Books for Book Clubs

This weekend I read a wonderful book about a book club - Dinner With Anna Karenina by Gloria Goldreich. I really enjoyed this novel about a group of women, Cynthia, Jen, Elizabeth, Rina, Donna, and Trish, and their book club. They read and discussed some great books. And yes, it did have a happy ending - but all the characters had to work to make it happen.

Books the group discussed:

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• The Letter of Edith Wharton and The Reef by Edith Wharton
• The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Bell Jar and Ariel by Sylvia Plath
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Other fiction titles about books groups:

• Reading Group by Elizabeth Noble
• Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
• Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik

Any of these books would be great to read on your own or with your book club.

No due date, No fine!

The Badin Branch Library offers a unique paperback book exchange where patrons may swap paperback books. These items do not need to be checked out or returned, although we do ask that patrons replace what they take with paperbacks of their own.

Please-

• paperbacks only
• even trade: one for one, etc.
• books you bring must be in good condition

NYT Best Sellers - Week of 10.01.06

Red Titles = We Own

FICTION:

1. The Thirteenth Tale - Setterfield, Diane (On order)
2. The Book Of Fate - Meltzer, Brad
3. The Mephisto Club - Gerritsen, Tess
4. Rise and Shine - Quindlen, Anna
5. Judge and Jury - Patterson, James & Gross, Andrew
6. Dark Celebration - Feehan, Christine
7. Ricochet - Brown, Sandra
8. The Guy Not Taken - Weiner, Jennifer (on order)
9. The Emperor's Children - Messud, Claire (on order)
10. The Afghan - Forsyth, Frederick

NONFICTION:

1. Marley & Me - Grogan, John
2. I Feel Bad About My Neck - Ephron, Nora
3. The Looming Tower - Wright, Lawrence
4. The World is Flat - Friedman, Thomas L.
5. State of Emergency - Buchanan, Patrick J.
6. Freakonomics - Levitt, Steven D. & Dubner, Stephen J.
7. Fiasco - Ricks, Thomas E.
8. Hubris - Isikoff, Michael & Corn, David
9. The Way We Were - Burrell, Paul
10. Blink - Gladwell, Malcolm

Friends of the Library Book Sale

It's almost time for the semi-annual friends of the Library Book Sale! For book lovers, this is a wonderful opportunity to get new and used books CHEAP.

Preview Night (for Friends members)

Thursday, October 12 from 5:00 - 8:00 PM

Memberships will be available that evening.

Open to the Public

Friday, October 13 from 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM

and

Saturday, October 14 from 9:00 AM - 2:00 PM

Come early for the best selection.

Enfranchise at SCPL!

September is National Library Card Sign-Up Month

Come celebrate at your local Stanly County Public Library

Get it.

• Get your first library card and receive a logo book bag full of logo goodies.

Use it.

• Use your card anytime during the month, and be automatically entered in a drawing for a prize pack of a bestseller, a limited edition library t-shirt and a limited edition library coffee mug.

New in Youth & Children's Services

The Children's Department now has audio-books on CD available for checkout. The titles include:

• The Tale of Despereaux - DiCamillo
• The Silent Boy - Lowry
• Lunch Money - Clements
• Stink & the Incredible Super-Galactic Jawbreaker- Mcdonald
• Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods - Collins
• Chicken Boy - Dowell
• Fairy Duet & the Quest for the Egg - Levine
• Becoming Naomi Leon - Ryan
• The Misadventures of Maude March - Couloumbis
• Gossamer - Lowery
• Small Steps - Sachar
• Dealing With Dragons - Wrede
• Stormchaser - Stewart
• Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane - DiCamillo
• Party Princess - Cabot
• Wrong Hands - Richardson
• Everything on a Waffle - Horvath
• Charlie Bone & the Castle of Mirrors - Nimmo
• Flush - Hiassen

New Books - Audult Fiction - August 2006

New Books – Adult Fiction
August 2006
Stanly County Public Library – Learning for a Lifetime @ Your Library

Alentejo Blue by Monica Ali
Yacoubian Building by Ala Aswani
Farewell Summer by Ray Bradbury
Wives Behaving Badly by Elizabeth Buchan
One Mississippi by Mark Childress
Sins and Needles by Monica Ferris
Prisoner of Gauntanamo by Dan Fesperman
Plum Wine by Angela Davis-Gardner
Dollar Daze by Karin Gillespie
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Druid’s Sword by Sara Douglass
Baby Proof by Emily Griffin
Lilah by Marek Halter
Love in the Present Tense by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Between Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson
Shiver by Lisa Jackson
Winter’s Heart by Robert Jordan
No Good Deeds by Laura Lipman
Owl & Moon Café by Jo-Ann Mapson
Nancy Culpepper by Bobbie Ann Mason
Vanishing Point by Marcia Muller
Dressmaker by Elizabeth Oberbeck
Cross My Heart by Carly Phillips
Lover’s Knot by Emilie Richards
In the Dark of the Night by John Saul
Ruins by Scott Smith
Summer at Willow Lake by Susan Wiggs

