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.

2008 Book Club Schedule Available

The book club reading schedule has been set for 2008. Our first meeting of the year will be on Tuesday, January 15th at 11:00 am and we will discuss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Copies of the reading schedule are available at the library. Books are also available for checkout. Please join us in January as we start a new year of reading and discussing books.

Newest Oprah Selection

Oprah has chosen Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth as her newest book club selection. The Albemarle library does have a copy of the book available for checkout.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

New York Times Best Selling Fiction

1. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini


2. The Wheel of Darkness by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child


3. Dark Possession by Christine Feehan


4. Bones to Ashes by Kathy Reichs


5. The Elves of Cintra by Terry Brooks


6. Play Dirty by Sandra Brown


7. The Quickie by James Patterson


8. Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade by Diana Gabaldon


9. Away by Amy Bloom


10. Sweet Revenge by Diane Mott Davidson


11. Power Play by Joseph finder


12. The Sanctuary by Raymond Khoury


13. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan


14. Sandworms of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson


15. The Secret Servant by Daniel Silva

Noted titles:

Songs Without Words by Ann Packer

Area Author Events

There are a lot of author events happening this fall in our region. I hope everyone gets the chance to attend one, or more, of these events.

An Evening with John Hart, author of King of Lies, will be speaking at the Historic Salisbury Station on Sunday, September 30 from 5:30-8:00 PM. A copy of his second novel, Down River, will be given to each person who attends. Reservations can be made by contacting The LandTrust at 70-647-0302.

A Conversation with Sue Monk Kidd will be held at the Salem Fine Arts Center, Salem College on Tuesday, October 2 at 7:00 pm. General admission, which includes dessert reception, is $22. For tickets call: 336-721-2855.

Kathy Reichs, Forensic Anthropologist and best-selling author, and Dr. James Tabor, scholar on the times of Jesus, will present Dead Bones Talk & Silent Stones Speak: Solving Mysteries with Forensic Science and Archaeology on Tuesday, October 9:00 at 8:00 pm at the Anne R, Belk Theater at Robinson Hall, UNC. Tickets are $15 for the general public and can be purchase by calling 704-687-2599.

The Friends of the Stanly County Public Library present Mark Ethridge, author of Grievances at their annual author dinner. The event will be held on Thursday, October 11 at 6:30 pm at Stanly Regional Medical Center's Family and Education Center. Tickets are $12 for Friends members and $15 for non-members and can be purchased at the Albemarle Library.

Remembering 9/11 in Fiction

The library has the following novels written around 9/11:

The Falling Man by Don DeLillo

Extremely Loud and Incredible Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

The Zero by Jess Walter

A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Ken Kalfus