2007 Reading List

One of my blogging friends posted about having a 2007 reading list the other day and I got inspired so I solicited suggestions from my friends about what to read next year. Here's what I have so far:

Fiction:

Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Norwegian Wood - Murakami
Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig
Rug Merchant - Meg Mullins
Book Thief - Markus Zusak
Stardust - Neil Gaiman
Virgin Suicides - Eugenides

Non-Fiction

Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior
Fear of Falling - Barbara Ehrenreich
Velvet Elvis - Rob Bell

Comment below to share your suggestions with me!

Miss Potter

On the way into work this morning, I listened to a wonderful story about the new Beatrix Potter movie, "Miss Potter". The movie starts Renée Zellweger as Potter and Ewan McGregor as Potter's publisher, Norman Warne.

Beatrix Potter is famous for her serious of Peter Rabbit books.

Notable Deaths in 2006

A list from the Associated Press

Deaths in the News: Gerald Ford and James Brown

Ford, our 38th president, died yesterday and Brown, "The Godfather of Soul" died on Christmas Day.

We have a wonderful collection of Brown's music, a 2CD set, "50th Anniversary Collection".

We also have a great book about the Ford presidency, 31 Days: The Crisis That Gave Us the Government We Have Today.

National Film Registry

Today the Library of Congress added 27 titles to the National Film Registry. How many how you seen? I've seen three. Care to guess which ones?

* Applause (1929)
* The Big Trail (1930)
* Blazing Saddles (1974)
* The Curse of Quon Gwon (1916-17)
* Daughter of Shanghai (1937)
* Drums of Winter [Uksuum Cauyai] (1988)
* Early Abstractions #1-5, 7,10 (1939-56)
* Fargo (1996)
* Flesh and the Devil (1927)
* Groundhog Day (1993)
* Halloween (1978)
* In the Street (1948)
* The Last Command (1928)
* Notorious (1946)
* Red Dust (1932)
* Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971-72)
* Rocky (1976)
* sex, lies and videotape (1989)
* Siege (1940)
* St. Louis Blues (1929)
* The T.A.M.I. Show (1964)
* Tess of the Storm Country (1914)
* Think of Me First as a Person (1960-75)
* A Time Out of War (1954)
* Traffic in Souls (1913)

Cool Links

Transcript of President's Bush Press Conference

Longterm.gov: National Clearinghouse for Long-Term Care Information (Department of Health and Human Services)

Swivel.com A new site for data set and graph geeks.

And I thought I had a lot of books

Holiday Party Excuse Generator

Books Reviewed in Today's Chicago Tribune

Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power by Joseph Margulies (review)



The Handmaid and the Carpenter by Elizabeth Berg (review)

Looking for something to do this weekend?

Try going downtown to visit Chicago's Christkindlmarket, a "Traditional German-American Holiday Market" in Daley Plaza.

It's a Wonderful Life

As a subversive film? You decide.

Cool Site: Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930

From the Harvard University Library

Free Searchable Koran

Three different versions can be searched here.

Dennis Kucinich runs again

Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich has thrown his hat into the 2008 presidential race.

Read our copy of Kucinich's 2003 book, A Prayer For America.

Cool Site of the Day: Encyclopedia Popcornica

Encyclopedia Popcornica

Everything you wanted to know about popcorn and much, much more.

Iraq Study Group

Want to read the Iraq Study Group Report for yourself? Reserve our copy or read it online.

Congrats to Ryno!

Ryne Sandberg, the former Cubbie 2nd baseman and Baseball Hall-of-Famer, is getting back into baseball as the manager of the Peoria Chiefs.

Road trip anyone?

New and Better Bus Service in Addison?

Yesterday, the Addison village board approved plans to make it a possibility.

Coins

Today the U.S. Mint announced that it was unveiling a new set of presidential coins. The library has several resources that can help you with building your coin collection including:

Standard Catalog of World Coins

Collecting lucky coins, tokens, and medals



History of the United States Mint and its coinage

Great American Smokeout

Today is the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout. If you're a smoker, have a look at the site and get some tips on how to stop.

Who's in the running?

