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

Rabbit is Rich by John Updike - recommended by Cheryl
Winner of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Ten years after RABBIT REDUX, Harry Angstrom has come to enjoy prosperity as the Chief Sales Representative of Springer Motors. The rest of the world may be falling to pieces, but Harrry's doing all right. That is, until his son returns from the West, and the image of an old love pays a visit to his lot.... - Library Catalog.


The Dog Lover's Companion to California by Maria Goodavage - recommended by Megan
This updated handbook has the inside scoop on the best parks, dog runs, beaches, forest preserves, ski areas, pet-friendly businesses, and much more. Local author Maria Goodavage and her trusty companion Jake have dug up many surprising resources available to dogs in the Golden State, such as baseball games, summer camps, ski areas, and pet parades. - Library Catalog.

MOVIE WATCH:
Into the West -recommended by Megan
Two young brothers living in the Dublin slums run away with a magical horse, trying to recapture their family's traditional life as tinkers and to find the wild west of their imaginations, while their desperate father and the law search for them. - Library Catalog.

Quote of the Week

Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.
- George Sand

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 Cider House Rules by John Irving - recommended by Nancy

First published in 1985, The Cider House Rules is John Irving's sixth novel. Set in rural Maine in the first half of this century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch--saint and obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Cloud's, ether addict and abortionist. It is also the story of Dr. Larch's favorite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted.

Inventing English: a portable history of the language by Seth Lerer - recommended by Andrew
"Seth Lerer's Inventing English is a history of the English language from the age of Beowulf to the rap of Eminem. Many have written about the evolution of our grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, but only Lerer situates these developments in the larger history of English, America, and literature." - Book Jacket

MOVIE WATCH:

Blood Diamond - recommended by Cheryl
Danny Archer is an ex-mercenary turned smuggler. Solomon Vandy is a local Mende fisherman. Amid the explosive civil war overtaking 1999 Sierra Leone, these men join together for two dangerous missions: recovering a rare pink diamond of immense value and rescuing the fisherman's son. The son was conscripted as a child soldier into the brutal rebel forces ripping a swath of torture and bloodshed across the alternately beautiful and ravaged countryside. - Library Catalog.

Quote of the Week

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

Hockey: a people's history by Michael McKinley - recommended by Mattison

McKinley's history of the "fast, rough, beautiful game" comprehensively chronicles hockey from its genesis as a winter substitute for lacrosse. A companion to a similarly titled CBC TV series, the lavishly illustrated book combines punchy boxed features celebrating individuals and hockey oddments and a detailed tracing of the game's development. Among the tidbits one learns: the New York Rangers' name derives from a pun (their first owner was Tex Rickard, making them "Tex's Rangers"), women introduced the goalie mask (at various times, they employed a baseball catcher's mask and a fencing cage) decades before Ken Dryden became an inspiration to Friday the 13th's Jason, and women's professional hockey dates back nearly as far as men's but disappeared after the 1940s. Of course, McKinley returns frequently to hockey's hallowed rivalry: the Toronto Maple Leafs versus the Montreal Canadiens. Only the Yankees versus the Red Sox yarn can compare to that of the Francophone-beloved Canadiens and mercurial Conn Smythe's scheming to make the Leafs their outranking Anglo analogue. Bouts of hand-wringing over the way American money threatens hockey's Canadian identity punctuate the continuum as McKinley gives all the franchises and all the stars, from Cyclone Taylor to Maurice "Rocket" Richard to Wayne Gretzky, their due. - Booklist

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan - recommended by Megan
In 1949, four Chinese women--drawn together by the shadow of their past--begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club--and forge a relationship that binds them for more than three decades. - library catalog.

MOVIE WATCH
Secret Window - recommended by Cheryl
Following a bitter separation from his wife, famed mystery writer Mort Rainey is unexpectedly confronted at his remote lake house by a dangerous stranger named John Shooter. Claiming Mort has plagiarized his short story, the psychotic Shooter demands justice. When Shooter's demands turn to threats, and then to murder, Mort turns to a private detective he knows. But when nothing stops the horror from spiraling out of control, Mort soon discovers he can't trust anyone or anything.

Quote of the Week

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
-Mark Twain

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

American Nerd: the story of my people by Benjamin Nugent - recommended by Andrew

An engaging study of the nerd in American popular culture and throughout history discussed in such contexts as the rise of online gaming, the science fiction club, ethnicity, Asperger's syndrome, autism, and high school and college debating.

Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland - recommended by Lindy

Imagining the banks of the Seine in the thick of la vie moderne, Vreeland (Girl in Hyacinth Blue) tracks Auguste Renoir as he conceives, plans and paints the 1880 masterpiece that gives her vivid fourth novel its title. Renoir, then 39, pays the rent on his Montmartre garret by painting "overbred society women in their fussy parlors," but, goaded by negative criticism from Émile Zola, he dreams of doing a breakout work. On July 20, the daughter of a resort innkeeper close to Paris suggests that Auguste paint from the restaurant's terrace. The party of 13 subjects Renoir puts together (with difficulty) eventually spends several Sundays drinking and flirting under the spell of the painter's brush. Renoir, who declares, "I only want to paint women I love," falls desperately for his newest models, while trying to win his last subject back from her rich fiancé. But Auguste and his friends only have two months to catch the light he wants and fend off charges that he and his fellow Impressionists see the world "through rose-colored glasses." Vreeland achieves a detailed and surprising group portrait, individualized and immediate. - Publishers Weekly

MOVIE WATCH:

French Kiss - recommended by Megan

When her fiance is smitten by a beautiful Frenchwoman, Kate flies to Paris determined to win him back. However, nothing prepares her for Luc, a cunning, sexy Frenchman with a gift for gab and a fondness for thievery. A self-proclaimed expert on affairs of the heart, Luc promises to help Kate win back her man. But one star-crossed misadventure after another sweeps them across France, ultimately changing them in ways they never dreamed possible.

Quote of the Week

"The world was hers for the reading."
- Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn