News, events, and opinions from the staff of the Dover Public Library in New Hampshire.
Finish your Christmas shopping at the Library. We offer an assortment of gifts unique to
Birds Eye View of
Notepaper featuring five historic scenes of
The
Factory on Fire! Cocheco Mill Blaze of 1907 Revealed DVD. $20.00
The Great Blaze: A Look Back at
Come on in and see what else we have to offer!
It's Christmas time once again and Scott Calvin juggles a full house of
family and the mischievous Jack Frost, who is trying to take over the "big
guy's" holiday. At the risk of giving away the secret location of the North
Pole, Scott invites his in-laws to share in the holiday festivities, and
upcoming birth of baby Claus with expectant wife, Carol. Along for the
adventure are Scott's extended family, son Charlie, ex-wife Laura Miller,
her husband, Neil Miller and their daughter, Lucy who, together with head
elf Curtis, foil Jack Frost's crafty scheme to control the North Pole.
Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing by Sonny Brewer I can’t believe I read the whole thing in one night. I have been in a slump lately; no books or audiobooks have thrilled me. Many were tossed aside after a few lackluster chapters. Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing was a book I could not put down. Cormac is a personable Golden Retriever who rarely leaves his owner’s side. They go to work together, they hang out at home together, their bond is deep. Sonny, the author, leaves Cormac with a friend while he goes off on a book tour. The nightmare begins when he gets a phone call telling him that Cormac has disappeared. Neighbors thought they had seen him in the back of a strange red pickup truck. The pound does not have him, shelters and vets have not seen him either. The breakthrough finally comes when a young girl admits Cormac was left at the pound. The director stonewalls until lawyers are brought in and then admits that Cormac was given to a Golden Retriever Rescue in another part of the country. The chase is on to find him before he vanishes forever.
The author does a splendid job building the tension in this true life story as well as bringing Cormac with all his eccentricities to life. A treat for any dog lover.
Test your vocabulary skills while you help feed the world. Here’s how you can play: Click on the answer that best defines the word. If you get it right, you get a harder word. If wrong, you get an easier word. For each word you get right, Free Rice will donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. Its lots of fun; words range form easy to unusual. Do you know what caprine and scintillation mean? If you do, don’t be supercilious, be insuperable and help make an oblation of rice!
This weekend I experienced science fiction transformed into reality. I saw Butterscotch; a toy horse that whinnies, swishes his tail, blinks, and moves in response to the touch of your hand. It reminded me of Ray Bradbury stories where the toys becomes a little too sophisticated for the good of their human owners. Every where I went huge plasma screen TVs were on sale, reminding me of another Ray Bradbury story. In “The Pedestrian” a man is arrested by police for his unusual behavior. He is out walking, enjoying the night air while everyone else sits in their living rooms, illuminated by the ghostly blue flicker from huge TV screens hanging on the walls. Ray Bradbury was particularly prescient with the story he titled “The Murderer”. His portrait of a world of constant background noise from radios, TVs, and wrist radios much like the modern cell phone, was written in 1953! The Murderer is sent to a mental institution because he began gleefully destroying all the noise making machines after realizing, “The telephones such a convenient thing: it just sits there and demands you call someone who doesn’t want to be called. Friends were always calling, calling, calling me. Hell, I hadn’t any time of my own. When it wasn’t the telephone it was the television. The radio, the phonograph….It was music by Mozzek in every restaurant, music and commercials on buses I rode to work. When it wasn’t music, it was interoffice communications, and my horror chamber of a radio wristwatch on which my friends and my wife phoned every five minutes.”
It all makes me wonder what other science fiction scenarios will soon be come reality….
Our intrepid Library office manager spends many hours on the phone ordering books and dealing with all sorts of vendors trying to get the best deal for the library. When you spend this much time on the phone you grow to despise those automated telephone systems. One of her favorite web sites is Get Human. They offer phone numbers for hundreds of companies and the numeric codes that will get you out of the dreaded automated telephone system and talking to a real live human.
The Circulation Librarian is always finding the cutest bookmarks to tempt unwary readers. They are often seasonal; in October she set out bookmarks that looked like candy bars wrappers. The Hershey chocolate bar bookmark was deliciously realistic. This month’s irresistible bookmarks feature a snowman and a gingerbread man. Why do her bookmarks always make me feel hungry?
Maybe it’s a good thing Norman Mailer is not alive to personally receive this particular prize. He is the 2007 winner of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award for the most awkward description of an intimate encounter. The Literary Review, a British magazine, started the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards in 1993 to “draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it”. Previous winners include Sebastian Faulks and Tom Wolfe.
More than 6,000 teen readers across the country chose New Moon by Stephenie Meyer as their favorite book in the annual American Library Association Teens’ Top Ten vote. New moon is the second book in an incredibly popular series about teenage vampires. The 2007 Teens' Top Ten is:
Happy Thanksgiving to you all!
Are you going to be one of those unfortunate travelers braving the airports over the Thanksgiving holiday? If you are, why not load up your MP3 player with a few audio books to occupy your time? Many new titles have been added this month.
| Title | Author |
| Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress | Sijie, Dai |
| Blue Christmas | Andrews, Mary Kay |
| Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy | Nimmo, Jenny |
| Creation in Death | Robb, J.D. |
| Fatherland | Harris, Robert |
| King Dork | Portman, Frank |
| A Lick of Frost | Hamilton, Laurell K. |
| Look Me in the Eye | Robison, John Elder |
| The Secret Life of Josephine | Erickson, Carolly |
| Sixteen in | Brand, Max |
| Stone Cold | Baldacci, David |
| Third Degree | Iles, Greg |
| American Creation | Ellis, Joseph J. |
| Charlie Bone & the | Nimmo, Jenny |
| | Mills, Kyle |
| Double Cross | Patterson, James |
| The Heir | Bradford, Barbara Taylor |
| Last Night at the Lobster | O'Nan, Stewart |
| The Race | Patterson, Richard North |
Our wonderful patrons know how to keep the librarians’ spirits up. Thank you Joanne and Michael!
The Library is always looking for local craftspeople and artists who would like to display their work at the Library throughout the year. If you are interested please contact Sandra Erdmann.Find out if you know when to use "it's" or "its and "there," "their," or "they're" with this fun little quiz. If you grew up in a household like mine, with a mother who would correct us by saying things like “that is THEY, not, that’s them.” you will find it a piece of cake. I only missed one, don’t tell my Mom, or the Library Director either because she knows her grammar like nobody’s business. Hmmm, was that correct grammar?
Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss
Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies by June Casagrande
When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It by Ben Yagoda
Spunk and Bite by Arthur Plotnik
Right, Wrong, and Risky by Mark Davidson
Much Ado About English by Todd Watson
My Dad recently called me to get more information on a story he had just seen on Good Morning America. It seems that several Veterans charities had been given failing grades for using under 35% of money collected “on actual bona fide charitable programs”. I was able to find the text of the article on GMA’s website for him as well as passing on websites of charity watchdog groups. Before you give money this year, make sure to check up on the groups you are interested in at
http://www.give.org/
http://www.charitynavigator.org/
http://www.charitywatch.org/azlist.html
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