In the Spotlight
Posted On: Feb 7, 2013 In: In the Spotlight, Staff Picks
Knowing that I’d basically be taking a month off from blogging about my Classics Reading Project during our library’s move to its temporary location, I knew I had plenty of time to read. And what better to fill that stretch with than another doorstop of a classic of Russian Lit? So it was that I picked up a copy of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky…not exactly the cinderblock-sized book that is War & Peace (the Russian Literature that got me started with this whole Reading the Classics thing). But I was also under the impression that, while shorter than War & Peace’s 1300+ pages, Dostoevsky’s 630 page masterpiece was a bit deeper psychologically. Read More..
Posted On: Jan 29, 2013 In: In the Spotlight, Staff Picks
I have never been a fan of audiobooks. This is perhaps because my first experience was listening to The Scarlet Letter during 11th grade English class, which at 16, I found unbearably boring (no offense to its fans). But I am constantly jealous of all the reading people get done while simultaneously completing other tasks. I can see how commuters fall in love with audiobooks, but since I live less than a mile from the library and rarely drive, listening to books in the car wasn’t going to work for me. I needed another way to work audiobooks into my reading routine. Read More..
Posted On: Jan 25, 2013 In: In the Spotlight
Bodice-ripping romances. Celebrity biographies. Ultra geeky sci-fi paperbacks. We all have our guilty pleasures when it comes to reading. We’re librarians, we don’t judge. Heck, we’ll even help you find more cat mysteries, troll-laden fantasy tomes, or teen romances – just ask us. Read More..
Posted On: Jan 15, 2013 In: In the Spotlight, Staff Picks
When the book club I’m in selected Snow Flower and the Secret Fan as its next title, I was a little hesitant to read it, thinking I might not be the book’s intended audience. To be blunt: it looked like a book for ladies. And by that I don’t mean women, I mean proper ladies with lace parasols and deeply-held opinions about crumpets. The book had a soft pink cover adorned with little flowers and a delicate fan framed by floral scroll work. I know it’s unfair to associate a book with its cover, or a color palate with gender, but this one was asking for it. Read More..
Posted On: Jan 3, 2013 In: In the Spotlight, Staff Picks
While you may have spent the holidays listening to, or even playing or singing, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, I spent a rather enjoyable chunk of time reading about it. And, eventually, surfing YouTube to watch and listen to a few unique performances. But more on that later. Read More..
Posted On: Dec 30, 2012 In: In the Spotlight, Staff Picks
It’s 1999 and Lincoln hasn’t had a girlfriend in a decade, still lives with his mother, and has just taken a job at a newspaper where his main task is to read company emails that are caught in the network filter and flagged as inappropriate. Though he is supposed to reprimand those who are using work email for personal correspondence, he doesn’t ever notify Beth, the movie reviewer, or her best friend Jennifer, the copy editor, of their violations — because he likes them. Read More..
Posted On: Dec 26, 2012 In: In the Spotlight, Other
Bentley Little is one of the horror genre’s best kept secrets. He has been writing for twenty years and has penned more than a dozen novels and over one hundred short stories but almost never gives interviews, doesn’t have a website, and rarely appears at book signings. He published his first novel in 1990 and it won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel, the genre’s highest annual honor for new novelists. Since then, he has gone on to develop a unique voice that has won famous fans such as Stephen King and Dean Koontz. Read More..
Posted On: Dec 20, 2012 In: In the Spotlight, Staff Picks
Fifty years ago this October the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe when the United States and the USSR squared off over the stationing in Cuba of Soviet medium range ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear warheads. Less than two years later the greatest film treatment of the absurdity of nuclear warfare and one of the greatest films of all time was released by the visionary director Stanley Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Read More..
Posted On: Dec 18, 2012 In: In the Spotlight, Staff Picks
My attention was recently drawn towards an article focusing on the career of author Philip Roth. The article was written in response to Roth announcing his retirement from writing after his most recent novel. As I read, I found myself intrigued by Roth’s career as a writer. I had never read anything by Roth, but in researching his works decided to pick up one of his better known novels, Portnoy’s Complaint. Read More..
Posted On: Dec 15, 2012 In: In the Spotlight, Staff Picks
This month I accidentally discovered a novel that may very well rank among my favorites of all time! I had actually begun to read another book to serve as my “Classic of the Month”. It was a reread; again a re-visitation of a favorite from my college days that I felt I wanted to share…and it may yet become a blog post one day. But just as I was getting into it, fate intervened! And oddly enough it came in the form of rabbits from Richard Adam’s Watership Down. Read More..
