I'm moving!

This blog is being moved to a new name. From now on, I will be blogging about books at librarytwitt.blogspot.com Why the move? I'm trying to be consistent and make it easier for readers to find me. I am known as librarytwitt on Twitter. My tweets are mostly about websites and books I find interesting or helpful. You can also send a direct message to me if you need help with a research project or a book suggestion. So Twitter is completely mobile...if you have a smartphone you can Twitter. Join up and follow me at LibraryTwitt. I moved my blog and named it to match my Twitter name. In my blog, I will only share books and websites I have read or used.

Also, I encourage you to comment both on Twitter and Blogspot...talking about this stuff is twice as much fun! Share what you are reading and looking at on the Internet.

Summer Reading Suggestions

Every year, people ask for a summer reading list. This year I actually had time to compile one. Somehow the Boston Globe saw it (the Internet is an amazing thing) and interviewed me for an article. Haven't seen it yet so it may never get published. You might like the list anyhow. It features links to author websites as well as to Amazon. Let me know here if you like it. Click here to go to the list.

Hunger by Michael Grant

Sequels are often disappointing, especially in a projected series. So I started Hunger hoping for the best but expecting the worst. This is a true sequel...no annoying recaps of the first book taking up a lot of room. The children of Perdido Beach are now facing an enemy worse than Caine and his scary pack of murderous preppies: hunger. All the junk food is gone and the good food has rotted (of course! little kids would always choose cookies over chicken!). Sam is desperately trying to hold it all together by harvesting farmers' fields. The problem is that they are all being guarded by worms with deadly teeth (another mutation). As hunger weakens the children, Caine makes his move to conquer his brother and serve the dark being in the mine. And Sam ends up fighting a war for survival on multiple fronts.

Jodi Picoult's New Book

Check out this video which will tell you all about Handle With Care in Jodi's own words and voice.

Happy 25th, House on Mango Street!

And here's an interview with the author:


And here's an interview with the author:

Can You Summarize In Six Words?

Ernest Hemingway famously wrote a six word memoir: "For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Used." That tells quite a story, doesn't it? In Not Quite What I Planned (SC Str), the editors of Smith Magazine solicited "famous and not so famous" writers to submit their own six word memoirs. Here's one of my favorites: "Followed rules, not dreams. Never again." I could think about that one all day. So here's your chance...submit a six word memoir to our Comments section. We'll put them all on a page in the library website for semi-immortality. The only restriction...keep it clean! Oh wait, you want mine? Here it is: Some dreams deferred, but never forgotten. Your turn....

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

'“Dead girl walking,” the boys say in the halls.
"Tell us your secret,” the girls whisper, one toilet to another.
I am that girl.
I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.
I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.

Lia and Cassie were the "wintergirls," forever frozen in their obsession to be thin. They need to be in control by not eating, by purging, by exercising, by cutting. But when Cassie goes too far and dies, Lia is haunted by her former best friend, by her own guilt, and by the fear that she might be next. Can a wintergirl bloom in the spring?

Is it duct tape or duck tape?

We all use that amazing silver, supersticky tape to hold together practically everything. Is it "duck tape" or "duct tape?" That's one of the interesting questions answered in Discover’s 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Everything. You'll find out about germs, airport security, bees, meteors, birth, death, milk, mosquitoes, and much, much more.

Or, if you're still interested in duck/duct tape...how about making this nifty tool belt? One of the many projects in Ductigami by Joe Wilson. [745.5 Wil]

Holiday Presents from the Library!

Great vacation reading, all tied up in a holiday bow! Just look for this sign to try out a special bundle of books.


Here's a list of all the bundles:



Take a Hike! (Girl who Loved Tom Gordon [King]; A Walk in the Woods [Bryson]; Walk My Way [Dixon])

Knit One Read Three (Chicks with Sticks [Lenhard]; Chick With Sticks sequel [Lenhard]; Knitting School)

A Tea Party with Jane Austen (Emma [Austen]; Jane Fairfax [Aiken]; Letters of Jane Austen [Austen]; What Jane Austen Ate and Carles Dickens Knew [Pool] )

Civil War: Real and Imagined (March [Brooks]; Traveler [Adams]; Photos by Brady)

Click: 3 About Photography (Razzle [Wittlinger]; Class Pictures [Bey]; Voices in the Mirror [Parks])

Angels and Demons for Fun (Maximum Ride [Paterson]; Good Omens [Gaiman]; Repossesed [Jenkins])

Getting in to College Blues (Catalyst [Anderson]; Where Do I Go From Here; Good Enough [Yoo]

Fangs (Gil’s All Fright Diner [Martinez]; Silver Kiss [Klause]; Encyclopedia Horrifica [Gee]

Brr...Arctic Adventures (North Pole Was Here [Revkin]; Cage [Schulman]; White Darkness [McCaughrean])

Environmental Crisis 3 Ways ( Earth Matters [DK]; Forty Signs of Rain [Robinson]; State of Fear [Crichton] )

Engineers Can Build Anything (The Big Dig; Aftermath [Florman]; Gecko’s Foot [Forbes] )

Are There Secrets Anymore? (Numerati [Baker]; Feed [Anderson]; Traveler [Adams])

Hoops (Lay-ups and Long Shots; Rebound: the Odyssey of Michael Jordan [Green]; Eagle Blue [d’Orso]

Love...100 Years Ago (The Luxe [Godbersen]; Ragtime [Doctorow]; Northern Light [Donnely] )

Take me Out to the Ballgame! (Satchel Paige [Sturm]; The Negro League [Margolies]; Summerland [Chabon] )

Many Roads to Recovery (Million Little Pieces [Frey]; Big Sur [Kerouac]; Generation RX [Crister] )

Blood, Guts and DNA (Grave Secrets [Reichs]; Bone Lady [Manhein]; Casebook of Forensic Detection [Evans])

Poof!

Sam Temple is sitting in his U.S. History class, bored out of his mind. And then POOF!
His teacher vanishes. As Sam and his classmates come to realize, everyone over the age of 15 has disappeared. Cars crash because their drivers aren't there anymore. Over the next few weeks, Sam and his small circle of friends try to keep the little children safe, the power running, the town fed and the bullies at bay. But new kids in town with startling powers threaten the peace. Animals are mutating and down in the depths of a mine, an unspeakable darkness threatens every human in town. Can Sam save the town before his 15th birthday. Because Sam knows that on his birthday, he, too, will disappear.

A Fresh Twist on Little Women

"March," by Geraldine Brooks is the winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Ms. Brooks has always been a fan of Louisa May Alcott's classic "Little Women." She began to speculate about the father of the March girls, who was away at war for most of the first half of the book. The result of that speculation is this novel about war, race, faith and honor.

My field trip to Concord

I mentioned in my end of the year entry that I was going to visit Concord for a literary field trip. Mrs. Scully (who has left Newton North for a new job at Newton South) and I went to Concord together. We visited Orchard House, home of Louisa May Alcott.
If you have read Little Women, you would love this tour. My favorite part was seeing all the drawings by May Alcott (aka Amy March)...it seems that the Alcott's encouraged their daughter to draw directly on the walls!

After lunch at the Concord Inn in the center of town, we headed for the Old Manse. This house was built in 1770 by Ralph Waldo Emerson's grandfather, a minister in town. On April 18, 1775 the Battle of Lexington and Concord was fought just yards from Emerson's pasture. From an upstairs bedroom you can look out a window and see the bridge and imagine the British troops running away and the wounded Minutemen collapsing in the field. Those same windows are engraved with some amusing details of daily life by Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife, Sophia. They lived in the Old Manse right after they married. Ralph Waldo Emerson also lived there for a while and wrote the following lines you may recognize:

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world."

