Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

Happy New Year! While the Crawfordsville Library is closed Thursday, December 31 and Friday, January 1, here are some requested and perhaps enticing books for your New Year's reading. "The Secret Wife of Louis XIV" by Veronica Buckley is about Francoise D'Aubigne, Madame de Maintenon and secret wife of the Sun King born in a bleak French prison in 1635 because her father was a condemned traitor and murderer, and her mother was the warden's seduced daughter. After begging in the streets, her beauty, intellect, and judgment got her to Versailles and onward. David Tyree's "More than Just the Catch" is the true story of achieving the impossible as he relates his mistakes and second chances so he could serve the New York Giants. "Quick & Clever Instant Cards" and "Quick & Clever Handmade Cards" are Julie Hickey's instruction books. How about Stephen King's 1074-page "Under the Dome"!

Nobel Prize winner Herta Muller's new book "The Appointment" is her own powerful life story as a factory worker during Ceausescu's totalitarian regime. Another Nobel Prize winner, Orhan Pamuk, offers fiction called "The Museum of Innocence" set in Istanbul in 1975 when a settled fiance meets a distant cousin and his life changes; he becomes a "collector" in the two-sided city. The brutality and beauty of life today on the Arizona-Mexico border defines the story "Crossers" by Philip Caputo. "Await Your Reply" by award winner Dan Chaon follows three separate young people who are hiding by fleeing their normal lives. "To Try Men's Souls" is Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen's novel of George Washington and the miracle of American success.

"Grave Secret" by Charlaine Harris (writer of the Sookie Stackhouse novels) tells about family secrets. The novel "The Elephant Keeper" by Christopher Nicholson takes us to England in 1766 both in its countryside and its dark London streets, showing the love and loyalty between a man and two elephants, changing the lives of all who meet them. The tie between a recalcitrant boy and his patient step-father is "Spooner"

by Pete Dexter. "Chronic City" by Jonathan Lethem tells about "Manhattanites wrapped in their own delusions, desires, and lies." The late Kurt Vonnegut's "Look at the Birdie" holds 14 previously unpublished short stories, illustrated with his own line drawings. "The Suicide Run" contains five tales of the Marine Corps by Pulitzer Prize winner William Styron. Philip Roth's 30th fiction novel "The Humbling" profiles a "finished" actor needing renewal. "Waiting for Columbus" by Thomas Trofimuk tells about a mental patient claiming to be the famous explorer, and the efforts to discover what pain caused his delusion. Brad Leithauser's "The Art Student's War" portrays a young, female artist in a loving historical portrait of a now-vanished Detroit in its heyday during World War II.

"The Confessions of Edward Day" by Valerie Martin shows New York in the 1970s as the "Method" teachers were taking students among Broadway actors; "truth, in the theater as in life, is ever elusive and never inert." In Roberto Bolano's "2666", three academics are on the trail of a reclusive author, a new reporter, a widowed philosopher, and a police detective, in a border city where hundreds of women have disappeared. "Last Night in Twisted River" by John Irving profiles 1954 in a sawmill settlement in New Hampshire and spans fifty years of society as a father and son become fugitives because of an accidental crime.

Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

Reading Ideas for December 27th - Happy Holidays to our “Words Worth Reading” blog readers. While the Crawfordsville Library is closed December 24, 25, and 26, here are fiction and nonfiction requests that might be of interest to you when the library reopens Sunday, December 27.

First, nonfiction. Tamara Lowe's "Get Motivated!" is based on an 8-year study of 10,000 people overcoming any obstacle, achieving any goal, and accelerating success. "Renegade: The Making of a President" offers exclusive interviews with Barack Obama by Richard Wolffe. Gary Pomerantz' "The Devil's Tickets" tells of the contract bridge craze of the 1920s when Ely Culbertson turned it from a social pastime into the battle of the sexes and a cultural movement, a symbol of the modern age. "Excel 2007 for Dummies" should help a lot of us figure that out. "The Passover Plot" by Hugh Schonfield is a controversial stance alleging that Jesus plotted his own arrest, crucifixion and resurrection. "Jesus, Interrupted" by Bart Ehraman reveals the hidden contradictions in the Bible and "the challenges we face when attempting to reconstruct the life and message of Jesus". "Before Oprah" is Michael Banks' report about Ruth Lyons, the woman who created talk TV, "the most influential housewife in America" in the 1950s and 1960s.

Dan Kurzman has written an extraordinary tale of intrigue and betrayal in World War II called "A Special Mission" Hitler's secret plot to seize the Vatican and kidnap Pope Pius XII. "America in Vietnam" by Herbert Schandler is touted as the first full exploration of the North Vietnamese leadership's perspectives at that time. "Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa" is written by R. A. Scotti.

"The Healing of America" is T. R. Reid's global quest for better, cheaper, and fairer health care. "Healing is a Choice" is Stephen Arterburn's list of ten decisions to transform life, and ten lies that can prevent it happening. In "Service Included" Phoebe Damrosch tells her four-star secrets of an eavesdropping waiter, learned when she was the first female captain at one of New York City's most prestigious restaurants. One man's search for quiet in our noisy world is "One Square Inch of Silence" by Gordon Hampton who says natural silence is our nation's fastest disappearing resource. "Just Listen" discovers the secret to getting through to absolutely anyone; Mark Goulston says you can use the tips whenever a job, sale, or relationship hangs in the balance.

Here is some fiction requested by patrons. "Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game" by Tilly Bagshawe pits survivors of a business tycoon against each other for control of a corporation. Suzanne Brockmann's "Hot Pursuit" follows Alyssa Locke, leader of Troubleshooters, guarding lives; she's hunted by "The Dentist" serial killer. Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol" takes us to Washington, D. C. and a race through codes, secrets, and unseen truths honoring the Masonic Order. "The Fixer Upper" by Mary Kay Andrews is lobbyist Dempsey Killebrew's challenge when her father wants her to help refurbish an old house in Georgia. "Rain Gods" by James Burke takes place in a tiny Texas town near the Mexican border to solve nine illegal aliens' murders. "Royal Flush" a Royal Spyness Mystery by Rhys Bowen involves Lady Georgiana, 34th in line to the throne, and penniless heiress, who tells her tale in "first-person" style. In Mary Jane Clark's "Dying for Mercy" a death shatters the serenity of the exclusive enclave of Tuxedo Park, New York, the first act in a plan to expose sins of the past. Sherryl Woods offers three new books, "Harbor Lights", "Flowers on Main", and "The Inn at Eagle Point", all Chesapeake Shores Novels. "Plain Pursuit" is a Daughters of the Promise Novel by Beth Wiseman focusing on one woman's journey into an Amish community. "The Calligrapher's Daughter" is a novel by Eugenia Kim about a privileged girl in Korea whose father tries to maintain traditional ways as the Japanese gain control of his beloved country.

Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

The Crawfordsville Library will be closed Thursday, December 24; Friday, December 25; and Saturday, December 26.

Another Important Library Donation - "Rivers, Rails, and Runways" is a book of poetry donated to the Crawfordsville Library by the Montgomery County Women's Republican Club. The writings of Norbert Krapf, present Indiana Poet Laureate, and of four other local "Airpoets" honor the Indiana landscape. The collection was chosen by British glass artist Martin Donlin to inspire his twenty-five foot windows at the new Midfield Terminal of the Indianapolis International Airport. (The "other" collaborative writers are Indiana Poet Laureate 2002-2008 Joyce Brinkman, artist and poet Ruthelen Burns, Chair of the English department at DePauw Joseph Heithaus, and Jeannie Deeter Smith.) "The Shadow of Sirius" is a collection of 92 poems by W. S. Merwin, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Aravind Adiga's "The White Tiger" is called "an arresting and unlikely black comedy", "blazingly savage and brilliant," and a "side-splitting account of India today". Also just arrived is his "Between the Assassinations" which "enlarges our understanding of the world we live in".

Lots of people borrow biographies. "Booker T. Washington" by Raymond Smock subtitled Black Leadership in the Age of Jim Crow, is issued by the Library of African-American Biography. "Meeting Jimmie Rodgers" is Barry Mazor's story of how America's original roots music hero changed the pop sounds of a century. Rodgers produced tones, tunes, and themes that had much influence on his contemporary performers. C. W. E. Bixby's "Arthur Miller" includes insights into his marriage to Marilyn Monroe and sheds light on how it influenced his subsequent great plays. "Prairie Tale" by Melissa Gilbert describes her work being Laura Ingalls on "Little House on the Prairie" TV shows, while she was forcing herself to solve a self-destructive pattern of addiction and codependence.