For more new titles, please check the library’s online card catalog, or www.stanlylib.org

Vive la France

'Suite Francaise' - Irene Nemirovsky

France has fallen and the Wehrmacht will soon enter the City of Light - So begins Nemirovsky's wartime novel. The stage thus set, she assembles a cast- patrician, bourgeois, plebeian - whose members adapt (or not) to both occupation and occupier.

Originally intended as a novel in five parts, Nemirovsky completed only two parts prior to her arrest and deportation to Auschwitz where she died in 1942. Art does indeed imitate life.

Introducing The Class of 2009

BELOIT COLLEGE RELEASES THE BELOIT COLLEGE MINDSET LIST FOR THE CLASS OF 2009

Beloit, Wis.—In the coming weeks, millions of students will be entering college for the first time. On average, these members of the Class of 2009 will be 18 years old, which means they were born in 1987. Starbucks, souped-up car stereos, telephone voicemail systems, and Bill Gates have always been a part of their lives.

Each August, as students start to arrive, Beloit College releases the Beloit College Mindset List, which offers a world view of today's entering college students. It is the creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and Director of Public Affairs Ron Nief.

The list is distributed to faculty on campus during the New Students Days orientation. According to McBride, “It is an important reminder, as faculty start to show signs of ‘hardening of the references,’ that we think about the touchstones and benchmarks of a generation that has grown up with CNN, home computers, AIDS awareness, digital cameras and the Bush political dynasty. We should also keep in mind that these students missed out on the pleasures of being tossed in the back of a station wagon with a bunch of friends and told to keep the noise down, walking in the woods without fearing Lyme Disease, or setting out to try all of the 28 ice cream flavors at Howard Johnson’s.”

According to Nief, “This is not serious in-depth research. It is meant to be thought-provoking and fun, yet accurate. It is as relevant as possible, given the broad social and geographic diversity of our students, who are drawn from every state and 50 countries. It is always open to challenge, which has an additional benefit in that it reminds us of students’ varied backgrounds. It is still a good reflection of the attitudes and experiences of the young people that we must be aware of from the first day of their college experience.”

BELOIT COLLEGE MINDSET LIST® FOR THE CLASS OF 2009

Most students entering college this fall were born in 1987....

1. Andy Warhol, Liberace, Jackie Gleason, and Lee Marvin have always been dead.
2. They don't remember when "cut and paste" involved scissors.
3. Heart-lung transplants have always been possible.
4. Wayne Gretzky never played for Edmonton.
5. Boston has been working on "The Big Dig" all their lives.
6. With little need to practice, most of them do not know how to tie a tie.
7. Pay-Per-View television has always been an option.
8. They never had the fun of being thrown into the back of a station wagon with six others.
9. Iran and Iraq have never been at war with each other.
10. They are more familiar with Greg Gumbel than with Bryant Gumbel.
11. Philip Morris has always owned Kraft Foods.
12. Al-Qaida has always existed with Osama bin Laden at its head.
13. They learned to count with Lotus 1-2-3.
14. Car stereos have always rivaled home component systems.
15. Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker have never preached on television.
16. Voice mail has always been available.
17. "Whatever" is not part of a question but an expression of sullen rebuke.
18. The federal budget has always been more than a trillion dollars.
19. Condoms have always been advertised on television.
20. They may have fallen asleep playing with their Gameboys in the crib.
21. They have always had the right to burn the flag.
22. For daily caffeine emergencies, Starbucks has always been around the corner.
23. Ferdinand Marcos has never been in charge of the Philippines.
24. Money put in their savings account the year they were born earned almost 7% interest.
25. Bill Gates has always been worth at least a billion dollars.
26. Dirty dancing has always been acceptable.
27. Southern fried chicken, prepared with a blend of 11 herbs and spices, has always been available in China.
28. Michael Jackson has always been bad, and greed has always been good.
29. The Starship Enterprise has always looked dated.
30. Pixar has always existed.
31. There has never been a "fairness doctrine" at the FCC.
32. Judicial appointments routinely have been "Borked."
33. Aretha Franklin has always been in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
34. There have always been zebra mussels in the Great Lakes.
35. Police have always been able to search garbage without a search warrant.It has always been possible to walk from England to mainland Europe on dry land.
36. They have grown up in a single superpower world.
37. They missed the oat bran diet craze.
38. American Motors has never existed.
39. Scientists have always been able to see supernovas.
40. Les Miserables has always been on stage.
41. Halogen lights have always been available at home, with a warning.
42. "Baby M" may be a classmate, and contracts with surrogate mothers have always been legal.
43. RU486 has always been on the market.
44. There has always been a pyramid in front of the Louvre in Paris.
45. British Airways has always been privately owned.
46. Irradiated food has always been available but controversial.
47. Snowboarding has always been a popular winter pastime.
48. Libraries have always been the best centers for computer technology and access to good software.
49. Biosphere 2 has always been trying to create a revolution in the life sciences.
50. The Hubble Telescope has always been focused on new frontiers.
51. Researchers have always been looking for stem cells.
52. They do not remember "a kinder and gentler nation."
53. They never saw the shuttle Challenger fly.
54. The TV networks have always had cable partners.
55. Airports have always had upscale shops and restaurants.
56. Black Americans have always been known as African-Americans.
57. They never saw Pat Sajak or Arsenio Hall host a late night television show.
58. Matt Groening has always had a Life in Hell.
59. Salman Rushdie has always been watching over his shoulder.
60. Digital cameras have always existed.
61. Tom Landry never coached the Cowboys.
62. Time Life and Warner Communications have always been joined.
63. CNBC has always been on the air.
64. The Field of Dreams has always been drawing people to Iowa.
65. They never saw a Howard Johnson's with 28 ice cream flavors.
66. Reindeer at Christmas have always distinguished between secular and religious decorations.
67. Entertainment Weekly has always been on the newsstand.
68. Lyme Disease has always been a ticking concern in the woods.
69. Jimmy Carter has always been an elder statesman.
70. Miss Piggy and Kermit have always dwelt in Disneyland.
71. America's Funniest Home Videos has always been on television.
72. Their nervous new parents heard C. Everett Koop proclaim nicotine as addictive as heroin.
73. Lever has always been looking for 2000 parts to clean.
74. They have always been challenged to distinguish between news and entertainment on cable TV.

A recommendation for Fiction Readers

I just finished a wonderful new novel that I want to recommend.

Greensboro, NC resident Angela Davis-Gardner has just published her third novel, Plum Wine. A beautiful story of a young American woman, Barbara Jefferson, teaching in Tokyo in the late 1960's. Barbara inherits a chest full of bottles of plum wine from her Japanese mentor. Around each bottle of wine are pages of writing - all in Japanese calligraphy, which Barbara can't read. With the help of a local potter, Seiji, Barbara gets all the papers translated.

I had to keep reading to find how each paper was translated. They covered the years from 1930-1965 with only one gap from 1943-1948. Each translation was rich with Japanese culture and history.

If you like to read novels with a little mystery to them or set in a foreign country, then give Plum Wine by Angela Davis-Gardner a try.

Please leave a comment and let me know if you liked the book or not.

Aloft

'Trail of Feathers - In Search of the Birdmen of Peru' - Tahir Shah.

Did the Inca soar through austral heavens? Old legends, shamans, textile records and the accounts of 16th c. Spanish monks all say yes. Through Andean fastnesses, jungles and arid wastes, the author searches Peru for his own answers. Shah's 'trail of feathers' reminds us there is more than one way to fly.

Wanderlust

Are you planning a trip abroad? The Library has new guidebooks for destinations spanning the globe. Where are you going??

• Australia
• Austria
• Bahamas
• Bermuda
• Canada
• China
• Eastern Europe
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Italy
• London
• Mexico
• New Zealand
• Paris
• South America
• Southeast Asia
• Spain

Information Services - SCPL

The Reference Department at Stanly County Public Library offers print resources on a variety of topics for in-house use. The list below, by no means exhaustive, is but a sample of what we offer. Happy Researching!

• Financial - Value Line Investment Survey, Value Line Small & Midcap Edition, Morningstar Mutual Funds, Standard & Poor's Outlook, business directories
• Health/Medical - Physicians' Desk Reference, various consumer guides on medications, diagnoses and general health related concerns.
• Literary Criticism - Contemporary Literary Criticism series, surveys of British, American and select world literatures, histories, synopses, character guides & Cliffs Notes.
• Entertainment & Hobbies - Film and television guides, collectors' guides for coins, bills, comics, baseball cards, records, magazines, pottery, guns, antiques & much more.
• Religious Studies - Bible commentaries, directories, encyclopedias, world mythographies & belief systems, Wiccan guides & occult studies.
• Legal Resources - Landlord & tenant guides, divorce handbooks, child custody, North Carolina General Statutes.
• Science/Technology - Topical encyclopedias, handbooks and manuals covering the various and sundry sciences.
• Automotive - Chilton's Guides for both domestic and imported automobiles.
• Magazine Archives - The Library keeps a limited number of back issues. Please check with the library staff concerning availability.