Now that the 2006 Congressional election has come and gone, it's now time to start thinking about the 2008 Presidential election. The latest to make his wishes officially known is former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

The library has the following items about Giuliani

Leadership by Giuliani (book on cassette)
The Prince of the City : Giuliani, New York, and the genius of American life by Fred Siegel (book of cd)
Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City by Andrew Kirtzman (book)

The End of Lemony Snicket

This week marks the publication of the last of the Lemony Snicket novels, "The End." Also known as the "Series of Unfortunate Events" novels, the books have been a hit with readers of all ages.

The Addison library has all of the books in the series.

Obama: Will he or won't he?

With yesterday's publication of Barack Obama's latest book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the Amerian Dream, the political world is abuzz with the question, will the Illinois Senator run for the Presidency in 2008? Read our copy of his book and see if there are any clues there.

We also have the large print version.

Baseball playoffs!

Your blogger is a huge baseball fan and is very excited to be watching the playoffs. Even if someone very close to her is a Yankees fan.

Here's a link and a couple books to get you ready:

100 Reasons to Watch the Baseball Playoffs (ESPN)

Bat Boy: My True Life Adventures Coming Of Age With the New York Yankees

Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

The Booker Prize Shortlist

Every year the Booker Prize is awarded to the best novel best novel of the year written by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. Previous winners of this prize include Yann Martel's The Life of Pi and A.S. Byatt's Possession.

The announcement of the prize's longlist and shortlist always makes for interesting speculation in the literary press.

The books on this year's shortlist are

Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss
Kate Grenville- The Secret River
M.J. Hyland - Carry Me Down
Hisham Matar - In the Country of Men
Edward St. Aubyn - Mother’s Milk
Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

The winner will be announced October 10th in London.

All Aunt Hagar's Children

Pulitzer Prize winning author Edward Jones (The Known World) has a new collection of short stories out, All Aunt Hagar's Children.

The Miami Herald says "Powerfully, unsentimentally, he (Jones)writes of families falling apart and coming together, of ordinary and extraordinary people, of bad neighbors, worse luck and miracles. Throughout flows the inevitable pain of reconciling a rural past with an urban future and the lingering weight of shackles with the heady freedom of making choices that suddenly may turn sour."

"Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11"

Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11 is a wonderful new book about the story of the photographers who were first on the scene at the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks.

Garrison Keillor has a wonderful essay about the book in last Sunday's New York Times Book Review.

Hugo Awards

Every year, the Hugo Awards recognizes the best science fiction and fantasy writing. The 2006 Awards were announced last month.

The winner of the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Novel is......

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson!

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan has a new album, Modern Times, out this week. The library has a copy on order and owns several of his other albums.

As part of it's online archive the New Yorker has posted a 1964 profile of Dylan on its website.

Naguib Mahfouz

Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian novelist who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature, died yesterday at the age of 94.

Mahfouz, who the New York Times said is the "the Arab world’s foremost novelist" wrote 33 novels, 13 anthologies of short stories, several plays and 30 screenplays.

The Addison library has several of his works including, Arabian Days and Nights and Sugar Street.

Thursday links

Child Health Advice (Seattle Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center)

Hostage: The Jill Carroll Story (Christian Science Monitor)

What Makes a Planet? (Cornell University)

The Mindset of Today's 18 Year-Olds (Beloit College)

How To Actually Carry Snakes on a Plane (Slate)

Pretty girls write books too!

The latest big buzz in the literary world is the first novel Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. Various literati have been grumbling that Pressl got her huge book contract based more on her looks than her writing abilities. Read it and judge for yourself.

New Terror Alert

For the latest on what's happening about the latest terror scare in Britain, see the Guardian Unlimited's Special Report: Terrorism Threat to Britain page.

Wednesday links

Timeline of Key Events in Lebanon (Infoplease.com)

USB-Powered Air-Conditioned Clotes (Newlaunches.com)

The National Hurricane Safety Initiative

Illinois Traffic Alert System

The Story Starter

British Open

This year the British Open, one of professional golf's majors, takes place at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake, England.

This blogger doesn't golf at all (with the exception of some horrible rounds of mini golf and 6 holes on a "real" golf course in North Carolina) but manages to find herself glued to the TV whenever one of the majors comes down to the wire.

If you want something to read or listen to during of the many commercials during the tournament this weekend, check out John Feinstein's The Majors: In Pursuit of Golf's Holy Grail.

Think you've well-read?

