twenty-five volunteers helped to return the book collection to the Children’s Department after the storm related repairs. This group worked hard and went home tired after a long week of unloading boxes, pushing book carts, and arranging books on the shelves. Thank you to everyone who stepped up to help.

Children’s Department: The reopening of the Children’s Department in mid-November was the biggest accomplishment of 2011. If possible, the second reopening eclipsed the total renovation in 2008. The bright new carpet and brighter colors in the stairway signal to everyone that a good time can be had. The addition of lovely artwork above the Circulation Desk and near both computer locations adds a touch of whimsy.

In conclusion, the artwork above the downstairs Circulation Desk sums up 2011:

Once upon a time…they lived happily ever after.

The aggravation, angst, and weather calamities are neatly described by "..." , the spaces between the once and the ever after.

Food + Dog + Love = Book

2012-01-09T04:18:00.000-05:00

The Lost Recipe for Happiness by Barbara O'Neal is about a sous-chef who finally gets the chance to run her own kitchen, in a new Aspen restaurant that the owner names after her dog. The dog and the romance reminded me of another enjoyable light read, Turning Tables by Heather and Rose MacDowell, in which a laid-off marketing manager faces a sink-or-swim situation as a waitress at a top New York restaurant. Though I haven't read it, I think Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs has promising similiarities (a 50-year-old TV chef who falls for her producer.) And of course, there's always the all-you-can-eat buffet of culinary mystery novels.

The Art of Blown Glass

2012-01-06T06:31:00.000-05:00

The display in the lobby this month is the blown glass of Berkeley Heights teens Mark Bochner and Josh Bochner. They learned the art at Buck's Rock Performing and Creative Arts Camp in Connecticut.

Bowls are Josh's favorite pieces to make. Mark has been blowing glass for 6 years and uses a multitude of techniques, ranging from 500 year-old Italian methods to modern American styles.

The BHPL App for Smartphones & Tablets

2012-01-04T18:05:00.005-05:00

You can now search the BHPL catalog on your Android phone, iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad with the free BHPL app! The BHPL app for the Kindle Fire is coming soon.

If "all thumbs" means "clumsy" to you, not "an efficient method of typing on your phone", you're going to love the app's truncated search. You only have to type in the first few letters of each keyword. For example, "ja ke on" will find everything we have on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Search the library's magazine and journal article databases. Check your account. Renew your books. Look at what items are new this week. All on your phone!

BHPL on iTunes/App Store

Android Market - search for BHPL

You might also be interested in downloading the library's eBook app, Overdrive Media Console.

Lucy by Ellen Feldman

2012-01-03T10:10:00.005-05:00

On Friday the morning book group will discuss Lucy, Ellen Feldman's fictionalization of the relationship between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lucy Mercer in the late 1910s. FDR was Assistant Secretary of the Navy at the time, and Lucy was Eleanor Roosevelt's social secretary. The affair went on a very long hiatus when FDR's political advisers convinced him that a divorce would put an end to his dream of becoming president.

Lucy went on to marry the widower Winthrop Rutherfurd, who as a young man had been secretly engaged Consuelo Vanderbilt. (Consuelo's mother Alva forced her to marry the Duke of Marlborough instead.) Amazing by today's standards, FDR's relationship with Lucy did not become publicly known until 1966. Ellen Feldman based the book in part on Franklin and Lucy's correspondence, including letters found as late as 2008.

Discussion questions for Lucy are available at ReadingGroupGuides.com. Ellen Feldman won a Guggenheim fellowship in 2009, 6 years after Lucy was published.

My Reading Journal is Full

2011-12-31T12:21:00.001-05:00

Twenty years ago, when I moved to New Jersey, my book group in Washington, D.C. gave me a reading journal to keep track of the books I read. I just finished my last book of 2011 and have come to the last page of my journal. There were years when I didn't keep track very well of what I read, or added titles in misremembered batches later, but for the last five or so years, I've been pretty good at keeping up to date. The trick, I think, is to just put the author, title and date read. Don't expect to review the book or you will just avoid writing in the journal at all. You can also save your receipts from the library to refresh your memory if you return a book before entering it in the journal. I have also kept track of my reading on GoodReads.com. You can see my list on the rights side of this blog. Sometimes I write a brief review or description of the book for this blog or Amazon.com or GoodReads. A friend recently noted that I don't give many stars to my GoodReads reviews. I'm a hard grader, I guess. So if you look at that list, just consider three stars to be four and four to be five and that will probably be more in line with other raters on the website. I try not to give negative reviews on this blog, because the idea, in my mind at least, is to find good things for our library patrons to read. I do try to tell who I think the book will appeal to, ie: "if you like this, then try that" - linking what are sometimes called "read-a-likes."
In the next few posts, I will write about my favorite books of 2011 and some of the memorable books I've read in the last twenty years.
Happy New Year and Happy Reading!

The Leftovers: Left Behind, only funny

2011-12-31T10:24:00.000-05:00

The last book I read in 2011 is a weird one and memorable. With The Leftovers, New Jersey author Tom Perrotta imagines how the world would react if suddenly millions of people just disappeared. Poof, like the Rapture, only maybe it isn't really the Rapture. Exactly what happened and why is never clear to the reader or to the millions of people left behind on earth: the 'Leftovers.' The author is funny and sad, nostalgic and hopeful, all in the same sentence. I think this may be Perrotta's trademark emotional style. The premise is depressing, but with humorous observations about suburban New Jersey life to balance out the overall tone of the book. Who was taken out (up?): the Pope, TV chefs and various pop stars. Who was left behind?: the good and the bad and most of all the ordinary, common man and woman. Cults arise to deal with the worldwide tragedy and the authors satire of cults is also funny but sad. The 'Guilty Remnant' cult followers wear white, take a vow of silence, smoke cigarettes and follow and watch people, all the while staring and blowing smoke at them. The Holy Waynes follow a charismatic leader who starts out with good intentions to heal the bereft, but then becomes an amoral egomaniac. The Barefoot People are like hippies with an eye painted on their foreheads who go the opposite way from the Guilty Remnants, they are the hedonists to their stoics.
Definitely a book to think about long after turning the last page.

Jesuits in Outer Space

2011-12-30T09:39:00.003-05:00

Mary Doria Russell now mostly writes historical fiction, but her first and wonderful novel, The Sparrow, is science fiction. The Sparrow is about a Jesuit mission (more scientific than religious) to a planet inhabited by alien species. However, most of the novel takes place on Earth, alternating between 2019 when the music radio broadcasts from the planet Rakhat are intercepted, and 2060, when the sole survivor, Father Emilio Sandoz, returns and is unwilling to talk about what happened. This may sound depressing, but the prospect of finding out what happened, and the wonderfully developed characters - a doctor, an artificial intelligence analyst, an engineer, and an astronomer, among others - kept me reading. The author is a Catholic who converted to Judaism, and the main characters are Jesuit priests and a Sephardic Jew, so The Sparrow will be more interesting to readers who are interested in Judaism and Christianity. The Sparrow won the 1998 Arthur Clarke Award (the best science fiction novel published in the UK that year).

Some Staff Favorites This Year

2011-12-29T12:30:00.008-05:00

I asked my coworkers which book, out of all the ones they read this year, was their favorite. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth since librarians don't like to choose just one book, but after some prodding I got these titles:

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

South of Broad by Pat Conroy

The Snowman by Jo Nesbo. "Put that it scared me simple."

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

I'll Walk Alone by Mary Higgins Clark

Lady Susan by Jane Austen. Finding a Jane Austen novel you haven't read before is great, isn't it?

Mao's Last Dancer by Li Cunxin. Yours truly's choice. The movie is good too.

ListenNJ is now eLibraryNJ

2011-12-19T12:38:00.005-05:00

Once upon a time (OK - in 2006), a group of libraries joined together to lend free downloadable audiobooks to their patrons via ListenNJ.com. ListenNJ.com has been renamed eLibraryNJ.com to reflect the fact that it has been lending eBooks as well as audiobooks since 2010. As a bonus, the web site has been newly redesigned too.

Although most of the titles available at eLibraryNJ are shared with all libraries, some titles are reserved for Berkeley Heights library cardholders. Log in with your library card before you search in order to find these books.

Did You Know You Can Listen to Audiobooks on Your Kindle?

2011-12-15T12:50:00.002-05:00

I'm not talking about the uninflected robotic voice that can read your Kindle eBooks out loud. I mean the real deal, the kind narrated by an actor or actors in a studio. Here's how it works:

Get an audiobook in MP3 format, either one of the MP3 CD audiobooks that BHPL lends, or one from ListenNJ.com (free if you have a BH library card). You will need to download the Overdrive Media Console. Select an audiobook that has an "MP3" icon and download the title. Plug your Kindle into your PC. In Overdrive Media Console, click the title you downloaded and then click Transfer.

Go to My Computer and browse to the Kindle drive. Drag the MP3 files from the Kindle folder to the "audible" folder of your Kindle. The audiobook's tracks will show up on the Home page beside your eBooks with a little label that says "Music" to the left. If you have a Kindle Fire, the audiobook tracks show up on your Music tab.

How to Listen and Understand Great Music

2011-12-13T11:28:00.003-05:00

Yes, I'm going to explain how to do that in one blog post. Just kidding.

New Jersey's own Robert Greenberg is the entertaining lecturer of the music appreciation course with that name. That is, How to Listen and Understand Great Music, which BHPL has in its nonfiction audiobook collection. New Jersey comes up during a discussion of Lorenzo Da Ponte, the Venetian who wrote the libretti (a.k.a. the lyrics) for Mozart's operas. In 1805 Da Ponte ran a grocery store in Elizabeth of all places, before becoming Columbia University's first professor of Italian literature.

Dr. Greenberg tells funny and illuminating stories about composers, but what I liked best was learning about A) opera - which I thought I would have to suffer through - and B) the various forms of pieces (for example, concertos, oratorios, fugues), and how they came about. You get to hear a little of each selection, which is a good way to figure out what you'd enjoy listening to on your own in full later.

This audiobook course is located at BHPL at CD AUDIO 780.9 GRE - scan the walls for a pink flamingo to find the nonfiction audiobooks. Robert Greenberg has also put a version of the course in printed form with the book "How to Listen to Great Music: a Guide to Its History, Culture and Heart". For more reviews of Teaching Company courses that you can borrow from the library: Museum Masterpieces: the Met; The Story of Human Language; and a list of courses that BHPL owns.

Once Upon a Time . . .

2011-12-08T10:54:00.005-05:00

The artist Bea Tobolewski is putting the finishing touches on the children's room.

The official reopening was on November 19. This dog from the Mount Pleasant Animal Shelter was one of the guests present.

If you like hard-boiled mysteries...

2011-12-06T15:53:00.000-05:00

I took a sharp detour from reading my usual cozy mystery genre to venture into the dark underbelly of crime, violent characters, urban decay and deceitful treachery of the noir genre. The 39th installment in the Spenser series by the late Robert B. Parker, Sixkill introduces Zebulon Sixkill, an American Indian whom Spenser takes on as an apprentice. Parker's Spenser series is always dependably engrossing and well-written and Sixkill will not disappoint fans.
Next, I read George Pelecanos' The Cut, the first in a new series featuring investigator Spero Lucas. Spero is an Iraq vet and D.C. native who works for a local lawyer and takes his own cases recovering lost property. Fans of TV's the Wire and Treme, written by Pelecanos, will know to expect a very dark view of humanity and lots of heart-wrenching violence. Despite the fact that I don't generally read or particularly like violent novels, The Cut held my attention and I finished it despite an incredibly graphic and disturbing murder scene which made me want to quit reading altogether. Fans of Michael Connelly will like Pelecanos' books. Washington, DC natives will recognize the local landmarks, schools, restaurants and haunts that only natives are familiar with. This is not the DC of people who live in Georgetown and the northwest section of Northwest and who come and go with political jobs. It's the DC of rabid Redskins fans and people who know how to get around without ever using the Beltway.
Related websites:
George Pelecanos
Robert B. Parker

Born on a Blue Day

2011-12-02T12:59:00.000-05:00

The Friday Morning Book Group just discussed Daniel Tammet's Born on a Blue Day, inside the extraordinary mind of an autistic savant, a memoir which I reviewed on this blog when I first read it in 2007.
Mr. Tammet begins his memoir,
"I was born on January 31, 1979 -- a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday, because the date is blue in my mind and Wednesdays are always blue, like the number 9 or the sound of loud voices arguing."..." I have a rare condition known as savant syndrome, little known before its portrayal by actor Dustin Hoffman in the Oscar-winning 1988 film Rain Man. Like Hoffman's character, Raymond Babbitt, I have an almost obsessive need for order and routine which affects virtually every aspect of my life."
The author's condition has been studied by autism experts world wide and because he is able to fully express what it feels like to be him, his participation in research studies is especially valuable and likewise, his memoir gives a rare glimpse into the mind of a person with synesthesia, Aspergers and savant syndrome.
The book led to a very lively discussion about normal brain function, and cases like Daniel's which resulted in the ability to learn a new language in a week, recite Pi for hours on end to the umpty-umpth (22,514) digit, and do complex mathematical calculations quickly in his head. We discussed whether he might be a fraud, or just memorizing things by using mnemonic tricks as described in Moonwalking with Einstein, the art and science of remembering everything by Joshua Foer. Having seen Tammet on video clips of his TV appearances, most agreed that he did not appear autistic at all, but felt that his condition is genuine.

Museum Masterpieces: the Met

2011-12-01T11:07:00.012-05:00

The library has a wonderful Teaching Company course on DVD that you can borrow called Museum Masterpieces: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. There are 24 half hour lectures, but you can skip around if you like.

My favorite part was learning about the historical connections between works of art in the Museum. An amazing engraved helmet, the "burgonet with falling buffe" (above) is on display in the Department of Arms and Armor. The helmet was given to the Medici court in Florence sometime in the 16th century. The helmet appears in a portrait of Cosimo II de Medici, which the Met web site says is not on display - another reason to check out the DVDs. The lectures will also give you a peek at famous prints, photographs and costumes usually not on display.

The period rooms you can wander around in (like the bedroom from the Sagredo Palace in Venice, above) have always been my favorite part of the Met. The DVDs showed me several rooms I had never come across before, including the Verplanck Room in the American Wing. The Verplanck Room's furniture is from the home Daniel Verplanck grew up in. Daniel's childhood portrait by John Singleton Copley is also at the Met, and the view in the background is that of his family's home in Fishkill-on-Hudson. The walls and cornice of the room were taken from another house in the Hudson River Valley, so the portrait's background gives you an idea of what the view through the room's windows may have been like.

Manu, Yemo and Trito: the 5,000 Plus Year-Old Creation Myth

2011-11-29T12:15:00.004-05:00

This past month I've been fascinated by The Horse, the Wheel and Language by David Anthony. Anthony takes linguists' work on Proto-Indo-European (the mother of modern languages as varied as Sanskrit, Latin, Greek and English) and links it to archaeological studies, including his own, to theorize where Proto-Indo-European was spoken and how it spread. Although I tend to skim the many chapters of archaeological evidence, there is some really interesting stuff in here, like the Proto-Indo-European creation myth.

Anthony offers compelling evidence for the theory that horse-riding herders from the steppes around the Black Sea, wanting more pasture land in order to maximize their wealth, spread westward towards modern-day Hungary and beyond (and finally eastward toward India). He argues that the language spread not due to strictly military invasions, but due to a system resembling modern day franchises, where chiefs offered protection to native farmers in return for the best land for their herds. Natives began to speak the more prestigious Indo-European dialect. If you lived within this system, you followed a strict code of hospitality. The English words "guest" and "host" both come from the same Proto-Indo-European root, which has been reconstructed as *ghost-ti.

Belated Thanksgiving Story

2011-11-28T10:10:00.000-05:00

This time last year, I posted this shaggy dog story before Thanksgiving. I thought it was funny enough to repost. Enjoy.

The Library Parrot at Thanksgiving

Some libraries have library cats as recounted in Dewey, the Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, or aquariums in the children's room like the one at the New Providence Library down the road; one library where I worked had a Guinea Pig in a cage on the big oak library table in the reading room. The G.P was low on entertainment value as he hid in his cardboard tube most of the time during daylight hours. By far, the most remarkable library pet I've ever heard of was a parrot: Decimal.

Decimal, the parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Every word out of the bird's mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity. Decimal swore like a sailor and could peel the wallpaper off the wall at thirty paces with his salty vocabulary. The library staff tried and tried to change Decimal's attitude by consistently saying only polite words, playing soft music and modeling proper library behavior in an attempt to "clean up" the bird's vocabulary, but to no avail. Decimal continued to offend everyone, including the library's patrons. The library Board of Trustees had received many complaints about the parrot's behavior and the Director felt pressured to rehabilitate Decimal or give him away.

One day, the Library Director was fed up and yelled at the parrot. "If you don't clean up your act, you're gone, I mean it, gone to that perch in the sky!" The parrot yelled back. The Director shook the parrot and the parrot got angrier and even ruder. "@!!??""**!!!"
In desperation, the Director grabbed the bird and put him in the freezer in the staff kitchen. For a few minutes the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed.
Then suddenly there was total quiet. Not a peep was heard for over a minute. Fearing that he'd hurt the parrot, the Director quickly opened the door to the freezer. The parrot calmly stepped out and said,
"I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions.
I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully
intend to do everything I can to correct my rude and unforgivable
behavior."
The library staff was stunned at the change in the bird's attitude and wondered what had made such a dramatic change in Decimal's behavior, but before anyone could ask the reason, the bird continued, "May I ask what the turkey did?"

HAPPY THANKSGIVING
Thanks to my college roomate for sending me the email that is the basis for this story.

Posted by Berkeley Heights Public Library at 11/23/2010 06:11:00 PM

Holiday Food Drive at the Library

2011-11-21T11:33:00.000-05:00

'Check Out Hunger in New Jersey' by donating non-perishable food at the library drop-off basket. From today through December 16, the Berkeley Heights Public Library will be collecting food for the Community Food Bank of New Jersey and other local food pantries. Bring canned meat or fish, powdered milk, infant formula, canned soups and stews, canned vegetables and fruits, peanut butter and boxed pasta and rice to the upper level of the library. We will deliver the donations to food banks. Other Union County libraries are collecting food donations also.

Bring your food bank donations to the library.

Bags of groceries will be delivered to local food banks.

Thanks for your generosity!

I am Half-sick of Shadows

2011-11-17T11:57:00.000-05:00

Alan Bradley's fourth Flavia De Luce novel finds our precocious eleven year old sleuth still solving mysteries, poking her nose in where no one wants her, feuding with her dreadful sisters and cooking up surprises in her chemistry lab. In this installment, a film crew arrives at her family's crumbling manor home at Christmastime and murder ensues, of course. I am Half-Sick of Shadows is recommended for Flavia fans. Others, start with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

Related website: Flavia de Luce has a passion for poisons
Video book trailer for I am Half-sick of Shadows
Free excerpts from the book

The Lost City of Z: a tale of deadly obsession in the Amazon

2011-11-17T11:44:00.000-05:00

I loved reading The Lost City of Z as much as I know I would hate exploring the Amazon jungle in person. Bugs, snakes, mud, disease, searing heat and humidity: who needs it? Luckily New Yorker writer David Grann did the legwork that allows readers to be armchair adventurers. Author Grann follows in the footsteps of English explorer Percy Fawcett who disappeared in 1925 while searching the Amazon jungle for the lost city of Z. Was there ever such a city? What happened to Fawcett and his team? Can Grann solve the mystery? This non-fiction account is a fascinating adventure tale in the tradition of H. Rider Haggard or the Indiana Jones movies, and it's all true. Recommended for fans of Sebastian Junger and Jon Krakauer.

An Unquiet Mind: a memoir of moods and madness

2011-11-17T11:05:00.000-05:00

The author, Kay Redfield Jamison, is a psychologist, a renowned expert on mood disorders and a member of the Johns Hopkins Medical School faculty. In her memoir, An Unquiet Mind, Dr. Jamison reveals her own lifelong struggle with manic-depressive illness. The author admits her inability to recognize her own illness despite treating many bipolar patients. She recalls her resistance to taking lithium as well as her suicide attempt. A groundbreaking memoir for its honesty and for the risk the author took in divulging her illness publicly.

Related websites: Reading Group Guides review and questions
Personal Reflections on Manic-Depressive Illness, a video of the author
Mood Disorders Center, Johns Hopkins
Creativity and manic depression link

Laughter on the Stairs

2011-11-17T10:42:00.000-05:00

English author, gardener and raconteur Beverley Nichols' second volume in his Merry Hall trilogy continues the story of the renovation of his country house and garden. Laughter on the Stairs concentrates on the house rather than the garden. Eccentric neighbors and friends and loyal but quirky household staff return. In one chapter, the author and his friends fill a dry well by hand by lugging water from a nearby stream all night in order to ensure the sale of a cottage for their shy neighbor Miss Mint of Bide-a-Wee Cottage. They fill the well to fool the buyer, an obnoxious author who pretends to be a gypsy and writes terrible, but bestselling, drivel about her adventures in a caravan. These are all true stories and I wonder how Mr. Nichols had any friends left after he wrote these memoirs in the early 1950's. The book is illustrated with lovely black and white drawings throughout. For fans of English cozies/memoirs/humor and above all - for gardeners.
The library owns the Merry Hall Trilogy which is shelved in non-fiction 635 NIC. For my review of the first book in the trilogy, Merry Hall, click here.

Lower Level Is Open

2011-11-15T15:22:00.004-05:00

After flooding caused by tropical storm Irene in late August, and lengthy repairs and renovations to the children's room, the children's room is now open!

Movie night will be November 17 since the meeting room is also open now. To celebrate the children's room reopening, there will be two family-friendly events on Saturday, November 19: a dog adoption talk at 11 a.m. and a magic show at 3:30 p.m.

Cleaning Up after Irene: Part 6

2011-11-10T01:45:00.002-05:00

The painting finished up last week, the carpeting has been completed and the bookshelves have been moved back into place. The shelves along the periphery have been bolted to the walls. Library staff and volunteers are working to move all the books from the meeting room and reshelve them in their correct order. The furniture and computers will be moved back into the children's room today.

Catch previous posts about the clean-up efforts here:
Cleaning Up After Irene, Part 1
Cleaning Up After Irene, Part 2
Cleaning Up After Irene, Part 3
Cleaning Up After Irene, Part 4
Cleaning Up After Irene, Part 5

How to Live: or, a Life of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell

2011-11-08T12:33:00.003-05:00

Although BHPL owns this year's National Book Critics Circle winner for biography, How to Live, I ended up buying it at Green Apple Books in San Francisco because I was running out of books to read on my trip.*

Montaigne was the mayor of Bordeaux, but he is famous for his Essays, which he began writing in 1572. Montaigne spoke only Latin as a child; he survived the plague and the religious civil wars of France; and he traveled in an age when most people didn't. Sarah Bakewell tells these and other stories from Montaigne's life, with each chapter of How to Live answering that question with examples from Montaigne's life and writing. How to Live is also a history of the Essays: the author describes them as

“a centuries-long conversation between Montaigne and all those who have got to know him: a conversation which changes through history, while starting out afresh almost every time with that cry of 'How did he know all that about me?'”

If you read How to Live, you'll want to read or re-read Montaigne's Essays next. BHPL owns a book of selections (made by Salvador Dali, no less) from Charles Cotton's 17th century translation of the Essays. Cotton has old-fashioned language compared to Donald Frame's 1958 translation. However, Cotton translated the essays as they were published during Montaigne's lifetime, and his translation is free online. Frame's translation - 908 pages in paperback- is based on Marie de Gournay's posthumous edition of the Essays.

*Unrelated but cool (like one of Montaigne's tangents!): check out Green Apple's photos from their recent midnight launch party for Haruki Murakami's 1Q84.

Teaching the Low-tech Way

2011-11-03T14:38:00.000-05:00

I sometimes wonder if the greatest invention of the late 20th century was the PC or the Post-it note. Some days I would definitely go for that little sticky piece of paper. In fact, when a patron comes up to the desk and hands the reference librarian a small crumpled-up piece of paper with an almost illegible scribble on it, that is usually the beginning of a very interesting interaction. Do you have this book? Can you figure out who called me from this number? Can you find me information on this disease/drug/procedure? Can you find the actual law from this citation?A recent article in the New York Times describes a Waldorf School in California where many Silicon Valley employees enroll their children. The irony is that Waldorf Schools do not use computers in the classroom until middle school and then in a very limited way. The Waldorf philosophy is very low-tech and old fashioned. Read about it here:
This article in the New York Times
What do you think the best way to teach young children is? Are computers helpful or harmful at that age?
Despite all the advances and changes in public library services, most people still think of the old-fashioned book as the centerpiece of the library mission. Quick: I say "library", you think insert word here_________!

The Carpet Squares Have Landed! Flood Damage Update

2011-11-03T14:13:00.003-05:00

Today the carpet squares for the lower level were delivered.

The pattern with the circles which covered the Children's Room before the Wrath of Irene took out our Lower Level is now out-of-print or whatever it's called in the world of floor coverings.

Catch previous posts about the clean-up efforts here:
Cleaning Up After Irene, Part 1
Cleaning Up After Irene, Part 2
Cleaning Up After Irene, Part 3
Cleaning Up After Irene, Part 4

We hope our young patrons will enjoy the new pattern of blue squares.

Day After Night by Anita Diamant

2011-11-01T05:11:00.001-05:00

The library's morning book group will discuss Day After Night, Anita Diamant's latest novel, on Friday, November 4 at 10:30 a.m. on the upper level of the library. Readers may know Diamant best for The Red Tent, in which Dinah from the Book of Genesis narrates the story of her life.

Based on true historical events, Day After Night tells the story of four young women thrown together in a British internment camp for Jews fleeing to Israel in 1945. Tedi, Leonie, Shayndel, and Zorah are from the Netherlands, France and Poland and are learning Hebrew at Atlit, the camp. I read it quickly, wanting to find out how each of them survived the Holocaust and how their new lives in Israel would begin.

Anita Diamant's web site has a great interview with her here. She grew up in Newark and her Amazon biography tells about her experiences with her childhood library.

Simon and Schuster has published the discussion questions for Day After Night.

Local Librarian Insists Book is Not Dead

2011-10-28T10:40:00.002-05:00

While wandering the halls between sessions at a conference of New Jersey reference librarians, who should I bump into but our occasional blog contributor, Marian the Librarian. Just the person to give me the unvarnished truth about the future of books in a digital world. Marian is an avid attendee of continuing education classes as you can read about in her previous posts on this blog and she is not afraid to tell it like it is.

Is there a librarian in the house?
Time Management in Libraries

Me: Marian, did you go to the session about the book being dead? What do you think?
Marian: Anne, don't you think we need to define book and dead before we have that conversation? By book, do we mean the bound book, formerly known as a codex, which replaced the scroll, or do we mean the contents of the book in whatever delivery format it exists? Is a book on CD still a book or has it become something else? A weasel perhaps? No, absolute rubbish! It's still a book. If a book thrums electronically over the wireless cloud of the internet to land on your ereader, is it the same book that sits on the shelf in the library or is it fundamentally different?
Me: Yes, of course, I see where you are going with this...
Marian: (fixing me with a gimlet eye to stop my interruption) And dead? DEAD! How can the book be dead when they are still everywhere? Did I miss something? Have all the book collections on every shelf just vaporized overnight?
Me: No. Erm. That was a rhetorical question, right?
Marian: Let's hear no more about this dead book talk. Excuse me. I want to eat my box lunch and read the book I just downloaded from ListenNJ. It's due in five days.

Libraries: Between a Codex and a Hard Place

2011-10-28T10:20:00.001-05:00

Recently I attended a conference for New Jersey reference librarians entitled: "No Turning Back: Moving Forward in the Digital Age." In the face of the increasing digitizing of the information world, with e-books, e-readers, downloadable books, reference book databases online, library catalogs and websites available on smartphones and so on, librarians today are confronted with a rapidly changing world. In the face of this challenge, librarians did what we do second best: we had a meeting. This is the situation as it is now. Public libraries serve the younger generation, the so-called digital natives who have grown up with cell phones and computers. Libraries also serve a large population of patrons who are not computer literate or who lack access to computers. Libraries should offer access to books and information in two formats: digital and pre-digital. Straddling these two worlds can get costly. For example, the Berkeley Heights Public Library has the revered Encyclopedia Britannica sitting on the shelves in the Reference Department and the online version is available from the library website's Databases and Articles page. The same arrangement, having online and on-the-shelf versions of books and reference books, is common but not universal throughout the collection. To take another example: the library owns two hardcover copies of John Grisham's latest bestseller Litigation, one copy in large print, and one audiobook version on CD. Plus five copies of the book are available as a downloadable audiobook from ListenNJ which Berkeley Heights Library patrons can use. Depending on budgets and availability and demand, ListenNJ may also add an ebook version of Litigation. The principle idea of public libraries: to acquire and make available books and other educational and recreational materials to a wide audience for free, is the same as it has always been historically. It's just that the choice of format has changed and grown. And of course the technological and monetary aspects of electronic formats create a challenge for librarians and patrons. More simply put, what should we spend library money on if a book comes in several formats? This is not a new question: trying to achieve a balance in maintaining and building a library collection has always required consideration of the budget, the population served, the content of the work (reviews, how it fits in the collection) and the format (book, music, magazine and now digital versions.)
Back to the conference: librarians, like booksellers and publishers, would like to have a crystal ball to tell us what the future holds not only for books, but also for the future of libraries and related institutions. The conference did not provide answers, probably because there are no answers. When did buggy whip manufacturers realize they were on the way out, the Dodo of 19th century technology? Did the buggy whip makers start to diversify early enough to save their livelihoods? Maybe some started making automobile parts if they were really flexible and prescient in their outlook. That's what anyone in the book business or in a wider sense, the information business, has to do: be flexible, stay informed and stay-tuned.
If having a meeting is what librarians do second best, what is it we do best? For reference librarians, we hope we help our patrons find the information they need when they need it and in the format which they prefer. Just ask, we're here to help and all of us are between a codex and a hard place.