http://www.stanlylib.org/services.html#ref

A Knickerbocker Goes West

'A Tour on the Prairies' - Washington Irving - 1832

- Book Recommendation -

For those armchair travelers yearning for 'undiscovered countries', Irving offers just the tale - Rangers, Native-Americans, Prairie Fires, Bison, Campfire Gourmands, Guns & much more!!! These observations, taken from his travels on the western frontier circa 1832, illustrate a fascinating period of westward expansion, exploration and exploitation. Pack your chaps, lassos and pemmican. Also, be sure to pick a stout horse - you'll need one.

New Fiction Titles Available

New Fiction Titles July 2006
Stanly County Public Library
Learning for a Lifetime @ Your Library

Adler, Elizabeth – Sailing to Capri
Block, Lawrence – Hit Parade
Burke James Lee – Pegasus Descending
Child, Lee – The Hard Way
Clark, Mary Jane – Lights Out Tonight
Douglas, Carole Nelson – Cat in a Quicksilver Caper
Finder, Joseph – Killer Instinct
Foster, Alan Dean – Candle of Distant Earth
Furst, Alan – Foreign Correspondent
Gulley, Philip – Almost Friends
Hooper, Kay – Sleeping with Fear
MacDonald, Patricia – Married to a Stranger
Macomber, Debbie – Susannah’s Garden
McCaffrey, Anne – Dragon’s Fire
Muller, Marcia – Vanishing Point
Peterson, Tracie – Desert Roses
Reichs, Kathy – Break No Bones
Rendell, Ruth – End in Tears
Saul, John – In the Dark of the Night
Thayer, Nancy – Hot Flash Club Chills Out
Weis, Margaret – Dragons of the Dwarven Depths

For more new titles, please check our online catalog available at www.stanlylib.org.

NCknows - Live Online help 24/7 - Use it Now!

Live Online Help from Librarians - All Day, Every Day -

Contact the Reference Department at the Main Library in Albemarle for more information on how to access NCLive and NCknows - 704 986 3759 -

What is NCknows? -

NCknows is a service that allows North Carolina citizens to get help from librarians and use their library resources from their computer. By typing messages back and forth, you can communicate with a librarian, browse webpages together, receive articles from NC LIVE, and get answers to questions. It's free, helpful and easy.

Who is NCknows?

NCknows is staffed by librarians from academic, public and specialty libraries. By coordinating with participating libraries across the state and other libraries across the country, we are able to offer help around the clock.

How is NCknows supported?

NCknows is a pilot project supported by a grant under the Federally-funded Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). The project is administered by the State Library of North Carolina in Raleigh with help from a committee of librarians and directors from North Carolina's libraries.

Very Lonely Planet

Book Recommendation - 'The Brief History of the Dead' - Kevin Brockmeier.

A virulent plague, a motley crew of the recently deceased & the urban cartography of an ever-changing necropolis populate the narrative of Brockmeier's 'Brief History'. More interesting though, are the author's speculations concerning the after-life, how we affect one another though our daily connections and more importantly the memories (or not) we keep within us all. This is a good book for a lazy summer afternoon.

A Polaris Summer...

As the library staff continues to work with Polaris this summer and adapt all of its new features to Stanly County, please remember the next time you visit one of the library branches in Albemarle, Badin, Locust, Norwood, and Oakboro to ask about:

* receiving notices & reminders from the library though your e-mail instead of your mail box;

* maintaining a personal reading log in Polaris of everything you check out and read.

And – all students are invited to help us update their accounts by telling us what school they will be attending in the Fall. This will help our Youth & Children's Services staff in developing the collections and allow us to offer feedback to the Stanly County Schools about student library use.

Thanks, and enjoy your summer (at the library!)

What College Students are Reading

An article in this weeks Charlotte Observer shared what some of the area colleges are having new students read over the summer. Any of these titles would be good discussion books for book clubs.

Appalachian State - "Freakonomics" by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Davidson College - "The Dignity of Difference" by Jonathan Sacks

Furman University - "Blood Done Sign My Name" by Timothy Tyson

Queens University of Charlotte - "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" by Dai Sijie

UNC Chapel Hill - "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri

University of South Carolina - "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder

Wake Forest University - "An Enemy of the People" by Henrik Ibsen

Wofford College - "Paco's Story" by Larry Heinemann.