According to this list, you're probably not. Your blogger has read a mere thirty-something of the books featured in 1001 Books To Read Before You Die.

Time to get back to reading. After I get off work of course. ;)

Recently reviewed books

T.C. Boyle's Talk, Talk (New York Times Review)



J. C. Hallman's The Devil is a Gentleman: Exploring America's Religious Fringe (New York Times Review)




Upamanyu Chatterjee's English, August : an Indian story (New York Times Review)



Peter Robinson's Piece of My Heart (New York Times Review)



James Carroll's House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power (New York Times Review)

Monday links

Here are some of the links your blograrian (yes I made that word up) has bookmarked recently.

• Growing Wikipedia Revises Its 'Anyone Can Edit' Policy: An excellent article from Saturday's New York Times about how Wikipedia (the web anyone-can-edit encyclopedia) now prevents some entries (such as the ones on Opus Dei and Tony Blair) from being changed without prior approval.
• Create A Graph: Need a graph for a paper or project? Plus in your information at this website and it will do the hard work for you.
• Quickfacts: Locate A County By Place Name: A feature of the U.S. Census Bureau website, the page allows to find what county any U.S. town or city is located in.

Downloadable audiobooks are here!

Yes you may download audiobooks for free (if you have an Addison library card) from the comforts of your own computer. Visit our downloadable audiobooks webpage for more information!

And we still have more Ravinia tickets free for Addison cardholders, stop by the Fiction Desk at the library before it's too late!

Summer Reading and Ravinia!

The Ravinia Festival has graciously provided the Addison Library with some free tickets for show of their shows this summer. To select your tickets, just bring your Addison library card to the Fiction Desk at the library.

Summer Reading has started at the library. Below are all the details you need to know:

• Addison Public Library card holders only.
• The first 425 who sign up will receive a Read gel bracelet and one VideoBuck good for one free feature-film video rental from the Addison Public Library.
• Read or listen to audiobooks a total of 20 hours! No videos may be used. Reading to others—parents, children, partners, etc.—counts toward the total number of hours. Book lists, which offer suggestions for reading, are available. All books and audiobooks must be checked out at the Addison Public Library.
• Earn one VideoBuck for each 5 hours of reading you complete.
• Complete 20 hours by July 29 to qualify for the Grand Prize Drawing. Each person who finishes earns one ticket.
• The first 250 people who finish will receive an Addison Public Library zippered book bag.
• Grand prizes will be drawn on August 3.
• The Grand Prize is a $75 gift certificate to a local bookstore. Additional prizes include $50 and $25 gift certificates to a local bookstore.
• Those who complete 10 hours of reading in June qualify for one entry into a special drawing. Bring this booklet to the Fiction Desk by June 30 to fill out a ticket for the drawing. June prize winners still qualify for the Grand Prize drawing.

Getting stuff from another libraries

Don't you hate it when the library doesn't have the book, CD or movie you've been dying to read, listen to or watch?

We at the Addison library have the solution for you. It's called interlibrary loan. All that means is fancy library-talk for "we can request stuff from other libraries."

To take advantage of this wonderful service you may call us (630-458-3318), come in (2 Friendship Plaza, Addison, right next to Village Hall) or fill out a form on our website.

Legal Forms!

The library has just started subscribing to the Thomson Gale Legal Forms database. Now all Addison cardholders have access to Illinois and Federal legal forms from everything from affidavits to wills.

The legal forms database, as well as the rest of the databases that cardholders can access from home can be found here.

What can you ask a reference librarian?

Anything!

Here is a sample of the questions this blogger/reference librarian has answered so far today:

What are some local taxi services?
Do you have Rabbit Run by John Updike?
Do you have any books about being left-handed?

If you have a question for the reference librarian, you may stop in, call us (630-458-3318) or email us at adult@addison.lib.il.us.

We're here to help!

Shop for the Library!

Shop for the Library!
This is very easy for all of you online shoppers!

Now you can shop from some of the Internet's best online merchants while helping support your local library! Anytime you buy from one of the participating merchants, a portion of the purchase price goes to benefit the Addison Public Library. There are 4 easy steps to support our library:

* Select the Shop for the Library Website.
* Choose a library to benefit.
* Join this free service and sign up for their online fundraising newsletter.
* Download AutoTrack and ensure that any purchase you make with a participating merchant automatically benefits our library

How Opal Metha Lost Her Life

By now you might have heard the controversy over the book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by a Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan. The Harvard paper discovered similiarities between Viswanathan's book and a couple other "chick-lit" books including those of authors Megan McCafferty and Sophie Kinsella.