Six history books beckon. "A Brave Vessel" by Hobson Woodward, is the true tale of the castaways who rescued Jamestown and inspired Shakespeare's "The Tempest"; William Strachey kept meticulous records of their Atlantic Ocean disaster surviving island life for a year, and his work enabled the great play's plot. "Eagles and Empire" tells about the United States and Mexico from the fall of the Alamo to the conquest of Mexico City. DK Books has issued "World War II, The Definitive Visual History from Blitzkrieg to the Atom Bomb" a complete set of pictures and headlines of its events, people, eyewitnesses, weapons, and connections. "The Box from Braunau" is Jan Elvin's search for his father's war; as a World War II soldier William Elvin, Jr. was a hero but as a father and husband he spent his life struggling with ravages and demons his family could not comprehend. "Last Journey, A Father and Son in Wartime" comes from Darrell Griffin, Sr. and Jr., the latter killed in action during duty in Iraq, the former explaining what life is like for soldiers there, a grim reminder of the human cost of war.

Christopher Beha's memoir "The Whole Five Feet" tells what the Great Books taught him about life and death when he read all 22,000 pages of the Harvard Classics 100 years after their original publication.

The Christmas mystery story "The Body in the Sleigh" by Katherine Page just arrived; a body is discovered in a Maine village's antique sleigh the same day someone leaves a newborn baby in the manger of a nearby barn on Christmas Eve.

Battle of the Authors

Rice vs. Meyer
Who will rule this ring?
One will win and one will lose
You get to choose...

Vampires...this word once conjured fear and nightmares in the hearts and minds of women and men. They were creatures of evil, their quest for blood a dreaded fate that fell to those unlucky enough to be caught out after dark. Today though, the word "vampire" brings to mind images of romance and love, of mystery and excitement. How is it that these once loathed creatures have now become one of the most desired and sought after? While there are many out there who are part of this genre movement, two women spring to mind as the forces behind this literary, pop-culture phenomenon...Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer. Both authors have ultimately carried the torch that lights the way for vampires to feast in our hearts.

68 years ago in New Orleans, Howard Allen O'Brien, a baby girl named after her father, was born. Unwilling to go through her school years with the name Howard, she began calling herself Anne in the first grade. She met Stan Rice in high school and followed him to San Francisco after they were married. There she lived in the renowned Haight-Ashbury district while attending college. She gave birth to her first child in 1966. Sadly, her daughter later died of leukemia before her 6th birthday. A year later she completed her first novel, Interview with the Vampire, though it would be three years before it was published. Anne had another child, a son, in 1978. Though at the beginning of her career Anne left the Catholic Church, she has recently renounced her life as an atheist and chosen only to write books for "Him". Her books on the life of Jesus have been just as popular as the Vampire Chronicles. Anne Rice has sold over 100 million copies of her 30 novels. She writes under pseudonyms such as Anne Rampling and A. N. Roquelaure. There have been three movies and one TV series adapted from her novels.

Also named after her father, Stephenie Morgan was born in Connecticut in 1973 but later moved to Arizona where she grew up. Stephenie met the boy who would later become her husband, Pancho Meyer, when they were both children, though they were not friends. She gave up ideas of going to law school after the first of her three boys was born at which time she decided she just wanted to be a mom. She was just that until a fateful day in June of 2003 when she woke with a dream lingering in her mind. From this dream she wrote what would become Twilight. Stephenie is a devote follower of the Church of Later-Day Saints and, like Anne does now, she instills in her writing the beliefs she possesses. She has now sold over 70 million copies of her five novels. They are now in the process of filming the third book, Eclipse, in the Twilight Saga.

Though both these women have chosen to begin their writing careers with vampires, their take on these beings are very different. Meyer has a very soft approach to her characters. There is love and romance but it's all very safe and appealing to a younger audience. Rice, on the other hand, has very plainly written characters for an adult audience. Her characters and situations are for a more mature reader and often not for the feint of heart. Anne also follows a more traditional/mythological path to the powers of her vampires. Her lead character is a blood-sucking fiend of the night at the best of times while Stephenie's vampires can walk about in the sun and generally have a more human-like approach to the world. While it is possible that many people may cross over from one author to another it is less likely that young Twilight Saga readers will find what they are looking for in a Vampire Chronicles novel. However, one similarity that they both share in their writing is that they do not choose vampires as their only supernatural character. Meyer has intertwined werewolves in her books and Rice delves into witches, ghosts and demons.

