Staff Picks
Check the blog every week for updates on what our staff is reading and watching and recommendations for our new and all-time favorite books and movies. What is your favorite book or movie? Post your answer in the comments section below. To see all previous Staff Picks posts, simply type "Staff Picks" in the search box at the top left of this blog and click the "search blog" button

The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food Is Wrong. by Barry Glassner - Recommended by Andrew
From the author of the national bestseller "The Culture of Fear" comes a rallying cry to abandon food fads and myths for calmer and more pleasurable eating.


Fifth Business by Roberston Davies - recommended by Robyn
Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous. Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real. - Publishers Website. The Fifth Business is the first book in the Depford Trilogy.

MOVIE WATCH:
After the Wedding - recommended by Cheryl
Jacob, a Danish expatriate, runs a struggling orphanage in one of India's poorest regions. Desperate to save the orphanage from closing, he returns to Denmark to meet Jorgen, a wealthy businessman and potential benefactor. Jorgen invites Jacob to his daughter's wedding, seemingly as a friendly gesture, but the terminally ill Jorgen is also trying to find a new husband for his wife Helene. When Jacob meets Helene, he recognizes her as a person from a past he is trying to forget. The wedding invitation leads to a devastating series of surprises that change Jacob's life and force him to make a bitter choice.

Teen Volunteers Needed!

Attention teens who need community service hours. Teen volunteers are needed at the Mission Viejo Library for the 2008 SummerREAD (summer reading program), “Catch the Reading Bug”. Teen volunteers will help with registration, distribute stickers earned by children, and encourage them as they play the “Reading Bug Hunt Game.” The SummerRead program will run June 21 to August 2. Volunteers must be 13 or older at the start of the program. Applications are available at the Mission Viejo Library and the deadline for registering as a volunteer is June 3, 2008.

Staff Picks
Check the blog every week for updates on what our staff is reading and watching and recommendations for our new and all-time favorite books and movies. What is your favorite book or movie? Post your answer in the comments section below. To see all previous Staff Picks posts, simply type "Staff Picks" in the search box at the top left of this blog and click the "search blog" button.

A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans - recommended by Andrew
Thirty-year-old George Davies can't bring himself to hold his newborn son. After months of accepting his lame excuses and strange behavior, his wife has had enough. She demands that he see a therapist, and George, desperate to save his unraveling marriage and redeem himself as a father and husband, reluctantly agrees. As he delves into his childhood memories, he begins to recall things he hasn't thought of in twenty years.

Events, people, and strange situations come rushing back. The odd, rambling letters his father sent home before he died. The jovial mother who started dating too soon after his father's death. A boy who appeared one night when George was lonely, then told him secrets he didn't want to blow. How no one believed this new friend was real and that he was responsible for the bad things that were happening. Terrified by all that he has forgotten, George struggles to remember what really happened in the months following his father's death. Were his ominous visions and erratic behavior the product of a grief-stricken child's overactive imagination (a perfectly natural reaction to the trauma of loss, as his mother insisted)? Or were his father's colleagues, who blamed a darker, more malevolent force, right to look to the supernatural as a means to end George's suffering? Twenty years later, George still does not know. But when a mysterious murder is revealed, remembering the past becomes the only way George can protect himself - and his young family. -BOOK JACKET.

Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire - recommended by Lulu

As a child of the Cuban Revolution, Carlos Eire experienced the turbulent time firsthand. The author had never written about his childhood experience because he felt that he didn’t have enough “critical distance”. The summer of 2000 changed his feelings.

Elias Gonzalez was returned to Cuba after a debate that lasted months, his own son turned 11 (the same age as Carlos Eire when sent away during the “Pedro Pan” airlift) and the author tarted writing and he didn’t stop for four months. This book is the product of this work. The author has the ability to take most of us to a place and experience something most of us have not: What it was like when Fidel Castro was on the rise. This personal memoir is worth the read!

