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For the Love of Reading

How Beautiful the Ordinary, edited by Michael Cart

How Beautiful the Ordinary, edited by Michael Cart, is a welcome addition to the small but growing collection of young adult fiction exploring gender identity and sexual orientation. Being a young person is difficult, what with all the changes physical, emotional, and social. Most of us spend our whole lives getting to know ourselves, and those initial explorations in our youth are some of the most confusing and painful (and exhilarating and profound) because they are so new. All of this can be overwhelming, and when you throw in societal condemnation of some of these identities and/or lifestyles it is especially hard. This collection of short fiction by well-respected young adult authors takes a loving and unrelenting look at the struggle not only to discover what we are as young women and men, but to accept and own that identity as well. Read more »

Posted by Chris H. on Feb 28, 2012

Bestseller Express Collections at the Library

Monroe County Public Library patrons tired of being on waiting lists for popular new titles, both books and DVDs, now have another option: they can get these materials into their hands faster through the library's Bestseller Express collections. These browsing collections make popular books and movies available to more people more quickly. Titles in the collections cannot be reserved or renewed. "We developed Bestseller Express to make more copies of high-demand titles available to our patrons," says Collection Services Manager, Pam Wasmer. "The Express collections are proving very popular. We want everyone to know about this new service option." Read more »

Posted by Jim G. on Feb 28, 2012

March Books Plus Discussion

Room Please join us on Sunday, March 4^th_, to discuss the intriguing premise of Emma Donoghue's Room. Here's how the author described the genesis of the book, "In my experience, the bond between mother and newborn is a tiny, cozy world that gradually relaxes its magic to let the rest of the world in. But motherhood -- even under ideal circumstances -- also has elements of nightmare as well as fairy tale, sci-fi as well as realism: it's a trip like no other, and it can occasionally feel like (let's admit it, shall we, mothers of the world?) a locked room."

This highly acclaimed novel was voted the One Book One Bloomington title for 2012. Please come and share your opinions and ideas about this topic.

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Posted by Sarah B. on Feb 28, 2012

Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain

The title of this book Lighting Out for the Territory by Roy Morris, jr. refers to the last paragraph in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when Huck reckons that it's time "to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest", which is exactly what Clemens himself did in July 1861. Clemens had ridden as a guerilla maurader for the Missouri militia in a locally formed group in the very early days of the Civil War called the Marion Rangers. They never saw any real action, but his brief stint with them, plus the ever present chance he could be drafted by either side, Union or Confederate, to pilot a gun boat, made the mostly neutral West look inviting.

His brother Orion had been appointed as Secretary to the Territorial Governor of the newly created Nevada Territory. Orion invited Sam to go along to share expenses. From this happenstance beginning one of America's great writers was born.

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Posted by Luann D. on Feb 23, 2012

The Stone Carvers

Stone Carvers The Canadian National Vimy Memorial sits on a preserved battlefield in France where the Canadian Expeditionary Force took part in the Battle of Vimy Ridge during World War I. The huge marble monument took 11 years to build and has giant human sculptures representing sacrifice, mourning, and strength and includes over 11,000 names of Canadian soldiers missing in action.

In Jane Urquhart's novel The Stone Carvers, we meet three fictional people who wind up working on this magnificent monument. Their lives are transformed both by the beauty of art and the horrors of war.

Klara and Tilman Becker grow up in rural Canada in a German immigrant community at the turn of the century. Their grandfather is a wood carver with high hopes for Tilman to learn the master craft. While Tilman has a natural carving ability, he is proves unable to stay on the farm. Even as early as 12, Tilman must migrate. Nothing his family does can keep him on the farm, not even a chain. Read more »

Posted by Sarah B. on Feb 22, 2012

How to Die in Paris

The title intrigued me, so I pulled this book off the new shelf. How to Die in Paris is Thomas's first book, a memoir, about her trip of seven months to Italy and Paris. Like all good travel books, it's also autobiographical, not only detailing the author's present but also her past.

Like many twenty-somethings, Naturi's had a difficult time in the recession finding steady work in NY City. Periodically, she lists how many times she's moved in the past few years, and how many nights she has spent couch-surfing, or staying with friends.

Before setting off for Europe, a friend takes her to see a fortune teller. Although Naturi pokes fun at the process, the fortune teller is adamant that the young woman will have an extremely tough time in Europe. Naturi scoffs it off, but... Read more »

Posted by Dory L. on Feb 20, 2012

A History of the World in 100 Objects

What a cool idea for a book. Telling the history of the world by looking at museum artifacts. To make it even more interesting, these descriptive reports of jewelry, mummies, pottery, coins, art, textiles, etc. were written by experts for radio. Luckily, for us we get to view the pictures also, hundreds of them.

A History of the World in 100 Objects is no coffee table book but a book to be read end to end. The entries for each of the objects (that range in date from 2,000,000 B.C. to 2010 A.D.) describe not only the artifacts themselves but what they teach us about history and about humanity. For example of silver bowl full of coins from around the year 927--shows that already England was well on its way to becoming a monarchy. Inscribed on one coin is Athelstan Rex totius Britanniae or Athelstan, King of All Britain.

Other items found in this same buried stash were arm bracelets from Ireland, Viking coins, and others from as far away as Afghanistan. A Viking stash of coins showed that they were becoming Christian--engraved on several was St. Peter's name (Petri), but also inscribed was the hammer from Thor, the old Norse god. Read more »

Posted by Dory L. on Feb 10, 2012

Arctic Obsession: the lure of the Far North

One of the earliest historical reports of a far northern, snow-covered place was by Pytheas who sailed out of what is now Marseilles in 325 B.C., and discovered a place he called Ultima Thule, a six day journey north of Britain. No one knows exactly where his ship landed but people believe that it may have been Iceland, Greenland, Norway or the Shetlands. Pytheas described the remarkable midnight sun and reported that the sea surrounding Thule was "neither sea nor air but a mixture like a sea-lung that binds everything together."

In the following centuries the Romans and medieval scholars called the Far North "the kingdom of the dead" where the Cyclops lived "in a place of chaos, the abysmal chasm." In those days scholars also believed that the North Pole was a "gigantic metallic rock rising out of the ocean." Read more »

Posted by Dory L. on Feb 8, 2012

From Book to Best Picture

We are still a few weeks away from the Academy Awards, but the nominations were announced last week. Out of the nine best picture nominees, six are based on books. So while maybe watching the nominated movies is on your February list, it also proves an opportunity to add some new book titles as well. The six books include:

The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings

"With beautiful and blunt prose, Hemmings explores the emotional terrain of grief, promising something far more fulfilling than paradise at its end."--San Francisco Chronicle

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a miracle, a daybreak, a man on the moon. It's so impeccably imagined, so courageously executed, so everlastingly moving and fine." --Baltimore Sun

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Posted by Sarah B. on Feb 6, 2012