2007 Nebula Award Winners

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have presented the Nebula Awards for 2007. Michael Chabon won the best novel award forThe Yiddish Policeman's Union. And J.K. Rowling won the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Memory Keepers Daughter

The novel, The Memory Keepers Daughter by Kim Edwards has been adapted for television. Lifetime will air the movie on Saturday April 12, 2008 at 9:00 pm (check your local listing). Dermot Mulroney, Gretchen Mol and Emily Watson star.

March BAM Challenge Book Review

I finally finished the book I was reading for the March Book A Month Challenge which had to do with craft. I read Sisters, Ink by Rebeca Seitz because the 4 women in the book were scrapbookers and I am too. It was a good little book about Tandy and her 3 adopted sisters and scrapbooking, family, coming home and love. This is Rebeca's second book, Prints Charming was her first title, and this one will be the first in a series - can't wait to read the next one.

Now I have to find a book to read for the April Book A Month Challenge - something to do with "beauty". I hope you're finding some great books to read for these fun challenges.

2008 Pulitzer Prizes Announced

ARTS:

Fiction: "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Books)
Drama: "August: Osage County," by Tracy Letts
History: "What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815-1848," by Daniel Walker Howe (Oxford University Press)
Biography: "Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father," by John Matteson (W.W. Norton)
Poetry: "Time and Materials," by Robert Hass (Ecco/HarperCollins) and "Failure," by Philip Schultz (Harcourt)
General Nonfiction: "The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945," by Saul Friedlander (HarperCollins)

National Poetry Month

maggie and milly and molly and may

by E. E. Cummings

10

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

Copyright © 1956, 1984, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust from The Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, Edited by George J. Firmage. Reprinted by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

BAM Challenge - "Beauty"

This month’s challenge is to read about “beauty”. Maybe you read a book of poetry you find evokes beauty. What about reimaginations of the tale of Sleeping Beauty or Beauty and the Beast? Music and art are routinely noted as beautiful expressions of the soul. Do you find a certain public person beautiful in face and form or soul? Maybe the beauty industry and what constitutes beauty fascinates you. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and so is the meaning of the books you read. Feel free to write a review here on the blog.

Watch PBS Online for Free

Stanly County Public Library is one of North Carolina's libraries with access to NCLive's newest online offering - nearly 25o PBS programs, including the Emmy award winning series "American Experience" and "Frontline", as well as groundbreaking programs such as Ken Burns' "The Civil War", "Baseball", and "Jazz". Go to: http://www.stanlylib.org/ and click on NCLive to get started. If you don't have an NCLive password, stop by any of the library locations - Albemarle, Badin, Norwood, Oakboro, or Locust - to get a free password.

Author Nora Roberts in the News

Author Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb was converting an old hotel into an inn with reading themed rooms. Read more about it:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080222/ap_on_re_us/fire_roberts;_ylt=AubYSzkoti5PdYUhxbzDpPhvzwcF

News from Author Cathy Pickens

Southern author Cathy Pickens has lots of interesting news in her latest newsletter. Be sure to watch for her newest title, Hush My Mouth which will be available in February.

If you want the chance to see Cathy, she will be at the South Carolina Book Festival in Columbia, SC February 22-23. She will be closer to Stanly County on April 1 when she will lead the Let's Talk About It discussion of Paretsky's Burn Marks at the Cabarrus County Library. She will also be the Friends of the Library speaker for the Kannapolis Public Library's luncheon and discussion on April 22.

There is a new Southern Writers Blog that Cathy is participating in. "A Good Blog is Hard to Find" is available at http://southernauthors.blogspot.com/ and you will find a large group of Southern writers - names you may be familiar with and new ones.

Visit Cathy's website at www.cathypickens.com for links to interview podcasts and youtube book trailers along with her appearance schedule.

February BAM Challenge

The theme for the February Book A Month Challenge is “Heart”.

