January 2008

New Fiction

• Beethoven was One-Sixteenth Black and Other Stories - Nadine Gordimer
  
• Chase, The - Clive Cussler
  
• Cheating at Canasta - William Trevor
  
• Double Cross - James Patterson
  
• Fall of Troy, The - Peter Ackroyd
  
• Hearts of Horses, The - Molly Gloss
  
• Lord John and the Hand of Devils - Diana Gabaldon
  
• Love Over Scotland - Alexander McCall Smith
  
• Mr. Darcy's Diary - Amanda Grange
  
• New Year's Quilt, The: an Elm Creek Quilts novel - Jennifer chiaverini
  
• Rumpole Misbehaves - John Mortimer
  
• Through the Children's Gate: a Home in New York - Adam Gopnik
  
• Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson
  
• Why Mermaids Sing: a Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery - C.S. Harris

New Non-Fiction

• BOOM! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today - Tom Brokaw
  
• Born Standing Up: a Comic's Life - Steve Martin
  
• Come to Think of It: notes on the turn of the millennium - Daniel Schorr
  
• Consume Reports Buying Guide 2008
  
• Elements of Cooking, The: Translating the Chrf's Craft for Every Kitchen - Michael Ruhlman
  
• Getting Started Knitting Socks - Ann Budd
  
• Good Dog. Stay. - Anna Quindlen
  
• How to Make Books: Fold, Cut & Stitch Your Way to a One-of-a-Kind Book - Esther K. Smith
  
• Howl: a Collection of the Best Contemporary Dog Wit - editors of The Bark
  
• Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Depression - Mildred Armstrong Kalish
  
• Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain - Oliver Sacks
  
• Nigella Express: 130 Recipes for Good Food, Fast - Nigella Lawson
  
• Nine, The: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court - Jeffrey Toobin
  
• Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh, The: a Woman in World History - Linda Colley
  
• Robert Moses and the Modern City: the Transformation of New York - edited by Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson
  
• Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter - Phoebe Damrosch
  
• Soft + Simple Knits for Little Ones - Heidi Boyd
  
• Tenth Muse, The: My Life in Food - Judith Jones
  
• World Almanac and Book of Facts 2008, The
  

New Audios

All CDs unless noted

• Beethoven was One-Sixteenth Black and Other Stories - Nadine Gordimer
  
• Love Over Scotland - Alexander McCall Smith
  
• Now & Then - Robert B. Parker
  
• Road, The - Cormac McCarthy
  
• Strong Poison - Dorothy L. Sayers
  
• Stumbling on Happiness - Daniel Gilbert
  
• Taste of Conquest, The: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice - Michael Krondl
  
• Then She Found Me - Eleanor Lipmans

New DVD's

• Adam Bede
  
• An Angel for May
  
• Animal House
  
• Arms and the Man
  
• Ballykissangel, series 1-5
  
• Barchester Chronicles, The
  
• Bostonians, The
  
• Bourne Ultimatum
  
• Bush's Brain
  
• Clifford the Big Red Dog: Clifford Saves the Day! and Clifford's Fluffiest
  
• Conduct Unbecoming
  
• Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course, The
  
• David Copperfield
  
• Desperate Housewives, the Complete Third Season
  
• Devil's Disciple, The
  
• Early Summer
  
• Friend Cleo
  
• Gleaners and I, The
  
• Good Stuff: Big Joe Fitz and the Blues Break, The
  
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
  
• Heartbreak House
  
• Maborosi
  
• Millionairess, The
  
• Mrs Warren's Profession
  
• Once
  
• Our Mutual Friend
  
• Pallisers, The, complete collection
  
• Piglet's BIG Movie
  
• A Place in the Sun
• Pygmalion
  
• Set-Up, The
  
• Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe
  
• Simpsons Movie, The
  
• Tigger Movie, The
  
• Twilight Samurai, The
  
• Velazquez
  
• Way We Live Now, The
  
• Where the Wild Things Are
  

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BOOKLISTS

Every month in this spot we feature reading suggestions. These include historic fiction, science fiction, mysteries, and more. Many of these titles can be found in the Mid Hudson Library System.

Future Classics

Novels written since 1950 that people will be reading a hundred years from now.

• Allende, Isabel - House of the Spirits
  
• Allison, Dorothy - Bastard out of Carolina
  
• Atwood, Margaret - The Handmaid's Tale
  
• Bradbury, Ray - Fahrenheit 451
  
• Burgess, Anthony - A Clockwork Orange
  
• Burroughs, William S. – Naked Lunch
  
• Capote, Truman - In Cold Blood
  
• Chabon, Michael - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
  
• Cunningham, Michael - The Hours
  
• Doctorow, E. L. – Ragtime
  
• Eugenides, Jeffrey - Middlesex
  
• Frazier, Charles - Cold Mountain
  
• Gaines, Ernest - Lesson Before Dying
  
• Garcia Marquez, Gabriel - 100 Years of Solitude
  
• Golden, Arthur - Memoirs of a Geisha
  
• Greenberg, Joanne - I Never Promised you a Rose Garden
  
• Guterson, David - Snow Falling on Cedars
  
• Haruf, Kent - Eventide
  
• Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
  
• Hemingway, Ernest – The Old Man and the Sea
  
• Irving, John – The World According to Garp
  
• Juster, Norman - The Phantom Tollbooth
  
• Kerouac, Jack - On the Road
  
• Kesey, Ken - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
  
• Kingsolver, Barbara - The Poisonwood Bible
  
• Lahiri, Jhumpa – The Namesake
  
• Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
  
• LeGuin, Ursula - The Left Hand of Darkness
  
• Lessing, Doris - The Golden Notebook
  
• Lewis, C. S. - The Chronicles of Narnia
  
• Mailer, Norman – Executioner’s Song
  
• McCarthy, Cormac - All the Pretty Horses
  
• McCarthy, Cormac - The Road
  
• McEwan, Ian - Atonement
  
• McMurtry, Larry - Leaving Cheyenne
  
• McMurtry, Larry - Lonesome Dove
  
• Morrison, Toni - Beloved
  
• Morrison, Toni - The Bluest Eye
  
• Munro, Alice - Lives of Girls and Women
  
• Niffenegger, Audrey - The Time Traveler's Wife
  
• O'Brien, Tim - The Things they Carried
  
• Pamuk, Orphan – My Name is Red
  
• Pasternak, Boris – Dr. Zhivago
  
• Patchett, Ann - Bel Canto
  
• Proulx, Anne - The Shipping News
  
• Pullman, Philip – The Golden Compass series
  
• Rowling, J. K. – The Harry Potter series
  
• Russell, Mary Doria - The Sparrow
  
• Salinger, J.D. - Catcher in the Rye
  
• Sebold, Alice - The Lovely Bones
  
• Shaara, Michael - Killer Angels
  
• Smiley, Jane - A Thousand Acres
  
• Smith, Zadie - On Beauty
  
• Stegner, Wallace - Crossing to Safety
  
• Styron, William – Sophie’s Choice
  
• Tan, Amy - Joy Luck Club
  
• Tyler, Anne - Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
  
• Updike, John - Rabbit Tetralogy
  
• Vonnegut, Kurt - Slaughterhouse Five
  
• Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
  
• Wolfe, Tom – The Right Stuff
  
• Yann, Martel - Life of Pi
  
• Zusak, Markus - Book Thief
  

Ulster County
Info Portal

A number of exciting new databases are available through the Ulster County Info Portal. These include the Historical New York Times which provides coverage from September 1851 to December 2001 and Net Library Downloadable Audiobooks. Others include Tumblebooks, Rosetta Stone and Gale Testing. Two databases are highlighted below.

GALE Testing and Education Reference Center With Career Search module- This offers practice tests to prepare for the GED, SAT, ACT, Civil Service, vocational & military tests. Also resources for making informed education decisions. more

The Rosetta Stone Online Language Learning Center - This site offers English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Greek and Russian. As children, we gradually learned our first language through a process of associating mental images with words or phrases, accompanied by complete immersion in our environment. This approach was simple because it was natural and allowed the brain to adapt to increasing complexity.

Rosetta Stone recreated this natural way of learning by developing a method that uses a computer to mimic the environment in which we learned our first language. We call this Dynamic ImmersionT. A simple, intuitive interface and advanced technology confirms learning at every step of the process by prompting you to make connections between images you already understand and the new language. You receive immediate feedback, which helps you to reinforce learning. This systematic structure builds from simple nouns and verbs to more complex concepts and phrases very quickly, helping you achieve your language-learning goals faster than you ever thought possible." more

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Tea Time Book Group

Wednesday, January 9th,
4pm in the Reference
Room

The selection this month is The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. The Red Tent is a reimagining of the female experience in biblical times.

Join us in the Reference Room for lively Discussion and light refreshments.

Books are available at the library.

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HOLMES & CO.
Mystery Lovers Book Group

Thursday, January 24,
4pm in the Reference Room

The selections for this meeting include two books: Two books: Red Harvest by Dashell Hammett and Thus was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell, and a short story: The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor - a Sherlock Holmes mystery - Arthur Conan Doyle

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Scrabble

Mondays, January 7, 14, 28

6-8pm in the
Reference Room

Scrabble players meet every Monday in the Library's Reference room. Newcomers are welcome!

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Knitting Group

Saturdays, January 5, 12, 19, 26
10am-noon

The Stone Ridge Library Knitters meet every Saturday morning from 10am - 12noon. All ages and experience levels can join us and drop-in knitters are also welcome. We each bring our own supplies and do our own work, but one of the best things about us is that whatever obstacle or confusion you might encounter, you're likely to receive as much comment and advice as you need to get where you're going with a project. Some of us can help toward the repair of knitted or crocheted items too.

The group is sociable and lively, and our conversation and sharing is just as wide-ranging as our projects. We are especially interested in the UFOs (Un-Finished Objects) that members bring in and love the show and tell of projects under way and being finished, new or old, simple or complex. Though knitting is our love and mainstay, we graciously adapt ourselves to stray crocheters and those of us who simply must take to the hook when the spirit moves. We share articles, magazines and books on knitting. Donations of yarn to the Library get made up into items for sale at the Library Fair and during the winter holidays for the benefit of the Library. Some of us also knit things for local hospitals or for the U.S. troops.

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ON THE SHELVES

Poughkeepsie Journal 12.2.07
On the Shelves with Matt Pfisterer

These scandalous titles are celebrity-lovers' dreams

On the Shelves is a monthly column by a rotating list of mid-Hudson Valley library directors who comment on notable books coming to your local public library.

Your local library is the best place to find an incredible selection of contemporary and classic literature, including award-winning titles from around the world.

Did you know your local library is also a great place to indulge your passion for provocative and sensational titles ripped from the headlines? Check out these books which may not impress your English professor, but will give you plenty to talk about around the water cooler:

Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Me, by Pattie Boyd; Harmony Books

Pattie Boyd was a British model and actress of the 1960s and muse to legendary rockers George Harrison and Eric Clapton. Boyd met Harrison on the set of A Hard Day's Night. The two were married in 1966 which inspired Harrison to write "Something," which Frank Sinatra described as one of the greatest love songs ever written.

Unfortunately, the two would not live happily ever after as Harrison engaged in a succession of infidelities, most notably with Beatles drummer Ringo Starr's wife Maureen, and Boyd began a passionate affair with Eric Clapton, inspiring him to pen the classic rockers "Layla," "Bell-Bottom Blues" and "Wonderful Tonight."

Celebrity Detox: The Fame Game, by Rosie O'Donnell; Grand Central Publishing

O'Donnell, who recently ended her stint on The View, reflects on her childhood and career up to and including her tumultuous departure from the daytime show.

O'Donnell calls co-host Barbara Walters a liar who failed to come to her defense during her infamous on-air feud with Donald Trump, and goes on to describe Walters, 78, as being "too old" to handle the demands of the television program. Rosie also dishes mightily against Trump whom she describes as "totally creepy," and "sadistic in a deeply disturbing way."

The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, by Nikki Sixx; Pocket Books

Nikki Sixx (born Frank Carlton Serafino Feranna Jr.) is the bass player and lead songwriter for the notorious heavy metal band Motley Crue, which has sold more than 45 million records worldwide.

The book is a series of journal entries from 1986 (including one entry where he describes overdosing and being left to die in a trash dumpster by a drug dealer) along with present-day commentary about his bandmates, friends, ex-lovers, caretakers, business associates and family who offer commentary about the specific passages. Sixx presents a cautionary tale vividly describing the dangers of aspiring to a life of "sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll."

If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer, by the Goldman Family; Beaufort Books

O.J. Simpson's "hypothetical" confession in which he describes how he might have conducted the murders was set to be published by Harper Books. A Florida bankruptcy court awarded the publishing rights to the Goldman family to partially fulfill the unpaid civil judgment against Simpson, which stands in excess of $38 million. According to the publisher, a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to the Ron Goldman Foundation for Justice.

Matt Pfisterer is the director of the Grinnell Library, a public library founded in 1867 that serves residents of the Town of Wappinger, Village of Wappingers Falls and the surrounding vicinity. He serves as 2007-08 chair of the Dutchess County Public Library Director's Association and is the moderator of Grinnell Library's Readers Rendezvous book discussion group.

On the Shelves is a monthly column by a rotating list of mid-Hudson Valley library directors who comment on notable books coming to your local public library.

Can't decide on what to read? Visit
Mid Hudson for links to lists of titles that might attract your interest.

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GREAT WEBSITES!

Comedy Central's Indecision 2008

A humorous take on the 2008 presidential election. Features video clips of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's interviews with 2008 presidential candidates and Colbert's candidacy announcement, humorous candidate profiles, and a blog. From Comedy Central. more

I Can't Believe
It's Vegan

Listings of brand name food items that do not contain animal products, including breakfast cereals, beverages, snacks, condiments, baked goods, refrigerated and frozen foods, baking mixes and ingredients, and pantry staples. From People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). more

PC Magazine: Security

Collection of product profiles and reviews for computer security software and hardware. Browse by price range, company, or categories such as anti-spyware, anti-virus, encryption, and parental control. From PC Magazine. more

College of Cook Book Knowledge

Collection of material relating to 20th century American cookbooks. Features illustrated publishing histories of the "Joy of Cooking" (including the 1931 self-published first edition) and "Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book," and listings of several Time-Life cookbook sets. Also includes a humorous presentation about the fictional "College of Cook Book Knowledge," which was allegedly "burned to the ground by zealots from a nearby French cooking school." From a bookseller. more Rare Books: The Cookery Exhibit Click on the images of book title pages to find text excerpts and recipes from historical cookbooks. Includes books such as "The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy" (1747), "American Cookery" (1812), and first editions of "The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book" (1896) and "The Joy of Cooking" (1931). From the Richard L. D. & Marjorie J. Morse Department of Special Collections, Kansas State Libraries. more

Virtual Finland: Independence Anniversary Year

This 2007 presentation celebrates the 90th anniversary of Finland becoming an independent state in December 1917. Articles describe Finland's road to independence and celebrations in the independence anniversary year. Includes photos and a link to a site devoted to the 90th Finland independence anniversary. From the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. more Finland 1917-2007: The Finnish Indepen- dence in Statistics "Through the 12 months of the 90th anniversary year of Finnish independence [2007], Statistics Finland will publish on this website examples of what the development of our society and its current situation look like in the light of statistics." Some of the themes explored in this presentation include the industrial structure, energy, books and publishing, villa ownership, education, and telecommunications. In English and Finnish. From Statistics Finland, "one of Finland's oldest government agencies." more

Sharpbrains: Your Brain Fitness Center

This website features links to articles on topics of brain research and operation such as mental exercise, stress management, improving memory, nutrition, and workforce training and leadership. Also includes a blog, newsletter, and glossary. You can use the "Teasers" puzzles on the site to help keep mentally fit. From a consulting company promoting brain health and fitness. more

The Dalai Lama

Background article about the Dalai Lama, who is "the head monk of Tibetan Buddhism and traditionally has been responsible for the governing of Tibet, until the Chinese government took control in 1959." Includes discussion of the traditions associated with the selection process for a new Dalai Lama, a profile of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, and links to related news and coverage of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism. From the British Broadcasting Corporation. more

National Response Center

This U.S. Coast Guard center serves as "the sole national point of contact for reporting all oil, chemical, radiological, biological, and etiological discharges into the environment anywhere in the United States and its territories." The center's website contains background on the response system, summaries of significant environmental and terrorist incidents reported to the center (back to 2004), incident statistics (including by type and by cause, back to 1991), and related documents and data. more

Social Explorer

This site "provides easy access to demo- graphic information about the United States, from 1940 to 2000," by featuring "thousands of maps and hundreds of reports with thousands of variables." Includes interactive census maps (showing population, age, race, occupation, and other factors) and related reports. Additional features are available for a fee. more

Jane Austen's World

Collection of links to material related to early 19th-century novelist Jane Austen and her life and times. Includes links to full text of her novels, material about film adaptations, culture and fashion of the Regency Era, and academic articles. Also includes links to blogs. From an enthusiast. more

Pew Research Center Topics: Publications on Election '08

Compilation of backgrounders, analysis, and other publications related to the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Some of the topics include debates, political endorsements, presidential primaries, religion, specific candidates, news coverage, and candidate websites. From the Pew Research Center. more University of Michigan Documents Center: Elections 2008 Extensive, annotated listing of websites related to the 2008 U.S. national election. Covers presidential and congressional candidates, debates, campaign finance, media coverage, advertising, policy issues (such as energy, gay marriage, and terrorism), elections and voting, and much more. Also includes relevant Library of Congress subject headings and keyword searching suggestions for databases and online search engines. Maintained by political science librarian Grace York and interns at the University of Michigan Library. more

The New York Times: Crosswords/Games

Free content from The New York Times includes a free weekly crossword puzzle from the online archive (updated every Monday), a daily sudoku puzzle, and articles about crossword puzzles, bridge, and chess. Also includes links to the Learning Network with crosswords for young solvers (with puzzles on topics such as American history, geography, and science), and a daily news quiz. Also includes links to related sites. Additional material is available for a fee. more

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Phone: 687-7023

E-Mail: Webmaster

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