Songs in My Head and at APL

APL has 4 new cds with songs that are stuck in my head, otherwise know as "ear worms." The list has the APL holdings and a link to listen to the song.

Black Dub cd
Black Dub website - Click video, then I Believe in You

Circuital cd
My Morning Jacket website - Find the videos, then click Holdin' on to Black Metal

Rome cd
Danger Mouse's Rose with a Broken Neck on the Rolling Stone website.

Torches cd
Foster the People website - Find the videos, click Pumped Up Kicks

2011 Nobel Prize

The end of September finds us within days of the Swedish Academy’s announcement of its Nobel Prize winners. The announcement schedule is:

Monday, October 3rd: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Tuesday, October 4th: Nobel Prize in Physics
Wednesday, October 5th: Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Friday, October 7th: Nobel Peace Prize
Monday, October 10th: Nobel Prize in Economics

The announcements can be viewed live. Traditionally the Nobel Prize in Literature does not receive a designated announcement. Instead, the Swedish Academy announces the prize sometime in the first half of October. I am unsure of the reason, but do enjoy the Christmas-morning-feel of waiting for the literature winner.

The following four American writers have been favorites the past few years:

Philip Roth
American Pastoral
Portnoy’s Complaint

Joyce Carol Oates
them
Blonde

Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian
Child of God

Don DeLillo
Underworld
White Noise

These three writers, coupled with the four American writers, comprise a general list of favorites:

Adonis
The Pages of Day and Night
Transformations of the Lover

Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Wizard of the Crow
A Grain of Wheat

Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Norwegian Wood

The Syrian poet Adonis is a perennial favorite and with the Arab Spring gripping Syria, he seems professionally and politically positioned to win this year’s prize. If I were betting (and I am not, however, numerous betting houses throughout Europe offer odds) I would take Adonis. I’d like to see Cormac McCarthy win, but American writers have not fared well since Toni Morrison won in 1993. Here's to a week of Christmas-morning-anticipation.

Enjoy Your Freedom - Read a Banned Book!

The list looks like it's for a reading group with interesting, eclectic taste: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

Actually these are some of the books that were challenged, restricted, removed, or banned during the past year. In early September, a school board in Republic, Missouri voted 6-0 to place Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler in a restricted part of the high school library and allow only parents access to the books. The challenge was brought by a college professor who said the books were among titles that "teach principles contrary to Biblical morality and truth."

In past years, many of what we consider to be classic American novels have been banned - - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, The Call of the Wild by Jack London, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, and The Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

In the early part of the 20th century, books were censored from being bought or published. Today, it more often means a book has been challenged in a library setting, usually a school library. We have had books challenged at the Austin Public Library and we have a committee to respond to such challenges. According to the American Library Association, most challenges to books are motivated by a desire to protect children from "inappropriate" sexual content or "offensive" language, but some books are said to be "unsuited to any age group."

This week, we honor our freedom of choice, speech and the press with Banned Books Week. This annual event celebrates the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. It shows support for not only intellectual freedom, but also honors human beings' basic right to choose, to make individual decisions regarding what they read, which is not the case in many places. Iran's culture minister creates lists of harmful books to be banned. Titles ranging from the uncensored version of Plato's Symposium to Louis-Ferdinand Celine's Journey to the End of the Night, and works by James Joyce, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kurt Vonnegut and Paulo Coelho have been banned in recent years.

The 30th annual Banned Books Week, sponsored by the ALA, booksellers, and publishers is Sept. 24th to Oct. 1st. Many of APL's locations will have displays of banned books. The Harry Ransom Center's exhibit, Banned, Burned, Seized, and Censored, which opened September 6 and goes through January 22, 2012, reveals how censorshop worked in America between WWI and WWII, letting writers, reformers, attorneys, and publishers speak for themselves, and illuminating the complex negotiations that occurred at the intersection of literature and "obscenity."

180° South

I've watched a beautiful documentary several times now called 180° South. It features a man named Jeff Johnson narrating a trip he takes to Patagonia, a region of Argentina and Chile. Johnson was inspired by two men, Yvon Chouinard and Douglas Tompkins, who took a similar trip to Patagonia in the late '60s. Following Johnson's travels you get to see some of the most gorgeous, untouched open country in existence. Johnson's narration reveals a person passionate about the environment and travel coupled with a wonderful fearlessness and sense of freedom. His passions are surfing and rock climbing, so the documentary is full of footage of some amazing surf and seemingly completely vertical, totally smooth mountains. Over the course of the documentary, you are introduced to Chouinard and Tompkins, two really amazing men. Chouinard is a famous outdoorsman who began the well-known clothing and outdoor supply company, Patagonia. Tompkins, also a famous outdoorsman, began The North Face and ESPRIT Clothing Company, but now he devotes his time and resources to buying up land in Patagonia in an effort to preserve the area. Tompkins and his wife Kris have conserved nearly 2 million acres of mostly grasslands in Patagonia.

What I love about this documentary is that it does not have a blatant envioronmental message. It's really about one man's travels and his thoughts along the way. The beauty he sees is in real danger largely because of increasing development and he definitely addresses it, but I never felt there was any kind of agenda in mind. The reason I've watched it so many times is really for the scenery - I often put it on in the background as I make dinner and allow myself to be transported to the gorgeous country I hope to see with my own eyes someday. Also, it has an excellent soundtrack including songs by Andrew Bird and Modest Mouse.

Read more about Patagonia (the place as well as the company) here at the library!

Dusk on the Campo: A Journey in Patagonia

Enduring Patagonia

In Patagonia

Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
Written by Yvon Chouinard

Patagonia: Nature's Last Frontier

Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes: A Year Alone in the Patagonia Wilderness

Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin
Famous for his book In Patagonia in which he documents his travels, this is a collection of Chatwin's letters.

Looking for a Job?

As reference librarians here at the Central location of the Austin Public Library, we help countless people every week find a job. We help people write their resumes. We help people decipher the maze of applying online. We help people learn new skills for this very competitive job market. We help guide people to the many available resources on job searching. And finally, we love it when people come back to us and tell us that the help we gave them helped them land a new job.

If you're out there in blog land, scouring the Internet for job resources, search no more. The reference librarians have created four very lenghthy information guides to help you fetter out the mountains of career paths you can choose, uncover the hidden job market, find those job listings, write an excellent resume, and excel at the interviews you're going to land.

We know getting a job should be as easy as filling out a job application, going in for an interview and getting the job. But, it's not. You need to read everything you can, learn the ins and outs of your choosen career path, and shine among often hundreds of job applicants. Read through the following information guides, I would be surprised if they didn't help.

Jobs Information Guides
: Career Guidance
: Hidden Job Market
: Job Searching
: Resumes, Cover Letters, Interviews

If all of this reading is overwhelming to you and all you have is a simple question, come to one of our job labs here at the Central Library. We have them every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 3:00-4:00 on the 2nd floor. Friendly librarians and volunteers will help you with such details as traversing those online applications all the way to learning how to insert formulas in MS Excel. You have a question? We'll have an answer. If we can't find the answer, we'll find someone who can.

Good luck and don't forget to write a thank you note after your interview!

The Filter Bubble

I recently read Eli Pariser's new book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You. This was an informative read regarding privacy on the Internet and the types of information companies are actively collecting about your behavior online. Basically, major Internet companies, such as Google and Facebook, are looking very closely at your every click and diligently recording the info in an effort to personalize their site specifically to you. For example, when you do a Google search and start clicking away at the results, Google installs a cookie in your browser so that it may track what you're clicking on and what you're doing online. If you seemed more inclined to click on a right-leaning political website, for example, Google takes note and the next time you run a search the results displayed will include more right-leaning websites similar to the one you clicked on. If you have an account with them and are regularly logged in during your searches and activities, Google learns even more about you.

