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September 2009
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The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries. [Descartes] Photo of Library Exterior

New Fiction

  • The Merry Misogynist - Colin Cotterill
  • Once on a Moonlit Night - Dai Sijie
  • Storm Cycle - Iris Johansen
  • The Girl who Played with Fire - Stieg Larsson
  • Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann
  • The Defector - Daniel SilvA
  • Rhino Ranch - Larry McMurtry
  • Inherent Vice - Thomas Pynchon
  • Order in the Chaos: a Templar novel - Jack Whyte

New Non-Fiction

  • The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America - Douglas Brinkley
  • The Official SAT Study Guide - College Board
  • The Independent Investor's Handbook - Louis J Foreman
  • The Library: an Illustrated History - Stuart A.P. Murray
  • The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior - David Allen Sibley

New Audio Books

  • Sharpe's Battle - Bernard Cornwell
  • The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
  • Finger Lickin' Fifteen - Janet Evanovich
  • Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin
  • The Moon Looked Down - Dorothy Garlock
  • The Doors of Perception - Aldous Huxley
  • Dressed for Death - Donna Leon
  • Swann's Way, part 1 - Marcel Proust
  • The Maples Stories - John Updike

New DVD's

  • Adventureland - Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart
  • The Class - Laurent Cantent, director
  • Duplicity - Clive Owen
  • Flight of the Conchords, season 2
  • I Love You, Man - Paul Rudd
  • Lord of the Flies
  • One Day You'll Understand - Jeanne Moreau
  • Project Runway, season 5
  • The Simpsons, Season 12
  • The Soloist - Jamie Foxx, Robert Downey Jr.
  • Sunshine Cleaning - Amy Adams, Emily Blunt
  • Trouble the Water - New Orleans documentary

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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.

Visit the Library to pick up a copy of the booklist-of-the-month brochure and check out a book from our current display.

Read 'em
and Weep

Tearjerkers

  • Tuesday's With Morrie BIO Schw - Mitch Albom
  • Little Women - Louisa May Alcott,
  • Sweet Hereafter - Russell Banks,
  • Talk Before Sleep - Elizabeth Berg
  • Glass Lake – Maeve Binchy
  • The Education of Little Tree – Forrest Carter
  • Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
  • The Year of Magical Thinking 813.54 did - Joan Didion
  • The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • Magnificent Obsession – Lloyd Douglas
  • Horse Whisperer – Nicholas Evans
  • Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-stop Café – Fannie Flagg
  • Cold Mountain – Charles Frezier
  • Dragonfly in Amber – Diane Gabaldon
  • Old Yeller – Fred Gipson
  • Marley and Me 636.752 gro - John Grogan
  • Man Without a Country – Edward Hale
  • Goodbye, Mr. Chips – James Hilton
  • At Risk - Seventh Heaven - Turtle Moon – Alice Hoffman
  • The Knitting Circle - Ann Hood
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
  • A Prayer for Owen Meany, - World According to Garp – John Irving
  • Almost Paradise – Susan Isaacs
  • The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
  • To Dance With the White Dog – Terry Kay
  • Schindler's List – Thomas Keneally
  • In Another Country – Susan Kenney
  • Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
  • Duma Key - Stephen King
  • The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
  • To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
  • Where the Heart Is - Billie Letts
  • How Green Was My Valley – Richard Llewellyn
  • Hank and Chloe - Jo-Ann Mapson
  • Tim - Ladies of Missalonghi – The Thornbirds – Colleen McCullough
  • Atonement - Ian McEwan
  • Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
  • Terms of Endearment - Buffalo Girls – Larry McMurtry
  • Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
  • Beloved – Toni Morrison
  • Dewey: A Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World - Vicki Myron
  • The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
  • Black Water - Joyce Carol Oates
  • The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
  • Dive from Clausen's Pier - Ann Packer
  • Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas - James Patterson
  • Handle with Care, - My Sister's Keeper, - The Pact - Jodi Picoult
  • Coming Home - September - The Shell Seekers - Rosamunde Pilcher
  • Nation - Terry Pratchett
  • The Shipping News – Annie Proulx
  • One True Thing – Anna Quindlen
  • The Yearling - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
  • Where the Red Fern Grows – Wilson Rawls
  • Empire Falls - Richard Russo
  • The Sparrow - Children of God - Mary Doria Russell
  • The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
  • Love Story – Eric Segal
  • Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
  • Love is a Mix Tape 781.64 she - Rob Sheffield
  • A Tree Grows In Brooklyn – Betty Smith
  • The Notebook - Nicholas Sparks
  • The Notebook - Nights in Rodanthe - A Walk to Remember – Nicholas Sparks
  • Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
  • The Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein
  • Sophie's Choice – William Styron
  • Kitchen God's Wife – Amy Tan
  • Return of the King - JRR Tolkien
  • Saint Maybe – Anne Tyler
  • Exodus - Leon Uris
  • Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
  • Bridges of Madison County - Robert James Waller
  • Fools Crow - James Welch
  • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

FALL BOOK SALE

Saturday, October 10, 2009
10am - 2pm

Our popular fall book sale promises to provide a browsing and shopping treat for bibliophiles as the air becomes crisp and the leaves begin to turn color. Books for everyone! Home baked goods will also be available.

Knitted items, made by members of the library’s knitting club will also be available - a great opportunity for early bird holiday shoppers.

Our Monday morning volunteers are currently making gift baskets for this sale and we are looking for "gift items" such as notepaper, soaps, jewelry, candles and china.

We are accepting donations of books in excellent condition and are requesting that your home baked goods be brought to the Library any time on Friday or Saturday morning.

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TOWN OF ROCHESTER AND STONE RIDGE LIBRARY REACH AGREEMENT

Officials of the Town of Rochester have reached a preliminary agreement, subject to board approval of the final budget, with the Stone Ridge Public Library (SRPL) to provide services to Rochester residents. Supervisor Carl Chipman, budget director, and Lynn Archer, councilwoman, met with library board president Suzanne Hauspurg and director Jody Ford. Nicole Quinn and Fay Loomis, members of Rochester Citizens for Library Choice (RCLC) and liaison between the two boards, were also in attendance.

Chipman has agreed to put the sum of $12,500, equal to the amount currently paid to the Ellenville Public Library & Museum (EPL&M), into the 2010 budget to fund 250 households or approximately 600 cardholders. Additionally, the library will provide free cards to all Rondout Valley School District students, approximately another 500 cardholders. Should the cap of 250 households be reached, additional families will be placed on a wait list. The one-year contract will be reviewed to assess needs, prior to the formulation of the 2011 budget.

“We want to give Rochester residents a choice of the two excellent libraries which serve our community,” Chipman said. ”We can do it for $5.00 per assessed parcel. Libraries are for the betterment and education of our community. In particular, we are happy to be supporting the young people and seniors who live in our town and find the Stone Ridge library more accessible. Funding will continue to the EPL&M for those who find it more convenient to drive south.”

“It’s a win-win situation for both the SRPL and the Town of Rochester,” said Hauspurg.

“We are pleased that so much effort and cooperation have gone into the process,” said Loomis. “The town has accepted the offer of RCLC to look into additional funding to help provide library services for all Rochester residents.”

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Tea Time Book Group

Wed. September 9,
4pm, Biography Room

The selection for September is The Reader by Bernard Schlink. A story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.

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

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HOLMES & CO.
Mystery Lovers
Book Group

Thurs. September 17,
4pm, Bio Room

The selections for this meeting include: The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill, a mystery set in Laos and The Adventure of the Dancing Man - a Sherlock Holmes mystery by Arthur Conan Doyle.

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MEDIEVAL BOOK GROUP

Wednesday, October 14
7pm, Biography Room

The primary reading for this meeting is Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium by Judith Herrin. This is the story of three Byzantine empresses from 780 to 856.

For a more general view of Byzantium, read Judith Herrin’s Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire.





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The New Yorker Discussion Group

Friday, September 11 at 3:30pm in the Reference Room

The following articles were chosen from the New Yorker Magazine for discussion. Newcomers are always
welcome to join.

  • Profiles: Joe Arpaio: Sheriff Joe by William Finnegan
    July 20, p. 42
  • Annals of Crime: At the Train Bridge by Calvin Trillin
    July 27, p. 32
  • A Reporter at Large: Travels in Siberia I by Ian Frazier
    August 3, p. 36
  • A Reporter at Large: Travels in Siberia II by Ian Frazier
    August 10, p.44

Please bring your “wish list” of articles for discussion from current New Yorker magazines for the September meeting. Our facilitator will make the selections at the beginning of the meeting.

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Knitting Group

Every Saturday
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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WRITERS GROUP

Monthly

1pm in the
Reference Room

The Library has a writers group that meets monthly on Saturday in the Reference Room. They read from their writing and share thoughts. If you are interested in writing you are welcome to join us.

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ON THE SHELVES

These 4 are intriguing summer reads

Poughkeepsie Journal 8.9.09
By Gregory Callahan

For readers looking for something a bit less formulaic in their literary lives, this summer's crop of fiction has a number of intriguing offerings.

Ron Currie's recent novel Everything Matters has been generating considerable buzz since its publication in June.

One of the controversies surrounding the book is whether it's actually the author's first or second novel. Currie's previous book, God Is Dead, was a "novel in stories," and there will always be those genre-fetishists who will say there's no such thing. I suggest that while it may be true "everything matters," the question of whether this is a debut novel or not matters less than its quality.

Everything Matters is an impressive work. While there may not really be such a thing as a book with something for everyone, Currie's novel is varied enough, and surprising enough that it should appeal to a wide array of readers. The book centers on the life of John ("Junior") Thibodeau, who, while still in utero, hears a voice informing him the Earth will be destroyed by a wayward comet in 36 years.

Understandably, the burden of such foreknowledge shapes the youngster's life in every conceivable way. Readers probably won't be too surprised to see Junior slip into an already established family pattern of substance abuse, made all the worse by his early onset existential angst ("How can anything really matter?"). But so much of what happens after is indeed surprising - even startling.

As with many experimental novels, readers will find some passages more involving than others. This is one case, however, where the time-honored advice to stick with a book because it "gets better" really does apply. This is speculative fiction that packs an emotional wallop. It doesn't get much better than that.

Also startlingly inventive is the debut novel by British author Jonathan L. Howard. Johannes Cabal, the Necromancer is a post-modern gothic tale, as literate and witty as it is eerie. There have been tales about sinister carnivals and circuses before - and in his acknowledgements Howard cites a notable one, namely Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, as an influence. One new element Howard's book brings to the mix, however, is the origins of such a ghastly entourage. In his tale, Faustian wagers are struck, souls are thoughtlessly (and sometimes cheerfully) signed away. Readers are in for a rollicking good time.

Badlands Saloon by American writer/illustrator Jonathan Twingley is also a noteworthy debut. The writing is terse but poetic; the many accompanying illustrations are startling. A friend commented the work looked like Eric Carle for grown-ups. I had been thinking the artwork was like a kinder, gentler Ralph Steadman, illustrating a sweet-naturedly offbeat coming-of-age story.

The small-town North Dakota setting is evocative, the characters beyond quirky (think "Northern Exposure," except people actually die here) and the art student hero is guileless and endearing.

It can be argued the artwork is what makes the novel exceptional, but Twingley is a very promising writer as well.

Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment tackles life-and-death issues in its own unique way.

An elderly New York couple must face the routine crises age inevitably brings - declining health, the need to sell off their condo and the sudden health crisis of a beloved pet.

All this takes place against the backdrop of a possible terrorist incident that virtually immobilizes the city over a period of 48 hours.

This brief novel expresses post-9/11 anxiety in surprisingly effective, ultimately quite touching ways. You come to care for this couple, their frightened dog - and for an entire city gripped by fear.

Gregory Callahan has been director of the Hyde Park Free Library since 1999. He has also worked in academic and corporate libraries and has been an educator on both the secondary and post-secondary levels.