Her publisher has since withdrawn the book from bookstores and cancelled her publishing contract. Read the latest about the controversy at this story from Yahoo! News.

Chicago Tribune Book Section

Looking for some great new reads. Check out the reviews in yesterday's Chicago Tribune book section.

We have many of the books reviewed here at the library including:

The Great Match Race: When North Met South in America's First Sports Spectacle by John Eisenberg


Man O' War: A Legend Like Lightning by Dorothy Ours


Brookland by Emily Barton


The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky: A True Story by Ken Dornstein


This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Holmes


Something Out of Nothing: Marie Curie and Radium by Carla Killough McClafferty


Houndsley and Catina by James Howe

Recommended books

Everyone has a list they recommend to other people including the First Lady (and former librarian) Laura Bush. Her list is posted on the White House website.

Mark Felt

Mark Felt, the former FBI agent who was revealed as the "Deep Throat" in the Watergate scandal, has a new memoir out, A G-Man's Life: The FBI, 'Deep Throat' and the Struggle for Honor in Washington. The library currently has the audio CD on order. You may reserve it here.

Enrique's Journey

One of this bloggers' favorite books of the year is Enrique's Journey: The Story of a Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite With His Mother by Sonia Nazario. Nazario, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, follows the journey of Enrique, a young boy who leaves Honduras to the travel to the United States in hope of finding his mother. His mother had left him behind in Honduras a dozen years earlier in hope of making a better life for herself in the United Stes. Thousands of Latin American and Mexican children undertake a similiar journey every year. The journey is dangerous, life-threatening and humilating with a ever-present risk of starvation, rape and death.

If you're looking for a book about immigration, motherhood or a plain good read, this is it.

Computer tips

We at the Addison library are here to help you with your computing needs. We have computer classes, computer books and computers for you to use at the library. And yes we do have wireless Internet access.

For questions or help about any of these, please email the Information Services desk at adult@addison.lib.il.us or call at 630-458-3318.

Top Adaptations of Movies Into Books

Yesterday, The Guardian newspaper in England announced a poll for the "Top Film Adaptation" of a book. The fifty titles on the longlist are:

1984
Alice in Wonderland
American Psycho
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Brighton Rock
Catch 22
Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
A Clockwork Orange
Close Range (inc Brokeback Mountain)
The Day of the Triffids
Devil in a Blue Dress
Different Seasons (inc The Shawshank Redemption)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Bladerunner)
Doctor Zhivago
Empire of the Sun
The English Patient
Fight Club
The French Lieutenant's Woman
Get Shorty
The Godfather
Goldfinger
Goodfellas
Heart of Darkness (aka Apocalypse Now)
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Jaws
The Jungle Book
A Kestrel for a Knave (aka Kes)
LA Confidential
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Lolita
Lord of the Flies
The Maltese Falcon
Oliver Twist
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Orlando
The Outsiders
Pride and Prejudice
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The Railway Children
Rebecca
The Remains of the Day
Schindler's Ark (aka Schindler's List)
Sin City
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
The Talented Mr Ripley
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
To Kill a Mockingbird
Trainspotting
The Vanishing
Watership Down

This blogger's personal favorite is the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. These and many of the others on the list are available at the library.

Finding Book Gems

Next Wednesday, April 26th at 7pm in our meeting room, Mary Marshall, a local book expert, (and our very own Assistant Director/Head of Children's Services) will share tips about how to recognize the gems—those books that are more valuable than the sale price. The cost of the program is free.

Book News

One new feature of our website you may not know about are our new monthly book newsletters called Book News. Each month on the 15th, there will be descriptions of new books listed in a number of categories from Audio Books to Science and Nature. You may read the newsletters on the website and/or have them emailed to you.

Winnie The Pooh

Yesterday, Winnie the Pooh, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Winnie the Pooh is one of mine, and probably yours, favorite characters in children's literature.

The library has a number of Pooh-related items including the book, The Brilliant Career of Winnie-the-Pooh: The Definitive History of the Best Bear in All the World by Ann Thwaite and the DVD, Disney's Sing Along Songs: Sing a Song With Pooh Bear and Piglet Too.

31 Days

One of the best history books of the spring is being published today, 31 Days: The Crisis That Gave Us the Government We Have Today by Barry Werth. It's an inside look at the first 31 days of Gerald Ford's presidential administration. The library also has it on CD.

Elinor Lipman

One of modern fiction's funny writers is Elinor Lipman. Her latest novel, My Latest Grievance was reviewed in this past Sunday's New York Times.

Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

Another DVD that the library received this week was The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

The movie is based on the classic C.S. Lewis children's novel. We have many other Narnia items including the original books, CDs and other film versions of the series.

Brokeback Mountain

The multiple Oscar-winner Brokeback Mountain was released on Tuesday. We have the DVD at the library.

We also have the original short story in print and CD as well as the film's soundtrack.

Blooker Award

What's the Blooker Award you ask? It's a new annual reward for the best blook. So what's a blook then? A published book that originated in a blog.

This year's Blooker Award for Non-Fiction is Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: How One Girl Risked Her Marriage, Her Job and Her Sanity to Master the Art of Living. The book originated from a blog the author had about her quest to try all the recipes in one of Julia Child's cookbooks.

Who Reads What 2006

Every year, the Gardiner Public Library in Maine surveys celebrities and politicans to find out what books they have read and loved recently.

Following are a few of the celebrities and their choices:

Gregg Allman (musician) – The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom

Rosalynn Carter (former First Lady) – The Bible

Barbara Delinksy (writer) – A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving and Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks

Margaret Geller (astrophysicist) – A Bed of Red Flowers: In Search of My Afghanistan by Nelofer Pazira

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Supreme Court Justice) – John Marshall: Definer of a Nation by Jean Edward Smith and The Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest by Sandra Day O’Connor

Not-So-Silent Spring

An article "Not-So-Silent Spring" in today's Slate magazine talks about two new books about global warming, Field Notes from a Catastrophe and The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth.

You may borrow these books at the library.

Game of Shadows

The most newsworthy book of the spring is probably Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, Balco, and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports, the book about the Barry Bonds steroid scandal. The Addison library has it on order. You may reserve the book or CD of it.

New Currency

The website of the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing has a page about the new $10 bill which was just introduced on March 2nd.

The library has a wonderful book about paper currency, The Art of Money: The History and Design of Paper Currency From Around The World.

Total Solar Eclipse on Wednesday

There will be a total solar eclipse on Wednesday, March 29th. You can watch live coverage of it here or check out one of our excellent books on eclipses: Totality: Eclipses of the Sun and Eclipse!: The What, Where, When, Why, and How Guide to Watching Solar and Lunar Eclipses.

Spring Break

This week is Spring Break for Addison's public schools. The library has a number of activities to keep you from spring break boredom!

Jurisprudence

As juries are in today's news, now is a good time to read a great book about jury duty, A Trial by Jury by D. Graham Burnett.

Getting your reserve and overdue notices via email

One service few of our customers know about is that you can get notice of your reserve and overdues via email. For more information, ask at the checkout desk.

Thank you!

To the Village of Addison for approving an additional $2 million for our building project on Monday night. This brings the total contribution by the village to $13 million. The village is using local sales tax revenue for their contribution.

For those who might be wondering when the new building might be completed, we're currently estimating that the new building will be open in the fall of 2008. Construction should start in early 2007.

Election!

Yesterday was the primary here in Illinois. The DuPage County Election Commission website will keep you updated with the latest election results.

The library has some excellent books about the history of elections including Jefferson's Second Revolution: The Election Crisis of 1800 and the Triumph of Republicanism and Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876.

St. Patrick's Day

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day and the library has lots of items to help you celebrate.

We have Irish cookbooks, Irish music, Irish mysteries and so much more!

Ash Wednesday

Today is the day some Christians celebrate Ash Wednesday. The library has a large religion section with lots of books about Christianity such as Keith Ward's Christianity: A Short Introduction.

Play ball!

Baseball spring training is here! The Addison library has lots of great baseball books. One recent favorite is Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.

Welcome to our new 'blog!

Check here for the latest at the Addison Public Library!