Though they may be complete opposites of each other, the characters these two women have written to life are similar in that the readers have grown to love and care immensely for them. They have built up a following that has swept the nation and left us mesmerized in their wake. Our question to you now is this...Which of these women shall live on forever as the Queen of Vampire Fiction? Who will rule the night at CDPL and who will be left to dust? Our former Battle of Authors champion publicly voiced his opinion as this "...Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good." Give us your opinion by posting to this blog or filling out a ballot form in the Circulation area of the library.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Rice

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephenie_Meyer

http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/

http://www.annerice.com/

Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

Library's Holiday Party Scheduled for Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2009

The Crawfordsville Library Youth Services staff will welcome readers and families to its Holiday Show next Tuesday, December 15 at 6:45 p.m. in the library's Donnelley Rooms on the lower level! The holiday spirit from Family Time Entertainment will include magic, audience participation, comedy and stories about December holiday events and traditions. Registration is not required.

Just placed on the Crawfordsville Library's shelf is "Hoosiers All", Emerson Houck's "most comprehensive book on Indiana's high school basketball history ever written - with 1200 schools included". A new autobiography is "A Life Decoded" by Craig Venter, subtitled "My Genome, My Life". He is the man who through vision, tenacity, and insight challenged conventional wisdom to reveal the human genetic code. Drafted to Vietnam as a Navy medic, he realized his interest was medicine, jump-started his education, and became an outspoken scientist. Gerald Martin's "Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life" is the first authorized biography of the 1982 winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, the most popular international novelist of the last 50 years. Raised by grandparents in a small town in Colombia, he became a provincial journalist before writing his fiction.

Scout Tufankjian's "Yes We Can" shows his photographs of Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Marcos Witt's "Dile Adios a Tus Temores" in Spanish means how to overcome fear and live life to the fullest. Skye Jethani's "The Divine Commodity" is about discovering a faith beyond consumer Christianity. Daniel Goleman's "Ecological Intelligence" shows how, by considering the hidden impacts of what we buy, we can change everything in our experience. "Life Ascending" by Nick Lane lists the ten great inventions of evolution in a thoughtful and clear discussion of the history of nature's ingenuity. "On Kindness" by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor examines the pleasures and perils of this gentleness. The Dalai Lama offers a commentary about carefulness, patience, and wisdom as the Way of the Bodhisattva, entitled "For the Benefit of All Beings". "Titanic: The Ship Magnificent" Volume One: Design and Construction by Bruce Beveridge et al. contains the "blueprints" of her luxurious and advanced design.

Several new manuals deal with family challenges. Shirley Thomas' "Two Happy Homes" is a working guide for parents and stepparents after divorce and remarriage. "Step-Wives" by Lynne Oxhorn-Ringwood lists ten steps to help ex-wives and stepmothers end their struggle and put the children first. Carl Pickhardt offers "The Everything Parent's Guide to Children and Divorce". Matthew Cohen's book is "A Guide to Special Education Advocacy: What Parents, Clinicians and Advocates Need to Know". "Juvenile Court" is Leora Krygier's "Judge's guide for young adults and their parents".

The "IQ Puzzle Book Challenge" (well named) gives hundreds of different pictures "of logic" to overhaul our brains and excite our minds. The answers are in the back pages. The plus-size model Mia Tyler's "Creating Myself" tells how she learned that beauty comes in all shapes, sizes, and packages.

Here are new books about art. Jessica Hagy's "Indexed" shows ideas expressed by drawing a few circles with a few words. Simon Richmond's 'The Rough Guide to Anime" is a text about Japanese animation.

Upstairs/ Downstairs December 2009

This is a listing of the books that have moved Upstairs from the Downstairs 7-day shelf and can now be checked out for 28 days.

As of Dec. 3, you can find the following new books in the Adult Fiction section of the library.

Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan

Star Bright by Catherine Anderson

Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy

Tempt Me With Darkness by Shayla Black

Three Weeks to Say Goodbye by C. J. Box

Lethal Legacy by Linda Fairstein

Love Mercy by Earlene Fowler

People of the Thunder by Michael W. Gear

I See You Everywhere by Julia Glass

Wanted by Shelley Shepard Gray

The Sudoku Puzzle Murders by Parnell Hall

Liberty by Garrison Keillor

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. Lee

The Mosaic Crimes by Giulio Leoni

The Return: an Inspector van Veeteren Mystery by Hakan Nesser

The Second Opinion by Michael Palmer

Night and Day by Robert B. Parker

Run for Your Life by James Patterson

Eclipse by Richard North Patterson

World's Tallest Woman by Rita Rose

Rebecca's Reward by Lauraine Snelling

A Death in Vienna by Frank Tallis

Vienna Blood by Frank Tallis

Chateau Beyond Time by Michael Tobias

An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear

When the Heart Cries by Cindy Woodsmall

Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

The Library's Vast Christmas Reading Choices - Christmas books for children are collected in the center section of the main floor's east wall in the Crawfordsville Library. Adult Christmas books have been gathered on both sides of the third shelving beyond the elevator on the upper level.

Here are new books for the upcoming season. Debbie Macomber's newest story "The Perfect Christmas" finds Cassie Beaumont employing a professional matchmaker. In Robyn Carr's fourth Virgin River novel "A Virgin River Christmas" a widow seeks the man who cared for her husband when he was dying four years before in Fallujah, Iraq. Scholastic's Chicken Soup for the Soul series has issued "The Book of Christmas Virtues" with inspirational short poems and stories to warm the heart by Jack Canfield & Mark Hansen. The mystery "Hercule Poirot's Christmas" by Agatha Christie features a cantankerous patriarch who dies after announcing he is cutting off his four sons' allowances. Donna Andrews' "Six Geese A-Slaying" is a Meg Langslow mystery for Christmas. Glenn Beck's "The Christmas Sweater" story plot weaves in his own boyhood memories and life lessons.

"Ford County" is John Grisham's first collection of short stories focusing on the Mississippi setting of his first novel, "A Time to Kill". Luanne Rice's "The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners" shows a dropout from wealth and privilege living a full life on Capri while being sought by the daughter she left behind. "Fugitive: A Novel" by Phillip Margolin follows an Oregon lawyer protecting an escapee from the Baptiste regime who is a suspected murderer. Karen Harper's "Deep Down" shows a daughter searching for her lost mother, suspecting that crimes are being committed by a disgruntled suitor and ginseng thieves.

Other new fictions are Oscar Casares' "Amigoland" a look at love, borders, death, and everyday willful ignorance in Mexico, expressed with laughter. "Strangers" by Anita Brookner shows a Londoner, resigned to his bachelorhood, who sets off for a holiday in Venice where he meets a young woman in the midst of a divorce, causing him to think about his former girlfriend, his aloneness, and need for companionship. In "A Gate at the Stairs" Lorrie Moore forms her plot based on the anxiety and disconnection of post-9/11 America, the insidiousness of racism, and the blind-sidedness of war.

Emily Yellin has traveled the world to study the industry and the inner-workings of customer service and what it reveals about our world and our lives in her engaging "Your Call is (not that) Important to Us".

Here's some history. In "Defenders of the Faith" James Reston chronicles Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Suleyman the Magnificent and the battle for Europe, 1520-1536 that ended the Renaissance and brought Islam to the gates of Vienna. "Cahokia" is Timothy Pauketat's study of the ancient great Illinois city of the Mississippi (near St. Louis) studied for the Penguin Library of American Indian History. In "Mile-High Fever" Dennis Drabelle tells about silver mines, boom towns, and high living on the Comstock Lode.

A stack of helpful technology "for Dummies" manuals has arrived. The manuals cover topics for the BlackBerry Storm, Google applications, Linux operating systems, Twitter, PC troubleshooting, WordPress, Google Blogger, and computers for seniors. Others are "Beginning Joomla!" by Dan Rahmel, "iPhone 3G Portable Genius (also covers iPhone 3G)", "Using Drupal" by Angela Bryon et al, and "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Computer Basics" by Joe Kraynak.