Tell Me of Lincoln

2011-10-27T08:51:00.005-05:00

In the 1920s, a sculptor planning a bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln interviewed over sixty people who had met Lincoln, including some eyewitnesses to his assassination. Although the sculpture was never completed, James Kelly's notes and papers were preserved by the New York Historical Society. In 2003, Civil War expert William Styple encountered the Kelly Papers while doing research for his book Generals in Bronze. Styple was inspired to edit and publish Kelly's interviews in Tell Me of Lincoln: Memories of Abraham Lincoln, The Civil War & Life in Old New York, which was released in 2009.

William Styple will be at the Berkeley Heights library (on the upper level due to the renovations going on downstairs) on Saturday, November 5 at 2 p.m. He will talk about Tell Me of Lincoln and sign copies afterwards. William Styple has written, co-written, and edited over 20 books on the American Civil War. His 1998 book The Little Bugler won the Young Readers’ Award from the Civil War Round Table of New York City. He has appeared on Book TV/C-Span several times over the past ten years, and most recently last April on FOX News commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Firing on Fort Sumter. William Styple also worked on the production of several Civil War films such as Glory and Gettysburg. He is currently active in battlefield preservation and is writing the biography of New Jersey General Philip Kearny.

HeritageQuest is Back

2011-10-21T13:07:00.005-05:00

HeritageQuest, the genealogy database that lets you search US Census records, is available to BHPL card holders again. Berkeley Heights residents can access HeritageQuest via the Internet even on their home computers, for free. Just go to bhplnj.org and click on Databases/Articles, or go straight to bhplnj.org/history. After you click on HeritageQuest, you'll be prompted for your BHPL library barcode number.

In HeritageQuest, you’ll find U.S. federal census records, family histories, published genealogies, historical books, Revolutionary War records, Freedman’s Bank records, and more to help you trace your American ancestors’ paths across history.

Cleaning Up After Irene, Part 4

2011-10-19T09:48:00.005-05:00

After the new drywall was installed, the children's room needed to be painted. Painting began late last week.

The stairs between the upper and lower level were repainted. No more beige walls!

Catch previous posts about the clean-up efforts here:

Cleaning Up After Irene, Part 1
Cleaning Up After Irene, Part 2
Cleaning Up After Irene, Part 3

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

2011-10-17T03:12:00.001-05:00

Noir is not my usual choice of fiction, but I was going to San Francisco and wanted to get a feel for the city. Somehow The Maltese Falcon got read; China Boy by Gus Lee didn't - maybe because of Anne's blog post on hard-boiled detective fiction:

Hammett’s Sam Spade and Chandler’s Philip Marlowe . . . blunder through their books being bopped, “packing heat”, meeting shady dames, drinking too much hootch, with or without a Mickey Finn, and all that hooey.

In The Maltese Falcon, private eye Sam Spade and femme fatale Brigid O'Shaughnessy look for a jeweled statue of a falcon that the Knights Templar of Malta sent to Charles of Spain in the 16th century. Not only is it valuable but it's somehow tied to the death of Spade's business partner. It's a fast-paced read, with lots of twists and wild goose chases, but ultimately it's the dialogue that makes it worth reading.

A few years ago my sister in San Francisco took Don Herron's Dashiell Hammett tour. Apparently Hammett used The Maltese Falcon to rewrite some Continental Op stories that he didn't like. Don Herron has also written a guidebook.

If you've read The Maltese Falcon already, check out Marissabidilla's theory that Rhea (the fat man's daughter) and Wilmer (the gunman) are the same person.

Library Book Group Dukes it Out Over Charming British Novel

2011-10-12T15:40:00.001-05:00

Last night, the library's Tuesday night book group discussed Julia Stuart's 2010 novel, The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise in a surprisingly spirited exchange of opinions. Ms. Stuart's novel, a charming love story about a Beefeater and his wife who live in the Tower of London, was well-received by the critics when it was published. This blog's favorable review of it can be found here. However there were several readers in the group who did not like this book at all and who did not find its humor humorous and who could not finish the book. Their reaction seemed surprisingly strong considering the fairly innocuous nature of the book. Ms. Stuart's style is low-key, the characters are quirky; the overall tone is one of a gently humorous and sympathetic look at people's lives. Librarians believe "every book its reader." Maybe Dr. Ranganathan's Third Law of Library Science needs a corollary: "every book its non-reader." But that's o.k., book groups are a good way to try books outside your usual reading zone and you will never know which book is yours until you try it. I liked The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise very much, but if you have an aversion to whimsy or quirky, best stay away from it.

Where Mark Twain Met Tom Sawyer

2011-10-11T13:31:00.003-05:00

San Francisco: A Cultural and Literary History by Mick Sinclair was the only book small enough to fit into my carry-on when I visited my sister there last week. Despite its slimness, it had a million interesting facts (or at least my sister pretended they were):

During the 19th century gold rush, sailors abandoned their ships and passengers as soon as they reached the Bay. The abandoned ships were used as landfill to create what is now the Financial District, or in the case of two of the ships, a prison and a hotel (page 13).

You'll never see the Transamerica Pyramid the same way, knowing that "Mark Twain shared the basement steam baths with one Tom Sawyer" in the Montgomery Block, the first building built on the site. See page 138.

Flying books near City Lights, the bookstore of Lawrence Ferlinghetti who published Allen Ginsberg and other Beat poets

San Francisco had an outbreak of the bubonic plague one year after the 1906 earthquake (page 41).

I didn't make it to the Cow Palace, but when I saw the sign for it on US-101 I thought of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. They went to a Beatles concert at the Cow Palace in 1965 not realizing the crowd would be mostly screaming young girls (page 200).

Mick Sinclair also introduces his readers to the wit of deceased San Francisco journalist Herb Caen, who coined the word "beatnik" and described Haight-Ashbury as "Hashbury" (page 102).

Mimes Make Perfect Library Cops

2011-10-08T14:34:00.000-05:00

Ain't the internet great? I just saw an article about mimes being used as traffic cops in Caracas, Venezuela which you can read here. The idea is that mimes dressed in bright clown costumes will silently persuade dangerous drivers to slow down by gesturing like, well, like mimes. The Associated Press article tells us:
"About 120 mimes dressed in clown-like outfits and white gloves took to the streets of the Sucre district this past week, wagging their fingers at traffic violators and at pedestrians who streaked across busy avenues rather than waiting at crosswalks."

Now, this strikes me as a truly bizarre approach to law enforcement, but the article goes on to say,

"Mayor Carlos Ocariz of Sucre, in the eastern part of Caracas, turned to the mimes to encourage civility among reckless drivers and careless pedestrians. He is following the example of Antanas Mockus, a former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, who combined mimes and stricter police enforcement in a program that was widely seen as a success."

AP photo of mimes directing traffic

So, who knows, maybe in other cultures, mimes are held in high regard or even feared? I think in New Jersey drivers would be sorely tempted to run over mimes. But this whole mime-as-enforcer made me realize that mimes and libraries are perfect together. People are constantly noting that libraries are not as quiet as they used to be. Those same people usually go on to note that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket and who am I to disagree? Since the lower level of the library, the Children's Room, has been closed for a while due to hurricane damage, the library is filled with middle school students from 3 - 5 pm every day and this is where the mimes come in. We of the librarian persuasion have been unable to persuade the kids that they should be quiet in the library. Do you think a few wandering mimes holding up their hands in the universal gesture for "stop" or covering their ears and cringing as though in pain from the noise, or pretending to climb in an imaginary glass box out of which they cannot get or into which they put a middle schooler, would that work? How about pretending to blow away the kids in a pretend wind storm?
Related books: the library has a couple of books about mimes, but they are packed away until the Children's Room is reopened. If you are desparate to learn how to mime pulling on an imaginary rope or pretending to walk down non-existent stairs, just search YouTube for mime videos and you will be able to amaze and astound your friends and maybe apply for a job in Caracas!

Cleaning Up After Irene: Part 3

2011-10-06T12:33:00.001-05:00

The Duct Dudes ("Your Air Pollution Solution") are cleaning the air ducts of the library - the next step towards getting the children's department back to normal after tropical storm Irene hit.

You can see the boxes that hold the children's book collection in this photo.

Until the restoration is complete, a small collection of books from the lower level are available on the upper level. Clifford the Red Dog is sitting on top of the children's book shelves (formerly foreign fiction). YA fiction is located on the book case at the top of the stairs where the monthly book display used to be.

Cleaning Up After Irene - Part 2
Cleaning Up After Irene - Part 1

Japanese Ceramics Exhibit

2011-10-06T06:32:00.000-05:00

Ceramic art by Ritsuko Moore of Rokkaku Ceramic Studio is on exhibit in the lobby of the library through the end of October. Some of Moore's work on display includes examples of raku firing, tableware, tea pots and other pots, serving sets, and vases. Selected works by students of the Rokkaku Ceramic Studio are also on display in the wall cabinet.

The following is from Ritsuko Moore's website:

Ritsuko was born and raised in Japan. She started studying ceramics seriously in 1985 in Tokyo. Since then she has taken ceramic courses and kept learning her skills in London, Chicago, New Jersey, and San Francisco. In 2002, she set up her own studio in San Francisco and started to share her ceramic skills in her community. At the same time, she participated in local pottery sales. In 2006, Ritsuko moved back to NJ and built a new studio. Currently she has been creating pottery for sales and art competitions. Ritsuko also teaches small classes in her studio and in local schools.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

2011-10-04T01:57:00.002-05:00

Last year, the book group said they wanted to read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. It was a bestseller at the time, so we waited until it had been out for over a year and a half. What we didn't know was that it was an eternal bestseller. The book group had to share copies and read it in half the usual time. But I think the trouble was worth it.

The author's extensive web site describes the premise of this odd hybrid of biography, investigative journalism, medical ethics and science this way: "Doctors took her cells without asking. Those cells never died. They launched a medical revolution and a multimillion-dollar industry. More than twenty years later, her children found out. Their lives would never be the same."

Dwight Garner of the New York Times describes it: "A thorny and provocative book about cancer, racism, scientific ethics and crippling poverty, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks also floods over you like a narrative dam break, as if someone had managed to distill and purify the more addictive qualities of Erin Brockovich, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and The Andromeda Strain." You can read the Sunday NY Times book review here.

Check out the author's page for reading groups for the discussion questions and more. Book group member Marilyn recommends Real Simple's online book club blog posts about the book (parts 1: Life, 2: Death, and 3:Immortality).

Studies I Wish I'd Thought Of: Tweets Reveal Mood of Nation

2011-09-30T08:37:00.005-05:00

This morning's award for best headline summary of the scientific news release of the day goes to Britain's the Telegraph: "Twitter shows we get up happy but get grumpier as day wears on" .
The Telegraph gets bonus points for including a photo of a nubile young lady in bed waking up very happy. My morning paper, USA Today, brought this Cornell University study to my attention while I drank my coffee. USA Today presented the news with this headline: Twitter used to study happiness patterns - factual, succinct, but not riveting.

My own mini-scientific survey was to "Google" the phrase "Cornell Twitter study" to see who covered this news release and how did they headline it? The Cornell study was widely reported this morning. The abstract of the Twitter study can be found in the journal Science, released today.

Abstract: "We identified individual-level diurnal and seasonal mood rhythms in cultures across the globe, using data from millions of public Twitter messages. We found that individuals awaken in a good mood that deteriorates as the day progresses—which is consistent with the effects of sleep and circadian rhythm—and that seasonal change in baseline positive affect varies with change in day length. People are happier on weekends, but the morning peak in positive affect is delayed by 2 hours, which suggests that people awaken later on weekends."

The abstract sounds much more scientifically legitimate than the news coverage which dumbs down the topic considerably. My initial reaction was that this study was one of those dumb, "wow, ya think?" academic exercises, but because we can't read the whole article, it's hard to say. The library does get Science online through EBSCO, but not full text or in hard copy. In any case, the reports of this study got my attention, even though the study results seem obvious and here I am joining all the newspapers, tweeters, bloggers, emailers, Facebookers and so on passing this news on to you, but few of us will really read the whole report or understand its significance. I find that makes me feel that my head is full of tons of useless tidbits of information and that surely leads to a grumpy start to the day.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

2011-09-30T06:50:00.000-05:00

The publicity around Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother focused on author Amy Chua's parenting style, probably for the shock value (see Anne's blog post: "It's Ten PM. Are Your Children Practising Violin 'Til Their Fingers Bleed?"). Given that most readers wouldn't pick up a book about the world of classical music, it's a stroke of marketing genius. And yes, a book about a household where the piano has teeth marks is going to be interesting.

But so are the parts about why the violin is much harder than the piano, and the inside view of music lessons with famous teachers. The author's enthusiasm for classical music must be contagious - I've checked out one of the library's Teaching Company music courses (BHPL has several different ones, all on CD).

The end of Battle Hymn has - for lack of a better word - plot twists that humanize the author and make the book take on a carpe diem philosophy. As the author says on page 63, "... the best way to protect ... children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits, and inner confidence that no one can ever take away."

Scrapbooking: the Old and the New

2011-09-26T10:40:00.000-05:00

Making scrapbooks has become popular again, but today's scrapbooks aren't the simple black-paged albums of yesteryear in which granny glued in newspaper clippings and mementos. Today, 'scrapbooking' is a gazillion dollar industry with magazines, blogs, websites and stores devoted to selling supplies to crafters. With a trip to the craft store, a swipe of the credit card and directions from a magazine or book, anyone can turn out a very professional looking scrapbook. The Berkeley Heights Public Library shelves books about making scrapbooks and journals in 745.593. Patrons will find two magazines of interest to crafters in the library Crafts 'n' Things and PaperCrafts. Past issues of magazines may be checked out for one week.

For a history of scrapbooks the way they used to look, read: Scrapbooks, an American History by Jessica Helfand (2008) (745.593 HEL)
From the cataloging note:
"This lavishly illustrated book focuses its attention on the history of American scrapbooks--their origins, makers, diverse forms, the reasons for their popularity, and their place in American culture."

Read this Salon interview with Ms. Helfand to understand why she thinks modern scapbooks aren't messy enough and lack originality. Beyond the Valley of the Doilies.

If you want to make an original-looking scrapbook or journal without spending tons of money on supplies, turn to books like Mixed Media Journals by Katherine Duncan Aimone; Artful Journals by Janet Takahashi and Artist Journals & Sketchbooks by Lynne Perrella.

Work Progressing on Children's Room

2011-09-23T13:52:00.006-05:00

First Disaster Restoration Specialists has packed up its dehumidifiers.

Now we're starting to rebuild. In the photos above, the green is new drywall going in. Next up: air duct cleaning on October 5 and 6 - which may be noisy.

BHPL is Now Lending to Kindles!

2011-09-21T17:03:00.009-05:00

The long wait is over! You can now download library eBooks onto your Kindle device or Kindle app, for free. It's easy to get a library eBook onto a Kindle. Just check out an eBook at ListenNJ.com that indicates it is compatible with the Kindle, log into your Amazon account when prompted, and send the book to your Kindle.

If your Kindle doesn't use wi-fi, you will need to connect your Kindle to your computer with its USB cable in order to download the book.

In the bottom right corner of the screenshot above, you can see Amazon's instructions for downloading a book to your Kindle without wi-fi. Even with the USB cable, this is much easier than the process for downloading library eBooks onto other types of e-readers.

I've written more detailed instructions here. There is a help sheet for Kindle owners who would like to download library eBooks here.

To find a Kindle-compatible book, go to listennj.com and click on the "Now Available Library eBooks for Kindle" logo in the top right corner. If you'd like to download one immediately instead of getting on a wait list, check the box "Only show titles with copies available" and click Submit.

The Hunger Games

2011-09-19T14:39:00.003-05:00

In this scifi novel by Suzanne Collins, Katniss, Peeta and 22 other teenagers are sent as tributes to the Hunger Games, which only the lone victor will survive. The yearly televised Hunger Games are meant to punish the regions of North America which rebelled against The Capitol generations before. The premise sounded too violent and Survivor-esque for me, but when my book club picked it, I found myself glued to the pages. The Hunger Games is the first in a trilogy, and is being also made into a movie, coming out in March. This is probably the first YA series I've read since Harry Potter that has been as good (but different), and like HP, it has a big following in fandom.

Suzanne Collins talks about the influences that the Greek myth of the Minotaur, the gladiators of ancient Rome, and even the Great Depression have had on The Hunger Games trilogy in this interview.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

2011-09-14T15:26:00.001-05:00

Last night the library book group discussed Shirley Jackson's psychological thriller We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Almost everyone liked the book and a lively discussion ensued. You can click on the link to the New York Review of Books review above (the highlighted book title) for a synopsis of the plot, characters and themes. Briefly, six years before the opening of the book, the entire Blackwood family save three, was murdered by arsenic at dinner. The surviving family members, Constance, the older sister who stood trial for the murder and was acquitted; Merricat, the younger sister who narrates the book; and Uncle Julian, who was poisoned but survives as an invalid, live in isolation in their big house on the edge of a village. The villagers shun and taunt the Blackwood family.
Most of the book group participants had read Jackson's short story, 'the Lottery', in which a village annually chooses a victim to be ritually stoned to death, a story which has disturbed generations of high school students and caused widespread outrage when it first appeared in the New Yorker magazine in 1948. From this common American reading experience, we all knew that Jackson's writing has a dark tone and that she writes about the potential for evil in people. We Have Always Lived in the Castle explores that idea also. The Blackwood household and the villagers mutually despise each other and are both capable of violence and cruelty towards each other in thought and actions.
The book falls into the horror genre, with the elements of the outsider personality which becomes violent and while there is the spooky mansion looming over a poor village, this is not a haunted house mystery. There are also elements of witchcraft in Merricat's strange rituals and burying of talismans to ward of intruders and protect her house.
We wondered exactly what was the motive for the arsenic poisonings and although the book eventually reveals the poisoner, the author never explains why. We also wondered exactly what was the nature of the psychopathy of the narrator and hauled out the DSM but then decided a diagnosis didn't really matter to the overall understanding of the book.
I would recommend this book to reading groups looking for something other than recent bestsellers and "psychological fiction" that is so popular with today's reading groups. It is easy to borrow from other libraries on interlibrary loan, it is available in paperback and there is a considerable body of literary criticism about the works of Shirley Jackson. Jackson inspired Stephen King and many other horror authors, so I would recommend it to King fans and fans of the horror genre.
Related websites: The Works of Shirley Jackson , a website of Kristen Hubard, a graduate student at VCU with links for more websites for horror fans.
NYT obituary of Shirley Jackson
Monstrous Acts and Little Murders, an article by Jonathan Lethem for Salon about Shirley Jackson

One Hundred Years of Popular Cameras: An Exhibit by the Fleetwood Museum

2011-09-13T14:48:00.007-05:00

The Fleetwood Museum of Art and Photographica is exhibiting vintage cameras in the library display cases through the end of September.

Above: the Pocket Kodak Jr., in front of a photo of the Vermeule Mansion. The mansion houses the Fleetwood Museum, which calls itself North Plainfield's Camera Museum.

A few photography books from the library collection are in the third display case. You can find the other photography books in the 770s in the room behind the circulation desk.

Can you taste what the chef meant?

2011-09-10T11:48:00.000-05:00

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender falls into the category of books which, in my system of classification, should be called "books with really weird premises." Nine year old Rose realizes on her birthday that she can detect the emotions of the person who prepared the food she eats. She tastes her mother's unhappiness in her lemon birthday cake. Maybe nine years old is when children begin to realize that their parents are not perfect and have feelings beyond the ones they project in an attempt to be good parents and shield their children from life's sorrows. In Rose's case though, everyone's feelings come crashing in on her every time she takes a bite of food.
In Rose's family, her brother and her mother both have secret lives and the father chooses to be oblivious to everyone. The story follows Rose from her ninth birthday into young adulthood. By that time, the family secrets are laid bare and Rose has learned to accomodate her special skill. The challenge for the author of a book with a really weird premise, is how to live up to that premise and carry it through in a logical manner integrated into the story. Aimee Bender's book lives up to the premise well, I thought.

Similar books: Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquival; Chocolat by Joanne Harris; The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.

More Books with Weird Premises

The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths

2011-09-09T14:45:00.003-05:00

The Crossing Places is the first in a new British mystery series that Booklist gave a starred review (and Publisher's Weekly called "serviceable"). Ruth Galloway is a forensic archaeologist at the University of North Norfolk, living in a remote cottage by the marshes of the North Sea. She has lived there for a decade, ever since she helped dig up an Iron Age timber circle out of the marsh. The author was inspired by "Seahenge," pictured below.

Seahenge

Ruth meets DCI Harry Nelson, who is searching for two missing children, when he finds Bronze Age bones in the marsh. Nelson has also received letters about the missing girls that have references to Norse mythology and archaeology.

I love the ocean, mythology, and anything ancient, so the setting attracted me immediately. As Elly Griffiths explained in an interview:

We were walking over Titchwell Marsh on the North Norfolk coast and [her husband, an archaeologist] happened to mention that prehistoric man saw marshland as sacred – because it’s neither land nor sea but something in-between, they saw it as a kind of bridge to the afterlife. Neither land nor sea, neither life nor death. The entire plot of The Crossing Places came to me in that instant.

The next mystery in the series, Janus Stone, has references to Roman mythology, and Library Journal promises it has more "wonderful British seaside scenery". It will be interesting to see how Ruth and Harry get on in the next novel, given their odd relationship in The Crossing Places.

Clean Up from Irene

2011-09-01T10:35:00.005-05:00

The upper level of the library has reopened. The children's room and meeting room are still closed until further notice due to storm damage from Irene. BHPL will not charge overdue fines for items that were due between August 27 and September 6, when the library was closed.

First Response Disaster Restoration Specialists were at work last week restoring the flood damage. Shown above are ozone generators. Dehumidifiers were also used.

First the carpet was removed:

Then the floor was sanitized.

Children's books were boxed up and put in the meeting room.

Chairs and tables were also been moved to the meeting room.

The library's online resources, such as downloadable audiobooks and ebooks, newspaper databases, and children's resources, are always available through your home computer.

Library Closed Until Further Notice

2011-08-31T03:36:00.000-05:00

Due to storm damage from Irene, the library is closed until further notice. Remember, you can use your Berkeley Heights library card to check out items at nearby libraries including New Providence, Long Hill, Summit and Chatham.

Now on to our regularly scheduled blog post:

Last week summer's film festival just wrapped up at BHPL. Before the movie plays, a powerpoint of reviews for that night's movie runs on a loop. We had some really great films, and they mostly got great reviews. But it's the occasional negative review that adds some spice:

“The Concert was so unfunny, I had to consult IMDB.com to make sure that it was indeed listed as a comedy.” – Rachel Saslow, Washington Post

“Hollywood has a long history of turning highbrow art into middlebrow mush, and Mao's Last Dancer is just one more kick dancer in that long line.”– Richard Nilsen, Arizona Republic

“Punitively affirmational parable.” – Jessica Winter, Village Voice on The Way Home

“This is a movie so excited to exist that it overwhelms you with plot. Sitting through it is like opening the door to an overloaded closet. Stuff just tumbles out.” – Wesley Morris, Boston Globe, writing about White Wedding

"Complacent middlebrow tosh" - Ty Burr, Boston Globe, on The King's Speech

The audience at the library liked these movies - there was a lot of laughter, and teary eyes when the lights came up. If you'd like to form your own opinion, these movies are available for check out on DVD as soon as the library reopens.

Wating for Irene: Hurricane Tips

2011-08-26T10:02:00.002-05:00

NJ librarians stay in constant contact about all things librarianish by means of a list-serv, which is a closed email network. Each morning NJ librarians can expect an inbox full of library lore, tips, disasters, continuing education opportunities, technology updates and so on. This morning, we received this email about the impending Hurricane Irene which even as I type and you read is barreling relentlessly toward the hapless Garden State. I share it here so I don't have to reinvent the wheel of hurricane preparedness. However, I have highlighted in yellow the stuff you really need to know so you can skim it quickly before running around bringing in lawn furniture, hanging plants and other potential projectiles. This is no laughing matter, being hit by a flying pot of petunias is the leading cause of hurricane related visits to the E.R. involving flowers. Blogger's notes are in italics and I have reduced the size of redundant or ridiculous text.

"Hurricane Irene Forecast Impact on New Jersey Could be Severe"

It appears the greatest impact from Irene will be felt overnight Saturday through about midday Sunday. Here are some disaster planning, response and recovery resources for your library, for your personal safety, and even for your pets:

STORM TRACKER (nb: this is a link that doesn't work, to a map so you can see exactly where Irene is at all times.)

FOR YOUR LIBRARY (NB: non-librarians can safely skip this part) Emergency Responders: http://ldb.njstatelib.org/Preservation/Emergency_Responders.php
General Disaster & Preservation Information: http://ldb.njstatelib.org/Preservation
Disaster Preparedness & Recovery Tools & Salvage Charts: http://ldb.njstatelib.org/Preservation/Disaster_Planning.php
24/7 Disaster Assistance Hotline, Northeast Document Conservation Center: 978-470-1010
ALA Disaster Response Resources http://www.ala.org/ala/professionalresources/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet10.cfm

FOR YOUR PERSONAL SAFETY FROM FEMA (NB:"good job, Brownie!")
August 24, 2011
No.: HQ-11-134
FEMA News Desk: 202-646-3272

As Hurricane Irene Approaches, FEMA Urges East Coast Resident to Be Prepared
Residents Should Follow the Instructions of Local Officials and Visit Ready.gov or Listo.gov to Prepare for Hurricanes and Severe Weather

WASHINGTON - As Hurricane Irene moves toward the East Coast of the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is urging all residents in East Coast states to take steps now to prepare their families and businesses for hurricanes and severe weather. Visit www.Ready.gov or www.Listo.gov for helpful tips on preparing for hurricanes, flash flooding and other disasters.

According to the National Weather Service, Hurricane Irene is now a category three hurricane and will move across the southeastern and central Bahamas today and over the northwestern Bahamas on Thursday. For more forecast information from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Hurricane Center, click here.

"FEMA, along with the entire federal family, continues to closely monitor Hurricane Irene," said FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate. "We remain in close contact and coordination with all of our state and territorial partners in the Caribbean and along the East Coast that have already or could possibly experience impacts from this storm. Hurricane Irene's future path is still uncertain, and I encourage everyone to visit Ready.gov and take steps now to keep their family safe and secure. The most important thing for people to do right now is to listen to and follow the instructions of their local officials. If you are told to evacuate, evacuate."

As Hurricane Irene approaches the East Coast, FEMA, through its regional offices in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, continues to monitor the storm closely and is in close contact with their respective state emergency management agencies.

In advance preparation for the storm, FEMA has deployed National Incident Management Assistance Teams to staging areas in Georgia and Virginia, in anticipation of further deployment to potential impact areas along the east coast of the U.S. Additionally, at all times, FEMA maintains commodities, including millions of liters of water, millions of meals and hundreds of thousands of blankets, strategically located at distribution centers throughout the United States and its territories. In Atlanta, for instance, FEMA has more than two million liters of water, more than 1.3 million meals, and more than 16,000 cots and 56,000 blankets. These resources may be moved to Incident Support Bases, which are distribution centers located closer to the impacted areas, as needed and requested by state partners.

These commodities are meant to supplement state resources if needed, but it is critical that individuals and families that are able build their own emergency supply kits, so that in the event of a disaster, state and local resources can be focused on our most vulnerable citizens.

FEMA is coordinating across the federal government to ensure territorial and state officials have the support they need as they respond to or prepare for Irene. New actions as of today include, but are not limited to:

• The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has started deploying members of the 249th Engineering Battalion (Prime Power) to Puerto Rico to assist with restoring power to the island.
• The Federal Communications Center (FCC) has deployed two Roll Call Spectrum Scanning teams to the FEMA regional offices in Atlanta and Boston. These teams conduct post scans after landfall to determine which critical communications systems might have been impacted.
• Health and Human Services (HHS) is prepared to provide public health and medical support to states along the east coast in response to Hurricane Irene. The HHS is also coordinating with public health and emergency management agencies in U.S. territories and states along the projected hurricane path to make information available on how people can protect their health as they prepare for and respond to hurricanes and other natural disasters.
• The U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) has activated a Defense Coordinating Officer to the FEMA Regional Response Coordination Center in Atlanta in preparation for support to civil authorities as Hurricane Irene approaches the East Coast of the United States.
• The Department of Defense has designated Fort Bragg, North C Incident Support Base to support FEMA operations to respond to Hurricane Irene.

Click here for the previous update on these activities.

FEMA encourages everyone, regardless of whether they live in a hurricane-prone area, to take steps to ensure their families, homes and businesses are prepared for a possible emergency. As a reminder, the month of September is designated as National Preparedness Month (NPM), an opportunity to encourage Americans to be prepared for disasters or emergencies in their homes, businesses, and communities. Individuals and families can learn about events and activities, and groups can register to become a NPM Coalition Member by visiting http://community.fema.gov. NPM is sponsored by the Ready Campaign in partnership with Citizen Corps and The Ad Council.

FEMA's support of disaster response activities in Puerto Rico, and its proactive support for East Coast storm preparations, does not diminish its focus from critical federal disaster response and recovery operations that continue, across the nation, including flooding in the Midwest and the ongoing recovery from the southeastern tornadoes. Every disaster is a reminder that they can happen anytime, anywhere. Now is the time to prepare--visit www.Ready.gov or www.Listo.gov for tips on creating your family emergency plan and putting together an emergency supplly kit.

Follow FEMA online at http://blog.fema.gov, www.twitter.com/fema, www.facebook.com/fema, and www.youtube.com/fema. Also, follow FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate's activities at www.twitter.com/craigatfema.

The social media links provided are for reference only. FEMA does not endorse any non-government websites, companies or applications.

FEMA's mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.

FOR YOUR PETS
Here is New Jersey’s state plan for dealing with pets in a disaster. It was formulated after Katrina, when so many pets were lost or their owner had to leave them behind.
http://www.state.nj.us/njoem/plan/pets-shelters.html

Stay safe!"

Blogger's endnote: So there your have it in a nutshell. A very big nutshell. Luckily for you, Dear Reader, I have predigested not only FEMA's, but our entire "Federal Family's" press releases for you and so it bears repeating, watch out for flying petunia pots. I recently learned from my Facebook Friends that the reason people buy bread and milk and toilet paper before storms is that these people plan to make milk sandwiches and wrap them in toilet paper to protect them.

Good luck everyone and stay dry!

Mao's Last Dancer by Li Cunxin

2011-08-25T01:30:00.001-05:00

I laughed, I cried, it's better than Cats. Well, I've never seen Cats, but I loved Mao's Last Dancer - the morning book group's pick for our meeting on September 2. This memoir written by the ballet dancer Li Cunxin was on the bestseller list for over a year in Australia, where he lives, and was also a New York Times bestseller.

Li grew up in Communist China, the sixth of seven boys. His close-knit family subsisted mostly on dried yams grown on their patch of the commune farm on his father's day off from work. In 1972, at age eleven, Li withstood several painful auditions that tested his flexibility and was selected to attend Madame Mao's Beijing Dance Academy. Although he was homesick and near the bottom of his class his first few years, one of his teachers inspired him and he began his ascent to stardom in the ballet world.

This is an inspirational story about the pursuit of excellence and the pain of being separated from family. Li Cunxin tells it straightforwardly (somewhat disappointing for readers hoping for literature with a capital L) and seasons it with humor. Puzzled by the tights that dancers wear, after one ballet Li's father asks, "Why didn't you wear any pants?"

Mao's Last Dancer was made into a movie that will be shown at the library tonight (August 25) at 7 p.m. as part of the Summer International Film Festival.

Discussion questions for the book are available here. The study guide for the movie asks some helpful questions too. The New York Times ran an interview with Li Cunxin in 2004 called "The Dancer Who Defected Twice". You can watch clips of Li's motivational speaking on his web site.

L.A. Theatre Works

2011-08-23T07:37:00.001-05:00

Last week a patron asked us for audiobook recommendations, her only requirement being "good narration" and "no mysteries". The Agatha Raisin radio dramas came to mind, but they were mysteries and something you download from ListenNJ.com instead of checking out of the library. Then I remembered The History Boys, a play on CD that BHPL owns that I enjoyed listening to years ago. It turned out the patron grew up reading plays and was enthusiastic about listening to them.

Most of BHPL's plays on CD are by L.A. Theatre Works. These include:

Bunbury by Tom Jacobson
Bus Stop by William Inge
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial by Herman Wouk
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Eleanor, Her Secret Journey by Rhoda Lerman
I Sent a Letter to My Love: a Musical
Incident at Vichy by Arthur Miller
Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde
A Lesson Before Dying by Romulus Linney based on the novel by Ernest Gaines
Mary Stuart by Friedrich von Schiller
The Norman Conquests: a Trilogy by Alan Ayckbourn
The Odd Couple by Neil Simon
The Real Doctor Strangelove: based on the book by Peter Goodchild
The Ruby Sunrise by Rinne Groff
Shakespeare's Greatest Hits: adapted by Barbara Gaines
Speed the Plow by David Mamet
The Tale of the Allergist's Wife by Charles Busch
Tea at Five by Matthew Lombardo
Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose
Work Song by Jeffrey Hatcher and Eric Simonson

They are shelved by the author's last name in the fiction audiobooks.

The Book of Animal Ignorance

2011-08-18T09:22:00.000-05:00

Working in a library means that you daily run across interesting books, but there isn't enough time in the world to read them all. That's how that obnoxious bumper sticker/t-shirt slogan "so many books, so little time" was derived I suppose. Anyway, I often bring books back to the Reference Desk and keep them around to dip into at random, especially non-fiction books like
The Book of Animal Ignorance: everything you think you know is wrong by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson, 2007. (call #590 LLO)

The Book of Animal Ignorance is perfect for browsing. Here are some tidbits from it. "Cheerful dogs wag their tails more to the right side of their rumps. Morose dogs wag to the left." (59) I'll have to check my dog to see if she's depressed or not. I think she kind of wags bilaterally which must mean she is even-tempered and not neurotic? Hedgehogs win polls as the most popular garden animal in the U.K. (100) Now that implies a lot of strange things, about polling, and about the Brits. My dog's run-in with a hedgehog a few weeks ago was really disturbing. The varmint had fangs you would not believe and did not look the least bit like Beatrix Potter's Mrs. Tiggywinkle. Aside from not wearing a pinafore, it was just plain aggressive. "Pigs can learn to dance, race, pull carts, and sniff out land mines." (161) But would you want your pig to dance? I think not."Sheep, even more than their close relatives the goats, were responsible for the greatest lifestyle shift in human history: the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer." (192) So next time you impatiently wait for a flock of sheep to leave the road so you can keep driving, just stop cursing them and offer them thanks for our modern way of life.
If you want to know more interesting facts about animals, check this book out.

Scandals, Vandals and da Vincis by Harvey Rachlin

2011-08-17T02:08:00.001-05:00

I enjoyed The Art Detective so much that I kept reading in the same vein, this time Harvey Rachlin's Scandals, Vandals and da Vincis. This "gallery of remarkable art tales" tells the story behind 26 famous paintings.

The first chapter is about the Mona Lisa, its horrifying theft from The Louvre on August 21, 1911 (nearly 100 years ago exactly!) and why Leonardo would never part with it, even though it was a commission.

The Honourable Mrs. Graham (seen above) by Thomas Gainsborough also has a fascinating story behind it. Mary Cathcart was the daughter of an earl who was the English ambassador to Catherine the Great's court in Russia. She and her husband Thomas Graham led a happy life, until the tragedy that befell the Grahams caused Thomas to never want to see the portrait again. Then, at the age of 42, he began a brilliant military career that eventually led him to be named to the peerage as Baron Lynedoch.

The Tribunal of the Uffizi, which depicts the gallery of the Uffizi palace in Florence, is an amazing painting by Johann Zoffany. Scandals, Vandals and da Vincis describes the intense personal losses Zoffany suffered as a result of accepting the commission.

It's OK to skip around in this book - you can focus only on the paintings you will see in your travels or trips to New York.

"I would prefer not to."

2011-08-13T12:40:00.000-05:00

Bartleby, the Scrivener, a story of Wall-street by Herman Melville
In Herman Melville's story, the narrator, a Wall Street lawyer, tells of the first time his copyist refused to do his job.
'In this very attitude did I sit when I called to him, rapidly stating what it was I wanted him to do—namely, to examine a small paper with me. Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when without moving from his privacy, Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, “I would prefer not to.” '

This is the start of Bartleby refusing to work and the beginning of the phrase which lives on, "I prefer not to." Many of us prefer not to, but we do, because we have to. What if we all just stopped being dutiful, reliable, dependable and compliant? Neither readers nor the narrator ever know why Bartleby stops working, but guessing has become a literary game that has lasted for over a century. After starting out as an avid worker, Bartleby becomes a completely passive presence in his job and life. The lawyer thinks of him as the subject for a great anecdote, the quirkiest of all the quirky scriveners on Wall Street. What made me think of Bartleby today was that the American public is widely polled these days as being frustrated by politicians and financiers and other people in power who seem to prefer not to really work hard enough together to solve the problems the U.S. now faces. They prefer to play games and assign blame. Bartleby dies in the end in the new York city prison still known as the Tombs. Is that the price of apathy?
Related websites:
Gallup polls
Bartleby the Scrivener downloadable e-book from Project Gutenberg (thousand of free books online)
The Tombs

Give your kid a library card, not a credit card

2011-08-12T13:58:00.003-05:00

I just stumbled across this nifty little article from Real Simple magazine in which various professionals give advice to parents, like "slather 'em in sunscreen" say doctors, and, eat a low-carb breakfast says a school nurse, and so on.

"What I Wish Parents Knew": Doctors, teachers, therapists and more weigh in

The "and more" tips at the end of the article is advice from random other professions, but nary a tip from librarians. That's o.k.; librarians are asked about what children should read and when and how much and other reading-related child-development questions.And of course, librarians are hauled out for the occasional article about the alleged imminent demise of the book or libraries as we know them. But if the article writer had asked librarians for advice for parents, this is what I think we might say:

Commuter Parking for Big Wheels

Bring your child to the public library to get a library card as soon as he can sign his name.

Teach your child to ask for help from the librarian if she needs it. Many teenagers just give up trying to find things and go home bookless. If your child says the librarian is grouchy and scary, tell your child to stop mumbling and the librarian will then become helpful and friendly. (Just kidding there, parents! We are never grouchy and scary.)

Which leads to tip 3: make your kids enunciate. Just kidding on that one too. As a parent of two former teens, I know that is impossible, however studies have shown that many former teens learn to speak clearly by their mid-twenties.

Leisure reading should be fun, not a punishment. Once your child has completed school assignments, let them read what they enjoy at whatever level they like. I can't tell you how many times parents come in and try to foist some dreadfully boring, classic tome on their poor kid for "fun" reading. That will drive them right to the arms of computer games, trust me on this.

And finally, turn off the television and computer games during the school week. Really, that means you parents too.

Topper: Far from a Flop

2011-08-08T15:28:00.006-05:00

Topper got added to my "to read" pile last July, when Free Acres in Berkeley Heights had its 100th anniversary. BHPL had an exhibit on Free Acres resident and illustrator Will Crawford that included this sign, The Flop:

Crawford carved it for his neighbor, Thorne Smith, who in 1926 was sure that his comic novel Topper would be a flop. But it actually became his most famous book. In 1937 Topper was made into a movie starring Cary Grant, and then it became a TV show from 1953 to 1955 starring Leo Carroll, Robert Sterling and Anne Jeffreys.

Topper lives on Glendale Road (there's one in Summit, although it's impossible to say for sure which New Jersey town Topper is from) and leads a boring, upright life, commuting to New York by train every day. A midlife crisis spurs him to buy the restored automobile formerly owned by George and Marion Kerby, a fun-loving couple who died when the car hit a tree. Topper's wife finds the car flashy and wants nothing to do with it, which is probably for the best since Topper is a terrible driver and the car is haunted by the ghosts of George and Marion.

George and Marion can physically materialize and dematerialize at will, which leads to many comedic scenes, notably when Topper, George and Marion get into a fight with the locals at a pharmacy and the following courtroom scene. I downloaded it onto an iPod from ListenNJ and found it amusing, but you'll need to make some allowances for the fact that it was published 85 years ago.

The Art Detective by Philip Mould

2011-08-05T12:41:00.005-05:00

"Two months earlier I had told an old lady that her early-twentieth-century portrait of a young girl would be worth more if the child were better looking. She then revealed it was a portrait of herself as a child. From that moment I swore always to ask clients what they knew before wading in."

With lines like these, reading The Art Detective feels like you're seated next to the author Philip Mould at a dinner party, listening to him talk about his adventures in art. The Art Detective tells the story of six paintings the London art dealer and BBC Antiques Roadshow host has encountered over his career, or as the subtitle of the book says, "fakes, frauds and finds". The finds were the most interesting to read about, especially the ones that were transformed by the daring removal of paint added in later years.

These news stories should give you a taste for the subject of the book, although they're no substitute.

Rare Gainsborough Uncovered by Antiques Roadshow Presenter

No Flattery Is Found in an Imitation of a Rockwell

The One That Got Away: Fisherman's Legal Battle Over £150,000 Artwork

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

2011-08-03T10:20:00.001-05:00

Reading Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace for the library book group meeting this Friday morning, I couldn't help but think of the similarities to the Amanda Knox murder trial: a beautiful young woman on trial for a scandalous murder, with plenty of room for conjecture as to her innocence or guilt.

Alias Grace is based on the 1843 double murder of a land owner in Ontario and his housekeeper/lover. The hired man, who was hanged for the murder, said that the 16 year-old servant girl Grace made him - and helped him - kill the housekeeper. Whether Grace and the hired man were lovers who ran away together, or whether he forced her to go with him at gunpoint, is something that will keep readers turning the pages.

Being the work of Margaret Atwood, the book is of course much more than an account of a murder. Alias Grace was her first work of historical fiction, and it put her on the Booker Prize short list for the third time (she eventually won for The Blind Assassin). This is one of my favorite passages - Grace is speaking:

I never do such things, however. I only consider them. If I did them, they would be sure I had gone mad again. Gone mad is what they say, and sometimes Run mad, as if mad is a direction, like west; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a separate country entirely. But when you go mad you don't go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes in.

Useful links

Margaret Atwood's Letter to the Reader

Random House interview with Margaret Atwood

Salon interview with Margaret Atwood: "Blood and Laundry"

Discussion questions

More discussion questions

Self-evident Consumer Warnings

2011-08-01T11:16:00.001-05:00

As I removed the reflective sun shade from my car windshield this morning, I noticed the warning: 'Remove this sun shade before operating automobile'. Really? Now, I'm not the first person to notice that some consumer warnings are just stupid, but, how, I ask myself, can this be related to library usage? How, in other words, can I use this observation to write a blog post that will sneak up on blog readers and make them Love Libraries and Love Reading and make them immediately drop everything and come to the library to check out dozens of books AND OTHER MATERIALS, as we like to say these days? In other words, how to use this as a hook to MARKET THE LIBRARY? What if we put warning labels on books: Caution, reading this book might make you smarter. How about a warning label on the front door of the library: Caution, enter at your own risk, library contains thousands of entertaining books, DVD's and audiobooks. A warning at the top of the sign-up sheets for computer classes: Be advised that taking computer classes may result in addiction to your computer. The sign over the Reference Desk currently says: "Questions? Ask Us" we could add, and Librarian May be Unable to Stop Recommending Books, Websites and other resources.
Related blog:
The "M" Word-Marketing Libraries

Personal Growth through Isolation

2011-08-01T10:29:00.002-05:00

Joan Anderson's memoir A Year by the Sea, thoughts of an unfinished woman (1999) chronicles the year she took off from her marriage to "find herself". The author starts each chapter with inspirational quotes from the similar A Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh and other sources. Many reviews on GoodReads compare it to Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love (2006). This genre of memoir can perhaps be traced back to Viginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929) What all three books share is the idea that women should have a space all to themselves, or take time and space, in order to maintain their individuality. When writing about this idea, a modern author has to be careful not to tip to the side of selfishness, self-involvement, whining and entitlement. Reviewers differ on whether Anderson tips more to the selfish than the self-reflective. For me, classics, but not memoirs, like A Room of One's Own and Henrik Ibsen's The Doll's House, Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder treat women's dilemma of individuality so beautifully that it's difficult to tolerate the clunky prose styles of contemporary memoirists who attempt to shed light on the issue.
"A Year by the Sea' is not a classic piece of literature though, it's a quick, painless read. Anderson does what so many women, and men for that matter, would like to do: chuck it all and escape to a cozy cottage on Cape Cod (or wherever - fill in place here) and then write a bestseller about it that sells to the Oprah crowd. But wait, that's not all! Anderson follows this memoir with several others and she has a business that provides expensive "workshops" for women seeking to find themselves. I'm just picturing what a workshop by Virginia Woolf would have been like...

Read-a-likes: popular memoirs by women authors

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion: musings on illness and death in the family.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls - puts the "dys" in dysfunctional family.

Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott, or any of her books; Lamott is funny and flawed.

The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway, if you like to read about Australia.

My review of Take Big Bites by Linda Ellerbee which I loved because she is funny and self-deprecating.
My review of Mutant Message Down Under, a memoir which may be a hoax and which I found even more annoyingly narrow-minded than Eat, Pray, Love and A Year by the Sea.

Area Bear Seeks Chair

2011-07-27T09:58:00.001-05:00

The blinking telephone message light greeted me last night when I got home from work. The police reverse phone emergency system informed me that a "free-ranging" bear spotted near Summit Middle School was last reported heading in a "westerly" direction. Last time I got that message was the day I had inadvertantly left the door propped wide for my dog and wondered if a bear had found a "just right" sized bed or chair in my house or perhaps raided the cupboard looking for porridge. I wonder what they mean by a "free-ranging" bear though. Would that be something different from a bear with a plan or a GPS? While I was pondering that mystery, I started to think about how bears are portrayed in children's books, so cute and cuddly and, well, human. Some well-known literary bears spring to mind:

The many versions of the story of Goldilocks and her nemeses, the Three Bears, who I think of as Mr. and Mrs. Three and Little Three, Jr.
The Berenstain Bears, whose eponymous (always wanted to use that word in a sentence) series features moral lessons for young children about proper behavior in school, at the doctor, with the babysitter, on a boat, at night etc. There's no situation these books don't address. Every day has teachable moments for these poor bears. My son was addicted to this series; me not so much. I prefer:
Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson as a read-a-loud for preschoolers, Michael Bond's Paddington series is fun to read to older children. My kids still refer to Paddington "having a tussle with a sticky bun" in the station cafe. Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey is a classic; I love McCloskey's illustrations and the old-fashioned 3-tones pictures. And Daniel Pinkwater's stories about Larry the Polar Bear who floats on an ice flow and ends up in Bayonne, NJ is a must read.
If approached by a real bear, remain calm and report it to the bear hotline
1-877-927-6337
For more information about real bears, read the NJ Department of Environmental Protection's
Bear Facts page.

Attack of the Giant Primrose or Serendipity in the Garden

2011-07-26T17:59:00.000-05:00

Pulling into my driveway after work yesterday evening, I admire the Evening Primrose growing next to my garage. Picture a plant so big it towers over the lanky daylilies, a monster of a weed, over six feet tall, growing in a large clump that sprang to life from the scattered seeds of last year's flowers. The dusty green foliage and bright buttercup yellow flowers glow against the Tar Heel blue wood siding. Last summer, serendipity made me spare an anonymous seedling and later realize that what appeared to be a three foot high weed actually bloomed nicely in August. Identifying it as Evening Primrose, I collected the seeds and scattered them this spring in the same place where it had thrived before. This summer the plant has doubled in height and is blooming earlier in the summer which makes me wonder what will happen if I gather this crop of seeds and sow them next spring? Is this the Jack in the Beanstalk of wildflowers? Will I be able to scale the heights of my garage roof by climbing up the Evening Primrose stalk? Will I have so many Evening Primrose seeds that I can start my own herbal oil supply business? Or trade a handful of seeds for a cow? Could I be the Gregor Mendel of Evening Primroses? Loud barks interrupt my revery. Addie waits by the driveway side window and demands dinner upon my arrival home and she's pretty sure that my sitting in the car daydreaming is not getting her dinner fixed fast enough.

Addie

Further reading:
Rutgers Agricultural Experiment Station NJ Weed Gallery
The monk in the garden : the lost and found genius of Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics by Robin Marantz Henig.(BIO Mendel)
NCAM Fact Sheet on Evening Primrose oil from National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine,National Institutes of Health
Addie might be a Belgian Malinois, but she definitely did not go with Cairo the Dog and Seal Team Six into Pakistan as she is a diehard suburban doggy who fears fireworks and jumping out of helicopters.
Why is my house Tar Heel Blue? Just to annoy Ellen.

Tartuffe

2011-07-20T10:16:00.002-05:00

On Friday, July 22 at 7 p.m. the Next Stage Ensemble of the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey will perform an hour-long version of Moliere's comedy "Tartuffe." Due to tonight's extreme heat, the play will be held in the Berkeley Heights Community Center at 29 Park Avenue. Please bring your own lawn chair.

"When Orgon, a gullible and wealthy family man, invites the seemingly pious Tartuffe to stay at his home, he is convinced that he has joined a noble cause. Despite the warnings of his family and friends, Orgon holds his friend in the highest regard and showers him with gifts and money and even the offer of his daughter’s hand in marriage. The family soon lays traps to expose the true nature of the mysterious stranger. Will their efforts be too late?" (From the Next Stage Ensemble's press release.)

Here are some fun facts about Tartuffe.

- The first three acts were staged at Versailles in 1664 as part of Pleasures of the Enchanted Garden. Although Louis XIV thought Tartuffe was funny, he immediately prohibited its full production at the urging of the Archbishop of Paris. It was not until 1669 that Louis lifted the interdict. See Wayne Turney's The Tartuffe Controversy.

- The character Tartuffe's name means "truffle" - the black fungus delicacy that grows underground in the wild. The truffle was made popular by Louis XIV's chef Varenne, who cooked for the same kinds of royal parties where Moliere's plays were performed. See the Utah Shakespeare Theatre page on Tartuffe for more.

- The characters in Tartuffe are based on stock characters from Italian comedy, but Moliere also followed the rules for French tragedy (respecting the unities of time, action, and place, and writing in Alexandrine verse). See "Tartuffe," Recommended Reading: 500 Classics Reviewed, June 1995.

- Tartuffe does not appear on stage until the third act.

- Robert Cardullo argues that Orgon is meant to be a comic version of Louis XIV. His chief adviser, Tartuffe, can be compared to Louis' ministers, the Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. See Explicator, Spring2009, Vol. 67 Issue 3, p173-176.

If you would like to read any of the articles cited in this blog post, they are available online at Literary Reference Center.

Books about Murder Trials

2011-07-19T15:01:00.001-05:00

The Casey Anthony murder trial has riveted the public for the past month and the not-guilty verdict was one of the most unexpected results in a famous trial since the acquittal of O.J. Simpson in 1995. If you like to read about true crime and murder trials, browse the shelves classified as 364.15 and 345.7 in the Dewey Decimal system.

If you would like to read about O.J. Simpson's murder trial to compare it to the Casey Anthony case, try these book or search for O.J. Simpson as the subject heading in the library catalog.
Without a Doubt by Marcia Clark 345.73 CLA
Outrage: the five reasons why O.J. Simpson got away with murder by Vincent Bugliosi 345.73 BUG

The library's newest book about famous crimes and trials is Popular Crime: reflections on the celebration of violence by Bill James (364.1 JAM) Best known for his coverage of baseball, Bill James has turned his fascination with reading about crimes into a book covering infamous murder cases.

If you like the CSI t.v. show and are interested in forensic science, try The Real World of a Forensic Scientist: renowned experts reveal what it takes to solve crimes by Henry C. Lee et al (363.25 LEE) Henry C. Lee testified for the defense at the O.J. Simpson trial. Read some of his testimony here.

The Power of Half by Kevin Salwen and Hannah Salwen

2011-07-18T09:52:00.005-05:00

A few years ago, the Salwen family of Atlanta put their $1.6 million dollar house on the market, moved into a house that cost half as much, and donated the other half to The Hunger Project. The Power of Half is the book about the family's project, which began when 14-year-old Hannah got upset by the sight of a Mercedes driving past a homeless man asking for money.

The Power of Half is a very quick read (only 242 small pages), but if you don't have time to read it, try watching Hannah's Lunchbox, a video by her brother Joseph about the project, or the video of Hannah and Joseph speaking at TEDx Atlanta.

There are a couple of brilliant ideas (or as Kevin Salwen puts it, "Cool Things") at work in The Power of Half. Cool Thing #1 is "the more you give, the more you get". The Salwens now have a larger purpose in life, what they call their "family legend". Oddly enough, they have attracted criticism online for enjoying the benefits of their donation, and for their choice of charity.

Cool Thing #2 is that no one is asking you to sell your house: just make a measurable commitment instead of vowing to do "more". As the book says, "Your 'half' can be whatever you choose, at whatever budget you set," suggesting as an example that you take half the time you spend watching TV and use that time to volunteer. Choose a cause that you feel strongly - even angry - about. If you need ideas, Charity Navigator lets you browse by 9 types of nonprofits.

Refreshing Reference Questions

2011-07-14T14:58:00.004-05:00

Water + disaster = the perfect summer movie, no? Here are some similarly thrilling reference questions we've had this July.

A patron explained to me that he watched a NOVA episode a few years ago about how the last ice age formed the Hudson River and the New York harbor when an ancient lake in upstate New York broke through a dam. He had forgotten the name of the lake and when it happened.

Woods Hole published a press release on their web site about this event (which it dates to 13,350 years ago) and names the lake: Glacial Lake Iroquois. The press release begins, "Imagine a lake three times the size of the present-day Lake Ontario breaking through a dam and flooding down the Hudson River Valley past New York City and into the North Atlantic."

Ian and Jenny Giddy have a summary of the geology of the Hudson River at watertrail.org with wonderful phrases like "bulldozing mile-thick glaciers" and "huge tongues of ice".

Information was also requested about the collision between a ship and a bridge over the Raritan River decades ago. The patron could not find anything on it using Google. We found an article about the crash in the Historical New York Times, an online database that goes all the way back to 1857. On March 4, 1966, train service between Perth Amboy and South Amboy was disrupted for weeks when a cargo ship hit the Raritan River Drawbridge.

The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma

2011-07-11T09:03:00.001-05:00

Nothing momentous really happens in this coming-of-age memoir, unless you count The Streak, in which Alice's single father, an elementary school librarian in south Jersey, reads out loud to her every night from the time she was 9 until the day he drops her off at college. It's a quick read, sometimes funny (like the time James suggests a trip for ice cream to take Alice's mind off a C on her report card . . at the Custard Corral), and sometimes sad (when Alice's mother moves out on Thanksgiving Day).

The closest book I can think of that felt similar to me was Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron. Other reading-related memoirs at BHPL include Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch and So Many Books, So Little Time: a Year of Passionate Reading by Sara Nelson.

Which Doorway Would You Pick?

2011-07-07T06:00:00.001-05:00

In Nancy Pearl's reference series Now Read This, the fiction within is categorized by four main appeal factors: story, setting, character and language. As Library Journal describes it,

The story doorway beckons those who enjoy reading to find out what happens next.

The setting doorway opens widest for readers who enjoy being immersed in an evocation of place or time.

The doorway of character is for readers who enjoy looking at the world through others' eyes.

Readers who most appreciate skillful writing enter through the doorway of language.

Now Read This groups mainstream fiction titles by their primary appeal factor (although the authors invite you to disagree). Here are a few examples.

Story:
Gentleman and Players by Joanne Harris
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Setting:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Character:
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

Language:
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Atonement by Ian McEwan

If I had to pick one of these "doorways", it would be setting, with story coming in second. This probably explains my fascination with Harry Potter, quirky nonfiction, and mysteries set in places where I'd like to travel or live. While I appreciate characterization and language, it's almost always something one of my book groups has chosen to read, instead of something I've picked. What about you?

Harry, a History by Melissa Anelli

2011-07-05T08:47:00.004-05:00

Harry, a History is a history of the Harry Potter phenomenon written by Melissa Anelli, the editor of the HP news site The Leaky Cauldron. It's also an account of her activities at the Leaky Cauldron, from the early days when she was just out of college and entering what she calls the "fandom" to the later, frenzied days surrounding the release of the last couple of books, when she was podcasting live in front of hundreds of people at bookstores across the country and going to Edinburgh to interview J.K. Rowling. She even got to tour the movie set during filming (going into raptures at the sight of the Great Hall and, of course, noticing the little things the film set got wrong).

One part of the "fandom" that I found interesting were the "shipping wars": online debates between fans over whether Hermione should/would end up in a relationship with Harry, or with Ron. I had forgotten how crazy things got towards the end of the series' publication: the undercover sting operation that led to gun shots, the New York Times book review that came out before the book's release (anathema to any fan trying to avoid spoilers!) and the thousands of people at J.K. Rowling's publicity events. If you find the beginning of the book slow, with its chapters on wizard rock, fan fiction, and the books' fundamentalist challengers, you will not miss too much if you skip those.

Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses by Claire Dederer

2011-06-30T14:13:00.007-05:00

Claire Dederer has been many interesting things in her life: a book reviewer, a tugboat driver, a twenty-something wandering the world and living hand to mouth, but these things are somehow peripheral to the story she tells of being a wife and mother in Poser. She seems more like the funny and slightly neurotic mom you might meet while waiting to pick up your child from school than someone whose book reviews appear in the New York Times.