Pariser points out many problems with Internet companies using this practice and two in particular really stood out to me. First of all, you regularly have Internet companies looking over your shoulder as you browse, collecting (sometimes intimate) information about you. As a librarian, I find this assault on individual privacy alarming, particularly as a clear way to opt out of this level of data collection is not readily apparent to those that do not have an account with the Internet site or search engine they are using. When I discuss issues with Internet privacy with others I often hear back, "Oh well, if you're not doing anything illegal, what's to worry about?" Plenty, in my opinion. Information on how you behave, legally or otherwise, can always be manipulated or edited to reflect poorly on you. We see this everyday in the news. Though most of us are not newsworthy figures, I still feel that we are not immune from the manipulation of private information by various entities and/or individuals for their own professional or personal gain as most terms of agreement are vague on how the information they collect may be used. Further still, there are virtually no laws that pertain to Internet privacy, so, as of now, the information we give to Internet companies so freely could be used in a wide variety of ways that are potentially detrimental or inflammatory.

But, for me, this is not the worst of it. The reason the info is being collected on you in the first place is so Internet companies can improve and personalize their services. This sounds like a good thing, but, as mentioned above, Google is filtering your search results. Rather than a search engine that shows you a wide variety of websites from a wide variety of perspectives, you're seeing websites based on what you've already demonstrated to Google that you like through your previous clicks. With the rise in popularity of the Internet, many people, myself included, touted what a great tool it would be to bring democracy, change, and exposure to fresh perspectives to people around the world. Instead, the major Internet companies that are major players in the future development of the Internet are bringing you exactly what they believe you want to see. Eli Pariser argues that this allows for people to get caught in feedback loops that continually validate their own perspectives and sense of the world without any chance of exposure to something new or something in conflict with what you already believe.

This is a smartly argued book that raises some great questions on the future of the Internet. Will we allow major corporations to make the rules, or are we going to stand up for our own rights online and our vision of the Internet as tool for democracy? This is only one of many great books on the topic, so read up and speak out!

Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace

Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry)

The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing To Our Brains

Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality

The Crying of Lot 49

For years I have wondered what the title Crying of Lot 49 written by Thomas Pynchon in 1966 referred to. So I finally checked the book out from Faulk Central to discover that the phrase is also the last line of the novel. The story is about a conspiracy to subvert the US postal system, and the main protagonist, Oedipa Mass, is a suburban housewife who becomes aware that there may be more to life than her sterile mode of existence. The novel is full of absurdist names, metaphors, freaky characters, allusions, cultural symbols, and terms overloaded with confusing meanings. The crying refers to the auctioneer's voice and lot 49 is the collection of stamps being auctioned. But the stamps may also be crying a message, but I am not re-reading the book to figure it out.

Below is an example of Pychon's writing, and the passage still resonates today since the government reported this week that more than 46 million Americans are living under the government’s official poverty line, which is the highest number in the 52 years the Census Bureau has recorded such data.

Yet at least he had believed in the cars, maybe to excess: how could he not, seeing people poorer than him come in...bring with them the most godawful of trade-ins: motorized, metal extensions of themselves, of their families and what their whole lives must be like, out there so naked for anybody, a stranger like himself, to look at...inside smelling hopeless of children, of supermarket booze, or two, sometimes three generations of cigarette smokers, or only of dust--and when the cars were swept out you had to look at the actual residue of these lives, and there was no way of telling what things had been truly refused ...or had simply (perhaps tragically) been lost: clipped coupons promising savings of 5 or 10¢, trading stamps, pink flyers advertising specials at the market, butts, tooth-shy combs, help-wanted ads, Yellow Pages torn from the phone book, rags of old underwear or dresses that already were period costumes, for wiping your own breath off the inside of a windshield with so you could see whatever it was, a movie, a woman or car you coveted, a cop who might pull you over just for drill, all the bits and pieces coated uniformly, like a salad of despair, in a grey dressing of ash, condensed exhaust, dust, body wastes--it nauseated him to look, but he had to look.

My favorite passage in the book is a conversation between Oedipa Maas and her psychiatrist, Dr. Hilarius.

“I came," she said, "hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy."
Cherish it!" cried Hilarious, fiercely. "What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by it's little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be".

The Crying of Lot 49 is one of the titles on APL Recommends Cult Classics list.

Trying hard to do...

"The tree on the mountain height is its own enemy.
The grease that feeds the light devours itself.
The cinnamon tree is edible: so it is cut down!
The lacquer tree is profitable: they maim it.
Every man knows how useful it is to be useful.

