April 2008

New Fiction

• A Prisoner of Birth - Jeffrey Archer
• The Silver Swan - Benjamin Black
• Tell Me, Pretty Maiden: a Molly Murphy Mystery
• Book of the Dead - Patricia Cornwell
• The Painter from Shanghai - Jennifer Cody Epstein      
• Keller Heat - Linda Fairstein
• The Janissary Tree; introducing Investigator Yashim - Jason Goodwin
• The Snake Stone: Investigator Yashim Returns - Jason Goodwin
• The Labrador Pact - Matt Haig
• The Invention of Everything Else - Samantha Hunt
• Compulsion - Jonathan Kellerman
• Remember Me? - Sophie Kinsella
• Change of Heart - Jodi Picoult
• Lush Life - Richard Price
• The Post Birthday World - Lionel Shriver
• Willing - Scott Spencer      
• Honor Thyself - Danielle Steel
• The Woman Who Wouldn't - Gene Wilder
• Watches of the Night - Sally Wright

New Non-Fiction

• How Can I Keep from Singing? The Ballad of Pete Seeger - David King Dunaway
• God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer - Bart D. Ehrman
• The Open Road: the Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama Pico Iyer
• Cake Art - Lindsay Kincaide
• The Complete Illustrated Guide to Stamp Collecting - Dr. James Mackay
• Guide to the State Parks of the United States - National Geographic
• The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad - John Stape
• The World That Made New Orleans: From Sp[anish Silver to Congo Square - Ned Sublette
• Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love and the Search for Home a memoir - Kim Sunee
• The War: An Intimate History 1942 - 1945 - Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns

New Audios

All CDs unless noted

• The Silver Swan - Benjamin Black
  
• The Rain Before it Falls - Jonathan Coe
  
• Founding Faith : Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America - Steven Waldman

New DVD's

• Atonement
• God Grew Tired of Us
  
• Into the Wild
  
• The Kite Runner
  
• No Country for Old Men
  

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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.

Notable Books

2008 top picks of outstanding books for the general reader.

"The titles are selected for their significant contribution to the expansion of knowledge and for the pleasure they can provide to adult readers." From the American Library Association.

Notable books 2007

FICTION

Bloom, Amy, Away

Carlson, Ron, Five Skies

Chabon, Michael, The Yiddish Policeman's Union

Clarke, Brock, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

Clinch, John, Finn: a novel

Englander, Nathan, The Ministry of Special Cases

Holthe, Tess Uriza, The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes

Jones, Lloyd, Mister Pip

McEwan, Ian, On Chesil Beach

Malouf, David, Complete Stories

Pettersen, Per, Out Stealing Horses

Trevor, William, Cheating at Canasta

NONFICTION

Ackerman, Diane, The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story

Angier, Natalie, The Canon

Ayres, Ian, Super Crunchers

Godwin, Peter, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun

Groopman, Jerome, How Doctors Think

Howell, Georgina, Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations

Isaacson, Walter, Einstein: His Life and Universe

Kingsolver, Barbara, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Margonelli, Lisa, Oil on the Brain

Weisman, Alan, The World Without Us

POETRY

Bosselaar, Laure-Anne, A New Hunger

Kennedy, X.J., In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus

Notable books 2006

FICTION

Bates, Judy Fong - Midnight at the Dragon Café

Foer, Jonathan Safran - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Gaitskill, Mary - Veronica

Ghosh, Amitav - The Hungry Tide

Ishiguro, Kazuo - Never Let Me Go

Iweala, Uzodinma - Beasts of No Nation

McCarthy, Cormac - No Country for Old Men

McEwan, Ian - Saturday

Murakami, Haruki - Kafka on the Shore

Robinson, Marilynne - Gilead

Urrea, Luis Alberto - The Hummingbird's Daughter

NONFICTION

Alexievich, Svetlana - Voices from Chernobyl

Anonymous - A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City

Bordewich, Fergus - Bound for Canaan: The Under-ground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America.

Cathcart, Brian - The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the International Race to Split the Atom

Diamond, Jared M - Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Eichenwald, Kurt - Conspiracy of Fools

Lepore, Jill - New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan

Moorehead, Caroline - Human Cargo: A Journey among Refugees

Packer, George - The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq

Reiss, Tom - The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life

Reynolds, David S - John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

Walker, Stephen - Shockwave: Count-down to Hiroshima

Walls, Jeannette - The Glass Castle

POETRY

Alexander, Elizabeth - American Sublime

Dybeck, Stuart - Streets in Their Own Ink

Notable books 2005

FICTION

Barnes, Julian - The Lemon Table

Christensen, Lars Saabye - The Half Brother

De Bernières, Louis - Birds without Wings

Dybek, Stuart - I Sailed with Magellan

Khadra, Yasmina - The Swallows of Kabul

Mda, Zakes - The Madonna of Excelsior

Mitchell, David - Cloud Atlas

Munro, Alice - Runaway

Niemi, Mikael - Popular Music from Vittula

Roth, Philip - The Plot against America

Wolff, Tobias - Old School

NONFICTION

Chernow, Ron - Alexander Hamilton

Ehrlich, Paul R. and Ehrlich, Anne E. - One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future

Fischer, David Hackett - Washington's Crossing

Henig, Robin Marantz - Pandora's Baby: How the First Test Tube Babies Sparked the Reproductive Revolution

Hersh, Seymour M. - Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

Hughes, Robert - Goya

Kurlansky, Mark - 1968: The Year That Rocked the World

Lansky, Aaron - Outwitting History: How One Man Rescued a Million Books and Saved a Civilization

Moats, David - Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States - The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorists Attacks upon the United States.