He wrote Concord Hymn while looking out that same window. I was inspired by my trip to plan rereading two books I would recommend to anyone. 1776 by David McCullough is a great look at the beginning of the American Revolution. It's fairly short and filled with wonderful stories and characters. The Peabody Sisters by Megan Marshall is my other reread. Sophia Peabody was married to Nathanial Hawthorne and her diamond ring was used to engrave on the windows of the Old Manse. The three sisters were amazing ladies and Megan Marshall (a Newton author) did a great job bringing them to life.



Next field trip: a visit to Mt. Auburn Cemetery. I recently finished The Escher Twist by Jane Langton. It's a murder mystery which combines math (Escher, Moebius Strips, etc.) and the history of the cemetery. Can't wait to track down all the landmarks in this amazing place. Want to come??

Summer Round-up of my "Best Books"

Yes, I've been reading all summer. No, not everything was worth writing about. Below you'll find the best of what I read, with a little something to see if you'd like to read it too. All will be available in the library sometime in September.

In Life as We Knew It, Susan Beth Pfeffer told the harrowing story of Miranda, trying to survive a natural disaster in rural Pennsylvania. In her new book, The Dead and the Gone, Pfeffer introduces us to Alex, who is trying to survive the same disaster in New York City. Alex's mother is working in a hospital on the other side of the city when disaster strikes. She never comes home, leaving Alex to try to survive on his own and to take care of his two younger sisters. The only beacon of hope in this violent and deprived New York is his school, where dedicated priests try to keep school open and food in the bellies of the hungry students. You will not soon forget Alex's difficult journey to Yankee Stadium. The stadium has been turned into a morgue and Alex is looking for his mother.

Rumors continues the story of Elizabeth and Diana, two high society sisters in 1890's New York. Elizabeth has headed West to find her true love and Diana, in love with her sister's former fiance, struggle to find love in the society world of decorum, rules and gossip. A solid sequel to The Luxe, this book needs to be read after reading the first. My favorite part of this book is the story of Lena, a former maid, trying to claw her way into high society. She doesn't have looks, she doesn't have breeding,but she is one determined lady and discovers how to lie effortlessly and often.

Cadel is a 7 year old genius who is so engrossed in his projects he never thinks about consequences.When he shuts down all the electricity in the city to see if he can, his adoptive parents take hime to a psychiatrist. Little do they know that Dr. Thaddeus Roth is really a henchman for notorious criminal Dr. Phineas Darkkon. Roth and Darkkon want to use Cadel for their own evil agenda. Will Cadel become a true Evil Genius or will he develop a conscience?

Summertime: What's in My Bag

I started reading this series many years ago. I was excited when PBS Mystery announced they were turning them into one hour mysteries. I was annoyed when the Inspector Lynley series completely messed up the books. Tommy Lynley is an elegant, titled Englishman (he's a Lord!) who has chosen to be a professional police detective specializing in homicide. His partner, Barbara Havers, is the polar opposite: dowdy, unpretty, lower class, abrasive and rude. Together, they make a fabulous team. Other characters deepen the personal story, which unwinds as the pair solve the mysteries. This is her newest book. If you are interested in the series, it starts with A Great Deliverance.

Authors On Tour Live: Elizabeth George

The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz won an Alex Award for best adult book for young adults. The description in Amazon convinced me: Meet Isabel "Izzy" Spellman, private investigator. This twenty-eight-year-old may have a checkered past littered with romantic mistakes, excessive drinking, and creative vandalism; she may be addicted to Get Smart reruns and prefer entering homes through windows rather than doors -- but the upshot is she's good at her job as a licensed private investigator with her family's firm, Spellman Investigations. Invading people's privacy comes naturally to Izzy. In fact, it comes naturally to all the Spellmans. If only they could leave their work at the office. To be a Spellman is to snoop on a Spellman; tail a Spellman; dig up dirt on, blackmail, and wiretap a Spellman.