No one seems to know
How useful it is to be useless."

-Chuang Tzu


In January I resolved to read less. My intention being that if I read less I would have more time for other activities. Realizing I already had plenty of time for other activities and that what I truly lacked was time for idleness, I further resolved to do nothing. Good and proper nothingness: Sitting on my porch, walking, thinking, trying not to think. Being an inveterate reader, I couldn’t possibly just begin this new course. I had to read about doing nothing first. Below are a few books that provided further encouragement to do nothing:

The Way of Chuang Tzu (beautiful meditations on simplicity, humor, and contentment)
How to be Idle (Tom Hodgkinson's goal: convince folks of the merits of idleness)
Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness (great essays on simple pleasures)
Candide (Candide does everything before reaching a place and state where he can do nothing).

Months later I still love a good book about nothing, but I've also become more comfortable with nothingness. The fall seems a fitting time to really hone the craft of doing nothing.

Happy Belated Labor Day

For those of you still laboring, and those who wish you were, and those who’ve quit looking, books and movies about labor unions, which are still legal as I write:

Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Movement
The forgotten workers of the fields -- The education of Cesar Chavez -- The community organizers -- Creating a union for farm workers -- The Delano grape strike and the great march to Sacramento

Dark Harbor: The War for the New York Waterfront
Case studies of New York stevedores and organized crime.

There is Power in a Union
The epic story of labor in America, beginning with the Pullman train strike.

Taylor Chain: A Decade of Union Democracy and Collective Bargaining
A movie about a strike in a small factory in Indiana and how both the workers and management want things to get better.

Why Unions Matter
Engaging examples of unions improving democracy.

State of the Unions
How labor can strengthen the middle class, improve our economy, and regain political influence.

Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants
A 2007 book about unions and stewardesses that should circulate more frequently after that new TV show, Pan Am, starts airing this fall.

Mobsters, Unions, and Feds
The title says it all: labor racketeering in New York City, and organized labor's response to organized crime.

Pride!!

Tomorrow, the GLBT community in Austin will be celebrating Gay Pride.  

Recently, I learned by serendipity about the death of Rudolf Brazda, one of the few survivors of Nazi concentration camps where he and other gay men had to wear a pink triangle attached to their uniforms denoting their sexual orientation.  That pink triangle made them a target for brutality, abuse and object of “scientific” experimentation. 

When I read about Brazda, I felt that I was the only person in the world who didn’t know about these atrocities. Then I jumped ahead in time to 1969 and started reading more in depth about the Stonewall riots in New York City. I learned about the before and after and how the protests changed the vision and rights of the GLTB community in this country.

Maybe because I have all this information fresh in my mind right now or maybe because of the love I have for my amazing friends in the GLBT community, that I am more excited than usual about this celebration in Austin.  If you want to get in the mood for this important event, here’s a list of movies in the Austin Public Library collection that might help you:

• Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
  
• Bent
• Black is-- black ain't (Documentary)
• Boys In the Band
• Eyes Wide Open
• It’s in the water   
• La Mission   
• Law of Desire
• Longtime Companion
• Paris Is Burning
• Prayers for Bobby
• Plan B
• Purple Sea 
• Sasha
• Suddenly Last Summer
• Tongues untied (Documentary)
• Transamerica
• Wizard of Oz
• Wilde
• XXY 

Tomorrow, go out, celebrate and be proud!  Ah!! Don’t forget to read our two previous blog posts: From the Closet to the Courtroom  and  Gay Pride Month Book Lists.

*Thanks to JB for helping with the selection of titles for this post.  

Not Your Normal Kitchen

I just finished Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly and I must say, I enjoyed it thoroughly. I've been watching Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations for a couple of years and I am very jealous of his travels and eating. However, he'll eat anything and everything. He's admitted so in his book and in his blog. I, for one, would not even dare go where he has gone, food-wise. I do not like liver. I would never eat an eyeball, no matter how much sauce you put on it. And I do not like a lot of fish. But that's why I don't have a wildly, popular tv show and he does. His happy-to-eat-everything additude all began with oysters when he was a young boy on a family trip to France. I wish I could be this open to trying new foods, I suppose it could be my squeamish American mind that prevents me from doing so.

