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 Issue 4, July 2005 |
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![The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries. [Descartes]](www_graphics_srl/basics/home_page_quote.gif) |
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New Fiction
New Non-Fiction
New Audio Books
New DVD's
Contact UsPhone: 687-7023 E-Mail: Webmaster BOOKLISTS Every month in this spot we will feature reading suggestions. These will include historic fiction, science fiction, mysteries, and more. Many of these titles can be found in the Mid Hudson Library System Western Historic Fiction Western Fiction, Mostly 19th Century: Allende, Isabelle - Daughter of Fortune. Blakely, Mike - Shortgrass Song. Blevins, Win - Stone Song. Bristow, Gwen - Calico Palace Capps, Benjamin - Woman Chief. Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop. Coldsmith, Don - Trail of the Spanish Bit. and rest of series. Collins, Natalie R - Wives & Sisters. Doig, Ivan - Dancing at the Rascal Fair. Edgerton, Clyde - Redeye. Fergus, Jim - 1000 White Women Freeman, Judith - Red Water. Galloway, David D - Tamsen. Gilchrist, Micaela - The Good Journey. Guthrie, A. B., Jr - The Big Sky. Harrigan, Stephen - The Gates of the Alamo. Henry, Will - The Gates of the Mountains. Holloland, Cecelia - Railroad Schemes. Houston, James D - Snow Mountain Passage. Jackson, Helen Hunt - Ramona. Johnston, Terry. C - Seize the Sky. Jones, Douglas C - Season of Yellow Leaf. Jones, Robert F - Deadville. Maino, Jeanette Gould. Left Hand Turn. (Donner Party) McCord, Christian - Across the Shining Mountains. McMurtry, Larry - Lonesome Dove. McMurtry, Larry - Berrybender Narratives, beginning with Sin Killer. Michener, James - Centennial. Michener, James - Texas. Paine, Lauran - Cache Canon. Parry, Richard - The Winter Wolf. Recknor, Ellen - Prophet Annie. Riefe, Barbara - Against All Odds. Rolvaag, O - Giants in the Earth. Ross, Dana Fuller - Wagon's West series, beginning with Independence Smiley, Jane - The All True Travels and Adventures of Lydie Newton. Stegner, Wallace - Angle of Repose. Swarthout, Glendon - The Homesman. Turner, Nancy - These Is My Words. Wheeler, Richard S - Sierra. Western Fiction, 20th Century: Dallas, Sandra - Persian Pickle Club. Enger, Leif - Peace Like a River. Haruf, Kent - Eventide; Plainsong. Maclean, Norman - A River Runs Through It. Murkoff, Bruce - Waterborne. Spragg, Mark - An Unfinished Life. Stegner, Wallace - Big Rock Candy Mountain. Udall, Brady - The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint. Wood, Jane Roberts - The Train to Estelline. Western Romance: Bonner, Cindy - Lily. Brown, Carolyn - Promised Land" series (Willow) DeBlasis, Celeste - The Tiger's Woman. Garwood, Julie - One White Rose, One Red Rose, One Pink Rose, For the Roses Miller, Linda Lael - Springwater" series (Savanna, Rachel, Jessica, Miranda) Osborne, Maggie - I Do, I Do, I Do; A Stranger's Wife; Silver Linings. Wood, Barbara - Domina. Compiled by the subscribers of the Fiction_L mailing list. |
UPCOMING PROGRAMSCajun Music and DanceSaturday, July 16, 7pm Marbletown Community CenterJoin us as we transform the Community Center to a Louisiana dancehall with Cleoma’s Ghost who will return to Stone Ridge for a traditional Cajun “Faisdodo.” Buffy Lewis (guitar and vocals) will kick things off with a dance lesson for beginners at 7 pm (no partner necessary) and then Roger Weiss will join Buffy on fiddle and vocals, to dish up an evening of beautiful harmonies, sassy two-steps and heartbreaking waltzes, guaranteed to delight dancers and non-dancers alike. “Roger and Buffy played a concert for us last summer,” said Library Director Jody Ford. “It was so much fun that we invited them back. Dancers and non dancers will surely enjoy this special event.” “Cajun music expresses so much about a people who have suffered and found refuge in music and dance,” said Lewis. “It has an amazing vibrancy as well as an intense emotionality, juxtaposing heartbreaking lyrics (sung in French) with upbeat music that begs to be danced to.” “People who have never heard Cajun music before are captivated by something they feel in their souls,” said Weiss. The music helps “let the good times roll, and provides a chance to blow off steam,” he added. Cajuns are French émigrés to Nova Scotia, who were expelled by the British in 1755 for refusing to swear allegiance to the Crown. They made their way to the bayous of Louisiana where they had to struggle to keep their culture alive. Music played a key role in saving that culture, and the French language—once banished from classrooms—is undergoing a renaissance. “The phenomenon of Cajun and Zydeco music in New York and the Northeast is exploding,” said Library Program Manager Diane DeChillo. These music and dance forms are an integral part of the folk and traditional genres that are enjoying such a revival in this area today.” Cleoma’s Ghost was born from the Cajun music experiences of Roger and Buffy over an eight year period, a shared musical delving into that “gumbo of styles—blues, polyrhythmic African beats, the hills of Appalachia.” In addition to appearing locally in clubs and for private parties and weddings, they play a faisdodo in Woodstock on the first Friday of every month at the Colony Café. (The translation of faisdodo is, “go to sleep.” Mothers would bring their babies to the dancehalls, and nurse them to sleep). Weiss and Lewis have traveled extensively in Southwest Louisiana to tap the roots of the music, studying with the old as well as new generation of Cajun musicians. they released their first CD, Mon Couer est Avec Toi, on Swallow Records in 2004. For more information, visit cleomasghost.com. Tickets are $5.00 per person at the door for this Library fundraiser. Refreshments will be served. Laissez les bon temps rouler! Knitting Group Saturdays, July 2, 9, 16, 23 & 30 10am-Noon Our knitting group is now meeting every Saturday in the Library's Reference room. All levels are welcome. RECIPE OF THE MONTH Barbecued Butterflied Lamb From Taster's Choice, by The Stone Ridge Library Cookbook Committee. Recipe by the Cookbook Committee.
In a large bowl, combine all ingredients and pour over lamb. Cover and let marinate overnight, turning often. Grill lamb over hot coals approximately 30 minutes. Truly a good way to enjoy summer lamb. To place a hold on this book, or any other item in the Mid-Hudson Catalog click http://gigcat.midhudson.org/ Don't like fiction? Check out these real-life storiesOn the Shelves with James Cosgrove Poughkeepsie Journal 6.5.05 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. I'm not sure whether "real men don't read fiction" but while trying to recruit males to join book discussion groups, I've learned more than a few prefer nonfiction to fiction. These men tell me they prefer reading about actual events to "made-up stories." In deference to fathers this month, and all other nonfiction-reading folks, I offer a few titles to consider. Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation, by Peter Bernstein; Norton. Although I do enjoy reading novels, I must admit nonfiction sometimes does read stranger than fiction. As the subtitle indicates, Bernstein not only tells the incredible engineering story of the canal, but he sets it in the context of the political and economic environment of a new nation. George Washington believed that our very survival depended on creating a link to the West. He and others almost went broke speculating on the Potomac River becoming the Patowmack Canal. Thomas Jefferson found the idea of an Erie Canal "a little short of madness." The schemes and motivations of early entrepreneurs and federal and state politicians provide entertaining reading and leaves us amazed that this wonder of the world, now largely forgotten, was built at all. That America had no trained civil engineers when construction began is one of the stunning facts that illuminate this well-researched history. Never Coming to a Theater Near You: A Celebration of a Certain Kind of Movie, by Kenneth Turan; Public affairs. Turan, a Los Angeles Times film critic, assembles a list of fine films that may have flown under your radar the first time they were released. This book flew under my radar when it was released last fall. Turan provides commentary for these films that he considers to have been undeservedly kicked to the curb by Hollywood. According to Turan, that large movie studios design new films to make back their investment during the first week of release, if they don't, the hype is withdrawn and they are considered failures. As expected, many of the entries are independently produced films. Use it as a handy guide to find interesting movies at your local video store or online mail service. Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak and Joy, Inside the Mind of a Manager, by Buzz Bissinger; Houghton Mifflin. One of the many baseball books released this spring to herald the new season, I recommend Bissinger's "Three Nights in August," Bissinger, who wrote "Friday night Lights," an account of a Texas high school football team, chose St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa as his current subject. Starting with LaRussa's biography and baseball pedigree, Bissinger, who was given full access to the St. Louis Cardinal organization in 2003, focuses on a three-game series against the Chicago Cubs to highlight the challenges a modern baseball manager faces and the management style LaRussa employs. Bissinger's writing style creates a good deal of suspense, detailed information and great storytelling that just might get a die-hard nonfiction reader interested in trying some fiction on for size. James Cosgrove is the director of the Marlboro Free Library, a public library serving the citizens of the Marlboro Central School District. He is the chair of the Mid-Hudson Library System's Central Library/Collection Development Advisory Committee, and serves on the Southeastern New York Library Resource Council's Regional Interlibrary Loan Committee. Can't decide what to read? Visit http://midhudson.org/read.htm for links to lists of titles that might attract your interest. |
GREAT WEBSITE !At maps.google.com you can find your house, zoom in or out, click and drag to see the adjacent area, find local businesses and get directions. But the best feature is the satellite image, you can toggle back and forth between a regular map and an aerial image. Google is promissing many more improvements to the site, so keep checking on it. Loud, Proud, Unabridged: It Is Too Reading!The New York Times - 5.26.05 - By AMY HARMON JIM HARRIS, a lifelong bookworm, cracked the covers of only four books last year. But he listened to 54, all unabridged. He listened to Harry Potter and "Moby-Dick," Don DeLillo and Stephen King. He listened in the car, eating lunch, doing the dishes, sitting in doctors' offices and climbing the stairs at work. "I haven't read this much since I was in college," said Mr. Harris, 53, a computer programmer in Memphis. And yes, he does consider it "reading." "I dislike it when I meet people who feel listening is inferior," he said. Fortunately for Mr. Harris, the ranks of the reading purists are dwindling. Fewer Americans are reading books than a decade ago, according to the National Endowment for the Arts, but almost a third more are listening to them on tapes, CD's and iPods. For a growing group of devoted listeners, the popularity of audio books is redefining the notion of reading, which for centuries has been centered on the written word. Traditionally, it is also an activity that has required one's full attention. But audio books, once seen as a kind of oral CliffsNotes for reading lightweights, have seduced members of a literate but busy crowd by allowing them to read while doing something else. Digital audio that can be zapped onto an MP3 player is also luring converts. The smallest iPod, the Shuffle, holds roughly four books; the newest ones include a setting that speeds up the narration without raising the pitch. "I wish I had had this feature while listening to 'Crime and Punishment,' " said Lee Kyle, 41, a math teacher in Austin, Tex., who now listens in bed instead of reading. It's more relaxing, he said, and he doesn't have to bother his wife with the light. Audio books, which still represent only about 3 percent of all books sold, do not exactly herald a return to the Homeric tradition. But their growing popularity has sparked debate among readers, writers and cultural critics about the best way to consume literature. "I think every writer would rather have people read books, committed as we are to the word," said Frank McCourt, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his memoir, "Angela's Ashes." "But I'd rather have them listen to it than not at all." To make the audio version of his books more tolerable, Mr. McCourt said, he insists on narrating them himself. "Actors are always doing this phony breathing," Mr. McCourt said. Among the questions facing audio book connoisseurs are: Which is better suited to the format, fiction or nonfiction? Can a bad narrator ruin a great book? If you've listened to a book, have you really "read" it? Rich Cohen, the author of "Tough Jews," has found short stories are best while walking his dog on the Upper West Side, because of the likelihood of distraction, and the difficulty in rewinding. "Sometimes your dog will attack another dog, and you're pulled completely out of the book," explained Mr. Cohen, who has experimented with various genres since discovering he could purchase audio books from Apple's online music store. A book about string theory by the physicist Brian Greene proved entirely unable to hold Mr. Cohen's auditory attention, as did "Hamlet." With "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," however, he had the multitasking satisfaction of digesting a book he had always been curious about but did not want to devote the time to actually reading. David Lipsky, another New York writer and frequent dog walker, said he often "shuffles" music on his iPod, and has similarly come to enjoy jumping among chapters of, say, James Joyce, Martin Amis and Al Franken as he circles the block. Charlton Heston reading "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" proved a dud, even if it was sandwiched between Jeremy Irons reading "Lolita" and Robert Frost reading his own poems. "You keep waiting for him to announce that Kilimanjaro's been taken over by damned dirty talking apes," Mr. Lipsky said. "Now it's hard to read 'Kilimanjaro' without hearing Heston's voice." The novelist Sue Miller said she prefers Henry James on tape because the narrator has untangled the complex sentences for her. But she found D. H. Lawrence unbearable. His notoriously repetitive prose "doesn't lend itself to an auditory experience," she said. Some critics are dismayed at the migration to audio books. The virtue of reading, they say, lies in the communion between writer and reader, the ability to pause, to reread a sentence, and yes, read it out loud - to yourself. Listeners are opting for convenience, they say, at the expense of engaging the mind and imagination as only real reading can. "Deep reading really demands the inner ear as well as the outer ear," said Harold Bloom, the literary critic. "You need the whole cognitive process, that part of you which is open to wisdom. You need the text in front of you." The comedian Jon Stewart, an author of the mock history textbook "America (The Book)," opens the audio version by lampooning the format. "Welcome, nonreader," he intones. Listeners are advised that the listening experience "should not be considered a replacement for watching television." Audio book aficionados face disdain from some book lovers, who tend to rhapsodize about the smell and feel of a book in their hands and the pleasure of being immersed in a story without having to worry about the car in the next lane. Gloria Reiss, 51, of St. Louis, said her officemates correct her when she mentions having read a book. "They'll say, 'You didn't read it, you just listened to it,' " said Ms. Reiss, who switched to audio when her two jobs and three poodles made it hard to find time to curl up on the couch. Recently a colleague refused her urging to take a Stephanie Plum mystery along on a long drive. "She goes, 'I like to read my books,' " Ms. Reiss said, "like that makes her better than me." Most audio book lovers argue that one is not better than the other. Some say it was not until they started listening to books that they realized how much of the language they were skimming over in the books they read on paper. And then there is the sheer pleasure of being read to. Ms. Reiss's husband, Ken, says he remembers more of books that he hears, perhaps because he's simply wired that way. Levi Wallach, 36, of Vienna, Va., says he's a slow reader, "so it's much more efficient for me to listen while I do other things." Libraries say the growth in circulation of audio books is outpacing overall circulation. Book clubs are increasingly made up of hybrid listener-readers, and the market for children's audio books is booming. Sales at Audible, the leading provider of digital audio books, surged from $5 million in 2001 to $34 million last year. Half of its subscribers are new to audio books. Still, a certain stigma lingers. Dan Barber, a chef, said he felt compelled to ask Louis Menand's permission to listen to his book, "The Metaphysical Club," on CD when Mr. Menand dined at his Greenwich Village restaurant, Blue Hill, last month. Mr. Menand assented, but his dining companion, Adam Gopnik, the New Yorker writer, looked put off, Mr. Barber said. Or maybe Mr. Barber was projecting his own ambivalence about audio, as evidenced by his consumption of Mr. Gopnik's anthology, "Paris to the Moon." "I read parts of it on tape," Mr. Barber said. "But I also read the whole book - what do you call it? Traditional-style?" John Hamburg, 34, notes that audio books can be shared in a way that printed ones cannot. Mr. Hamburg and Mr. Barber, high school friends, were both sobbing while listening to "Tuesdays With Morrie" during a drive, Mr. Hamburg said. Listening to authors read their own memoirs introduces an intimacy that cannot be achieved without the audio, Mr. Hamburg said. He found Bill Clinton's thick autobiography a bit daunting, for instance, but said listening to it "was kind of like being with an old friend." Mr. Hamburg, a screenwriter, says he limits his audio habit to biography, eschewing fiction out of respect for authors whom he imagines did not intend for their creative work to be read "when you're doing 30 minutes on your elliptical trainer." But when he came across the audio version of "The Kite Runner" online, it was hard to resist downloading it. The hardcover version of the novel, a coming-of-age story set in Afghanistan, has been sitting unopened on Mr. Hamburg's night table for weeks. It's still there. |
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