OUR GARDEN

The Library gardens are designed and maintained by the wonderful Garden Makers of Accord. more

GREAT WEBSITES!

The National Parks: America's Best Idea

Website for this Ken Burns film series (scheduled to air on PBS on September 27, 2009) that "traces the birth of the national park idea in the mid-1800s and follows its evolution for nearly 150 years." As of summer 2009, website features email postcards, park badges for Facebook and MySpace pages, wallpapers and widgets, filmmaker chat details, and Q&A's and other background about the series. History, park profiles, and other material will be added in September. more

Movie Review Intelligence

This website's purpose is "to give moviegoers and movie industry professionals -- filmmakers, marketers, exhibitors, critics and publishing editors -- the most accurate and complete picture of movie reviews possible." Find data on the percentage of positive reviews of a movie for categories such as "broad national press" and "alternative/indie," and links to reviews. Includes new releases, top 10 at the box office, other film listings, and listings for critics and publications. more

The Divine Art: Four Centuries of European Tapestries

Companion website to this 2008-2009 exhibit that featured life-sized tapestries from the 15th through the 18th century, depicting "allegories, biblical and Christian themes, events from ancient history, and mythological scenes, as well as representations of everyday life and verdures." Features illustrated essays on the use and function of tapestries, weaving structures, color in tapestries, and more. Includes a map and selected works from the exhibit. From the Art Institute of Chicago. more

Bon Appetit!
Julia Child's Kitchen at the Smithsonian

This exhibit provides a look at chef Julia Child's kitchen, which was donated to the Smithsonian Institution. Features an interactive view of the kitchen (zoom in to learn about appliances and other items), images of selected items in the collection, sample stories from Julia Child (some with audio), and related items about the chef and the exhibit. From the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. more

The First Photograph

Background about and image of the "First Photograph" taken in 1826 by Joesph Nicéphore Niépce. "Fascinated with the craze for the newly-invented art of lithography which swept over France in 1813, [Niépce] began his initial experiments by 1816," which included the use of light-sensitive varnish. He called the process "Heliography." Also includes images of reproductions of the photo. From the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. more

Joan Miró: Painting and Anti-Painting 1927-1937

Website companion to this exhibit about Spanish artist Joan Miró that "opens with a series of paintings on unprimed canvas made in Paris in early 1927. ... It concludes with 1937's singular, hallucinatory painting 'Still Life with Old Shoe', the result of Miró's abrupt return to working from life." View exhibition images by series (with essays at the start), chronologically, and by relative size. Includes an exhibition checklist. From the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). more

Harvard Business School: On the Global Economic Crisis

This site highlights research and commentary from Harvard Business School faculty on the global economic crisis. Find videos, articles from the Harvard publications (some material only available for purchase), and links to other news sources. Topics include consumer psychology, the opportunities in the economic downturn, recruiting, Obama's first 100 days, and more. From the Harvard Business School (HBS). more

The National Numismatic Collection


Website for the National Numismatic Collection (NNC) of the Smithsonian Institution. "The NNC contains many great rarities in coins and currency, ... as well as fascinating objects such as beads, wampum, dentalia, and other commodities once used as money." View selected coins, currency, and medals from the collection, and virtual exhibits on topics such as on the evolution of American money from gold coins to credit cards. The FAQ section includes references and links. more

Online Bookshelves: Contingency Operations

Compilation of reference and research material about U.S. Army contingency operations, including Grenada (Operation Urgent Fury), Panama (Operation Just Cause), Somalia (Operation Restore Hope), Bosnia-Herzegovina (operations Joint Endeavor, Joint Guard, and Joint Forge), and others. Includes books, book excerpts, short accounts, reports, and other publications. From the U.S. Army Center of Military History. more

Museum of the Rockies Photo Archive

This photo archive is a "preser-vation and research collection of historical photography from the Northern Rockies Region of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. The Archive collects and preserves photographs from the late 1860's to the 1980's." View selected images from collections by photographers such as Elsa Spear Byron documenting the Crow tribe, and online databases with images of Indian peoples of the northern Great Plains and railroads. From the Museum of the Rockies in Montana. more

Online

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