In this memoir, Dederer reflects on how her perfectionism and her need to please everyone helped turn her into the exact opposite of her hippie mother: a stressed out organic supermom who feels bad about not following all of the tenets of "attachment parenting" so prevalent in her native Seattle. As a child of divorce, she constantly reevaluates her marriage, wondering if it's going to last. Her parents' 1973 separation was so amicable that everyone, including her, pretended everything was fine, that it was normal for one's mother to have both a husband and a long-term boyfriend.

An analysis of the legacy of divorce, plus yoga, does not sound like a recipe for a funny book, but lines like "The studio was decorated in the style of Don't Be Afraid, We're Not a Cult" constantly made me laugh. Or this one, in which she describes her neighborhood: "In Phinney Ridge, people don't have 'beware of dog' signs. They have 'please be mindful of dog' signs."

Some interest in yoga is a prerequisite to liking the book, but you needn't take it too seriously or actually do yoga yourself. The book's self-deprecating humor and a healthy suspicion of yoga teachers who lecture their classes on Hindu spirituality makes things more accessible to non-yogis. And yet, the spiritual side of yoga will sneak in there anyhow and make a believer out of you, as you watch Claire slowly transform into a more relaxed, accepting version of herself. I'm listening to the audiobook, whose narrator, Christine Williams, does an excellent job.

More Knitting Humor

2011-06-29T08:52:00.001-05:00

The library book group has the month off and the only book I could bring myself to read in June, besides Harry Potter, was Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's Free-Range Knitter. This may seem like an odd combination, but did you know that Hagrid the Hogwarts gamekeeper is a knitter? Also, Mrs. Weasley and Hermione. And Dumbledore likes to read knitting patterns.

The essay in Free-Range Knitter about the time the author agreed to teach knitting to a group of children at a toy store had me in stitches. It was also the first time I heard the knitting poem. And don't miss her story about the time an elevator door at the passport office closed on her yarn, separating her ball of yarn from the project on her needles.

I should warn you that it isn't all knitting humor. Like her other books, there are stories about knitters for whom knitting provides a great consolation in difficult times and reflections on motherhood. The latter tend to be funny, though such as "How to Make a Hat if You are Twelve (And Not Very Careful About Stuff)".

Are You a Psychopath? Take this Test

2011-06-27T08:28:00.000-05:00

The Psychopath Test, a journey through the madness industry by Jon Ronson starts with the author, a journalist, being asked to find out who anonymously sent a cryptic self-published book to many psychiatrists worldwide, which then leads him somehow, circuitously to a Scientologist who gets him into Broadmoor Prison to interview a criminally insane inmate who claims he's not insane. Scientologists famously do not believe in psychiatry so they advocate for the prisoner. The author then goes on to learn about the Hare Psychopathy Checklist at a workshop lead by the list's creator Bob Hare himself. Armed with his newly acquired psychopath-spotting ability, the author goes all over the world for a year or so interviewing both diagnosed and suspected psychopaths and mental health professionals while dipping into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders and exploring the latest top psychiatric diagnoses like bipolar disorder in children. The irony of his research is that Ronson presents himself as an anxious neurotic; he worries a lot about being tracked down by some of the killers he meets and he worries about whether he might have some psychopathic tendencies, constantly referring back to the checklist to self-diagnose. The book is about at least two topics: psychopaths, or course, but also how mental illness came to be diagnosed by checklists in the DSM and the subsequent increase in number of diagnoses of mental disorders and the increased development of drugs to treat them. That is an ambitiously broad range of topics to cover in only 275 pages. What is psychopathy? How do we diagnose it? Why has there been an increase in the number of mental illnesses listed in the DSM which seem increasingly close to a normal state? Are there more psychopaths in positions of great power, like CEO's of corporations? Ronson raises a lot of questions, so if you are interested in related titles, you could read the following books: (call #'s follow the title)

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (Ref 616.89 Dia)
The books of psychiatrist Oliver Sacks
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, which is not about psychiatry or madness, but about medicine's use of checklists.(610.28 Gaw)
Opening Skinner's box: great psychological experiments of the twentieth century by Lauren Slater (150.72 SLA)

Related websites:

Laura Miller's review in Salon
Robert Hare's website

Summer Reads

2011-06-23T13:14:00.007-05:00

Why get on a wait list for this year's crop of beach reads, when last year's are on the shelves right now? Most of these come from Library Journal's list.

Summer Shift by Lynn Kiele Bonasia
While trying to run the Cape Cod clam bar she owns, 44-year-old widow Mary Hopkins must rely on her diverse and dependable staff to weather the sudden death of a young waitress, her beloved great aunt's struggle with Alzheimer's, and Mary's own sense that life is passing her by.

The Summer We Read Gatsby by Danielle Ganek
Forced to set aside their differences when they jointly inherit a rundown cottage in the Hamptons, practical-minded Cassie and her dreamer half-sister Peck struggle to decide what to do with the house, which comes with a resident artist plagued by bad luck.

Thin Rich Pretty by Beth Harbison
Remembering their misfit teen years and the summer they lashed out at rich and spoiled Lexi, Holly and Nicola struggle to overcome insecurities to safeguard their ambitions and are shocked to re-encounter a down-on-her-luck Lexi, who harbors painful memories.

The Island by Elin Hilderbrand
After her daughter, Chess, breaks off an engagement and her fiance subsequently dies in a rock-climbing accident, divorcee Birdie Cousins encourages her younger daughter, Tate, and her sister, India, to join her and Chess on Tuckernack Island for a month, a time when deep secrets are soon revealed.

Summer in the South by Cathy Holton
Visiting old friend Will from college only to find him much more attractive and confident than she remembers, Ava becomes immersed in Will's Southern community and wonders if the local secrets she uncovers will estrange her from Will or strengthen their bond.

Dolci di Love by Sarah-Kate Lynch
After discovering that her husband has a secret second family in Tuscany, Lily Turner leaves New York and looks for a happy ending in a struggling Italian bakery with the help of the Secret League of Widowed Darners.

The Icing on the Cupcake by Jennifer Ross
When Ansley Waller's fiance Parish cancels their upcoming wedding, Ansley decides to leave Dallas and make a fresh start. In a surprise move, she heads to New York City to live with her recently widowed grandmother Vivian, who gives Ansley an ultimatum: get a job or go home. Before long, she's opening up her own cupcake shop and even trying her hand at dating.

Looking for a Love Story by Louise Shaffer
Recently divorced, Francesca agrees to write a memoir on an elderly woman's parents who worked in vaudeville, and while researching the couple, Francesca starts to reexamine her own family and love life.

Cell Phones in the Library

2011-06-22T08:55:00.001-05:00

In Case of Emergency

It's hard to tell whether people talking to themselves in the library, or anywhere really, have a blue tooth connection to their cell phone or are just, well, talking to themselves. That's not an original observation, but in the context of keeping the library quiet, it makes it hard to ask a patron to turn off their cell phone if in fact they are just having a spirited debate with their favorite debater: themselves. Another tricky cell phone issue: patrons politely take their phone conversations to the bathroom or stairwell. I'm not a sound engineer, but I'm pretty sure the acoustics of those two places are the best in the library. The conversations are amplified for the world to hear. In fact, maybe we should have music programs in the stair well. And finally: kids with cell phones. Sigh. They use them, they lose them. The library staff is getting pretty good at figuring out how to use lost cellphones to contact the owner. Be sure you put the ICE on your kid's phone. ICE = In Case of Emergency contacts. Read this USA Today article for more information about ICE

Pottermore

2011-06-20T12:25:00.003-05:00

Adults don't get the summer off, but that doesn't mean we can't raid the kids' bookshelves. Now that the last Harry Potter movie is coming on July 15, I'm re-reading the series by listening to the audiobooks. The narrator, Jim Dale, got put in the Guinness World Book of Records for creating 134 voices for the series.

If you never finished the series or are afraid you won't like the series, you may want to start with book 3, The Prisoner of Azkaban, which is more complex and suspenseful than the first two books. Now that I'm reading the fourth book, The Goblet of Fire, I think it's even possible to begin there without getting too lost. That will definitely put you in the heart of the series' action.

J.K. Rowling is expected to explain to what her latest project, Pottermore, will be on June 23. Could it be a new series? I'd settle for a single book - but not the encyclopedia Rowling has said she'll write. The Harry Potter Lexicon is good enough for me.

When in Rome, Do As You Done in Milledgeville

2011-06-17T08:17:00.007-05:00

"When in Rome, do as you done in Milledgeville" - Flannery O'Connor, from The Habit of Being

Last week I was turning around on Highway 441 in Milledgeville, Georgia when I realized that I was in Flannery O'Connor's driveway. Talk about serendipity! O'Connor grew up in Georgia, but left to get her MFA in Iowa and to write at the Yaddo artist colony. When she was 26, she came down with lupus, the same disease that killed her father a decade earlier, and moved to her family's farm in Milledgeville. The Andalusia farm is where her famous short story collections Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find were written.

The bottom window was Flannery's. Can't you just imagine her peeking through the curtains? Flannery was her middle name and in Milledgeville she known as Mary O'Connor. Her bedroom was just off the foyer where the parlor would usually be, and her mother lived here also, until Flannery's death in 1964. Everything in the house (including the braces that she wore) is original, except for a few things that she gave to Georgia College, like her books and her typewriter.

I learned a new word while I was at Andalusia : peafowl. There are still peacocks and peahens running around the farm today, although I only heard them. You can get this photo on a postcard at the gift shop (as well as pithy bumper stickers that quote O'Connor).

Lawrence Downes wrote about visiting Andalusia and the Milledgeville area in his New York Times travel article "In Search of Flannery O'Connor". This is my favorite part:

I found a road that led down to the edge of a kaolin mine. Standing beside huge mounds of white chalky dirt, surrounded by deep treads left in the red clay by earth-moving machinery, I watched as a sentence from one of my favorite stories, “A Temple of the Holy Ghost,” slowly unfolded, as if for me alone:

“The sun was a huge red ball like an elevated Host drenched in blood and when it sank out of sight, it left a line in the sky like a red clay road hanging over the trees.”

The Postmistress: Reviewing the Reviews

2011-06-16T15:18:00.002-05:00

The library's Second Tuesday of the Month book group discussed Sarah Blake's The Postmistress this week. Everyone liked the book, but... . It's that "I liked it, but..." that makes this book interesting to review and to discuss. Briefly, The Postmistress tells the tale of three American women in the period before the United States joined WWII. Against that isolationist backdrop, radio reporter Frankie Bard broadcasts from the London studios of Edward R. Murrow during the Blitz. In a small town on Cape Cod, USA, doctor's wife Emma Fitch and village postmaster Iris James are the other two points of this literary triangle. Their lives become entwined through the plot device of letters not delivered.
Janet Maslin's review in the New York Times starts off snarkily but ends up praising the book while delivering some body blows to the author's style: a mixed review for a book that seems to elicit that response.
Maslin writes, "Is there any hope for a novel that begins as “The Postmistress” does?” In the fall of 1940 a 40-year-old spinster named Iris James goes to visit a Boston doctor. She wants a written document attesting that she is, as the book says, “intact.”"
USA Today's reviewer Carol Memmott loves the book pretty much unreservedly calling it "splendid" and comparing it, as many reviewers do, to The Guernesy Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, another book club favorite set during WWII and purely epistolary in nature. Both Maslin and Memmott and many reviewers also make the comparison to Kathryn Stockett's The Help.
Many non-professional blog reviewers (like moi) admit to mixed feelings about the book. The Literate Housewife writes,
"The Postmistress and I got off to a bumpy start," but then goes on to say that she liked the part of the novel about the war reporter best.
The library book group members also found the beginning of the book off-putting, and found Frankie Bard to be the most interesting character and her storyline to be the best.
The Postmistress is a good choice for a book group because it has lots of discussable themes: the role of fate in life and death and war being the main one. Does life "all add up" as the doctor who goes to help out in the Blitz believe? Or is death merely a result of random chance as Frankie Bard says? Or, as we pondered and debated on Tuesday night, is it more the confluence of conscious choices with random fate?

L'Oreal Volunteers Paint the Children's Room Today

2011-06-15T11:48:00.000-05:00

Many thanks to the L'Oreal Volunteers who painted the library Children's Room this morning. They came last year dressed in yellow t-shirts to paint the Library Meeting Room. This year, wearing t-shirts in primary colors, Sara Epstein (in red), Lauren Methven, Patti Baeder, Linda Helm (in blue) and Liz Palmatier (in yellow) came early, painted like champs and charged off to their next community volunteer project. We think it's really terrific of L'Oreal to sponsor this program annually.

Inspiration Board: Mysteries

2011-06-13T15:07:00.001-05:00

Another day, another re-post, my little blogovians: if you like this Inspiration Board, search for more in the search box at the top of the blog or click on the label of the same name in the tag cloud to your right, scroll down, down, yes, there, the tag cloud. Enjoy.

In 2009 I read 5 mysteries which were the first in a possible series. If the authors of the books pictured below do decide to write sequels, I will be looking forward to reading about: the narcoleptic detective from the Little Sleep, the precocious teenage sleuth from the Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Delhi's finest detective from the Case of the Missing Servant, Chet the Dog and his human partner from Spencer Quinn's Dog On It and the lawyers whose offices are at 221 B Baker Street where letters to Mr. Holmes are still received, and answered, in the Baker Street Letters.

PS: if this blog had an editor, he/she would have helped me with that first sentence. Rewrites welcomed.

PPS: this is me 2 years later: there have been terrific sequels to some of these book.s Alan Bradley has written two more titles in the Flavia de Luce series; the library owns two more Chet and Bernie mysteries by Spencer Quinn; there is one more Vish Puri mystery by Tarquin Hall; and one more Baker Street mystery by Michael Robertson. Now I have to track down the ones I've missed!

Typical Reference Questions in a Public Library

2011-06-09T08:35:00.001-05:00

Lion at the Reference Desk because Real Librarians Don't Like to Have their Pictures Posted on the Blog

This is a reposting from Jan 21, 2010. Our posts about what we do at the reference desk are tagged "reference questions" so if you want to find similar posts, type that in the search box at the top of this blog or click on that phrase in the tag cloud in the right hand column of this blog.