Anthony Bourdain has written many books, but I think the next one I want to read is:
No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach
Have you read any of Bourdain's works? You know he's written some fiction too.

Another chef, Andrew Zimmern, takes it just a bit farther. He has a show called Bizarre Foods where he samples food from all over the world. Not just everyday, run-of-the-mill food, he eats everything from bugs and rodents to eyeballs and guts. And there's a lot in between. Reviewing Bizarre Foods for the New York Times, Susan Stewart commented, "By taking an anthropological approach to food, Mr. Zimmern broadens his subject, conveying a vivid sense of place and serious appreciation for social and culinary diversity." Serious appreciation indeed.

If you have a strong stomach and want to check out Zimmern's show, get it from the library:
Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, Collection 1
Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, Collection 2

Zimmern just came out with a new book too, you should take a look:
Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre World of Food: Brains, Bugs, & Blood Sausage

Diego Rivera: The Complete Murals

There is a magical book that the library recently acquired. I am tempted to not blog about it for fear of the physical damage that may occur. I haven't actually weighed it, but I would venture to guess it must weigh upwards of forty pounds. I carry it around hoisted on my shoulder like a basket filled with a heavy load. Diego Rivera: The Complete Murals is a tome in the truest sense of the word. Inside it are lush, fold-out color plates of the super-human murals designed and executed by the Mexican artist. The book also serves as an encyclopedic catalog detailing the artist's life, world travels, and paintings and drawings completed prior to the development of his mature, most well known style.

More titles featuring Diego Rivera's work and life:

Diego Rivera, 1886-1957: A Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Art

Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera: El Agua, Origen de la Vida

Sonar con los Ojos Abiertos: Una Vida de Diego Rivera

Dreaming with his Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera

Taking Advantage

Without intending to, I have recently read four novels where teachers or bosses have had a "consensual" sexual relationship with a teenage girl. The stories go beyond the specific relationship to illuminate the fraught relationships among friends, families, and entire communities. All four books are cleverly constructed and very well written.

The Adults by Alison Espach
Covert affair, while inappropriate, not to say illegal, seems to be mutual, but Emily is 15 and the English teacher is 25. This secret life reinforces Emily's separation from the adults who most disappoint her.

Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout
A single mother and her teenage daughter, Amy, live an isolated life in New England until the intrusion into the life of Amy by her math teacher.

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
One of the three storylines in this identity thriller concerns Lucy Lattimore who runs off after her high school graduation with her history teacher.

The Good Parents by Joan London
Maya has moved from Western Australia to Melbourne where she finds a job in an office, and before she knows what is happening she begins an affair with her much older boss. When her parents travel to Melobourne to visit, she has disapperared.

Rio Hamza

A river up to one hundred times wider than the Amazon has recently been discovered. How had no one stumbled upon it yet? How had astronauts not reported a massive serpentine river flowing across the earth?

Easy. The river is underground. It is two and a half miles beneath the Amazon and runs a similar course across South America. The research team, led by Valiya Hamza who lent his name to the river, used thermal analysis in 241 vacated Petrobras oil wells to discover the river. The results are preliminary and the discovery has not been truly authenticated, but all signs (at least the geothermal signs) point to a giant subterranean river flowing through South America.

After reading about Rio Hamza, I immediately thought about H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines. I remember some subterranean action in this classic adventure tale. My mind then jumped to a novel I read after seeing my dad reading it: Clive Cussler’s The Mediterranean Caper. I don’t remember much of the Caper, but I remember the intrepid hero Dirk Pitt traveling well beneath the water.

King Solomon’s Mines launched a genre dubbed Lost World fiction. Prominent works within the genre include: Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot, and Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island.

Inevitably, exploration will intensify. Science clarifies, but in its wake removes mystery and wonder. For now, we relish one of those rare moments where mystery trumps proof and we can simply imagine what it must be like on the Rio Hamza 14,000 feet below the Amazon.

Nothing New Under the Sun

I picked up John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash the other day. I hoped it would convince me that we can recover from economic collapse, but after reading the book, I wasn't so much heartened that we've been through this and survived as I was disheartened that we've been through this and learned nothing.