For the month of love, you can read a romance, or go with any genre that has a subplot of romance. Try a book about legendary lovers or even something in medicine about the heart. And then there is always a book with “heart” in the title. I’ve got a great list of choices to get you started – or you can come up with your own title that somehow relates to the theme of “Heart”. Leave a comment and let me know what title you pick and leave a short review if you feel like it. My choice is going to be easy this month – a romance novel.

Romance
Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Cruise and Bob Mayer
Heart of Honor by Kat Martin
Be Still my Vampire Heart by Kerrelyn Sparks
What a Lady Wants by Victoria Alexander
Mad Dash by Patricia Gaffney
Alphabet Weekends: Love on the Road fro A to Z by Elizabeth Nobel
Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Love Letters From a Duke by Elizabeth Boyle

Other Genres
Blood Lie by Daniel Kalla
Heart of the World by Linda Barnes
Lover’s Knot by Emilie Richards
Dark Dreamers by Christine Feehan
The Wedding Officer by Anthony Capella
The Guy Not Taken: Stories by Jennifer Weiner

Legendary Lovers
Casanova in Love by Andrew Miller
The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
The Memoirs of Cleopatra: a Novel by Margaret George
Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Heart of a New Nation by David Price

Medicine
Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the first Human Heart by Donald McRae
The Alarming History of Medicine: Amusing Anecdotes from Hippocrates to Heart Transplants by Richard Gordon
Walk on Water: a Pediatric Surgeon’s Journey by Michael Ruhlman
Chicken Soup for the Soul Healthy Living: Heart Disease

Books with “Heart” in the Title
The Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Heart Full of Soul: and Inspirational Memoir About Finding Your Voice and Finding Your Way by Taylor Hicks
Where my Heart Belongs by Tracie Peterson
Socrates in Love: Philosophy for a Passionate Heart by Christopher Phillips

Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde

I read Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde for the Janaury Book A Month Challange. Our challenge was to read a book with the theme of "Time". The book I read is the latest in the Thursday Next series of books. This is a humerous series full of puns and literary allusions. Thursday, the heroine, is able to jump between the real world, Outland, and the book world where she has many adventures. Her son, Friday, is able to jump through time as a future member of the Chrono Guard. Together they have to work together in the present, past and future and in the real world and the book work to save time. The book was a little slow to get started but was worth sticking with. Great characters and a setting the is contemporary Britian but yet it's not the Britain we know. I hope you try this or one of the other titles in the series: The Eyre Affair, Lost in Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, and Something Rotten.

If you read a book for this challenge, please let us know, by leaving a comment, what book you read and if you liked it.

I'll be sharing the February Read A Month Challenge soon.

New Oprah Book Selection

Today Oprah announced the 61st book for her book club. It is the self-help guide A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by German Eckhart Tolle. The Albemarle Library has a copy of The Power of Now and earlier book by Tolle.

January BAM Challenge Theme

And the theme for January is: Time!

Katie, over at http://bamchallenge.wordpress.com/ offers suggestions of titles you might want to read. You aren't limited to these suggestions, and may read any book you feel has to do with the theme of "Time". Here are some suggested titles:

Time Travel
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
When I Fall in Love by Lynn Kurland
Brasyl by Ian McDonald
Historical Events, Places and People
The War: an Intimate History, 1941-1945 by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns
The Hundred Years’ War AD 1337-1453 by Anne Curry
The Dynasties of China: a History by Bamber Gascoigne
The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs. Disraeli by Richard Aldous
Historical Fiction
Annette Vallon by James Tipton
City of Dreams by Beverly Swerling
The Seanachie by Bob Huerter
Daughter of the Sun by Barbara Wood
The Religion by Tim Willocks
Fiction Set in Historical Times
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
River God: A Novel of Ancient Egypt by Wilbur Smith
The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer
Epic Fiction
The Thornbirds by Colleen McCullough
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Science of Time
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
The Nature of Space and Time by Stephen Hawking
Travels in Four Dimensions: the Enigmas of Space and Time by Robin Le Poidevin
The New Time Travelers: a Journey to the Frontiers of Physics by David Toomey
A World Without Time: the Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein by Palle Yourgrau Time Titles
Five O’Clock Shadow by Genie Davis
Five O’Clock Lightning: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and the Greatest Baseball Team in History, the 1927 New York Yankees by Harvey Frommer
Midnight by Dean Koontz
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
The One O’Clock Chop by Ralph Fletcher (YA)
The Two O’Clock War: The 1973 Yom Kippur Conflict and the Airlift that Saved Israel by Walter J. Boyne
No Girl Needs a Husband Seven Days a Week by Nina Foxx
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle (YA)
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (YA)
The Worst Hard Time: the Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