'This morning has been what I still think of as a "typical" shift on the Reference Desk, *When I started out in a big-city library, the Reference Desk had 3 incoming phone lines, lines of people around the desk waiting for help, and librarians took one hour shifts on the desk, one hour off to recharge. It was like working at a fast-food joint, but handing out answers instead of burgers. Now, libraries are busy, but in a different way, with questions coming in by email, blog comments, faxes and sometimes Twitter. We don't take text messages yet, but it could happen.
This morning's questions:
A late-breaking (8:55 pm Tuesday says the call slip) research question about commodity prices.
A Girl Scout leader asking about the best way to publicize G.S. programs and distribute flyers.
A colleague at another library asking about what databases we have and which might be discontinued due to lack of state funding.
Emails with incoming blog comments in Chinese to approve or reject. We don't accept comments that are selling things.
A public internet computer froze twice on the same patron and needed to be fixed.
I started to try out a new database using a trial subscription, but immediately ran into technical problems with it.
Questions about our downloadable audiobooks and how to renew them.
A man wanted recommendations of mysteries for his wife, but not "spy stuff."
A caller wanted the music and lyrics to a song by Irving Berlin.
Many interlibrary loan requests piled up on my CPU.
Request for the phone number of the Better Business Bureau.
Caller asked for book with funny title, something about "Guernsey potatoes."
Request for a book that went out yesterday for a local book club.
Do we have a copy of the 9/11 Report? (yes)
That's it so far at noon, 9 hours to go.'

PS: *I started out in a public library reference department over 30 years ago and despite the advent of the internet and Google, people still turn to the library to find answers to their questions.

Sarah Palin, Paul Revere and the Teachable Moment about Wikipedia

2011-06-08T15:53:00.039-05:00

Recently Sarah Palin, ex-governor of Alaska and possible 2012 U.S. presidential candidate, answered a reporter's question about the story of Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere. The reaction to her answer fell along partisan lines and ranged from accusations of inaccuracy to defense of her statement about the reasons for Paul Revere's famous ride. Soon after this news story appeared, the online free general encyclopedia website called Wikipedia found that its article on Paul Revere was being revised repeatedly to either support or negate Palin's version of history. Wikipedia allows anyone to edit its articles online so apparently Palin's defenders and detractors took the fight onto the most commonly used online encyclopedia. After a few days of repeatedly cleaning up its Revere article, Wikipedia put a virtual lock on it, effectively making it un-editable. In fact, Wikipedia did what the Encyclopedia Britannica and Grolier's Encyclopedia have always done: put out an edition of an article and then lock onto that version until the official editors feel it needs updating based on the facts of the case. Groliers and EB articles are written by experts in their field and the articles are often signed giving the author's credentials.
Without taking any side whatsoever, I think I have found one useful, library-related lesson in this latest Palin vs the news media kerfluffle. The Teachable Moment is this: you can't always believe what you read on Wikipedia or many, many other internet websites. You can rely on the facts in published reference works, both the old fashioned kind that sit on library shelves and the online versions that librarians purchase and link to their library websites. Berkeley Heights Public Library purchases reference books and encyclopedias in hard copy and in digital editions for our patrons to use. These reference works have been carefully researched, written, documented, edited, reviewed and have stood the test of time so librarians feel confident that the research resources we select for the library are "authoritative" - a nice library school word meaning the information is the real McCoy.
So if your children come home from school with an assignment which says they should not use Wikipedia or other unreliable websites, that's a good thing. If your children had checked online for the story of Paul Revere by Googling it in the last few days, you would have had very confused children. Ask your local reference librarian to point you towards the Real McCoy when it comes to research.

As to whether Ms. Palin was right or wrong or somewhere in between, I cannot say. But I can give you a really nifty assignment: pick a topic and then compare and contrast the content and accuracy of real signed encyclopedia articles with some anonymous website articles. If that doesn't sound like fun, trust us on this one: just because something appears in Wikipedia or on the internet doesn't make it true.

Related articles:
Paul Revere's Wiki Page Altered, The Daily Beast
After Palin's Paul Revere Comments, Wikipedia Page on Revere Becomes Political Football, Associated Press
Paul Revere, Wikipedia
Revision history of the Wikipedia Paul Revere article with screen names of contributers.
List of Databases subscribed to by the Berkeley Heights Public Library. Patrons with a Berkeley Heights Public Library card can use these resources from any internet-connected computer.

Mermaid Fiction

2011-06-07T14:05:00.002-05:00

I was thinking of re-posting old reviews again today and thought it would be neat to see what I was reading a year ago. As it happens, I was reading The Seduction of Water by Carol Goodman for the library book group discussion. I reviewed it in a very snarky, sarcastic review which I kind of regret posting. What is odd is that I just finished False Mermaid by Erin Hart which, like Goodman's book, features the Celtic legend of the Selkie wife. You may remember the folktale goes something like this: a poor, but honest, farmer spots a beautiful woman basking on a rock but she is really a seal who has shed her skin for the day. The farmer can control this creature as long as he can hide her seal skin from her. OK, maybe he's not so nice. Anyway, this legend has proved fertile ground for novelists and storytellers over the years.And it has also proved to be a veritable petri dish of overblown metaphors and feminist themes. For some reason when I picked up False Mermaid and realized I was back in the dread Celtic selkie territory, I shuddered but persevered because I really wanted to know "who done it." The book has a very complicated plot and is very suspenseful, so even if you have the same selkie aversion that I have (is that very likely?) you might still enjoy this murder mystery for its complexity, and for the Irish and Minnesota settings. The blurb from our catalog follows:
"After her Irish sojourn in Haunted Ground and Lake of Sorrows, Nora Gavin returns home to Minnesota, ready to pin the murder of sister Triona on Triona's husband and to protect their child, Elizabeth. Then Cormac, Nora's archaeologist buddy back in Ireland, digs up a story about a woman missing for a century-a story only Elizabeth understands is connected to her mother."
So possibly fate demands that I revisit the world of the selkie every June.If that's the case, the BHPL catalog lists 5 titles when searched for 'Selkies-Fiction' and a whopping 39 when searched for 'Mermaids - Fiction'.
If you would like to read more mysteries about forensic archaeologists, try Elly Griffiths' The Crossing Places, a Ruth Galloway mystery which is also full of Celtic lore. And if you like bodies preserved in peat bogs, both False Mermaid, the Ruth Galloway mysteries and Raven Black, #1 in the Shetland mysteries by Ann Cleeves use the fact that the tannin in peat bogs perfectly preserves bodies. File these mysteries under the mystery sub-genre: Forensic archaeologists, Celtic legends, bog people.

Ten Quirky Books

2011-06-06T14:27:00.001-05:00

Today's blog post combines two previously posted book lists for lovers of off-beat fiction.

Forever Odd by Dean Koontz, from the bestselling series about Odd Thomas who communicates with dead people. Dean Koontz is a mega-bestselling author whose style is easy to read and entertaining.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, the first in the bestselling Thursday Next series about a literary detective in a kind of futuristic/alternative U.K. where fictional characters run loose, puns are rampant and the author's imagination is really, really wild.This is sci-fi/fantasy/alternative history.

The Spare Room by Helen Garner, a friend with end stage cancer moves in and becomes the most annoying house guest imaginable. She won't leave, but what can you say in that situation? This must be the worst house guest situation ever.

Laura Rider's Masterpiece by Jane Hamilton, middle-aged mid-Western housewife encourages an affair between her husband and local celebrity so she will have material for the book she plans to write. They do say "write what you know".

The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst. A professor of linguistics tries to teach his dog, the only witness to his wife's death, to talk so he can understand whether his wife committed suicide or died accidentally.. The professor starts by taking the dog’s water bowl away while trying to teach him to say “water.” When he hears the dog lapping from the toilet bowl it is not exactly the Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan moment he was going for. A sad premise, but told with humor.

Swim to Me by Betsy Carter: 17 year old becomes a mermaid performer at the swimming show at Weeki Wachee Springs, FL. A coming-of-age story in a unique setting. This little book is a staff favorite.

Paper Wings by Marly Swick: growing up in the early 1960's in Madison, Wisconsin. Another coming-of-age tale.

Local Girls by Alice Hoffman: connected short stories. You can safely say that all of Alice Hoffman’s books tend to have a quirky feel which comes partially from her close observation of nature which she portrays as having a kind of creepy, predatory lushness. When humans interact with wild animals and wild vegetation in her books, strange things occur.

The Lady Who Liked Clean Restrooms by J.P. Donleavy: embroiders the urban legend about the stranger who signs a funeral guest book only to find out she inherits the deceased's estate. A very dark, weird book.

Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead: in this satire of marketing excesses, a small town hires a name consultant to reshape its image. This consultant is having an identity crisis as bad, if not worse, than the town’s.

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

2011-06-01T22:26:00.002-05:00

This Friday, June 3, at 10:30 a.m. the morning book group will discuss Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger, which won the Booker Prize in 1987. The novel's heroine is a former war correspondent and popular historian lying on her deathbed and recollecting scenes from her unconventional life, thinking of how her "history of the world" would have been written. We slowly learn more about Claudia's true love, a tank commander in Cairo during World War II, over the course of Moon Tiger.

The Guardian has as four-part series on Moon Tiger here, including an interview with the author.

Discussion Questions:

1. Just as there was a photograph in Lively's 1993 novel, The Photograph there is one in Moon Tiger, a 19th century photograph that Claudia owns. Anne Tyler quotes the passage in her review for the New York Times:

There is a grocer's shop and a blacksmith's and a stationary cart and a great spreading tree, but not a single human figure. In fact William Smith - or someone, or several people, dogs too, geese, a man on a horse - passed beneath the tree, went into the grocer's shop, loitered for a moment talking to a friend while the photograph was taken but he is invisible, all of them are invisible. The exposure of the photograph - sixty minutes - was so long that William Smith and everyone else passed through it and away leaving no trace.

What other passages talk about time and our concept of it in Moon Tiger? How is Cairo in 1942 a good setting for a story with a lack of chronology, like Moon Tiger?

2. What did you make of the relationship between Claudia and her brother Gordon? Between her and her daughter Lisa?

3. Do you think Claudia's life would have been different if Tom had lived? How?

4. The history of the world that Claudia is "writing" focuses on details and the experiences of individuals. Would you prefer a more objective overview of events? Why or why not?

5. Out of the 3 novels we've read that were set in Egypt, which is your favorite: Dreamers of the Day, The English Patient, or Moon Tiger?

6. What is unconventional about the way Moon Tiger is written?

7. In your mind, when a part of the narrative is being retold, who is telling it? Is Claudia imagining it?

8. Are there any links between your personal history and the greater history of the world? For example, Claudia says "I have Tito to thank for Jasper . . "

9. Claudia says "Fiction can seem more enduring than reality" (page 6 of the paperback edition). What does she mean? Do you agree?

10. What does the title of the book refer to? Why might Penelope Lively have chosen it for the title?

5 Brit Mysteries to Recommend

2011-06-01T15:20:00.002-05:00

I've been on a mystery-reading marathon in the last couple of months. What follows is a list of five mysteries by contemporary British authors writing in the "cozy", or classic, style of mysteries perfected by Agatha Christie and other authors of the mystery Golden Age.

Goodbye, Ms. Chips, an Ellie Haskell mystery #13 by Dorothy Cannell. Ellie returns to her prep school to investigate disappearance of a sports trophy. Amateur sleuth and her flamboyantly dressed housekeeper solve crimes.The tone is light and tongue-in-cheek.

The Janus Stone, a Ruth Galloway Mystery by Elly Griffiths (2010) 2^nd in series, forensic archaelogist called in to investigate bones of buried child at building site. The tone is dark and contemplative.

Peril at Sumner House, a Daphne DuMaurier mystery by Joanna Challis (2010). The author of Rebecca as amateur sleuth. The tone is semi-serious.

Sherlock Holmes and the Shakespeare Letter by Barry Grant (2011) Sherlock is defrosted in the 21^st century to solve more crimes. The mood is very similar to the original Holmes stories by Conan Doyle.

Death of a Chimney Sweep, a Hamish MacBeth mystery by M.C. Beaton. (2011) Small town in the Highlands of Scotland. Very light in tone with emphasis on the village eccentrics and the main character, Hamish MacBeth, the canny and adorable village constable.

How Not to Answer a Reference Question: a Shaggy Dog Story

2011-06-01T14:52:00.001-05:00

Speaking of answering interesting reference questions, as Ellen just posted, BHPL staffers are proud of the service we provide to our patrons, but have you ever met an over-zealous librarian who wants to give you more information, more books and book recommendations than you want or need? A patron emailed us the following shaggy dog story which reminds us that sometimes it’s better to wait until people ask for advice before offering it. Thanks, Bernie.

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust.The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes , RayBan
sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy,
"If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

Bud looks at the man then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers,

"Sure, Why not?"
The stranger parks his car, whips out his notebook computer, connects it to his cell phone,and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany.Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to the cowboy and says,

"You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"Amazing, that's right. Well, I guess you can pick one from the herd," says Bud.

Bud watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then Bud says to the young man,

"Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"
The young man thinks about it for a second and then says,

"Okay, why not?"
"Well now, seems to me you must be a consultant", says Bud.
"Wow! That's correct, but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answered the cowboy.

"You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about how working people make a living - or about cows, for that matter. This is a herd of sheep.

Now give me back my dog.

PS: just ask us a question and we will try to find an answer for you, nothing less and not too much more, we hope.

Questions, Answered

2011-05-28T02:28:00.001-05:00

Q. In the past month we have answered many, many questions on the theme "Do you have books on [fill in career here]?", for a project assigned at school.

A. After years of torturing myself by searching for careers or occupations in the catalog, I've taped vocational guidance to my computer monitor. That brings up everything career-related, not just books with careers or occupations in the title.

Q. Do you own The Origins of Russian Conduct, a book by George Kennan?

A. It turns out the person is looking for the Sources of Soviet Conduct which was an article that has been published online.

Q. I saw the sign that says you can get books in other languages from other libraries. [Wow! Sign reading is a rare but welcome occurrence.] Is there a list of books in German?

A. You can look up German language materials in NJCat, a catalog that searches public and college libraries in New Jersey. A lot of German novels came up when we tried that.

Q. Actually, I want nonfiction about the Cold War and the Berlin Wall in German.

A. We looked up Cold War in the English-German dictionary at Wordreference.com, then looked up kalter krieg in NJCat as well as Berlin mauer. It turns out that the Morristown library and Drew University have books about the Berlin Wall in German.

Q. Another patron wanted books & videos on balance for seniors, but not yoga, Pilates or anything that requires equipment (like a balance ball).

A. The DVD "Sit and Be Fit Balance & Fall Prevention Workout" fit the bill.

Q. BASF Ultradur plastics are used in automobile manufacturing. What other brands of plastic are similar?

A. Dowell.com has a chart comparing different types of polybutylene terephthalate.

The Un-American Origin of the Dollar

2011-05-26T06:30:00.000-05:00

I was reading Vanity Fair and came to a part where an English boy on vacation in Germany was described as having a pocket full of dollars. I thought that was more than a little odd, so I looked up "dollar" in the dictionary to see where the word came from.

The German word for valley is "tal"; a taler or thaler is a person or thing from a valley. Wikipedia explains that "the Thaler (or Taler or Talir) was a silver coin used throughout Europe for almost four hundred years." It is short for "Joachimsthaler", the first of such coins, which were minted in the valley of St. Joachim (now Jáchymov in the Czech Republic) beginning in the 16th century.