Snippets from the Shelves

We have an exciting new addition to our collection of books on CD. Recorded Books has a line named Modern Scholar which is a collection of college level courses taught by great professors who are enthusiastic about their subjects and have reputations for being great lecturers. Thanks to a one time bit of extra money, we are adding thirteen titles. The courses include Ethics: A History of Modern Thought; Walt Whitman and the Birth of Modern American Poetry; The American Presidency: From Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan; Journeys of the Great Explorers: Columbus to Cook; Rethinking Our Past: Recognizing Facts, Fictions, and Lies in American History; Take Me Out to the Ballgame: A History of Baseball in America; World War I: The Great War and the World It Made plus six interesting others. These are currently on order and we hope to have them available soon.

All the lists for the best this and thats of the previous year are published in December and January and that is true for lists of best books, also. Some of the best known lists are The New York Times Best Books and Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year. I also look at Booklist Editors’ Choice and a best books list fromLibrary Journal. For fun, this year I also looked at a list from EW. com (Entertainment Weekly) and one from Hudson Booksellers. While the goal of perusing all these lists is to see how many of the titles the library has, the most interesting aspect is that there is not a lot of overlap of titles among the lists. Some of the most interesting sounding books that are here in the library appear on a single list. For example, The New York Times has Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression. Hudson Booksellers has Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott, and Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre and David Michaelis’ Schulz and Peanuts are on the EW.com list. Publishers Weekly lists Touch and Go: A Memoir by Studs Terkel; Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron; American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion by Paul Barrett and Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy by Donald Kraybill. A few of the books that appear on more than one list are Rick Atkinson’s The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944; How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman; Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee; Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court; A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah; The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Storyby Diane Ackerman; Walter Isaacson’s Einstein; Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner; and The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. These are all books that the Library has, along with lots of other books on various lists and worth reading–something for everyone.

I can’t finish the Spring newsletter without mentioning that Spring is finally here and along with it is the urge to be outside and dig in the dirt, at least for a lot of us. As most of you know, we have many gardening books, ranging from the most basic “how and where to plant a seed” to “how to create a professional looking landscape” to “going green” to “how to make compost”. A lot of these books will be on display as well as on the shelves, so come in and browse.