Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Coming to the Badin Branch Library


Local writers, Jim and Joyce Lavene are graciously donating their entire Sharyn Howard Mystery series to the Badin Library on Thursday, November 8th at 6:00 pm. Everyone is invited to come to the Badin Library and meet the Lavene's. Find out how Badin became the inspiration for Diamond Springs. Light refreshments will be served. The Badin Branch Library will be the only library in the Stanly County Public Library system to house the complete Sharyn Howard Series.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Fall Book Sale

PREVIEW SALE
For Friends Members
Thursday, October 25
5:00 - 8:00 pm
Memberships will be available at the door.
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Friday, October 26
9:00 am - 6:00 pm
Saturday, October 27
9:00 am - 2:00 pm
Sponsored by the Friends of the Stanly County Public Library

Friday, October 12, 2007

Author Mark Ethridge

Last evening, author Mark Ethridge gave a wonderful talk about his book Grievances and the writing process, and a little bit about the newspaper business. At the end of the evening he mentioned that his grandmother, Willie Snow Ethridge, was also a published author. The library does have copies of two of her books, I Just Happen to Have some Pictures..., and You Can't Hardly Get There From Here.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Nobel Prize for Literature Announced Today

Doris Lessing, author of works from short stories to science fiction, including the classic The Golden Notebook published in 1962, has won the Novel Prize for Literature. Eleven days short of her 88th birthday, Lessing is the oldest choice ever for the prize and is the second British writer to win the prize since 2005, when Harold Pinter received the award. Last year, the academy gave the prize to Turkey’s Orhan Pamuk.

The library has two of her books available:
a biography, Under My Skin
and a novel, Ben, in the World : the Sequel to the Fifth Child

Friday, October 05, 2007

Oprah Picks New Book Today

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the newest selection in Oprah's book club. The Stanly County Public Library does have copies of the book for checkout.


From Publishers Weekly:


The ironic vision and luminous evocation of South America that have distinguished Garcia Marquez's Nobel Prize-winning fiction since his landmark work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, persist in this turn-of-the-century chronicle of a unique love triangle. It is a fully mature novel in scope and perspective, flawlessly translated, as rich in ideas as in humanity. The illustrious and meticulous Dr. Juvenal Urbino and his proud, stately wife Fermina Daza, respectively past 80 and 70, are in the autumn of their solid marriage as the drama opens on the suicide of the doctor's chess partner. Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, a disabled photographer of children, chooses death over the indignities of old age, revealing in a letter a clandestine love affair, on the "fringes of a closed society's prejudices." This scenario not only heralds Urbino's demise soon afterwhen he falls out of a mango tree in an attempt to catch an escaped parrotbut brilliantly presages the novel's central themes, which are as concerned with the renewing capacity of age as with an anatomy of love. We meet Florentino Ariza, more antihero than hero, a mock Don Juan with an undertaker's demeanor, at once pathetic, grotesque and endearing, when he seizes the memorably unseemly occasion of Urbino's funeral to reiterate to Fermina the vow of love he first uttered more than 50 years before. With the fine detailing of a Victorian novel, the narrative plunges backward in time to reenact their earlier, youthful courtship of furtive letters and glances, frustrated when Fermina, in the light of awaking maturity, realizes Florentino is an adolescent obsession, and rejects him. With his uncanny ability to unearth the extraordinary in the commonplace, Garcia Marquez smoothly interweaves Fermina's and Florentino's subsequent histories. Enmeshed in a bizarre string of affairs with ill-fated widows while vicariously conducting the liaisons of others via love poems composed on request, Florentino feverishly tries to fill the void of his unrequited passion. Meanwhile, Fermina's marriage suffers vicissitudes but endures, affirming that marital love can be as much the product of art as is romantic love. When circumstances both comic and mystical offer Fermina and Florentino a second chance, during a time in their lives that is often regarded as promising only inevitable degeneration toward death, Garcia Marquez beautifully reveals true love's soil not in the convention of marriage but in the simple, timeless rituals that are its cement.

Monday, October 01, 2007

October is National Reading Group Month

Celebrate National Reading Group Month by joining a local book club. The Stanly County Public Library system has three ongoing book clubs that welcome new members:

  • The Albemarle book club will meet on Tuesday, October 16th at 11:00 am to discuss Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.
  • The Locust book club will meet on Friday, October 19th at noon to discuss Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard.
  • The Norwood book club will meet on Tuesday the 8th at 6:30 pm.

If you already belong to a book club, take time this month to celebrate your accomplishments as a club. Share with all of your friends how wonderful book clubs are, and encourage them to join your book club or one that meets at the library.