Hasn't Katie put together a fabulous list? Remember, you don't have to read one of these books, you can read anything you want that has to do with "Time". I plan to read Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde. I'll post a review sometime this month. And if you read a "Time" book, post your review in the comments section.

Book A Month Challenge

Starting this month, I am going to participate in the Book A Month Challenge posted by Katie at http://bamchallenge.wordpress.com/ . Each month, she is going to post a new theme and challenge us to read a book on that theme. I plan to post my book reviews here, and I would love if you would join me in this challenge. You can sign up on her site, or play along with me here. Just leave your review in the comments section.

The Complete Jane Austen

From the PBS Masterpiece Theatre website:

The Complete Jane Austen, beginning Sunday, January 13, 2008, features all new productions of Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Sense and Sensibility. The lineup also includes the acclaimed Emma staring Kate Beckinsale, and the Emmy Award-winning Pride and Prejudice that made Colin Firth a leading man. Four of the titles -- Emma, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility -- were adapted by celebrated screenwriter Andrew Davies. check your local station for times.

Persuasion - January 13, 2008

Northanger Abbey - January 20, 2008

Mansfield Park - January 27, 2008

Miss Austen Regrets - February 3, 2008

Pride and Prejudice - February 10, 17, + 24, 2008

Emma - March 23, 2008

Sense and Sensibility - March 30 + April 6, 2008

If you want to re-read the book before watching the movie, the library has copies available.

Movie Matinee

Books have always been made into movies for the big screen. Come to the library during January to see just a few of those books that have been made into movies. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Monday, January 7th at 3:30 pm

The DaVinci Code (PG13, 149 min.)

Thursday, January 10th at 3:30 pm

Memoirs of a Geisha (PG13, 145 min.)

Thursday, January 24 at 3:30 pm

Emma (PG, 121 min.)

Monday, January 28 at 3:30 pm

A Beautiful Mind (PG13, 135 Min.)

Thursday, January 31 at 3:30 pm

The Bourne Identity (PG13, 119 min.)

Popcorn is being provided by the Friends of the Library. Bring your own beverage. All movies will be shown in the meeting room of the Albemarle Library.

SCPL Will Be Closed

Monday, December 31 at 5:00 pm

through

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

in observance of

New Year's Day

We will reopen Wednesday, January 2, 2008

From the Page to the Big Screen

Adult Winter Reading Program 2008

Registration starts January 1st. Program ends February 1st.

• Register and receive a book light


• For every book you read, enter the weekly prize drawing for a movie night prize


• Read four books - one of which must be a book to movie - and be in the final drawing for a DVD player.


• Attend a movie matinee

This program is sponsored by the Friends of the Library.

Holiday Closings

The Stanly County Public Library

will be closed

in observance of

Christmas

Monday, December 24th

Tuesday, December 25th

and

Wednesday, December 26th

We will be open

Thursday, December 27th

Vicki Lane--Appalachian Mystery Writer

The Friends of Stanly County Public Library will feature mystery writer Vicki Lane at the Albemarle Library on Thursday, January 17 at 6:00 p.m. Lane has received excellent reviews for her mystery series set in the North Carolina mountains. Lane's sharp eye for detail gets put to good use in her Appalachian series. At 53, Elizabeth Goodweather has been a resident of Asheville, N.C., for more than two decades, operating a small farm with her nephew Ben. Hear Lane discuss her heroine and the inspiration for her series.