MOVIE WATCH - Come watch this movie at the library Film Festival @ 6:30 p.m. in the City Council Chamber

Charlie Wilson's War - Recommended By Jeff
In the early 1980s, Charlie Wilson is best known as a womanizing US congressional representative from Texas. He seemed to be in the minor leagues, except for the fact that he is a member of two major foreign policy and covert-ops committees. However, once Charlie is prodded by his major conservative supporter, Joanne Herring, Wilson learns about the plight of the people who are suffering from the effects of the brutal Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. With the help of the maverick CIA agent, Gust Avrakotos, Wilson dedicates his canny political efforts to supply the Afghan mujahideen with the weapons and support needed to defeat the Soviet Union. Ultimately, Charlie learns that while military victory can be obtained, there are other consequences and prices to that fight that are ignored to everyone's sorrow. Based on a true story.

Quote of the Week

Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.
-Jimi Hendrix

Staff Picks

Check the blog every week for updates on what our staff is reading and watching and recommendations for our new and all-time favorite books and movies. What is your favorite book or movie? Post your answer in the comments section below. To see all previous Staff Picks posts, simply type "Staff Picks" in the search box at the top left of this blog and click the "search blog" button.

The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things by Barry Glassner - recommended by Andrew
Dubious dangers on roadways and campuses : how fears are sold -- Crime in the news : tall tales and overstated statistics -- Youth at risk : faulty diagnoses and callous cures -- Monster moms : on the art of misdirection -- Black men : how to perpetuate prejudice without really trying -- "Smack is back" : when presidents and the press collude, the scares never stop -- Metaphoric illnesses : how not to criticize the establishment -- Plane wrecks : small danger, big scare -- Final thoughts : the Martians aren't coming.

The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz - recommended by Megan.

This years winner of the Pulitzer prize.
"Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd, a New Jersey romantic who dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the fukú - the ancient curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still dreaming of his first kiss, is only its most recent victim - until the fateful summer that he decides to be its last. " - book jacket

Itty-bitty hats: cute and cuddly caps to knit for babies and toddlers by Susan B. Anderson - recommended by Lulu

For knitters who don't have a lot of time but want to knit something fun and cute, this book has creative patterns for hats. Book is arranged in difficult from easiest to more difficult. Instructions are very clear. From the simple baby caps to the rosebud cap and the rainbow and pastel Marley (as in Bob) hats, you'll delight your small friends!

MOVIE WATCH

Bee Season - recommended by Cheryl

Eliza demonstrates such an amazing gift for spelling any word given to her that her father Saul insists on coaching her himself. As Eliza's success continues, Saul's newfound devotion grows...causing huge changes for the entire family.

Quote of the Week

Whatever the costs of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation. -Walter Cronkite

Staff Picks
Check the blog every week for updates on what our staff is reading and watching and recommendations for our new and all-time favorite books and movies. What is your favorite book or movie? Post your answer in the comments section below. To see all previous Staff Picks posts, simply type "Staff Picks" in the search box at the top left of this blog and click the "search blog" button.

Honeymoon by James Patterson
How does it feel to be desired by every man and envied by every woman? Wonderful. This is the life Nora Sinclair has dreamed about, the life she's worked hard for, the life she will never give up." "When FBI agent John O'Hara first sees her, she seems perfect. She has the looks. The career. The clothes. The wit. The sophistication. The tantalizing sex appeal. The whole extraordinary package - and men fall in line to court her. She doesn't just attract men, she enthralls them." "So why is the FBI so interested in Nora Sinclair? Mysterious things keep happening to people around her, especially the men. And there is something dangerous about Nora when Agent O'Hara looks more closely - something that lures him at the same time that it fills him with fear. Is there something dark hidden among the unexplained gaps in her past? And as he spends more and more time getting to know her, is he pursuing justice? Or his own fatal obsession? - book jacket


Skinny Bitch: a no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous! by Rory Freedman - recommended by Lulu
A rallying cry for all savvy women to start eating healthy and looking radiant, this resource espouses a healthful lifestyle that eliminates meat and dairy foods, promotes whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, and encourages women to get excited about feeling "clean and pure and energized."

MOVIE WATCH - Non-fiction books to film
(Join us for our library film series beginning April 11th)

Into the Wild
Freshly graduated from college with a promising future ahead, Christopher McCandless walked out of his privileged life and into the wild in search of adventure. What happened to him on the way transformed this young wanderer into an enduring symbol for countless people, a fearless risk-taker who wrestled with the precarious balance between man and nature. Based on a true story.



All the Presidents Men
True story of the Watergate break-in that led to the political scandal of the decade.

Quote of the Week

If you read a lot of books you are considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well viewed.
- Lily Tomlin