Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

Crawfordsville Library's Summer Program Has Begun - It's time to sign up for this year's summer reading program at the Crawfordsville Library. The theme is "America Reading Coast to Coast" designed with age-specific goals for toddlers through high school aged patrons. Come in any time to register. In the elementary program you'll read for a certain length of time in each State. Delaware requires five minutes, while Pennsylvania requires fifteen minutes of good reading. The states are listed in the order they joined the Union, so you'll be almost done when you "reach" Alaska and Hawaii.

Lots of new library books are addressed to the individual reader. "You Are What You Speak" by Robert Greene traces the role that "language beliefs" play to identify us; there's the French Academy with its own standards, the Zionist revival of Hebrew, and our present-day efforts to provide education in foreign languages essential to business, diplomacy, and yes, intelligence organizations. The author wants us to put effort into our ways of communicating. Paul Bergman's "Represent Yourself in Court" tells how to prepare and try a winning case.

Learning to be creative is Ken Robinson's goal in "Out of our Minds" and he offers a groundbreaking approach to leadership, teaching, and professional development especially in Big Picture programs in schools. In "The Same Thing Over and Over" Frederick Hess comments on school reformers who get stuck in yesterday's ideas, and he urges us to create a much wider variety of schools to meet a greater range of needs for different kinds of talents, a developed challenge in our more complex and demanding society. There's a book about the CIA and the world of arts and letters called "The Cultural Cold War" in which Frances Saunders exposes the campaign where exponents of intellectual freedom became instruments of the American government.

"Curation Nation" is Steven Rosenbaum's title discussing why the future of content is context and how consumers can be creators by zeroing in on information that's specifically helpful amongst the enormous amount of data in this technical world. John Ortberg's "The Me I Want to Be" has a spiritual base for each of us including chapters on "finding my identity", "flowing with the spirit", "renewing my mind", and "transforming my experience."

"Miami Beach Deco" by Steven Brooke displays buildings protected by an Art Deco District which has enabled restoration of 1930s architecture, now a magnet for world-wide artists, designers, and travelers.

Requested novels begin with "Snowdrops" by Andrew Miller, a psychological drama about the irresistible allure of sin: a British lawyer working in Moscow doesn't ask questions about the shady deals he works on; the sordid portrayal of that city features characters whose hearts are as icy as the Russian winter. "Loom" by Therese Chehade introduces a newly resident Lebanese family trying to Americanize itself while drawn to a neighbor who exhibits his own isolation and loneliness. "The Accountant's Guide to the Universe" by Craig Hovey subtitled "Heaven and Hell by the Numbers" is a guided tour through the world of finance as a "quirky morality tale." "Minding Frankie" by Maeve Binchy tells of a motherless girl collectively raised by a closely-knit Dublin community. "The Adults" by Alison Espach shows an intelligent high school student exposed to the world of grown-ups who perform contemporary acts not based in highly moral principles.