November Art Quilt Display

Come in and see the art quilts by the Cocheco Quilter’s Guild Art Bee. They are stunning.

The Library is Open Today!

We are open today so come on in. The Friends of the Library Book Sale is still going on with lots of good books left!

The Library Will Be Closing at 2PM Today

We've just been notified by the City Manager that all city facilities, library included, will close at 2pm this afternoon. You have approx. 3 hours to come in and get your books and DVDs!

Will You Find Your Next Art Project at the Book Sale?

Find inspiration at the book sale. It's going on now.

Make a Kindle Cover from a Book

The Friends of the Library Annual Book Sale begins for DPL card holders today. Why not come in and pick out a book to make the perfect cover for your Kindle or Nook? This site has step by step instructions, and it looks pretty easy. You will end up with your own personalized jacket to protect your eReader, pretty cool!  

The Friends of the Library Annual Book Sale begins on Friday, Oct. 26 at 9am for Dover Public Library cardholders, and on Sat., Oct. 27 at 9am for the general public.

Find the Perfect Book to be Your Next Purse at the Book Sale

Take a look at these step by step instructions for crafting the world's best book purse then come to the book sale to find the perfect book to become that purse. If you prefer to watch a video demonstrating how to craft a book purse, check this site.

The Friends of the Library Annual Book Sale begins on Friday, Oct. 26 at 9am for Dover Public Library cardholders, and on Sat., Oct. 27 at 9am for the general public.  Thousands of hardcovers, paperbacks, DVDs, CDs, children's books and more!  Don't miss it.

Musicians a-plenty!

There's been a remarkable spate of musicians' and singers' biographies and autobiographies of late. All those people who've been making music for such a long time and are writing about it! Here's a sample of some new titles that our readers may enjoy:

Who is that Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan by David Dalton

Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970s by Peter Doggett

Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page by Brad Tolinski

A Natural Woman: a memoir by Carole King

Rod: the Autobiography by Rod Stewart

Waging Heavy Peace: a Hippie Dream by Neil Young

Who I Am: a memoir by Pete Townshend

Mick Jagger by Philip Norman

Kicking and Dreaming: a Story of Heart, Soul and Rock & Roll by Ann and Nancy Wilson

My Cross to Bear by Gregg Allman

I’m Your Man: the Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons

Bruce: the Innocence, the Darkness, the Rising  by Peter A. Carlin

Cyndi Lauper: a memoir by Cyndi Lauper

More Room in a Broken Heart: the True Adventures of Carly Simon by Stephen Davis

Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand by William J. Mann

Life is a Gift: the Zen of Bennett by Tony Bennett

Plan Ahead for Christmas at the Book Sale

Not only can you find some lovely books and CDs at the Friends of the Library Annual Book Sale for Christmas presents, you can also pick up some books to build these cool Christmas Trees.

Study Christmas

Old Book Christmas Tree

The Friends of the Library Annual Book Sale begins on Friday, Oct. 26 at 9am for Dover Public Library cardholders, and on Sat., Oct. 27 at 9am for the general public.

Book Sale Craft

Come to the Friend's of the Library Book Sale and find the perfect book to become your next planter!

The Friends of the Library Annual Book Sale begins on Friday, Oct. 26 at 9am for Dover Public Library cardholders, and on Sat., Oct. 27 at 9am for the general public.  Thousands of hardcovers, paperbacks, DVDs, CDs, children's books and more!  Don't miss it.

Book Sale Is Approaching!

The Friends of the Library Annual Book Sale begins on Friday, Oct. 26 at 9am for Dover Public Library cardholders, and on Sat., Oct. 27 at 9am for the general public.  Thousands of hardcovers, paperbacks, DVDs, CDs, children's books and more! Even if you don't find anything you want to read, watch, or listen to, there are loads of crafty ideas that require books. Here are just a few.

Flight Behavior

One of my favorite authors is Barbara Kingsolver and her new book, Flight Behavior, is due out on Nov. 6.  You can listen or read an excerpt at NPR.   If you like the sound of it, you can put a hold on the Dover Public Library copy by clicking on the link.  I can't wait! 

"Modernist Cuisine" now a bargain?

You may remember that last year Nathan Myhrvold published the 4-volume, 2,500 page "Modernist Cuisine", the most comprehensive guide to high-tech cooking ever. Its price was $625 and the Dover Public Library did not purchase it. Yet, it did sell over 50,000 copies around the world.

Now Myhrvolt is set to release "Modernist Cuisine at Home", the sort-of abridged version of the original, and only $140 (!) for 456 gadget-packed foodie pages. Publishers Weekly says this is the stuff for true kitchen scientists, with suggestions for digital scales, injectors, dehydraters, and blowtorches. "As a result," says the PW review, "it is a safe bet that their turkey confit recipe is one of the very few places where the terms needle-nose pliers and duck fat can be listed side by side."

We've had no requests for either of these tomes but they would be fun to see. Our patrons seem to prefer to cook with the Pioneer Lady, Rachael Ray, the Barefoot Contessa, Giada DeLaurentis, Emeril Lagasse, and other more traditional chefs, yes even Martha Stewart (who did write a foreword for Myhrvold's new release). Many cookbooks are now in the $35-$50 range, but I still cannot see paying $140 for a cookbook! (Although a donation of the book would be cheerfully accepted!)

Decorated Pumpkin Contest

Calling all 5-12 year olds—
Decorate an uncarved pumpkin and bring it to the library during the week of October 15-20.
They will be displayed in the Children’s Room for all to enjoy.
Vote for your favorite during the week of October 22-27 (ribbons will be awarded).

Take your pumpkins home by October 30.

Join us for "The Old Country Fiddler", Tues. Oct. 16, 7pm

The Friends of the Dover Public Library are pleased to sponsor a living history presentation by Adam Boyce as “The Old Country Fiddler: Charles Ross Taggert” on Tuesday evening, October 16 at 7pm. Through a grant from the New Hampshire Humanities Council, Adam Boyce will portray the Vermont-based,, Chautauqua-style entertainer Charles Ross Taggert (1871—1953) near the end of his career, c. 1936. 

As Taggert, Boyce will share recollections on his life, with some live fiddling and humorous sketches interspersed. A fiddler, piano player, humorist, singer and ventriloquist, Mr.Taggert made at least 25 recordings with Victor, Edison, and Columbia and appeared in a talking movie picture four years before Al Jolson starred in the “Jazz Singer”.

Taggert gave over 4,000 performances in nearly all of the 48 states at that time. His routines were adaptable to any circumstance and audience, and he could easily vary any program with his repertoire of hundreds of songs, stories, and caricatures. Last year, the communities of Topsham and Newbury, Vermont held Charles Ross Taggart Day. A bronze plaque was dedicated and placed at town hall, the site of Taggart's first public performance in 1895, and a Vermont State Historic Roadside Marker was erected near his former home, Elmbank, in Newbury. Our presenter for this program, Adam Boyce, re-enacted a performance by this noted traveling entertainer.

Boyce notes that, “These small, but important markers to Mr. Taggart's existence and impact on our cultural history will hopefully continue to educate the public for many years to come, as will my living history presentation about him.”

Join us on the 16^th for this free program! Refreshments will follow. For more information, call 603-516-6050.

National Book Award finalists announced!

For Fiction:
This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz, Penguin/Riverhead
Diaz’s second collection of short stories featuring the alter ego “Yunior”, who as a boy and young man was the central character in his first collection “Drown”. His voice is distinctive, mixing popular and high culture, comic books and literature.
The Yellow Birds, Kevin Powers, Hachette/ Little, Brown
In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year-old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. First Novel
The Round House, Louise Erdrich, Harper
One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe.
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain, HarperCollins/Ecco
After a ferocious firefight with Iraqi insurgents at “the battle of Al-Ansakar Canal”—three minutes and forty-three seconds of intense warfare caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew—has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo Squad into America’s most sought-after heroes, the Bush administration has sent them on a media-intensive nationwide Victory Tour to reinvigorate public support for the war, including being featured as part of the halftime show at a Dallas Cowboys game, alongside the superstar pop group Destiny’s Child. First Novel
A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers, McSweeney’s Books
In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter’s college tuition, and finally do something great, with mixed results.

For Non-Fiction:
Anne Applebaum
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956
RH/Doubleday
Iron Curtain describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete, how political parties, the church, the media, young people’s organizations―the institutions of civil society on every level―were eviscerated, how the secret police services were organized, how ethnic cleansing was carried out, and how some people were forced to collaborate while others managed to resist.
Katherine Boo
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
Random House
Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope: Individual stories of courage set against the backdrop of tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy.
Robert A. Caro
The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 4
RH/Knopf
The fourth installment in Robert Caro’s monumental work on President Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power follows Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career: 1958 to 1964
Domingo Martinez
The Boy Kings of Texas
Globe Pequot Press/Lyons Press
Domingo Martinez lays bare his interior and exterior worlds as he struggles to make sense of the violent and the ugly, along with the beautiful and the loving, in a Texas border town in the 1980s. First Book
Anthony Shadid
House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
In the spring of 2011, when Anthony Shadid—one of four New York Times reporters captured in Libya as the region erupted—was freed, he went to his ancestral home, Marjayoun, Lebanon…to an ancient estate built by his great-grandfather, a place filled with memories of a lost era when the Middle East was a world of grace, grandeur, and unexpected departures, and tells the story of the house’s re-creation, revealing its mysteries and recovering the lives that have passed through it. Shadid died on February 16, 2012 from an asthma attack while on assignment on the Syrian border.

For Poetry:
David Ferry
Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations
University of Chicago Press
The passionate nature and originality of Ferry’s poems modulates beautifully between plainspoken high eloquence and colloquial vigor, making his distinctive speech one of the most interesting and ravishing achievements of the past half century
Cynthia Huntington
Heavenly Bodies
Southern Illinois University Press
In this blistering collection of lyric poems, Cynthia Huntington gives an intimate view of the sexual revolution and rebellion in a time before the rise of feminism.
Tim Seibles
Fast Animal
Etruscan Press
The newest collection from one of America’s foremost African-American poets threads the journey from youthful innocence to the whittled-hard awareness of adulthood
Alan Shapiro
Night of the Republic
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
In Night of the Republic, Alan Shapiro takes us on an unsettling night tour of America’s public places―a gas station restroom, a shoe store, a convention hall, and a race track, among other locations―and in stark, Edward Hopper-like imagery reveals the surreal and dreamlike features of these familiar but empty night spaces.
Susan Wheeler
Meme
University of Iowa Press
A meme is a unit of thought replicated by imitation. Occupy Wall Street is a meme, as are internet ideas and images that go viral. But what could be more potent memes than those passed down by parents to their children? Susan Wheeler reconstructs her mother’s voice—down to its cynicism and its mid-twentieth-century Midwestern vernacular—in “The Maud Poems,” a voice that takes a more aggressive, vituperative turn in “The Devil—or —The Introjects.”

For Children:

Goblin Secrets, William Alexander, S&S.Margaret K. McElderry
Rownie, the youngest in Graba the witchworker’s household of stray children, escapes and goes looking for his missing brother. Along the way he falls in with a troupe of theatrical goblins and learns the secret origins of masks.
Out of Reach, Carrie Arcos, S&S/Simon Pulse
Rachel has always idolized her older brother Micah. He struggles with addiction, but she tells herself that he’s in control. And she almost believes it. Until the night that Micah doesn’t come home.
Never Fall Down, Patricia McCormick, HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray
When the Khmer Rouge arrive at his hometown in Cambodia, Arn is just a kid, dancing to rock ‘n’ roll, hustling for spare change, and selling ice cream with his brother. But after the soldiers march the entire population into the countryside, Arn is separated from his family and assigned to a labor camp. One day, the soldiers ask if any of the kids can play an instrument. In order to survive, Arn must quickly master the strange revolutionary songs the soldiers demand. This will save his life, but it will also pull him into the very center of what we know today as the Killing Fields.
Endangered, Eliot Schrefer, Scholastic
When Sophie has to visit her mother at her sanctuary for bonobos in Congo, she’s not thrilled to be there. It’s her mother’s passion, and Sophie doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. At least not until Otto, an infant bonobo, comes into her life, and for the first time she feels the bond a human can have with an animal.
Bomb: The Race to Build–and Steal–the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon, Steve Sheinkin, Macmillan/Flash Point
In December of 1938, a chemist in a German laboratory made a shocking discovery: When placed next to radioactive material, a Uranium atom split in two. That simple discovery launched a scientific race that spanned three continents. This is the story of the plotting, risk-taking, deceit, and genius that created the world’s most formidable weapon. This is the story of the atomic bomb.

No Wizard of Oz on a Bike

When Toto pulled back the curtain and exposed the man behind "The Great and Powerful Oz", viewers were saddened and disheartened for Dorothy and her friends. The same sobering feeling affected me recently after reading former pro cyclist Tyler Hamilton's "The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups and Winning at All Costs". 

As a result, I have taken off my Lance Armstrong Livestrong bracelet, which has adorned my wrist continuously for the last seven years. I loved the Tour, admired Lance, wanted to believe his claims of innocence. I don't anymore. It was traumatic, believe me, but my bracelet had to come off after reading Tyler Hamilton's account of the sport-wide culture of doping in pro cycling.

Now Tyler didn't have a stellar reputation: after all, he was a doper himself who was caught lying and banned. But his powerful and forthright account of rider transfusions, testosterone and EPO use in the peleton during the late 90s and 2000s in Europe is both credible and depressing. "The Secret Race" is a game-changer book, backed up by others' testimony and the exhaustive research of his co-author Daniel Coyle.

Someone once said that cycling is like sausage: You love it, but you don't want to know how it's made. Well, you certainly know the manufacturing process after reading this book. Tyler Hamilton writes without arrogance or excuses, explaining why he doped (and lied) and why every top rider did the same thing.  The only alternative to cheating, if you wanted to stay clean, was to finish at the back of the pack or retire. If a team had clever directors, the right doctors, and enough money to cover the logistics, its riders could stay ahead of the testers and the tests, or make payoffs to authorities to cover up transgressions.

It's hard for a huge fan of Lance Armstrong, such as myself, to turn the corner and realize that he's lied for years about his own doping, but it was even more difficult to read Tyler's accounts of his many interactions with Lance over the years. Armstrong is revealed as a domineering,vindictive, narcissistic bully whose threatening tactics ruined careers and reputations. "The Secret Race" is an absorbing, fascinating, and deeply disturbing book. I did find Tyler's story completely believable and feel betrayed by Lance Armstrong's repeated claims of innocence to this day. I regret my admiration for the man and now sadly feel that his seven Tour de France victories should be expunged.

Holiday Hours

The Library will be closed this Monday, October 8
in observance of Columbus Day.

Want to Work at the Dover Public Library?

WANTED: PART-TIME LIBRARY ASSISTANT I

ADULT CIRCULATION DESK  

Avg 23 hrs/week. Includes weekday, evening, and some Saturday hours.

Seeking an energetic person, ideally with public library experience, with an extensive knowledge of books and authors, an avid personal reading habit, well-developed customer relations skills, and familiarity with computer technology to work part-time at the Dover Public Library’s  busy Adult Circulation Desk.

Duties include: use of automated check-in/check-out system, registration of borrowers, collection of fines/fees, and assistance to patrons.  Circulation desk staff also reshelve library materials, answer telephones, offer readers’ advisory, and guidance in the use of library computers/databases and in the operation of printers, photocopiers, and microfilm readers.

Hourly rate is $12.09 and ranges up to $17.12.

Application CLOSING DATE:  Open until filled

Starting date: November 1, 2012

Applicants must have high school diploma; college degree and/or library experience preferred. Benefits include vacation, holiday and sick leave on a proportional basis.   

Applications available at the City Manager’s Office at City Hall, or may be downloaded at:  http://1.usa.gov/SAq9OZ

A full job description is available at the Adult Circulation Desk, or can be viewed at: http://www.dover.nh.gov/employment.htm

All completed applications must be returned to the City Manager’s Office or mailed to:

Employment

Office of the City Manager

City of Dover

288 Central Avenue

Dover, NH 03820

(Completed applications may not be faxed or emailed.)

OverDrive App Comes to Nook

Borrowing eBooks and audiobooks from the library just got a whole lot easier for users of the NOOK HD, NOOK HD+, NOOK Tablet™ and NOOK Color™. Last week, Barnes & Noble added the OverDrive Media Console app to the NOOK Apps™ storefront. This NOOK app enables users to wirelessly borrow eBooks and MP3 audiobooks from the library.

All NOOK devices, including NOOK 1st Edition, NOOK Simple Touch and NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight, have always enabled users to read eBooks borrowed from libraries and schools, but the process required sideloading the files from a computer using Adobe Digital Editions and a USB cable. Now users of NOOK HD, NOOK HD+, NOOK Tablet and NOOK Color can borrow eBooks and audiobooks wirelessly using the OverDrive app.

Users can visit the NOOK Apps storefront to install the free OverDrive Media Console (OMC) app. The app enables users to locate a library or school nearby, browse or search their eBook and MP3 audiobook collection and, after entering a valid library card, check out and download the title for a lending period of two weeks.  At the end of the lending period, the title simply expires.

The version of OMC available in the NOOK Apps storefront is OMC for Android v2.5, so any instructions found on library Help pages related to OMC for Android will apply to the NOOK app. While the app is free, users will need a valid NOOK account in order to download the app.