Philbrick, Nathaniel - Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery: The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842

Sokolove, Michael - The Ticket Out: Darryl Strawberry and the Boys of Crenshaw

Vine, Phyllis - One Man's Castle: Clarence Darrow in Defense of the American Dream

POETRY

Giovanni, Nikki - The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni

Kooser, Ted - Delights and Shadows

Memoir Writing Workshop with Rosemary Deen

Saturdays, April12, 19
1:30 to 3PM
in the Library Reference Room.

Registration is requested; please call 687-8726, or drop in at the library. This popular spring workshop is led by educator, author and library trustee Rosemary Deen.

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Healing Touch Workshop

Wednesday, April 16,
6:30-8:30pm
in the Reference room

One Light Healing Touch is a unique, heart-centered approach toward health and healing, drawing from the Shamanic, Esoteric and Holistic traditions. In this training participants learn a myriad of self-healing practices and techniques to enhance one's immune system, clear emotional and physical blockages, increase understanding and awareness and bring greater balance to the body, mind and spirit. The One Light Healing Touch Energy workshop will be faciliated by Nancy Plumer.

Nancy Plummer is an intuitive energy healer, a certified One Light Healing Touch Master Practioner/Instructor and teaches Kripalu yoga. she teaches at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck. To register for this free workshop, please call Nancy directly at 687-2252.

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Tea Time Book Group

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

The selection this month is The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. This classic is about the glittering yet treacherous world of New York High Society in the early 20th century. Joseph Keefe, one of the founding faculty members of UCCC, will lead the discussion. Dr. Keefe received his BA at SUNY Albany, his MA at the University of Iowa, and his Ph.D. at Syracuse University. His area of special interest has been American Literature from approximately the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.

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

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HOLMES & CO.
Mystery Lovers Book Group

NOTE DATE CHANGE:
Thursday, April 24,
4pm in the Reference Room

The selections for this meeting include two books: Murder Duet: a Musical case by Batya Gur and Three Coffins by John Dickson Carr, and a short story: The Adventure opf the Copper Beeches - a Sherlock Holmes mystery by Arthur Conan Doyle

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Scrabble

Mondays, April 7, 14,
21, 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, April 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 3.2.08
On the Shelves with Ellen Tannenbaum

Selection of teen fiction deals with serious topics

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.

A 16-year-old leukemia patient with a bucket list, a family shadowed in mystery, an abusive stepfather threatening to destroy an immigrant family and a teenage drag queen trying to find his place in the world are just a few of the great stories told in some of last year's best teen fiction books.

Before I Die, by Jenny Downham; Random House Children's Books

In Jenny Downham's Before I Die, Tessa is a cancer patient given just a few months to live. Encouraged by her best friend, she creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies (including having sex and falling in love).

Throughout her adventures, Tessa's body increasingly fails her, leading to the expected ending. This is a book about courage, strong character, a passion for life and dignity in death.

Mistik Lake, by Martha Brooks; Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Odella is 17 years old, a year older than her mother was when she was part of the accident on Mistik Lake.

Now acting as a parent to her sisters in place of her runaway mother, Odella is forced to dig into her town's history and generations' worth of family secrets so she can finally put the past to rest and look toward a brighter future.

Touching Snow, by M. Sindy Felin; Simon & Schuster Children's

How can 14-year-old Karina possibly be expected to get good grades at school with all of the chaos going on at home?

She lives with her extended Haitian family seeking refuge in upstate New York. Her stepfather, "the daddy," brutally beats all of the children. Her mother is too afraid of everything to be responsible and the anxiety level of the house is constantly increasing. It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to a bully and Felin's novel shows its readers just how much.

Freak Show, by James St. James; Penguin Group (USA)

When Billy Bloom's parents ship him off to an exclusive private school in Florida, he ends up spending almost as much time getting beat up as he does designing his next outfit.

Suffice to say this school is not prepared for its new drag queen student. With an unbreakable spirit, Billy tries reaching out to his classmates time and again in an attempt to show them being an individual does not make one a freak show.

Ellen Tannenbaum is the director of the Dover Plains Library, a member of the Westchester Library Association's Board of Directors and co-chairwoman of the 2009 Anne Izard Storyteller's Choice Awards.

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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Barnes & Noble Bookfair to Benefit Local Libraries

During National Library Week, April 13 - 19, 2008, Barnes & Noble will hold a bookfair to benefit the libraries of the Mid-Hudson Library System. This means that when a customer presents a voucher at the point of purchase during that week 10% of their sale will be contributed to the Foundation for Hudson Valley Libraries to benefit member libraries. In addition the Kingston store has planned events - from author visits and signings, to events like the "Dangerous Boys Club: A Pirate's Life for Me!" and a Kingston high school choir performance. You can pick up vouchers at the Library or you can download vouchers here.

GREAT WEBSITES!

Eurocheapo

This site is a "budget travel resource aiming to help make travelers' time in Europe affordable and memorable. [It offers] professionally written budget travel advice and recommendations written by [a] team of seasoned travel writers," and has an emphasis on reviews of budget hotels. Also includes information about European transportation, city guides for over a dozen cities, and a budget travel blog. more

Factory Farming Campaign

Website for this Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) program that "works to ease the suffering of the billions of farm animals raised and killed each year." Includes description of campaigns (such as freeing egg-laying hens from battery cages), facts about farm animal behavior, news (such as about the February 2008 beef recall based on a HSUS investigation), and legislation and litigation updates. Includes troubling images and video clips. more

Wildflower Information.org

This site is "a resource for wildflower enthusiasts and gardeners." It features a history of wildflowers, material about common and botanical wildflowers names, and a wildflower information database, which is sortable by bloom color, height, soil preference, moisture needs, and other factors. Flower entries include images. "Authors, photographers, naturalists and many gardeners have contributed to the information and images." more

MIT Museum: Holography Collection

Overview of this museum collection that claims to be "the largest and most comprehensive collection of holograms in the world." Find and view hundreds of two-dimensional holographic images by searching "hologram" in the online database. Also includes a glossary defining different types of holograms -- such as computer-generated stereograms, embossed mylar foil holograms, and laser transmissions -- and support options such as film, hard plastic, and metal. From the MIT Museum. more

Women
in the Literary Marketplace, 1800-1900

"The books and letters in this exhibition present a cross section of writing by English women in the nineteenth century -- a period when women entered the literary marketplace in unprecedented numbers." Some of the exhibit topics include early role models, women poets, publishing, "new women" novels, and journalism. From the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. more

Discounts for the 50+ Crowd

This article lists money-saving ideas from the author of a book on senior discounts. Includes asking about the availability of discounts, making sure to ask before you pay, and carrying proof of age. It gives some example of types of companies and organizations that offer senior discounts, including hotels, airlines, and educational institutions. Provides related links and reading. From Dow Jones MarketWatch. more
Great Deals for "Seniors"
This article lists a selection of companies that offer senior discounts, which "are offered to those as young as 50." Listings, categorized by age milestone, include hotels, rental cars, airlines, movie theaters, restaurants, and other companies and services. Rates and offerings may change from the time the article was written in 2006, but it provides a good example of the types of places to inquire about senior discounts. From the website for SmartMoney magazine. more
The Fine Print: Senior Discounts
This article discusses the "[h]otels, tours, airlines, and attractions [that] target seniors with special offers, which unfortunately often turn out to be discounts in name only. The only way to figure out if you're getting a deal is to crunch the numbers." Topics include airfare, lodging, attractions (such as museums and historic sites), trains, travel insurance, and overseas car rental. From Budget Travel magazine. more

Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture

This exhibit approaches "hip hop culture through the lens of portraiture," presenting photography, painting, graffiti art, film, poetry, and installation art. Features images from the 2008 physical exhibit, audio of interviews with the artists and of the making of the graffiti mural in the exhibit, and a place for users to submit their own hip hop portraits. From the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. more

Svalbard Global Seed Vault

Background about this seed vault (opened in February 2008 in the permafrost in the mountains of Svalbard, Norway) "designed to store duplicates of seeds from seed collections from around the globe. ... If seeds are lost, e.g. as a result of natural disasters, war or simply a lack of resources, the seed collections may be reestablished using seeds from Svalbard." Features news releases, photos, and videos. From the Norway Ministry of Agriculture and Food. more

Get Energy Smart

This is a statewide network of partners who offer energy efficiency solutions that can help reduce your energy usage and costs. From the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. more

Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos

Collection of videos from March 2008 of "fiery explosions, beautiful reactions, and hilarious music ...[which] are great reasons to be excited about chemistry." Includes videos of a gummy bear reacting with potassium chlorate, how to make your own glow sticks, and more. Note: these experiments are meant only for trained professionals in labs. From Wired magazine. more

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area

Website for this recreation area that "stretches for hundreds of miles from Lees Ferry in Arizona to the Orange Cliffs of southern Utah, encompassing scenic vistas, geologic wonders, and a vast panorama of human history." The website features material for planning a visit, photos and webcams, and background about history and culture, and nature and science. Also includes park news. From the National Park Service (NPS). more
2008 High-Flow Experiment From Glen Canyon Dam
Details about the Department of the Interior approved experiment in early March 2008 to evaluate "the effectiveness of using high flows from Glen Canyon Dam to improve natural, recreational, and cultural resources in Grand Canyon National Park." Includes a FAQ, media releases, flow schedule, maps, water gage data for sites along the Colorado River, planning documents and fact sheets, and related material. From the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). more

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