And since gas is so darned expensive, I'm planning some local field trips, including one to Concord. To get ready, I'm reading some books about the writers of Concord in the early 1800's. American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever was an amazing collection of essays. I had no idea what scandalous lives Emerson, Hawthorne, etc. lived. Would you believe that Louisa May Alcott had a crush on Henry David Thoreau? That Nathaniel Hawthorne courted one Peabody girl and then suddenly married her sister? Or that Margaret Fuller, a brilliant and brainy "modern" woman, had two married men vying for her attention? (The two men were Emerson and Hawthorne!) Having read this book, I'm dipping into Hawthorne in Concord by Philip McFarland and The Peabody Sisters by Megan Marshall. I love a good scandal, even if it is 180 years old! After, or during all this reading, I will head down the road to Concord and visit the Emerson House, the Old Manse, and the Alcott's Orchard House. A truly geeky summer trip!

Summertime: Graphic Novels http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifand Comics

The Dark Knight is scheduled to open soon...don't forget to read the graphic novels by Frank Miller. Need more comics? Check out this list from my favorite blogger, Whitney, in Pop Candy. She was a judge for the Eisner awards this year for best graphic novels and really knows the field. Here are just some of her recommendations:




Top 25 (some are adult in content)
Family Friendly





Do you like to draw and write comics? Check out Webcomics by Steven Withrow and John Barber. The authors give practical advise on "tools and techniques for digital cartooning" and interview well known webcomic creators.

Can't draw but have something to say in this medium? Check out this free website. It helps you put together your own comic strips, even if you can't draw a straight line!

Summer Reading Ideas Are Cominghttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Newton North doesn't have mandatory reading lists for students for the summer. That doesn't mean we don't think it's important (and fun) to read on vacation. It does mean that you should read what you love, whether it's Rowling or Dickens, Shakespeare or Stephen King. But sometimes it's nice to have some suggestions, so I will be blogging this week to mention some books not mentioned in this blog already. I'll try to give you choices in every genre, as well as some nonfiction books for those of you who prefer reality to fiction! I have two baskets full of books waiting for my vacation...start building your own summer survival kit!

Click here to access the suggestions!

Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella

The popular author Sophie Kinsella (of Shopoholic fame) introduces a new heroine with a big problem. Lexi Smart wakes up in the hospital with a case of amnesia caused by a head injury. The last thing she remembers is being a loser: crooked teeth, frizzy hair, no money and a dead-end job. But apparently the three years she can't remember were big ones: she's now sleek, sophisticated, rich, a successful businesswoman and married. But as she tries to reconstruct her recent history, Lexi begins to dislike the woman she became. If you're a fan of Samantha Who? or are just in the mood for a funny and touching story, this is the book for you.

Check out this book trailer for THE LUXE!

Shelter Stories is a compilation of Patrick McDonnell's comic strip MUTTS, a strip intended to shine a light on the many animals living in shelters and waiting for homes. You'll meet feral cats and abandoned bunnies, dogs who grew too big for their owners, puppies born on the streets and animals displaced in tragedies like Hurricane Katrina. In all their stories, the common thread is that, in a single act of love and generosity, anyone can make a difference by adopting such an animal or, if you can't , by supporting the shelters which do this heroic work. The comic strips are complemented by photographs of adopted animals with brief commentary by their new owners. You will not soon forget the blind bird given a home by an optometrist or the old warrior cat, ears torn and face scarred, who was given a loving home for the last days of his life.

Gossip Girls Meet the 1890's

Manhattan high society 1899.

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Beautiful girls in fabulous dresses, partying until dawn. Charming boys. Lies, secrets, hookups.

The princess of high society, Elizabeth Holland, dies in a carriage accident. What led her to that bridge and that fate? Was it a society marriage being forced on her? Or her backstabbing best friend? Her vengeful and jealous maid? Or her quiet sister's stunning betrayal.

The Luxe by Anna Godberson.