We're repeating history. The economy collapsed in 2008 for the same reason it collapsed in 1929: people invested money they had borrowed on the strength of profits they had yet to earn. There are some differences in strategy--a credit default swap, for instance, is a recent invention; in the 20s there was no fake insurance against losses (aside from optimism)--but it's the same house of cards, and it toppled for the same reason: debtors were called to pay back loans they took out to buy into, but that were also "secured" by, the house of cards.

Incredibly, some of 1929's money changers recovered from the crash and lived on to wreak the current chaos. Galbraith, writing in 1954, faults companies whose names you'll recognize: Goldman Sachs, Lehman, Chase.

More books by Galbraith:

John Kenneth Galbraith: The Affluent Society and Other Writings
The Economics of Innocent Fraud
A Short History of Financial Euphoria
A Journey Through Economic Time

Conquistadora

I just finished a great new novel by Esmeralda Santiago, titled Conquistadora. It is an epic that follows a young girl, Ana, through adulthood in which she pursues her ambitions from Spain to Puerto Rico in the mid-19th century. As a girl Ana dreams of Puerto Rico in which many of her ancestors lived and died including a distant male relative that traveled with Ponce de Leon, the famous conquistador. Her dreams finally become reality after she meets twin brothers Ramon and Inocente. She marries Ramon and convinces the brothers that in Puerto Rico lies their destiny. Once in Puerto Rico Ana deals with constant hardship and a bitter love triangle. Slavery and relations with slaves factor in heavily as the sugar plantation the twins and Ana become responsible for require signficant labor. Puerto Rico is almost it's own character in the book - the landscape is described in detail and the historical context is well-considered. While Ana is not the most likable main character, she is well-developed and complex. I highly recommend it; especially if you liked books such as The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende or One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

On Monday there's a free teleconference book club sponsored by the organization Las Comadres in which Esmeralda Santiago will be present! (See the links below.) Even if you haven't read the book, you might still want to tune in if you enjoyed her other work.

BOOKS

Almost a Woman
This is the first memoir I read by Santiago, though it is actually a follow-up to her first published memoir, and I just fell in love with Esmeralda, her family, and her writing style. Santiago recounts her young adulthood as a poor Puerto Rican immigrant living in New York City.

America's Dream
This is Santiago's first novel about a Puerto Rican woman and her many struggles.

The Turkish Lover
An account of Santiago's affair as a young woman with a Turkish filmmaker.

When I Was Puerto Rican
This is Santiago's first memoir which received much critical acclaim. It recounts Santiago's early years in Puerto Rico and her experiences after immigrating to New York.

WEBSITES

PBS NewsHour Interview with Esmeralda Santiago on Conquistadora
A great interview with Santiago about her new novel. She thanks librarians at both the end of her book and in this interview for their help finding the research she needed to complete her book; a nice reminder that if you have questions regarding research, information, or most anything you should Ask a Librarian!

Reading With Las Comadres: Conquistadora by Esmeralda Santiago
I have already reigstered and I hope some of you will too and listen in during the teleconference. I love book clubs - I always get so much more out of a book by discussing it with others. Plus, I'm yet to attend a book club that includes a discussion with the author, so I'm really psyched about this!

Bento!

If you're like me, you're trying to be wise with your money and its spending power. Since there's not much of it flowing my way, I'm trying to be especially wise when it comes to lunch. I use to grab lunch at the deli across the street, but I've realized that the $7 it costs to buy lunch every day is adding up to be quite a bill. So, a co-worker and I are doing a little trade. I bring her eggs from my neighbor's chickens and she brings me a fabulous packed lunch. After a few weeks, we've gone back and forth about the cuteness of her packed lunches and have discovered the oh-so-lovely world of bento boxes!

According to the OED, bento means "a Japanese or Japanese-style packed lunch traditionally consisting of rice, vegetables, and Japanese specialities such as sashimi and teriyaki, and served in a lacquered or decorated wooden box." The Encyclopedia of Food and Culture offers a really nice history of the bento; saying that the bento goes back as far as 1600 in Japan. Obviously, you do not have to include the aforementioned rice and vegetables. Sandwiches cut into cute shapes, fruit flowers, and awe-worthy and adorable bottles of sauce are part of today's bento boxes. If you do a simple Google search for "bento" you'll come across hundreds of sites on the topic and retail sites for bento accessories.

Bentos are extremely popular with the stay-at-home-mom set these days. Especially moms with school-aged kids. If you have an extra twenty minutes in the morning, packing a bento for your kids is a cute option. Your kid may just be the most popular one come lunchtime. Or, if you don't have kids, there are all sorts of adults who bento it to work too. You could be the most popular one at work!

Check out these books and sites for help in getting started. It's not hard, it just looks intimidating.
Bento Love by Kentaro Kobayashi
Face Food by Christopher Salyers
Simple Menus for the Bento Box by Ellen Greaves
Yum-Yum Bento Box by Watanabe and Ogawa

Just Bento and Hapa Bento are some very nice websites dedicated to all things Bento.

(pictures from the Going-On Grownup blog)

Two Songs Two Singers

There are two songs that I only recently discovered. Both of these songs have been around for quite some time. Nonetheless, in my opinion, their power to enchant has not diminished with the passage of time. The title of one of the songs is, El Desierto (The Desert), which was written and is performed by an extremely charasmatic artist named Lhasa de Sela who is of Mexican and Lebanese descent . The other song is entitled, L'Appuntamento (The Appointment), which is performed by the equally mesmerizing Italian singer Ornella Vanoni. Neither of the two songs is sung in English. However, if you have ever suffered a romantic loss you will immediately understand the sentiment and pain both are trying to convey.

Lhasa de Sela:
La Llorona
The Living Road
Lhasa

West Memphis Three

The West Memphis Three have been released.

You may or may not be familiar with this story, if not, you should read up on them in our newspaper databases. If you go to Factiva for instance, and type in "West Memphis Three", you will get over 700 articles alone. I know that Memphis is a long drive from here, but this town of almost a quarter million people has been the focus of worldwide attention over the last seventeen years.

The West Memphis Three are three young men who were, wrongly in most opinion, imprisoned for the murder of three young boys in Memphis, Tennessee in 1993. There are books and movies on the WM3 (as they are known). Celebrities (including Henry Rollins, Natalie Manes, Johnny Depp, and Eddie Vedder), high powered attorneys, and regular people across the globe have offered their support, pledged donations and help, and voiced their concern for the seemingly corrupt judicial system in Tennessee.

I'm currently reading a book, not on this topic, but eerily similar, In the Woods by Tana French. It's a great book and supports my feeling that even though you think you know the whole story, you may not know the facts. You need to do the research. You need to read. You need to ask questions, and listen to the answers. In this day and age of media onslaught, we are led to believe that everything we see and hear is true. And most times, this cannot be further from the truth. I encourage you to investigate. I encourage you to question everything you hear. The library is a great place to start. We have many resources, including our fabulous databases, that can help you vet out the truth.

I know that we may go on and on about our databases. But I cannot express to you how much I love them. There is so much information out there that is available to you by just the click of a couple of buttons. And it's all FREE with your library card! How can you not use them? Call us and we'll help you.

In the meantime read up on the WM3, make up your opinion of the young men and talk to someone else about it.

Devil's knot : the true story of the West Memphis three
Leveritt, Mara.

Paradise lost: the child murders at Robin Hood Hills
Berlinger, Joe.

West Memphis Three website

The Hyperbolic Apocalyptic Post

We are in the midst of dozens of 100 degree days and plenty more ahead. Clouds have forgotten how to rain. Trees are drying out. Pipes are cracking. Someone showed me a video of a thirsty armadillo drinking from a water hose. That can't be normal.

Rain will come. Temperatures will fall. We will recover. For this post though, I'm fanning the hyperbole flame. Our fiery conditions brought to mind several great post-apocalyptic novels. Nothing like settling into a comfortable seat and reading about worlds falling apart.


David Moody's Autumn. The City

John Barnes' Daybreak Zero

Max Brooks' World War Z

Cormac McCarthy's The Road

Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood