New Large Print Titles

Summer 2022

You can explore and reserve books in the library system catalog by following the cover or title links below.

Featured Titles

To highlight at top of page with covers: -

Biscuits and Gravy - William W. Johnstone and J. A. Johnstone

Four Aunties and a Wedding - Jesse Q. Sutanto

Additional Titles to Consider...

June and July Fiction:

August Fiction:

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

New Large Print Titles

Spring 2022

You can explore and reserve books in the library system catalog by following the cover or title links below.

Featured Titles

Caramel Pecan Roll Murder - Joanna Fluke

Robert Ludlum's The Treadstone Transgression - Joshua Hood

Robert B. Parker?s Revenge Tour - Mike Lupica

Death of the Black Widow - James Patterson and J.D. Barker

Additional Titles to Consider...

March & April Fiction

Coming in May Fiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

New Large Print Titles

November + December 2021

The following large print titles are due out in November and December 2021.

You can explore and reserve books in the library system catalog by following the cover or title links below.

Featured Titles

Additional Titles to Consider...

Fiction

Nonfiction

The Arbornaut - Meg Lowman
Piglet - Melissa Shapiro

Comments? or Questions?

November 2021 Titles

The following titles are due out in November 2021. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

New Large Print Titles

October 2021

The following large print titles are due out in October 2021.

You can explore and reserve books in the library system catalog by following the cover or title links below.

Featured Titles

We Are Not Like Them - Christine Pride and Jo Piazza

Additional Titles to Consider...

Fiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

New Large Print Titles

July 2021

The following large print titles are due out in July 2021.

You can explore and reserve books in the library system catalog by following the cover or title links below.

Featured Titles

Additional Titles to Consider...

Fiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

Best Books of 2020

Our Booklovers web guide has been updated with a variety of "best book" lists for 2020.

Explore fiction, nonfiction, biographies, and more, and discover new and interesting authors along the way!

These "Best Books of 2020" links include lists from...

Please follow this link to begin exploring the lists.

When you see an author or title that interests you, please call our Reference librarians at 341-5461.

If we own an item, and the item is ready to be checked out, we can reserve it for curbside pickup when we're open.

Our list of holiday hours and closings are available at this link.

If the item is available at another library, our librarians can check to see if that item can be sent to Thrall for eventual curbside pickup.

We wish you and your familiy a safe, joyful, and peaceful New Year!

Comments? or Questions?

January 2021 Titles

The following titles are due out in January 2021. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

2020 National Book Awards

This year's winners and finalists have been announced by the National Book Foundation.

You can follow the links below to explore winning titles and authors in the Thrall/RCLS library catalog, where you can also check availability or reserve items:

Fiction

Winner:
- Interior Chinatown - Charles Yu
Finalists:

Nonfiction

Poetry

Winner:
- DMZ Colony - Don Mee Choi
Finalists:

Young People's Literature

Winner:
- King and the Dragonflies - Kacen Callender
Finalists:

You can also explore previous finalists and winners (by year) via this link.

For more about the National Book Awards, please follow this link.

Comments? or Questions?

Holiday 2020 Titles

News Coverage

BBC: "Louise Glück wins Nobel Prize for Literature"
Google News (multiple sources): "Louise Glück - 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature"
National Public Radio (NPR): "Nobel Prize In Literature Awarded To U.S. Poet Louise Glück"
The New York Times: "Louise Glück Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature"

Library Items - Thrall + RCLS books by Louise Glück:

search the library catalog

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

Starting Monday, July 13th:

Expanded Access to Library System Materials!

Starting Monday, July 13, 2020, Thrall patrons can place requests on items from Thrall as well as these RCLS libraries through the online catalog:

Chester
Cornwall
Florida
Gardiner
Goshen
Greenwood Lake
Montgomery
Newburgh
Walden
Wallkill
Warwick
Washingtonville

Once items have arrived, you will be notified.

For more details on curbside services, please follow this link.

If you have any difficulties finding items or placing holds on items, please feel free to call Reference (Mon. - Fri. 9:30 AM - 4 PM) at 341-5461.

You can also ask us questions online!

We look forward to hearing from you!

Comments? or Questions?

July 2020 Titles

The following books are due out in July. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

June 2020 Titles

The following books are due out in June. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

2020 Pulitzer Prize Winners

The 2020 Pulitzer Prizes have been announced!

You can follow any of the title or author links below to explore this year's winners in the library system catalog.

Once RCLS libraries reopen, you can use these links to check availability or place holds.

You might also like to explore our OverDrive collection for winners and finalists in electronic formats.

Fiction

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (available as an eBook)

History

Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America by W. Caleb McDaniel

Biography & Autobiographies

Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser

Poetry

The Tradition by Jericho Brown

General Nonfiction

Drama

A Strange Loop by Michael R. Jackson

For more winning books and authors...

Comments? or Questions?

Celebrating
National Poetry Month

April 2020

Part Four: Becoming a Poet

Welcome to Part Four of our month-long celebration of National Poetry Month!

If you've missed our earlier posts, please follow these links:
Part One, Part Two, Part Three

In this final part, we're going to turn you into a poet!

Well, at least we're going to try!

Perhaps you've written some poetry in the past, or had a vague sense you could but never acted on it.

The truth is EVERYONE can be a poet. Yes, everyone! With a little knowledge, effort, persistence, and belief in yourself, you can do it! You can write poetry!

All of our thoughts are valid. All of us have experiences, histories, dreams, preferences, realizations, ideas, emotions, people we met/know/knew, things we learned and lost, situations that changed our lives, unique perspectives no one else precisely shares.

As individuals, these rich ingredients and aspects enable us to speak on a wide range of topics in ways only we can know and say.

These particular and powerful thoughts and expressions help make poetry such an endlessly fascinating and insightful enterprise: everyone potentially has a variety of things to say, ranges of styles and preferred words to phrase those ideas, and points of view that can express things in new light and from fresh angles.

Beyond being individuals, we are also members of communities, which in turn are part of towns/villiages/cities and states and countries and the larger world.

We exist in various times and conditions in the larger timeline of human history. We go different places, interact with diverse arrays of persons, organizations, and conditions.

This gives even further personal context to who we are, what we've seen, what we know and imagine, and all that informs us dynamically throughout our lives and everyone we encounter. Our influences can influence others as well.

With all that in mind, each of us already has "what it takes" to be a poet - inspirational memories, knowledge, occurrences, creative impulses, and aspirations to draw upon once we attune ourselves to that spectrum with inclinations to write and express as we could, given enough patience and perseverance.

Once you realize this, the only thing you need next is some basic awareness of how poems work. We have three free publications that can help you get started:

There's not much technical stuff to memorize when you're just starting out. It does help to be familiar with a few basic concepts, such as stanza (what you could consider a "paragraph" in a poem), rhythm (patterns of accented/unaccented syllables in words as you read a poem aloud), and rhyme scheme (how words in some poems can sound alike, or not, at the end of each line in a poem).

Instead of studying glossaries of such "literary terms" and "poetic devices," perhaps the best way to "know how poems work" is simply to read good poems by known poets.

In Part Three of this series of posts, we highlight Poets.org and The Poetry Foundation: these are two of the best websites to begin reading poems and, if you like, learn more about poetry itself.

Many readers new to poetry are surprised - when they really look at a famous poem close up - how simple yet effective it can be. Sometimes people with say, "I could have written that!"

And, there would be truth in that: you could have written something like that, but, in all likelihood, you might have chosen other words and ways to voice those thoughts.

One stellar example of simple, honest, direct poems, is this one by Emily Dickinson, a certified master of wit and brevity:

			I'm nobody!  Who are you?

			Are you nobody, too?

			Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!

			They 'd banish us, you know.

			How dreary to be somebody!

			How public, like a frog

			To tell your name the livelong day

			To an admiring bog!

			(source: Project Gutenberg)

What a great poem! It's conversational - as if the "speaker of the poem" (the narrator, like in a story) is talking directly to us. It's at once personal, engaging, real, and enjoyable.

There are many other fine examples out there in both classic and contemporary poetry. Since poetry today can take a wild variety of forms, it can be easier and less daunting to start out with classic poems.

Classic poems also offer us some appreciable understanding of what it is to be "timeless poetry": what makes a poem so wonderful, so universal in what it says, and how it says it, that it can still be enjoyed decades or hundreds of years after it was written.

When you're ready to begin writing, don't pressure yourself to produce a poem. You'll see that will come naturally in time.

Just grab a notebook, some paper, a pen or pencil - or you can start up your word processor (such as the free LibreOffice or OpenOffice, or something simpler like WordPad or Notepad on Windows) and start putting your thoughts down into words.

Having a dictionary and a thesaurus around can be very helpful. Sometimes we'd like to use a word but are not quite sure as to its meaning, or spelling, or usage. A good dictionary solves that fast!

Good dictionaries also give us some history of the word - its "etymology" - and that can help us understand those words, how they were formed, and even what they may have first meant when they first came into existence.

Other times, we might have a sense of what we want to say, and we'll write something down, but the words don't quite seem right.

There are almost always "better" ways to express ideas. You will know best, in time.

For now, a thesaurus can work wonders, reminding you - or revealing to you - comparable words (synonyms).

If you don't have a dictionary or a thesaurus, no problem! We have a directory of, as Shakespeare's Hamlet once said...

"Word, Words, Words!"

There you can easily find dictionaries and thesauri online (such as Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com) and some other things you might find helpful, such as rhyming dictionaries.

Eventually, as someone new to playing the piano develops more familiarity and confidence and begins to be able to play a song all the way through, so it will be with you and your poetry: eventually, through persistence and belief in yourself and your ideas and expressions, you will be able to put words on a page in such a way that it will become a poem.

Do this every day, or every week, or any chance inspiration strikes (and it will, once you allow it), and you can have enough poems to fill up a notebook!

But, now what? You reach this point, having poems you're pretty proud of, poems that sound and feel great when you read them aloud, but what do you do next?

Perhaps you have no interest in publishing them. Maybe they're too personal or you aren't ready for the world to read them. No problem!

You might consider sharing them first with one or several of your closest friends. If you feel more comfortable and encouraged in doing that, perhaps you will reconsider the prospect of publication.

How do you publish poetry? There are several routes you can go:

You could submit your poems to poetry contests, using this directory at Poets & Writers, for example.
You could try submitting your poems to literary journals and poetry publications, such as those featured in Poets & Writers Literary Magazines database.
You could join a free website such as AllPoetry.com and post poems online as well as participate in any of the many poetry challenges posted there every day. In addition to receiving feedback from readers and fellow poets, you might even develop a following!
You might even consider self-publishing a book of your poems, either in print or simply as an eBook online.

Self-publishing used to be a bit of a controversy years ago, since, before the Internet, the only way poets could ever achieve wide recognition was to get published multiple times in notable literary journals. For many readers and critics, this is still a preferred path for aspiring poets, since it maintains a sense of competition (your book of poems versus dozens to hundreds by other poets) and evaluation (a publisher decides your work meets a publication's standards).

One thing to be aware of are "vanity presses" and any publications inviting you to be published as long as you agree to buy their books. These offers may have the potential to be mostly for-profit operations where quality is not necessarily a prime consideration or even a requirement. They make money, your poem gets published. Everyone feels good, for a while, and for some people that is enough, to see their name in print (hence the "vanity" of this form of publication).

Wherever you submit, be sure to read their guidelines very carefully, be alert as to any restrictions, possible submission or reading fees, response times, whether or not they allow you to submit your poem elsewhere simultaneously, whether or not they will consider poems which have been published elsewhere (e.g. online).

Be especially intent to determine whether "all rights" remain yours after any publisher published a poem of yours - that your poem has the potential of being publishable elsewhere someday.

The Writing section of our Ready Referece Center includes websites featuring calls for manuscripts with various content preferences, requirements, along with any other special considerations or directives.

Ultimately, you will have to decide which route is best for you, when the time comes for that.

For now, just write! Express! Luxuriate in the power and beauty of words!

Permit yourself to be inspired and inspiring!

Let your poetic mind and heart and soul soar!

Believe in your voice, its relevance and validity, that it deserves to be read and heard!

Become the poet you always had the potential to be!

Set the poetry already inside you free!

Comments? or Questions?

Celebrating
National Poetry Month

April 2020

Part Three (of Four)

Welcome to Part Three of our month-long celebration of National Poetry Month!

If you've missed our earlier posts, you can find them here (Part One) and at this link (Part Two).

In this part, we're going to take a tour of some very notable poetry websites - ones so good you'll want to revisit them again and again!

First, we're going to take a look at the Academy of American Poets website (poets.org).

This is one of the most complete and valuable poetry websites online. You can use it to...

search for poems by title, keyword, or the name of poem. If you scroll down their page, you can also filter results by a variety of criteria, including topics, themes, and poetic forms.
search for poets by first and/or last name
read the poem of the day - a great reason to revisit this website daily! You can also register at their website to receive a poem every day in your e-mail.
search "materials for teachers" - includes some definitions of literary terms, lesson plans, essays, and more

And, of course, they also have a dedicated National Poetry Month page where, among many other things, you can read...

Next up is The Poetry Foundation. In addition to being the publisher of the magazine Poetry, they are "an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture." Established in 2003, they " evolved from the Modern Poetry Association, which was founded in 1941 to support the publication of Poetry magazine."

With that kind of history, and their critically-acclaimed Poetry publication, you can see why this indeed is a "notable poetry website" you will want to check out repeatedly.

Like Poets.org, PoetryFoundation.org enables you to search for poems or poets.

You can also use their Explore Poems search to discover poems by topics or themes.

They also offer an impressive amount of content, including...

Audio Poems
a Glossary of Poetry Terms
Podcasts
Poems for Children and Articles about Children's Poetry
Poems for Teens
Poem Guides
a Poem of the Day
Poetry Collections - some examples:
- Asian American Voices in Poetry - "A collection of poets and articles exploring Asian American culture"
- Native American Poetry and Culture - "A selection of poets, poems, and articles exploring the Native American experience."
- U.S. Latinx Voices in Poetry - "Exploring Latino/a American poetry and culture."
resources for educators
selections from How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch

Amazing, right? Definitely a website to bookmark and revisit along with Poets.org!

Now, this third website is technically a "database" where you can search for articles - but not just any articles: these are some of the most in-depth and insightful explorations of poems and poets you may ever find!

It's Poetry for Students, something members of Thrall can access for free when they log in with their library card numbers (without any spaces).

Poetry for Students is part of the larger "Literature for Students" portal, but it truly stands on its own, as you'll see.

The official description states this databases "features discussion and analysis of poems of all time periods, nations, and cultures" and "provides an overview of the poem and discussion of its principal themes, images, form and construction."

Wow. Just let that soak in for a moment: "all time periods, nations, and cultures." Do they really live up to that claim? Yes!

In fact, Poetry for Students is one of the most sought-after reference works by students in high-school and college because it has such a reputation for being comprehensive and incredible when it comes to providing "literary criticism" (scholarly commentary and analysis of literary and poetic works).

Now, once you log in, you'll see several book cover images. Simply click or tap the Poetry for Students cover to begin.

After this, don't fret to much about what you'll see next. At first sight, the list of multiple volumes running off the page might be daunting.

NOT to worry! There's a simple "Search within Series" search box off to the right side that instantly renders all those volume instantly searchable!

In that box, you could search for a poet, such as Emily Dickinson or Robert Frost, or for a kind of poem, such as a sonnet, which will show you articles about famous sonneteers including William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Pablo Neruda, among others.

You could also search for a poem, if you know it's title (e.g. "Hope Is the Thing With Feathers" or "The Road Not Taken") - be sure to put quotes around the title so search results remain relevant.

"Hope Is the Thing With Feathers" is a great example of how in-depth Poetry for Students gets: that's a 12-line poem (three stanzas, four lines each), and the main article on the poem is FOURTEEN PAGES LONG.

These articles REALLY get into it! In fact, most articles offer background about the poet, perhaps some related history, and then you'll get a line-by-line summary of the poem along with explorations of themes in the poem.

As if that's not enough: you'll also get a closer look at the poetic style employed, a Critical Overview (which often offers deep and valuable insights), and more, such as a list of sources cited in the article as well as a "For Further Study" section.

You can download PDFs of articles as well when you click/tap their icon located above the article where there's a downward arrow pointing at a rectangle.

So that's three websites, so far. Our tour of poetry can't possibly stop here, right?

Poetry is not a street or a town or a state or a country or even a world: it is a veritable multicultural multiverse of thought and expression!

We're just getting started. When you are ready for more, please follow this link for our Poetry menu (www.thrall.org/poetry) - another good website to remember, bookmark, and revisit!

There you'll find some of the Poetry Guides we mentioned in Part One and Part Two of our four-part Poetry 2020 series.

We hope you enjoyed this online tour of notable poetry websites! Please stay tuned: Part Four is coming very soon!

Comments? or Questions?

Getting Back to the Future...

Future Title Watch - March, April, May 2020

...as in Future Title Watch!

Many readers look to our monthly Future Title Watch publication, where they can discover new fiction and nonfiction releases and plan ahead for their next reads.

If it's been a while, and you'd like to catch up, you can follow this link and download PDFs of any monthly issue you'd like.

As you'll see, we've published quite a few issues over the years! And there's good reason for going back to other issues you might have missed: most issues highlight both fiction and nonfiction authors, enabling you to learn a little about their writing styles as well as some of their most popular titles.

Comments? or Questions?

Listen to This!

We've created an online collection of highly-recommended eAudioBooks over at the RCLS OverDrive eBooks service, which is free to members of Thrall!

Selections include both fiction and nonfiction titles, and you can use the "filters" at OverDrive to further limit topics:

Please follow this link to begin exploring "Listen to This!" selections

Most eAudioBooks can be listened to immediate right within your Web browser - no downloads necessary! They "stream" just like online videos elsewhere and simply require a live Internet connection when you access them in that manner.

To access OverDrive, please have your library card handy and log in with your library barcode number (without spaces).

When prompted for your PIN, that will be the last four digits of your telephone number when you registered for a library card, unless you changed it.

Titles which are listed as "available" can be borrowed and viewed immediately.

For those titles which are curently checked out to other readers, you can add yourself to a wait list by following the "Place a Hold" link for any given item.

For even more eAudioBook possibilities, you can follow this link for a list of topics at OverDrive.

Comments? or Questions?

May 2020 Titles

The following books are due out in May. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

Beyond the Bestsellers

Spring 2020 Edition

Three Ways to Enjoy!

Our latest Spring 2020 edition of our popular quarterly publication is available, and in three different ways!

Use any or all of them to discover new and interesting titles and authors often not found on limited "bestseller" lists!

Online Edition (includes title + author links to the library catalog:

Beyond the Bestsellers - Spring 2020 - Online Edition

Downloadable / Viewable / Printable PDF (the one normally available in print at Thrall):

Beyond the Bestsellers - Spring 2020 - Print Edition PDF

Thrall OverDrive eBook Collection (borrow or place holds and read electronically):

Beyond the Bestsellers - Spring 2020 - OverDrive eBooks Collection

Enjoy!

Comments? or Questions?

Celebrating
National Poetry Month

April 2020

Part Two (of Four)

Welcome to Part Two of our month-long celebration of National Poetry Month!

If you're relatively new to poetry, we know it can be a challenge to try to figure where you might just "jump in" due to the enormity of poets and poetry styles out there.

No worries! We have an easy two-page guide called "Meet the Poets" you can download to begin learning about some of the more popular and "accessible" (easy to understand) poets you might want to explore first.

For example, there's the ever-popular Maya Angelou, whose down-to-earth, honest, and eloquent voice resonates throughout everything she has written, in her critically-acclaimed fiction and biographies and especially within her memorable poetry.

There's also Billy Collins, a contemporary poet who was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001 - 2003. He specializes in turning ordinary words into clever poems which can be insightful, humorous, and bittersweet.

Emily Dickinson is a name even non-poetry-readers know. She ranks among the most popular poets of all time for very good reasons, among them her ability to capture moments and emotions in a few words which can leave lasting impressions on readers.

Matso Basho, a 17th century Japanese poet, wrote "haiku" poems - very short poems (most often presented in 3 lines, 17 syllables per poem, with 5 on the first and last lines and seven in the middle line). Like Dickinson, he was an expert at capturing observations and feelings, often while meditating on nature or specific experiences. Haiku poems can say and mean a lot in a few words!

Mary Oliver, winner of both a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, shares much in the nature-oriented tradition of Basho and writes to be easily understood like Dickinson. Oliver also wrote a variety of essays, which often accompany her poems in collections of her published writings.

Robert Frost is another name known even to those who've not read his poems. As of 2020, he is still the winningest poet of all time when it comes to Pulitzer Prizes. He won four times! Why? Because his classic tone, delivered through ordinary language, made reading his poems easy and a joy for generations of readers, even as he never shied away from serious thoughts in some of his poems.

For even more...

please download our "Meet the Poets" (PDF)

You can also follow any of these links below to explore these poets at either the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, Project Gutenberg (free eBooks online), or (where available) RCLS OverDrive eBooks you can read right in your Web browser (Thrall or RCLS library card required):

Maya Angelou
Matsuo Basho
- Academy of American Poets
- Poetry Foundation
Billy Collins
Emily Dickinson
Robert Frost
Mary Oliver
Some Additional RCLS / OverDrive eBooks to Consider:

Missed Part One of our National Poetry Month Celebration? You can find it at this link.

Comments? or Questions?

Celebrating
National Poetry Month

April 2020

Part One (of Four)

April is National Poetry Month, that special time of the year people across the U.S. are invited to contemplate the beauty, power, insight, and comfort poems can bring into our lives with just a few well-chosen words.

Many readers already have a place in their hearts for poetry. Others, understandably, not so much. How we first encountered poetry helped shaped our lifelong perceptions of it.

For some, those experiences began - and prematurely ended - with poems as relatively frustrating reading assignments: purely academic exercises which focused on technicalities such as "poetic forms" (different kinds of poems), "imagery" (things described), "meter" (word rhythms), "rhyme schemes" (how a poem rhymes line to line), or interpretations - figuring what a poem meant, or could mean.

Such concepts, too quickly introduced, can reduce poetry reading to a tedious chore. Poetry, itself, is not nearly that demanding.

Yes, it's a fact: some poems are difficult! Some poets do like being elusive, challenging readers to strain after meanings.

Classic poems, written in earlier styles of present-day languages, raise other challenges. The sonorous near-perfection of a Shakespearean sonnet can be unreachable if we're not familiar with how poets wrote in earlier times.

Modern and contemporary poems can, at times, present similar difficulties, especially "free verse," which might not even resemble what some readers expect when they think of poetry: free verse is where poets can get wildly creative, abandoning rhyming and rhythms in favor of something new.

The great news here is that the poetry world is big enough to be inclusive for everyone! There is - quite literally - a poem for each and every reader out there, including you - words that will resonate in ways you will personally appreciate and remember.

Whether you've never quite developed a love for poetry or you simply haven't had time to return to reading poems, we invite you to download these free publications we created to help you develop - or rediscover - your appreciation of all things poetic:

Getting into Poetry - An open door to the wondrous world of poetry. (PDF document)
Why Like Poetry? - Some great reasons to read or write poetry! (PDF document)

If you're ready and interested in expanding your poetic knowledge, we invite you to download these free and informative PDFs:

Poetry Terms - Some words worth learning!
Poetry: Patterns & Parts - Take a tour of three different poems.

With each week in April we'll be exploring more about poetry and poets.

We hope you enjoyed this first segment, and we invite you back to this blog next week for Part Two of our four-part Poetry 2020 series.

You might also like to visit our National Poetry Month website for more poetic possibilities! Enjoy!

Comments? or Questions?

BookPage

April 1, 2020

Many of you enjoy the monthly publication BookPage, which is made available in print at the library.

Since Thrall, and public libraries in general, are closed currently due to the pandemic, BookPage is making its April 2020 edition freely available online:

Please follow this link for the April 2020 issue of BookPage.

Please follow this link to explore our online collection of Christmas eBooks in OverDrive.

Comments? or Questions?

2018 + 2019 Nobel Prizes in Literature

The Nobel Foundation recently named both the 2018 and 2019 winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature:

2018: Olga Tokarczuk "for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life."
2019: Peter Handke "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience."

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

A New Poet Laureate for 2019

In June 2019, the Librarian of Congress appointed Joy Harjo as the new Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.

In addition to her critically-acclaimed career as a poet, it is also noteworthy to mention the Library of Congress describes Joy Harjo as "the first Native American poet to serve in the position."

The Library of Congress has this to say about Joy's writings:

"Joy Harjo has championed the art of poetry - 'soul talk' as she calls it - for over four decades.... To her, poems are 'carriers of dreams, knowledge and wisdom,' and through them she tells an American story of tradition and loss, reckoning and myth-making. Her work powerfully connects us to the earth and the spiritual world with direct, inventive lyricism that helps us reimagine who we are." (source)

Please follow this link for official information from the Library of Congress.

For Further Exploration...

You can learn more about Joy Harjo through the following links:

From Gale Literary Sources (available free to members of Thrall - login with library card #):
- Biography of Joy Harjo - from Contemporary Poets
- Representing Real Worlds: The Evolving Poetry of Joy Harjo - from Contemporary Literary Criticism
Thrall / RCLS Library System Catalog - items by Joy Harjo

February 2019 Titles

The following books are due out in February. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Nonfiction

The Pianist from Syria - Aeham Ahmad
Merchants of Truth - Jill Abramson
Borrowed Time - Sue Armstrong
Chamber Music - Will Ashon
Long Shot - Azad
Possible Minds - John Brockman
Earth-shattering - Bob Berman
Dinner for Everyone - Mark Bittman
How to Disappear - Akiko Busch
The Art of Dying Well - Katy Butler
Shortest Way Home - Pete Buttigieg
Wild Bill - Tom Clavin
Parkland - Dave Cullen
Under Pressure - Lisa Damour
Walk This Way - Geoff Edgers
Our History Is the Future - Nick Estes
The Formula - Ronald Ferguson
Savage Feast - Boris Fishman
El Norte - Carrie Gibson
Never Enough - Judith Grisel
Notes on a Nervous Planet - Matt Haig
Devices and Desires - Kate Hubbard
No Beast So Fierce - Dane Huckelbridge
Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe
The Darkest Year - William Klingaman
Antisemitism - Deborah Lipstadt
Separate - Steve Luxenberg
Spearhead - Adam Makos
Don't Label Me - Irshad Manji
The Threat - Andrew McCabe
Zucked - Roger McNamee
Liquid Rules - Mark Miodownik
I.M. - Isaac Mizrahi
Source of Self-Regard - Toni Morrison
The Polar Bear Expedition - James Carl Nelson
Digital Minimalism - Cal Newport
Figuring - Maria Popova
Drug Warrior - Jack Riley
Fraternity - Alexandra Robbins
The Dumb Things Smart People Do with Their Money - Jill Schlesinger
Grateful American - Gary Sinise
Good Kids, Bad City - Kyle Swenson
Practical Equality - Robert Tsai
The Master Plan - Chris Wilson
This View of Life - David Sloan Wilson

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

January 2019 Titles

The following books are due out in January. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Also check out our Christmas 2018 titles post below!

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

Christmas 2018 eBooks

Do you read eBooks? (If not, did you know it's a free service to members of Thrall/RCLS?)

We invite you to explore our RCLS/OverDrive eBook collection of Christmas titles.

You might also like to browse Christmas 2018 Fiction - in print - by following this link.

Comments? or Questions?

2018 National Book Awards

This year's winners and finalists have been announced by the National Book Foundation.

You can follow the links below to explore winning titles and authors in the Thrall/RCLS library catalog, where you can also check availability or reserve items:

Fiction

Winner:
- The Friend - Sigrid Nunez
Finalists:

Nonfiction

Poetry

Winner:
- Indecency - Justin Phillip Reed
Finalists:

Young People's Literature

Winner:
- The Poet X - Elizabeth Acevedo
Finalists:

You can also explore previous finalists and winners (by year) via this link.

For more about the National Book Awards, please follow this link.

Comments? or Questions?

December 2018 Titles

The following books are due out in December. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Also check out our Christmas 2018 titles post below!

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

Christmas 2018 Titles

Some titles to get you into the holiday spirit!

Also check out: our online collection of Christmas 2018 RCLS/OverDrive eBooks.

Comments? or Questions?

November 2018 Titles

The following books are due out in November. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

October 2018 Titles

The following books are due out in October. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

The Three Beths - Jeff Abbott
The Next Person You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
You Were Always Mine - Nicole Baart
The Dead Ringer - M.C. Beaton
The Craftsman - Sharon Bolton
Power Failure - Ben Bova
Street Freaks - Terry Brooks
The Dream Daughter - Diane Chamberlain
Glitter Bomb - Laura Childs
Hippie - Paulo Coelho
Dark Sacred Night - Michael Connelly
War of the Wolf - Bernard Cornwell
Rise of the Mystics - Ted Dekker
Virgil Wander - Leif Enger
Bright Young Dead - Jessica Fellowes
The Fox - Frederick Forsyth
Crisis - Felix Francis
The Witch Elm - Tana French
The Vanishing Box - Elly Griffiths
The Reckoning - John Grisham
The Proposal - Jasmine Guillory
Face Off - David Hagberg
An Easy Death - Charlaine Harris
Pulse - Michael Harvey
Winter in Paradise - Elin Hilderbrand
Wrecked - Joe Ide
Bright Ruin - Vic James
Vendetta - Iris Johansen
The Darkness - Ragnar Jonasson
Bathed in Prayer - Jan Karon
Elevation - Stephen King
When We Were Young - Karen Kingsbury
Unsheltered - Barbara Kingsolver
The Forbidden Door - Dean Koontz
Not Quite Over You - Susan Mallery
Marilla of Green Gables - Sarah McCoy
Residue - Michael McGarrity
Sleep of Memory - Patrick Modiano
The Clockmaker's Daughter - Kate Morton
Killing Commendatore - Haruki Murakami
Wyoming Legend - Diana Palmer
Shell Game - Sara Paretsky
Ambush - James Patterson
A Spark of Light - Jodi Picoult
Blood Communion - Anne Rice
Red Moon - Kim Stanley Robinson
The Other Wife - Michael Robotham
The Rain Watcher - Tatiana de Rosnay
Holy Ghost - John Sandford
The Consuming Fire - John Scalzi
The Collector's Apprentice - B.A. Shapiro
Every Breath - Nicholas Sparks
Dracul - Dacre Stoker
A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl - Jean Thompson
Under My Skin - Lisa Unger
Consumed - J.R. Ward
Uncompromising Honor - David Weber
Desperate Measures - Stuart Woods

Comments? or Questions?

2018 Pulitzer Prize Winners

The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes have been announced!

You can follow any of the title or author links below to explore this year's winners in the library system catalog:

Fiction

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

History

The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E. Davis

Biography & Autobiographies

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

Poetry

Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 by Frank Bidart

General Nonfiction

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr.

Drama

*Cost of Living by Martyna Majok
(*title not currently available in the RCLS library system)

Fiction

For further exploration:

Please follow this link to browse the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, and other "Best Book" lists in our Booklovers Web guide.

The following books are due out in November. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

The 2017 Nobel Prize
in Literature

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Kazuo Ishiguro, "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world."

You can read the offical announcement by following this link.

For further exploration...

From NobelPrize.org:

About the Nobel Prize in Literature
Kazuo Ishiguro Biobibliography (biography + bibliography) (PDF)

News Coverage

BBC: "Kazuo Ishiguro: Nobel Literature Prize Is a Magnificent Honour" (article + video)
Google News: Kazuo Ishiguro (multiple news sources)
National Public Radio (NPR): "Kazuo Ishiguro Wins Nobel Prize In Literature"
The New York Times: "Kazuo Ishiguro Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature"

Library Items - Thrall + RCLS books, etc. by or about Kazuo Ishiguro:

author search (by)
subject search (about)

Databases Available at Thrall (also available to members of Thrall remotely - log in with your library card #):

Gale Literary Sources - Autor interviews + literary criticism and analysis
(learn more about this database)
Literature for Students - In-depth literary criticism and analysis of The Remains of the Day and other works by this author
(learn more about this database))
Salem Literature - Critical Insights: Kazuo Ishiguro in Critical Survey of Long Fiction - "A biographical essay about Kazuo Ishiguro, with brief critical analysis of major works."
(learn more about this database))

Rituals - Kelley Armstrong
Gone Gull - Donna Andrews
On Her Majesty's Frightfully Secret Service - Rhys Bowen
The Massacre of Mankind - Stephen Baxter
Shattered - Allison Brennan
Seeing Red - Sandra Brown
A Nest of Vipers - Andrea Camilleri
Snap Judgment - Marcia Clark
Charlatans - Robin Cook
A Catered Costume Party - Isis Crawford
Dead to Begin With - Bill Crider
Texas Fierce - Janet Dailey
The Address - Fiona Davis
The Locals - Jonathan Dee
Red Swan - P.T. Deutermann
A Dark and Broken Heart - R.J. Ellory
Class Mom - Laurie Gelman
I Know a Secret - Tess Gerritsen
Summer on Firefly Lake - Jen Gilroy
Murder Wears Mittens - Sally Goldenbaum
The Innkeeper's Sister - Linda Goodnight
Y Is For Yesterday - Sue Grafton
The Last Tudor - Philippa Gregory
Saboteur - Andrew Gross
Shattered - Helen Hardt
Beyond Absolution - Cora Harrison
How to Find Love in a Bookshop - Veronica Henry
Fast Falls the Night - Julia Keller
Crime Scene - Jonathan Kellerman and Jesse Kellerman
Dragonsworn - Sherrilyn Kenyon
Sulfur Springs - William Kent Krueger
One Summer Day in Rome - Mark Lamprell
A Stranger in the House - Shari Lapena
Cicada Summer - Maureen Leurck
The Paris Spy - Susan Elia MacNeal
Any Dream Will Do - Debbie Macomber
You Say It First - Susan Mallery
The Burning Girl - Claire Messud
Need to Know - Fern Michaels
The Color of Fear - Marcia Muller
Thief's Mark - Carla Neggers
Tangled Destinies - Diana Palmer
The Red-haired Woman - Orhan Pamuk
Room of White Fire - T. Jefferson Parker
The Dolls (a "bookshot") - James Patterson
Medical Examiner (a "bookshot") - James Patterson
The Store - James Patterson
Glass Houses - Louise Penny
Mrs. Fletcher - Tom Perrotta
The Bedlam Stacks - Natasha Pulley
Death by His Grace - Kwei Quartey
Sleeping in the Ground - Peter Robinson
Exposed - Lisa Scottoline
The Good Daughter - Karin Slaughter
The Other Girl - Erica Spindler
The Right Time - Danielle Steel
Without Fear or Favor - Robert K. Tanenbaum
Nothing Stays Buried - P.J. Tracy
Devil's Cut - J.R. Ward
Grand Opening 2 - Carl Weber
Map of the Heart - Susan Wiggs
Barely Legal - Stuart Woods
Young Jane Young - Gabrielle Zevin

Comments? or Questions?

July 2017 Titles

The following books are due out in July. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

A New Poet Laureate

On June 14, 2017, the Librarian of Congress appointed Tracy K. Smith as the new Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.

In 2012, Smith won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Life on Mars.

The Library of Congress has this to say about Smith's writings:

"Her work travels the world and takes on its voices; brings history and memory to life; calls on the power of literature as well as science, religion and pop culture. With directness and deftness, she contends with the heavens or plumbs our inner depths-all to better understand what makes us most human." (source)

Please follow this link for official information from the Library of Congress.

For Further Exploration...

You can learn more about Tracy through the following links:

From Gale Literary Sources (available free to members of Thrall - login with library card #):
- Biography of Tracy K. Smith - from Contemporary Authors Online
- Interview with Tracy K. Smith - from Atlanta Review
- List of Works + Biographical Essay - from Twenty-First-Century American Poets
Thrall / RCLS Library System Catalog - items by Tracy K. Smith

June 2017 Titles

The following books are due out in June. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

May 2017 Titles

The following books are due out in May. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

2017 Pulitzer Prize Winners

The 2017 Pulitzer Prizes have been announced!

You can click any of the links below to explore this year's winners in the library system catalog:

Fiction

The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead

History

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy - Heather Ann Thompson

Biography & Autobiographies

The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between - Hisham Matar

Poetry

Olio - Tyehimba Jess

General Nonfiction

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City - Matthew Desmond

Drama

Sweat - Lynn Nottage

Poetry

Fiction

For further exploration:

Please follow this link to browse the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, and other "Best Book" lists in our Booklovers Web guide.

Comments? or Questions?

2016 National Book Awards

This year's winners and finalists have been announced by the National Book Foundation.

You can follow the links below to explore winning titles and authors in the Thrall/RCLS library catalog, where you can also check availability or reserve items:

Fiction

Winner:
- The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead
Finalists:

Nonfiction

Poetry

Winner:
- The Performance of Becoming Human - Daniel Borzutzky
Finalists:

Young People's Literature

Winner:
- March: Book Three - John Lewis, et al
Finalists:

For more about the National Book Awards, please follow this link.

You can also explore previous finalists and winners (by genre) via this link.

The 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to singer/songwriter Bob Dylan "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

You can read the offical announcement by following this link.

For further exploration...

From NobelPrize.org:

About the Nobel Prize in Literature
Bob Dylan Biobibliography (biography + bibliography) (PDF)

News Coverage

National Public Radio (NPR): Bob Dylan, Titan Of American Music, Earns Stunning Nobel Prize Win
The New York Times: Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

Library Items - Thrall + RCLS books, etc. by or about Bob Dylan:

Other Websites:

The Academy of American Poets: Bob Dylan
AllMusic: Bob Dylan - Artist Biography, Discography, Awards
Biography in Context: Bob Dylan biographies (database available to members of Thrall; login with library card #)
BobDylan.com (official website)
- See also: Songs + Lyrics - Select a song title (e.g. "All Along the Watchtower" or "Blowin' in the Wind") for lyrics.
  Please note: lyrics are not provided for every song.
The Poetry Foundation: Bob Dylan

Comments? or Questions?

October 2016 Titles

The following books are due out in September. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Nonfiction

The 2016 Pulitzer Prizes have been announced!

You can click any of the links below to explore this year's winners in the library system catalog:

Fiction

The Sympathizer - Viet Thanh Nguyen

History

Custer's Trials - T.J. Stiles

Biography & Autobiographies

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life - William Finnegan

Poetry

Ozone Journal - Peter Balakian

General Nonfiction

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS - Joby Warrick

Drama

Hamilton - Lin-Manuel Miranda

For more winning books and authors...

Comments? or Questions?

National Poetry Month 2016

April is National Poetry Month!

This year, perhaps you will consider...

Becoming a Poet!

Ever wanted to write a poem but didn't know where to start?

It's easier than you think! Here are some suggestions to help you begin:

Books you can borrow within the library system...

Even more books exist under these subjects in the library catalog:

Need some help with rhyming? Rhyming dictionaries also exist!

You can always ask a librarian about any of these topics!

Some websites you can visit to learn more about poetry...

Some Helpful Tips for Your Consideration...

Learning to write poetry can be fun, educational, even therapeutic and inspiring!
Poetry can help us explore, express, and understand the world (and even ourselves) in new ways!
A librarian can help you locate poetry collections (also known as poetry anthologies), and these can enable you to learn more about popular and classic poems as well as to help you gain a better sense of what kinds of poetic styles and topics you might like to explore in your own poetry.
Always be ready to write. Keep some paper and a pen or pencil handy so, when inspiration strikes, you're prepared! When it does, quickly write whatever thoughts come to mind. You can always revise later.
If you have a computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone, you might be able to download software or "app" which can let you type or record your ideas and observations as they occur to you.
Learning basic poetry concepts can help you understand how poems work and what makes "good poem."
You can download our free poetry guides at www.thrall.org/poetry and begin to see how various poetic techniques can transform ordinary words into moving and memorable passages.
For more possibilities, we invite you to visit our National Poetry Month website: www.thrall.org/npm

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

December 2015 Titles

Posted: November 20, 2015

The following books are due out in December. Please use the links below to place your requests now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Christmas Stories

Explore and enjoy these recent or forthcoming holiday titles...

Comments? or Questions?

November 2015 Titles

The following books are due out in November. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

2015 Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Svetlana Alexievich. "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time" (source)

For more about the author, her writings, and the Nobel Prize:

Additional News Coverage:

BBC: Svetlana Alexievich Wins Nobel Literature Prize
The New York Times: Svetlana Alexievich Wins Nobel Prize in Literature
National Public Radio (NPR): Belarusian Journalist Svetlana Alexievich Wins Literature Nobel
PBS NewsHour: Svetlana Alexievich, Investigative Journalist from Belarus, Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

You can also follow this link to browse books by Svetlana Alexievich ["Aleksievich"] in our local library system (RCLS).

See also:

Comments? or Questions?

New U.S. Poet Laureate

Juan Felipe Herrera is our latest United States Poet Laureate. He is "the first Hispanic American to be named" to this position (source).

Herrera previously served as California's state Poet Laureate. His appointment follows recent Poets Laureate Charles Wright (2014-2015) and Natasha Trethewey (2012-2014).

You can read about Herrera's appointment in the Library of Congress's press release.

The Library of Congress also provides an online guide to Juan Felipe Herrera and his works.

For further exploration:

Comments? or Questions?

October 2015 Titles

The following books are due out in October. Please use the links below to place your holds now.

Nonfiction

Comments? or Questions?

2015 Pulitzer Prize Winners

Posted: April 20, 2015

The 2015 Pulitzer Prizes for "Letters, Drama, and Music" have been announced!

You can click any of the links below to explore this year's winners and finalists (for Fiction, History, Biography, Nonfiction, and Poetry) in the library system catalog:

Fiction

Winner
- All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
Finalists
- Let Me Be Frank With You - Richard Ford
- Lovely, Dark, Deep - Joyce Carol Oates
- The Moor's Account - Laila Lalami

History

Winner
- Encounters at the Heart of the World - Elizabeth A. Fenn
Finalists
- An Empire on the Edge - Nick Bunker
- Empire of Cotton: A Global History - Sven Beckert

Biography & Autobiographies

Winner
- The Pope and Mussolini - David I. Kertzer
Finalists
- Louis Armstrong - Thomas Brothers
- Stalin - Stephen Kotkin

Poetry

Winner
- Digest - Gregory Pardlo
Finalists
- Compass Rose - Arthur Sze
- Reel to Reel - Alan Shapiro

General Nonfiction

Winner
- The Sixth Extinction - Elizabeth Kolbert
Finalists
- Age of Ambition - Evan Osnos
- No Good Men Among the Living - Anand Gopal

Drama

Winner
- Between Riverside and Crazy - Stephen Adly Guirgis
Finalists
- Father Comes Home from the Wars - Suzan-Lori Parks
- Marjorie Prime - Jordan Harrison

Music

Winner
- Anthracite Fields - Julia Wolfe
Finalists
- The Aristos - John Zorn
- Xiaoxiang - Lei Liang

Best Nonfiction of 2014

Additional "best of 2014" reading lists can be found in the Book Lists section of our online guide for Booklovers.

Comments? or Questions?

January 2015 Titles

Posted: December 22, 2014

The following books are due out in January. Please use the links below to search the library catalog and to place requests as items become available.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

December 2014 Titles

Posted: November 18, 2014

The following books are due out in December. Please use the links below to place your requests now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Christmas Stories

Comments? or Questions?

November 2014 Titles

Posted: October 27, 2014

The following books are due out in November. Please use the links below to search the catalog and place your requests now.

Fiction

Nonfiction

41 - George W. Bush
Christ Actually - James Carroll
The Future of God - Deepak Chopra
So Anyway - John Cleese
The Andy Cohen Diaries - Andy Cohen
Navy Seals - Dick Couch
American Titan - Marc Eliot
Between Two Worlds - Malcolm Gaskill
Watch Me - Anjelica Huston
Great Reformer - Austen Ivereigh
Prayer - Timothy Keller
Capturing Music - Thomas Forrest Kelly
Small Victories - Anne Lamott
Citizens of the Green Room - Mark Leibovich
True Love - Jennifer Lopez
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow - Sophia Loren
No Hero - Mark Owen
Thirteen Soldiers - John McCain
You Can't Make This Up - Al Michaels
Undeniable - Bill Nye
Digging for Richard III - Mike Pitts
Money: Master the Game - Tony Robbins
The Universal Tone - Carlos Santana
For Love of Country - Howard Schultz
There Was a Little Girl - Brooke Shields
I Must Say - Martin Short
Fully Alive - Timothy Shriver
Stranger - Chuck Todd
The Sphinx - Nicholas Wapshott
Ambition and Desire - Kate Williams
Havel - Michael Zantovsky
Countdown to Zero Day - Kim Zetter
Hope - Richard Zoglin

Comments? or Questions?

2014 Nobel Prize in Literature

Posted: October 10, 2014

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Patrick Modiano, a French author, "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation."

Please click here to read the official award announcement at NobelPrize.org.

To learn more about Patrick Modiano and his writings, please see these links:

See also our other posts on the 2014 Nobel Prizes in...

Comments? or Questions?

October 2014 Titles

Posted: September 23, 2014

The following books are due out in October. Please use the links below to place your requests now.

Fiction

Nonfiction

Charlie Chaplin - Peter Ackroyd
The Map of Heaven - Eben Alexander
The Good Son - Christopher Andersen
Fields of Blood - Karen Armstrong
The Perfect Kill - Robert Baer
America-Farm to Table - Mario Batali
Maeve's Times - Maeve Binchy
Breaking in - Joan Biskupic
Jerry Lee Lewis - Rick Bragg
Boy on Ice - John Branch
Brief Encounters - Dick Cavett
Not My Father's Son - Alan Cumming
Isabella - Kirstin Downey
More Awesome Than Money - Jim Dwyer
Play On - Mick Fleetwood
War Dogs - Rebecca Frankel
Food - Jim Gaffigan
Make It Ahead! - Ina Garten
Being Mortal - Atul Gawande
Neil Patrick Harris - Neil Patrick Harris
Losing Our Way - Bob Herbert
The Innovators - Walter Isaacson
The Best in the World - Chris Jericho
U2 - John Jobling
The Wars of the Roses - Dan Jones
Saving Simon - Jon Katz
Empire of Sin - Gary Krist
The Return of George Washington - Edward J. Larson
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis - Barbara Leaming
Even This I Get to Experience - Norman Lear
The Secret History of Wonder Woman - Jill Lepore
De Niro - Shawn Levy
When Lions Roar - Thomas Maier
Tinseltown - William J. Mann
Embattled Rebel - James M. McPherson
Village of Secrets - Caroline Moorehead
Republic of Imagination - Azar Nafisi
Worthy Fights - Leon Panetta
Parcells - Bill Parcells
Rocks - Joe Perry
Yes Please - Amy Poehler
Respect - David Ritz
Billy Joel - Fred Schruers
On His Own Terms - Richard Norton Smith
Black Prophetic Fire - Cornel West
Victoria - A. N. Wilson
Special Deluxe - Neil Young

Comments? or Questions?

September 2014 Titles

Posted: August 21, 2014

The following titles due out in September are sure to be popular. Please use the links below to place your requests now.

Fiction

Nonfiction

Comments? or Questions?

August 2014 Titles

Posted: July 22, 2014

The following titles due out in August are sure to be popular. Please use the links below to place your requests now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

New U.S. Poet Laureate

Posted: June 30, 2014

From the The Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress:

The 2014 Pulitzer Prizes for "Letters, Drama, and Music" have been announced!

You can click any of the links below to explore this year's winners and finalists (for Fiction, History, Biography, Nonfiction, and Poetry) in the library system catalog:

Fiction

Winner
- The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Finalists
- The Son - Philipp Meyer
- The Woman Who Lost Her Soul - Bob Shacochis

History

Biography & Autobiographies

Winner
- Margaret Fuller: A New American Life - Megan Marshall
Finalists
- Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World - Leo Damrosch
- Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life - Jonathan Sperber

Poetry

Winner
- 3 Sections - Vijay Seshadri
Finalists
- The Sleep of Reason - Morri Creech
- The Big Smoke - Adrian Matejka

General Nonfiction

Winner
- Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation - Dan Fagin
Finalists
- The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger and a Forgotten Genocide - Gary J. Bass
- The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War - Fred Kaplan

Drama

Winner
- The Flick - Annie Baker
Finalists
- The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence - Madeleine George
- Fun Home - Lisa Kron (music by Jeanine Tesori)

Music

Winner
- Become Ocean - John Luther Adams
Finalists
- The Gospel According to the Other Mary - John Adams
- Invisible Cities - Christopher Cerrone

Comments? or Questions?

December 2013 Titles

Posted: November 21, 2013

Nonfiction

Tennyson - John Batchelor
The Kid - Ben Bradlee
A Big Fat Crisis - Deborah Cohen
Body Book - Cameron Diaz
French Women Don't Get Facelifts - Mireille Guiliano
Glorious War - Thom Hatch
Neutrino Hunters - Ray Jayawardhana
Love Sense - Susan Johnson
My Venice and Other Essays - Donna Leon
Newtown - Matthew Lysiak
The Start Here Diet - Tosca Reno
The Heir Apparent - Jane Ridley
Super Shred - Ian Smith
Baby Knows Best - Deborah Solomon
My Age of Anxiety - Scott Stossel
Beethoven - John Suchet
Inside the Dream Palace - Sherill Tippins
The Daniel Plan - Rick Warren
Elizabeth of York - Alison Weir
America's Great Game - Hugh Wilford

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

Posted: September 27, 2013

The following books due out in October are sure to be popular. Please use the links below to place your requests now.

Nonfiction

Poetry

Fiction

Behind the Shattered Glass - Tasha Alexander
Esrever Doom - Piers Anthony
Solo - William Boyd
The Litter of the Law - Rita Mae Brown
The Star of Istanbul - Robert Olen Butler
Ghosts Know - Ramsey Campbell
How to Be a Good Wife - Emma Chapman
The Spymistress - Jennifer Chiaverini
Gilt Trip - Laura Childs
Creeps - John Connolly
Fallen Women - Sandra Dallas
October List - Jeffery Deaver
Outlaw - Ted Dekker
The Last Dark - Stephen R. Donaldson
Circle - Dave Eggers
The Spanish Queen - Carolly Erickson
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy - Helen Fielding
Just One Evil Act - Elizabeth George
The Signature of All Things - Elizabeth Gilbert
Plague Ship - Leonard Goldberg
Seven Deadlies - Gigi Levangie Grazer
Sycamore Row - John Grisham
The Case of the Love Commandos - Tarquin Hall
After Dead - Charlaine Harris
Ghost Gone Wild - Carolyn Hart
Spider Woman's Daughter - Anne Hillerman
Survival Lessons - Alice Hoffman
Lighthouse Island - Paulette Jiles
Silencing Eve - Iris Johansen
Spirit of Steamboat - Craig Johnson
Rasputin's Shadow - Raymond Khoury
Fifteen Minutes - Karen Kingsbury
We Are Water - Wally Lamb
Top Down - Jim Lehrer
Secret Keeper - Beverly Lewis
The Dead Run - Adam Mansbach
Old Mars - George R.R. Martin
Three Can Keep a Secret - Archer Mayor
Cross and Burn - Val McDermid
Nostalgia - Dennis McFarland
Police - Jo Nesbo
Doomed - Chuck Palahniuk
Wyoming Bold - Diana Palmer
Critical Mass - Sara Paretsky
Loss of Innocence - Richard North Patterson
The Double - George Pelecanos
The Sum of All Kisses - Julia Quinn
The Sisters Weiss - Naomi Ragen
The Wolves of Midwinter - Anne Rice
Dark Witch - Nora Roberts
Storm Front - John Sandford
Inherit the Dead - Jonathan Santlofer
Accused - Lisa Scottoline
Abominable - Dan Simmons
Bertie Plays the Blues - Alexander McCall Smith
Guests on Earth - Lee Smith
Vicious Circle - Wilbur Smith
Winners - Danielle Steel
Outlaw - Mark Sullivan
The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor - Patrick Taylor
Sense and Sensibility - Joanna Trollope
Identical - Scott Turow
Possession - J.R. Ward
Dark City - F. Paul Wilson
Doing Hard Time - Stuart Woods

Comments? or Questions?

Currently on Display...

Posted: September 5, 2013

The theme of our latest adult book display is Jewish Literature.

This standing book display can be found between our New Books section and the library catalog computers.

We invite you to browse and borrow any titles you find interesting!

You can also follow these links to explore related items in the library system catalog:

Comments? or Questions?

September 2013 Titles

Posted: August 29, 2013

The following books due out in August are sure to be popular. Please use the links below to place your requests now.

Nonfiction

Wilson - A. Scott Berg
Facing the Music - Nick Carter
Still Foolin' 'em - Billy Crystal
Sister, Mother, Husband, Dog - Delia Ephron
The Girl - Samantha Geimer
My Brief History - Stephen Hawking
Jim Henson - Brian Jay Jones
The Heart of the Plate - Mollie Katzen
No Plan B - Mark Kiszla
You'll Get Through This - Max Lucado
God Is Not Mad At You - Joyce Meyer
Wild Tales - Graham Nash
Kate: the Future Queen - Katie Nicholl
Killing Jesus - Bill O'Reilly
Break Out - Joel Osteen
November 22, 1963 - Dean Owen
Si-Cology 101 - Si Robertson

Fiction

Best Kept Secret - Jeffrey Archer
Broken Places - Ace Atkins
Robert B. Parker's Wonderland - Ace Atkins
Shattered Trident - Larry Bond
Inferno - Dan Brown
He's Gone - Deb Caletti
Storm Front - Richard Castle
Screwed - Eoin Colfer
Pirate Alley - Stephen Coonts
Zero Hour - Clive Cussler
Triumph - Janet Dailey
Barbed Crown - William Dietrich
Step of Faith - Richard Paul Evans
Magician's End - Raymond Feist
Star Trek: Into Darkness - Alan Dean Foster
The Names of Our Tears - P. L. Gaus
Flora - Gail Godwin
Angora Alibi - Sally Goldenbaum
Free Fall - Chris Grabenstein
Night is Watching - Heather Graham
Smarty Bones - Carolyn Haines
Dead Ever After - Charlaine Harris
Dead White and Blue - Carolyn Hart
And the Mountains Echoed - Khaled Hosseini
Deeply Odd - Dean Koontz
Stranger - Camilla Lackberg
Delicate Truth - John Le Carre
Ophelia Cut - John Lescroart
Just One Kiss - Susan Mallery
Against the Edge - Kat Martin
Classified - Fern Michaels
Big Sky Summer - Linda Lael Miller
Lost Daughters - Mary Monroe
Murder as a Fine Art - David Morrell
Little Green - Walter Mosley
Redeemer - Jo Nesbo
Montaro Caine - Sidney Poitier
Spear of Summer Grass - Deanna Raybourn
A House Divided - Kimberla Lawson Roby
Seduction - M. J. Rose
Silken Prey - John Sandford
Murder in Chelsea - Victoria Thompson
The House at Belle Fontaine - Lily Tuck
Long Live the King - Fay Weldon
Wind Chime Point - Sherryl Woods

Comments? or Questions?

Pulitzer Prizes 2013

Posted: April 19, 2013

The 2013 Pulitzer Prizes for "Letters, Drama, and Music" have been announced!

You can click any of the links below to explore this year's winners and finalists (for Fiction, History, Biography, Nonfiction, and Poetry) in the library system catalog:

Fiction

Winner
- The Orphan Master's Son - Adam Johnson
Finalists
- What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank - Nathan Englander
- The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey

History

Biography & Autobiographies

Poetry

Winner
- Stag's Leap - Sharon Olds
Finalists
- Collected Poems - Jack Gilbert
- The Abundance of Nothing - Bruce Weigl

General Nonfiction

Winner
- Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys - Gilbert King
Finalists
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity - Katherine Boo
- The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature - David George Haskell

Drama

Winner
- Disgraced - Ayad Akhtar
Finalists
- Rapture, Blister, Burn - Gina Gionfriddo
- 4000 Miles - Amy Herzog

Music

Winner
- Partita for 8 Voices - Caroline Shaw
Finalists
- Pieces of Winter Sky - Aaron Jay Kernis
- Ten Freedom Summers - Wadada Leo Smith

For more winning books and authors...

Comments? or Questions?

Beyond the Bestsellers:
Spring 2013

Posted: April 10, 2013

Our latest edition of Beyond the Bestsellers is now online!

Beyond the Bestsellers is where we highlight new and interesting authors and books not necessarily found on bestseller lists.

Perhaps your next favorite book is just a few clicks away!

Comments? or Questions?

National Poetry Month

Posted: April 10, 2013

April is National Poetry Month!

We invite everyone to take a few moments to celebrate the expressive power and beauty of words.

Please click here to explore our National Poetry Month activities and resource guide.

Comments? or Questions?

April 2013 Titles

Posted: March 27, 2013

The following titles are due out in April. Use the links below to place your requests now.

Nonfiction

Mom and Me and Mom - Maya Angelou
VB6 - Mark Bittman
Learning to Listen - T. Berry Brazelton
Carrie and Me - Carol Burnett
Flip - Kevin Cook
Autistic Brain - Temple Grandin
Waiting to be Heard - Amanda Knox
Making Good Habits - Joyce Meyer
Bunker Hill - Nathaniel Philbrick
Cooked - Michael Pollan
Unsinkable - Debbie Reynolds
Gulp - Mary Roach
Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls - David Sedaris

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

March 2013 Titles

Posted: February 22, 2013

The following titles are due out in March. Use the links below to place your requests now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

February 2013 Titles

Posted: January 25, 2013

The following books are due out in February. Use the links below to place your requests.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Extinction - Mark Alpert
Forbidden Sister - V.C. Andrews
The Night Ranger - Alex Berenson
Week in Winter - Maeve Binchy
Hit Me - Lawrence Block
Farside - Ben Bova
The Corpse on the Court - Simon Brett
The Dance of the Seagull - Andrea Camilleri
Power Trip - Jackie Collins
The Sound of Broken Glass - Deborah Crombie
The Burn Palace - Stephen Dobyns
Red Velvet Cupcake Murder - Joanne Fluke
Touch and Go - Lisa Gardner
Out of the Black Land - Kerry Greenwood
House of Earth - Woody Guthrie
Benediction - Kent Haruf
Deadly Stakes - Judith Jance
Guilt - Jonathan Kellerman
Burning Air - Erin Kelly
See Now Then - Jamaica Kincaid
Crystal Cove - Lisa Kleypas
Hostile Shores - Dewey Lambdin
Three Sisters - Susan Mallery
Gotcha - Fern Michaels
Gods and Beasts - Denise Mina
Alex Cross, Run - James Patterson
Storyteller - Jodi Picoult
Calculated in Death - J.D.Robb
Airtight - David Rosenfelt
A Time for War - Michael Savage
Bad Blood - Dana Stabenow

Comments? or Questions?

Currently on Display...

Posted: January 4, 2013

Notable Books of 2012

Our standing book display, nearest to the library entrance and our New Books section, features many of the most notable books of 2012 (as recently reported by The New York Times).

We invite you to explore this display and to check out any books you find interesting!

For more "best of 2012" book lists and reading possibilities...

You might also want to check out...

The Best American Poetry 2012 (and series) in the library system catalog.
Bestsellers & Awarded Books
Beyond the Bestsellers

Comments? or Questions?

Goblin Secrets - William Alexander

Finalists

For more information...

Please visit the National Book Foundation website
or check out our Awarded Books browser for Nobel / Pulitzer / and other prize winners.

Comments? or Questions?

November 2012 Titles

Posted: October 28, 2012

The following books are due out in November. Use the link below to place your requests now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

2012 Nobel Prize in Literature

Posted: October 11, 2012

The latest recipient of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature is Mo Yan, a Chinese author.

Mo Yan, whose real name is Guan Moye, is said to be the first Chinese national writer ^* to win this prestigious literary award.

His pseudonym (pen name) "Mo Yan" translates to "don't speak."

For more information on this writer and the Nobel Prize, please see these links:

From the Nobel Prize (official website):
Local Library System (RCLS) Items:
- Books by Mo Yan
- Other Nobel Prize Winners & Awarded Books
Websites:
- Google News: Mo Yan (multiple sources)
- National Public Radio (NPR): "Chinese Author, Mo Yan, Awarded 2012 Nobel Prize In Literature"
- The New York Times - Article: "Mo Yan Wins Nobel Literature Prize"
- The New York Times - News: Mo Yan
- Wikipedia: Mo Yan (article; please note their disclaimers)

June 2012 Titles

Posted: May 25, 2012

The following books are due out in June. Please use the links below to place your request now.

Fiction (continued)

Nonfiction

Fiction

A Place in the Country - Elizabeth Adler
Spring Fever - Mary Kay Andrews
Dead Scared - S.J. Bolton
Existence - David Brin
Never Tell - Alafair Burke
Gone Missing - Linda Castillo
Third Gate - Lincoln Child
Wallflower in Bloom - Claire Cook
Undead and Unstable - Maryjanice Davidson
XO - Jeffery Deaver
Mortal - Ted Dekker
Conviction - Robert Dugoni
Wrong Man - David Ellis
Wicked Business - Janet Evanovich
Porch Lights - Dorothea Benton Frank
Red Star Burning - Brian Freemantle
Mission to Paris - Alan Furst
Ransom River - Meg Gardiner
Heading Out to Wonderful - Robert Goolrick

Comments? or Questions?

On Display:
"Take Me Out to the Ballgame"

Posted: May 11, 2012

Our latest adult display features books about America's great national pastime: baseball!

From the history of the sport and biographies of famous players to fictional stories and more, our display offers something for baseball fans as well as any readers interested in intriguing tales inspired by the game.

This rotating display is located on the library's first floor, near the library catalog computers and stairs to the second level.

You are welcome and encouraged to check out any of the books on display!

You can also browse some related books and videos in the online library system catalog by clicking on any of these topics:

For event more baseball items...

Comments? or Questions?

May 2012 Titles

Posted: April 26, 2012

The following books by popular authors are due out in May. Please use the links below to place your requests now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Antiques Disposal - Barbara Allan
Robert B. Parker's Lullaby - Ace Atkins
Proposal - Mary Balogh
Cottage at Glass Beach - Heather Barbieri
The Inquisitor's Key - Jefferson Bass
The Columbus Affair - Steve Berry
Exit Plan - Larry Bond
They Eat Puppies, Don't They? - Christopher Buckley
A Dog's Journey - W. Bruce Cameron
Rest in Pizza - Chris Cavender
Guilt by Degrees - Marcia Clark
Lady Go Die - Mickey Spillane
The Storm - Clive Cussler
Honor - Janet Dailey
The Last Man - Peter Deutermann
The Emerald Storm - William Dietrich
Lion Is In - Delia Ephron
The Family Corleone - Edward Falco
Canada - Richard Ford
Spilled Blood - Brian Freeman
A Fatal Fleece - Sally Goldenbaum
Dead Level - Sarah Graves
Deadlocked - Charlaine Harris
Tote Bags and Toe Tags - Dorothy Howell
In One Person - John Irving
The Killing Moon - N. K. Jemisin
Rock Star in Seat 3A - Jill Kargman
Born of Silence - Sherrilyn Kenyon
Bloodline - Lynda La Plante
Beautiful Sacrifice - Elizabeth Lowell
Bring Up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel
Hard Country - Michael McGarrity
Breaking News - Fern Michaels
Railsea - China Mieville
Big Sky Country - Linda Lael Miller
Princeps - L. E. Modesitt
God Don't Make No Mistakes - Mary Monroe
Beach House Memories - Mary Alice Monroe
Home - Toni Morrison
The Body in the Boudoir - Katherine Hall Page
11th Hour - James Patterson
Karma - Carly Phillips
No Longer a Gentleman - Mary Jo Putney
Night Like This - Julia Quinn
Calling Invisible Women - Jeanne Ray
The Last Boyfriend - Nora Roberts
2312 - Kim Stanley Robinson
The Reverend's Wife - Kimberla Lawson Roby
Alpha - Greg Rucka
Stolen Prey - John Sandford
Blaze of Glory - Jeff Shaara
Grey Expectations - Clea Simon
Home for the Summer - Mariah Stewart
Dark Magic - James Swain
The Lower River - Paul Theroux
Final Sail - Elaine Viets

Comments? or Questions?

Get Poetic!

Posted: April 17, 2012

While poetry is indeed perennial, ever in season, April is National Poetry Month, a time when our nation commemorates poets and all forms of verse.

This April, we took some extra steps in hopes of inspiring you to celebrate the power and beauty of poetry - and perhaps even to write some poems of your own!

On our home page you will find (on the "Literature" line) a new "poetry" link. This leads to a new menu where you can access poetry eBooks, poetry criticism, online archives, our own poetry catalog, daily poems, rhyming dictionaries, and more!

You can also reach this menu directly by going to www.thrall.org/poetry

Realizing not everyone is keen on poetry, we created a new downloadable/printable guide:

"Getting into Poetry" (PDF format)

This guide is intended to be an invitation to a celebration of words and ideas - or, to mix up our metaphors a bit, a friendly "road map" into the wide and wondrous world of poetry.

We start off with some reasons you might want to introduce (or reintroduce) poetry into your life. (Trust us, there are many!)

We include a few poetry terms you might find useful as well as some fairly "easy-to-understand" poets you might like to begin with before moving on to some classic and more challenging / thought-provoking poems (also listed).

On the second page of our guide you'll find some poetry reading tips and some suggested books on reading - and writing - poetry.

If you haven't read poetry in a while - or at all - perhaps our guide can help you discover some great new writing and feel some fresh inspiration!

Free printed copies of "Getting into Poetry" (and our "Looking for Poetry" guide) are also available in the library.

Also consider...

our printable "Looking for Poetry" guide (which has a more in-depth listing of classic and contemporary poets, poems, and poetry collections)
and our Literature Guide, which includes a section on poets, poetry, and poetics!

Memorable Memoirs

This book display, located on the first floor (near the library catalog computers), features a number of interesting and insightful memoirs.

We invite you to explore this display and check out as many titles as you like!

For more memoirs in the library catalog, please click here to search for memoirs or click on any of the recently published memoirs below:

Some more possibilities:

You can click here to browse the more general category of Autobiographies in the library catalog.
Perhaps you would like to write a memoir of your own some day: please click here to browse books and guides about writing memoirs or autobiographies.

Comments? or Questions?

February 2012 Titles

Posted: January 29, 2012

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

Currently on Display...

Posted: October 7, 2011

Our latest book display for adults is

Altogether Austen

Celebrating the Works & Inspirations of Jane Austen

This book display, which is located on the first floor (near the library catalog computers) features works by, inspired by, or about Jane Austen.

We invite you to explore this display and check out as many titles as you like!

You can also use the following links to explore Jane Austen items in the library system catalog and on the Web:

Library System Catalog

Works by Jane Austen
Biographies & Criticism
Some Other Books & Stories by or about Austen
Videos - Adaptations of Austen's Works

Websites & Ebooks

Comments? or Questions?

2011 Nobel Prize in Literature

Posted: October 6, 2011

The latest recipient of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature is Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet, writer, and translator.

For more information on this poet and the Nobel Prize, please see these links:

From the Nobel Prize (official website):
Websites & Library Items:
- Academy of American Poets: Tomas Transtromer - brief biography, select poems
- Local library system (RCLS) items: poetry by Tomas Transtromer
- National Public Radio (NPR): "Nobel Literature Winner Tomas Transtromer: The Beauty Of Stillness" (article)
- The New York Times: Swedish Poet Wins Nobel Prize for Literature
- The Poetry Foundation: Tomas Transtromer - brief biography, select poems
- Wikipedia: Tomas Transtromer (article; please note their disclaimers)

Comments? or Questions?

October 2011 Titles

Posted: September 26, 2011

The following titles due out in October are sure to be popular. Place your requests using the links below.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Phobos - Steve Alten
Cloudburst - V.C. Andrews
Fine Art of Murder - Donald Bain
As the Pig Turns - M.C. Beaton
The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian
Murder Unleashed - Rita Mae Brown
Headstone - Ken Bruen
Skeleton Letters - Laura Childs
The Infernals - John Connolly
Falling Together - Marisa De Los Santos
The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides
Kill Shot - Vince Flynn
Nightwoods - Charles Frazier
The Lady Of Rivers - Philippa Gregory
The Litigators - John Grisham
Ed King - David Guterson
The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman
Nanjing Requiem - Ha Jin
Bonnie - Iris Johansen
Longing - Karen Kingsbury
Beauty and the Werewolf - Mercedes Lackey
Double Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
Robert Ludlum's The Ares Decision - Kyle Mills
City of Whispers - Marcia Muller
1Q84 - Haruki Murakami
The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje
Scenes from a Village Life - Amos Oz
The Christmas Wedding - James Patterson
Lionheart - Sharon Kay Penman
To Have and To Hold - Tracie Peterson
Snuff - Terry Pratchett
The Tehran Initiative - Joel C. Rosenberg
Neverwinter - R.A. Salvatore
Cain - Jose Saramago
The Lost Angel - Javier Sierra
The Best of Me - Nicholas Sparks
A Dublin Student Doctor - Patrick Taylor
Chalice of Blood - Peter Tremayne
Trump Tower - Donald Trump
Waking Hours - Lis Wiehl
The Dark at the End - F. Paul Wilson

Comments? or Questions?

Currently on Display...

Posted: September 12, 2011

Our latest book display for adults is

Call of the Quest

Heroic Journeys & Adventurous Tales

This display, located on the first floor, near the library catalog computers, features a variety of true and fictional accounts of quests for many different things, such as power, perfection, freedoms, rights, justice, meaning, peace, wealth, understanding, philosophical or spiritual enlightenment, mathematical solutions, other worlds, truth, and more.

We invite you to explore this display and check out as many titles as you like!

Additional titles relating to the theme of "quests" can be found under these subject headings in the library system catalog:

Comments? or Questions?

September 2011 Titles

Posted: August 26, 2011

The following titles due out in September are sure to be popular. Place your requests using the links below.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Birds of Paradise - Diana Abu-Jaber
The Tale of Castle Cottage - Susan Wittig Albert
Defensive Wounds - Lisa Black
Naughty In Nice - Rhys Bowen
Robert B. Parker's Killing the Blues - Michael Brandman
Lethal - Sandra Brown
Feast Day of Fools - James Lee Burke
Heat Rises - Richard Castle
The Affair - Lee Child
Aleph - Paulo Coelho
Goddess of Vengeance - Jackie Collins
The Burning Soul - John Connolly
The Race - Clive Cussler
Forbidden - Ted Dekker
Dark Predator - Christine Feehan
River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh
Damage Control - Denise Hamilton
Belonging - Robin Lee Hatcher
Prey - Linda Howard
The Pirate King - Laurie R. King
The Mercy - Beverly Lewis
Tag Man - Archer Mayor
The End of the Wasp Season - Denise Mina
Second Nature - Jacquelyn Mitchard
Light From A Distant Star - Mary McGarry Morris
Yankee Doodle Dixie - Lisa Patton
The Leftovers - Tom Perrotta
To Have and To Hold - Tracie Peterson
The Towers - David Poyer
The Vault - Ruth Rendell
New York to Dallas - J.D. Robb
Secret Obsession - Kimberla Lawson Roby
Ghost Hero - S.J. Rozan
Wife-In-Law - Haywood Smith
A Bitter Truth - Charles Todd
The Winters in Bloom - Lisa Tucker
How Firm A Foundation - David Weber
Son of Stone - Stuart Woods

Comments? or Questions?

A New Poet Laureate

Posted: August 12, 2011

On Wednesday, August 10, 2011, American poet Philip Levine became the Library of Congress' latest poet laureate.

Among other honors (such as the National Book Award), Philip Levine won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His published poetry collections include:

(Note: Click on the above titles to find them in the library catalog.)

For more details about the award, please visit these Library of Congress links:

For more information about the poet, please see these resources:

Academy of American Poets: Philip Levine
Library of Congress: Philip Levine - A Biography
Library of Congress: Philip Levine - Online Resources
PBS NewsHour: "Poet Philip Levine Recalls Life at the Factory" (video + transcript)
The Poetry Foundation: Philip Levine
Thrall Literature & Literary Criticism Databases - For members of Thrall. Recommended databases include "Salem Literature" (which includes "Critical Survey of Poetry: American Poets") and "Literary Criticism Online." Print editions of these two reference works are also available at our library.

Click here to search for "world literature" (keyword phrase)
Visit the Countries page of our Ready Reference guide and (from the right side of that page) select Literature or Poetry as the subtopic then click Search the Catalog.

Comments? or Questions?

May 2011 Titles

Posted: April 26, 2011

The following notable titles will be published soon. Please use the links below to check the library catalog and place your requests now!

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

Pulitzer Prize Winners for 2011

Posted: April 18, 2011

The Pulitzer Prize winners for 2011 were announced today.

Winning works and authors include the following (click a title to search for it in the library system catalog):

Biography: Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
Drama - Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris
Fiction - A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
History - The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner
Poetry - The Best of It: New and Selected Poems by Kay Ryan
Nonfiction - The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Please click here for the complete list of 2011 Pulitzer Prize Winners.

Comments? or Questions?

National Poetry Month

Posted: April 15, 2011

April is National Poetry Month. The Academy of American Poets describes the purposes inspiring this nationwide observance:

"Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture." (source)

You can participate in these poetic proceedings in a variety of ways, including right through our website:

Browse Poets and Poetry Books in our library catalog - Find favorite poets, discover new writers and works, or learn about reading and writing poetry. Browse by title, name, or topic.
Browse Poetry Resources on the Web - Explore our annotated list of poetry websites. Some websites include audio and video readings, interviews, poetry slams, and more.
Download our printable "Looking for Poetry" library guide - Classic and contemporary poets, poetry collections, and more to consider.
Literature Guide: William Shakespeare - Learn about one of the greatest poets and dramatists of all time and read his works.
Ready Reference: Poetry - Some quick links to key information on poets and poetry.
Ready Reference: Rhyming Dictionaries - Find words which rhyme with each other.
Writer's Markets - Calls for Manuscripts - Interested in publishing your poetry? Check these listings for submission guidelines, contests, and more.

Some Internet highlights to check out:

The Academy of American Poets website, where you can search for poets, a number of poems (search by title or theme), listen to poems, and engage in numerous related activities.
Library of Congress: Poetry - Learn about current and past Poets Laureate, listen to poetry, and more.
Poetry Foundation, another great website for learning about major poets and their works. From the publisher OF Poetry Magazine.

We also invite you to come to the library and browse our circulating poetry collections and poetry criticism reference works.

Some notable and recent poetry titles include:

100 Best African American Poems - Nikki Giovanni
The Apple Trees at Olema: New and Selected Poems - Robert Hass
The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry: An Anthology - edited by Ilan Stavans
Horoscopes for the Dead - Billy Collins
The Poets Laureate Anthology - edited by Billy Collins
Selected Poems - Robert Pinsky
She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems - Caroline Kennedy
White Egrets - Derek Walcott

If you are an active member of Thrall or any RCLS library, you might also want to:

For additional downloadable titles (no library membership required), the Project Gutenberg website offers a number of poetry texts in a variety of electronic formats.

The LibriVox website offers downloadable audio of poems read by different persons.

Younger aspiring poets might also want to visit the Poetry section of our "Ref Is Ready" guide for "Magnetic Poetry" games and more.

On Thursday, May 5, 2011, at 7 PM, Middletown Thrall Library will be showing a feature film inspired by the life of the major Romantic poet John Keats. Please call (845) 341-5454 (ext. 5479) for the title of that film. Attendance is free, and light refreshments will be served.

We hope these resources and activities will help inspire you to gain an expanded awareness and appreciation of the power, beauty, and relevance of poetry. Perhaps you will even consider writing some poems of your own some day!

Comments? or Questions?

Currently on Display...

Posted: April 4, 2011

The theme for our latest adult book display is:

Of Blossoms and Harvests

Gardening Stories & Guides

This display, located on the first floor near the stairs, features fiction and nonfiction books about gardening and gardeners.

We invite you to browse this display and check out any items that interest you.

For even more selections relating to these themes, please try one or more of these library catalog subject searches:

For even more topics in the library catalog as well as Web resources, please explore the Gardening section of our Ready Reference Guide.

Comments? or Questions?

April 2011 Titles

Posted: March 25, 2011

The following titles by popular authors are due out in April. Use the links below to place your request now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

New Book Display:
"Reflections of Her"

Posted: March 10, 2011

The theme for our latest adult book display is:

Reflections of Her: Exploring the Worlds of Women

This display, located on the first floor near the stairs, features a variety of books relating to women's interests, issues, studies, and history.

We encourage you to visit this display and check out items of interest to you.

For even more selections relating to these themes, please try one or more of these library catalog subject searches:

Please also check our Women's History information guide for even more library and Web resources about women.

Comments? or Questions?

March 2011 Titles

Posted: February 18, 2011

The following books by popular authors are due out in February. Please use the links below to place your requests now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

Book Displays:
"Entering Elsewhere"
and "To Whom It May Concern"

Posted: January 28, 2011

The theme for our two latest adult book displays are:

"Entering Elsewhere: Stories Set in Other Lands"
"To Whom It May Concern: A Celebration of Letters Real and Imagined"

The first display is located on the first floor just outside the office of our Head of Reference. The second can be found on by the stairs and adult library catalog computers.

As always, we encourage you to come down, browse, and borrow as many books you like from these displays.

For additional selections generally relating to these themes, you might want to try one or more of these library catalog search links:

Letters - Real & Imagined

Some Topics:
Some Books:
- Bright Star - letters of the poet Keats to Fanny Brawne
- Epistles of Saint Paul
- Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
- Letters of the Century
- Letters to Juliet (the book which inspired the movie)
- Letters to a Young Poet - Rainer Maria Rilke

Stories Set Around the World

Topics:
Other Topics:
Some Titles (fiction / nonfiction):
- Eat, Pray, Love: one woman's search for everything across Italy, India, and Indonesia - Elizabeth Gilbert
- Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
- Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy - Frances Mayes
- A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveler - Frances Mayes

The Final Reckoning - Sam Bourne
The Lost Gate - Orson Scott Card
Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy
To Have and to Kill - Mary Jane Clark
Vortex - Troy Denning
The Scent of Jasmine - Jude Deveraux
Half Past Dawn - Richard Doetsch
The Waxman Murders - P.C. Doherty
Buttons and Bones - Monica Ferris
The Outlaws - W.E.B. Griffin
Secrets to the Grave - Tami Hoag
Dead Zero - Stephen Hunter
Queen Hereafter - Susan King
What the Night Knows - Dean Koontz
In Too Deep - Jayne Ann Krentz
Naked Cruelty - Colleen McCullough
Home Free - Fern Michaels
Gift - James Patterson
Red Harvest - Joe Schreiber
Atlantis and Other Places - Harry Turtledove

2010 Holiday Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

Book Display:
"Food for Thought"

Posted: November 3, 2010

The theme for our latest book display is

"Food for Thought: A Flavorful Feast of Facts and Fiction"

Located by the stairs, this rotating display contains a delicious variety of true and fictional stories, recipes, and much more.

If you find something you like, we encourage you to check it out!

At home - or in the library - you can explore related books through these subject headings in the library catalog:

An extended menu of library catalog topics as well as websites can be found in the Cooking section of our Ready Reference guide.

Also available throughout the library system: current and past issues of popular food and cooking magazines. Examples include:

Please click here to browse even more cooking and food-related periodicals in the library catalog.

Comments? or Questions?

November 2010 Titles

Posted: October 25, 2010

The following titles by popular authors are due out in November. Use the links below to request them now:

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

2010 Nobel Prize in Literature

Posted: October 7, 2010

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Mario Vargas Llosa (English).

This Peruvian novelist, essayist, and journalist authored numerous literary works. Among his better known books are:

Conversacion en la Catedral (Conversation in the Cathedral)
La Guerra del fin del Mundo (The War of the End of the World)
La Fiesta del Chivo (The Feast of the Goat)

Please click here to read the official Nobel Prize announcement.

Additional information can be found at these links:

Comments? or Questions?

October Titles

Posted: September 30, 2010

The following titles are due out in October. They are sure to be popular, so use the links below to place your requests now!

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

Beyond the Bestsellers - Fall 2010

Posted: September 28, 2010

The latest electronic edition of Beyond the Bestsellers is now online.

Beyond the Bestsellers is a quarterly publication Thrall publishes in an effort to highlight interesting authors and titles often not found on bestseller lists.

Our online edition now has its own RSS feed, which you can subscribe to and receive automatic updates via your Web browser or RSS reader.

Links in the RSS feed lead directly into the library catalog, where you can check which titles are available or try to reserve them.

Print editions of Beyond the Bestsellers are available at the library.

Comments? or Questions?

As Storms Subside:
Stories after Wars

Posted: September 16, 2010

Long after military conflicts subside and the prospect of peace has been restored, at least tentatively, many soliders return home only to face entirely new struggles with stress, readjusting to normal life, memories of what took place, and more.

Their stories reveal the long-term human costs of warfare, the psychological scars remaining long after any physical wounds have healed.

This touching topic has also been fictionally explored by numerous authors throughout the years. Here are some titles you might want to consider:

Jenna's Cowboy by Sharon Gillenwater
Through a careful blend of romance and faith, Gillenwater broaches the topic of a returning veteran in a compassionate and positive manner that can be appreciated by many readers.
Paradise Valley by Robyn Carr
After losing a limb, a veteran's return begins in a dark and difficult mood but moves steadily toward more hopeful territory - and love - as someone in his life refuses to relinquish her feelings and beliefs in him.
Metal Heads by Tom Maremaa
Bruised, battered, and braced with metal, the main character in this story faces an increasingly dire situation where his knowledge of a warcrime threatens all those he knows and, most of all, himself.
In the Name of Honor by Richard North Patterson
The deadly tolls of war ring loud and clear in this suspenseful tale of a veteran pleading self-defense in the demise of a commanding officer.
The Last Day by James Landis
This stirring story strongly suggests there are indeed "teachable moments" to be found even in the darkest depths of wartime. A soldier back from Iraq learns about his enemy's lifestyle and looks past the conflict to learn to admire aspects of another person's culture.

More novels under these subject headings can be found throughout the library system:

Comments? or Questions?

September Titles

Posted: August 30, 2010

The following titles are due out in September. They are sure to be popular so use the links below to place your requests now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

The Tale Of Oat Cake Crag - Susan Wittig Albert
And Thereby Hangs A Tale - Jeffrey Archer
Trail of Blood - Lisa Black
Royal Blood - Rhys Bowen
Nose For Justice - Rita Mae Brown
Naked Heat - Richard Castle
The Spider's Web - Margaret Coel
Fort - Bernard Cornwell
By Nightfall - Michael Cunningham
Loco Motive - Mary Daheim
Me, Myself and Why - Maryjanice Davidson
Immanuel's Veins - Ted Dekker
Wicked Appetite - Janet Evanovich
Fall of Giants - Ken Follett
Heaven's Fury - Stephen Frey
The Widower's Tale - Julia Glass
Ape House - Sara Gruen
Mini-Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella
Dexter is Delicious - Jeff Lindsay
The Thorn - Beverly Lewis
Call Me Mrs. Miracle - Debbie Macomber
1022 Evergreen Place - Debbie Macomber
Red Herring - Archer Mayor
Getting to Happy - Terry McMillan
Deja Vu - Fern Michaels
Adam and Eve - Sena Jeter Naslund
Don't Blink - James Patterson
Bury Your Dead - Louise Penny
Portobello - Ruth Rendell
Her Daughter's Dream - Francine Rivers
My Lost Daughter - Nancy Taylor Rosenberg
A Secret Kept - Tatiana de Rosnay
On the Line - S. J. Rozan
Bad Blood - John Sandford
Waking Up Dixie - Haywood Smith
Safe Haven - Nicholas Sparks
Legacy - Danielle Steel
Out of the Dark - David Weber
A Chesapeake Shores Christmas - Sherryl Woods
Santa Fe Edge - Stuart Woods

Comments? or Questions?

On Display: From Page to Picture - Books Become Movies

Posted: August 5, 2010

Our latest display features books made into movies.

Titles include literary classics as well as contemporary works.

You can also follow these links to browse film adaptations within the library catalog:

Comments? or Questions?

August Titles

Posted: July 28, 2010

The following titles are due out in August. They are sure to be popular so use the links below to place your requests now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Burn - Nevada Barr
After America - John Birmingham
Bearers of the Black Staff - Terry Brooks
Tough Customer - Sandra Brown
The Man with the Baltic Stare - James Church
Cure - Robin Cook
The Last Talk with Lola Faye - Thomas H. Cook
Roast Mortem - Cleo Coyle
Murder in the Air - Bill Crider
Maybe This Time - Jennifer Crusie
Lost Empire - Clive Cussler
Scarlet Nights - Jude Deveraux
Tempted by Trouble - Eric Jerome Dickey
Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme - Carole Nelson Douglas
Omnitopia Dawn - Diane Duane
A Dark Peril - Christine Feehan
Buried Secrets - Joseph Finder
The Cobra - Frederick Forsyth
Crossfire - Dick Francis, Felix Francis
Freedom - Jonathan Franzen
Red Star Rising - Brian Freemantle
Death on the D-List - Nancy Grace
The Red Queen - Philippa Gregory
The Vigilantes - W.E.B. Griffin
The Capitol Game - Brian Haig
Veil of Night - Linda Howard
Hangman - Faye Kellerman
No Mercy - Sherrilyn Kenyon
I'd Know You Anywhere - Laura Lippman
Wicked Witch Murder - Leslie Meier
Stars and Gods - Larry Niven
Body Work - Sara Paretsky
The Postcard Killers - James Patterson
In Harm's Way - Ridley Pearson
Spider Bones - Kathy Reichs
Bad Boy - Peter Robinson
Dog Tags - David Rosenfelt
Empire - Steven Saylor
Three Stations - Martin Cruz Smith
Torn Between Two Lovers - Carl Weber
The Last Lie - Stephen White
The Sonderberg Case - Elie Wiesel
The Hot Box - Zane

Comments? or Questions?

New "All the Best!" Page

Posted: June 30, 2010

Our recent blog post got us thinking:

What if you could quickly access all of these historically "best" and contemporary "bestseller" titles from one convenient page?

The result is a new "All the Best!" page.

Previously, this link took you straight into the library catalog, where you could browse New York Times fiction and nonfiction bestseller lists as well as Netflix selections.

You can still do that, of course :-) but now you have some more options!

From the new page you can also browse a menu of major award-winning works and authors throughout history as well as notable contemporary fiction and nonfiction.

You can reach the menu through our home page as well as our library catalog entry page.

We hope you like the new page and that it inspires you to check out some truly great books!

Comments? or Questions?

July 2010 Titles

Posted: June 25, 2010

The following books by popular authors are due out in July.

Use the catalog links below to place your requests today!

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

All the Best!

Posted: June 9, 2010

If you are in the mood for a great book, be it a classic, a critically-acclaimed work of fiction or nonfiction, or simply anything written by an award-winning author, you can browse some suggestions (and quickly search the library catalog) in just a few clicks right at our website!

Looking for literary classics? Try our Literature Explorer:

How about major award-winners, such as Pulitzer or Nobel Prizes, or Caldecott or Newbery Winners?

Adults:
- You can click here to view winning titles and authors and the library system catalog.
- You might also like to try our "Random GREATS" page for a clickable list random award-winners.
Children (and parents/guardians): Please click here to browse Caldecott and Newbery Winners.
Young adults and teens: You will want to click here to check out ALA "Teens' Top Titles," "Great Graphic Novels," and more cool stuff.

In our Booklovers guide you will find a directory of websites highlighting award-winning titles and authors in a variety of genres.

If you're just looking for contemporary bestsellers, then here's your link!

If you'd like to go beyond the bestsellers, we can take you there whenever you're ready!

Posted: April 27, 2010

The following books by popular authors are due out in May.

Use the catalog links below to place your requests today!

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

Pulitzer Prize Winners for 2010

Posted: April 16, 2010

The Pulitzer Prize Winners for 2010 are:

Fiction: Tinkers by Paul Harding
Drama: Next to Normal by Tom Kitt, Brian Yorkey
History: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed
Biography: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles
Poetry: Versed by Rae Armantrout
General Nonfiction: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman
Music : Violin Concerto by Jennifer Higdon

Comments? or Questions?

You May "Burn" this Book

Posted: April 9, 2010

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the technical name for what you are permitted to do with something like an eBook or audio file.

Because each publisher offers a variety of titles and editions in different formats (electronic text or audio) and because each of those titles can have its own set of terms (which tell you what you can or cannot do), it is up to the user - you - to make an effort to learn what your options are whenever working with digital files.

Thankfully, this is quite easy to do with eBooks and eAudio available within the RCLS library system.

Here's how it works:

visit the RCLS Digital Download Center
locate a title that interests you
scroll down the item's page when it appears
read that item's "Digital Rights Information" section

Read that section - for each item - carefully to determine whether you may, within the time you are allowed, "burn" (record) an eAudiobook to a CD or transfer it to an MP3 player, print parts of an eBook text, and so on.

As these are items that you are borrowing from the library system, you are expected to comply completely with the specified DRM terms and copyrights.

Simply put, this means you cannot keep any item beyond the time you were allowed to borrow it.

For more information, please check out these links:

To explore other sources of downloadable eBooks, please see the eBooks section in our Booklovers guide.

You might also want to read our other blog posts on eBooks:

eBook Issues to Consider
eBooks & eReaders
eBooks for iPods, Sony Readers

Comments? or Questions?

April 2010 Titles

Posted: March 26, 2010

The following books by popular authors are due out in April.

Use the catalog links below to place your requests today!

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

eBook Issues to Consider

Posted: February 19, 2010

The recent surge of interest in eBooks provoked much curiosity as well as technical questions among readers.

To help you answer some of these questions, we prepared some free flyers at the library as well as at our website.

The world of eBooks can be exciting and useful, especially for readers who travel, yet, just as is true of digital music, technical questions and deeper considerations can linger.

For example, purchasing a regular book (in print) is often not the same as buying an eBook: the eBook is a computer file you have purchased the rights to access and transfer to your computer (or your portable media player, if that is permitted).

"Permission" is a key concept in digital music and book files: depending on where you acquire a file, that file can be subject to certain terms, such as whether or not you can transfer an audio eBook to an MP3 player.

The technical name for these permissions is Digital Rights Management (DRM). DRM is typically defined by both legal terms and technological limitations.

Since even the same publisher can publish a variety of files with different DRM terms, you can begin to see how difficult (and possibly frustrating) it can be for users to deal with, particularly if they are avid readers!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has prepared a document outlining potential issues and questions eBook users might want to consider before investing in an eBook reader or eBook titles:

Digital Books and Your Rights: A Checklist for Readers

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

On Display: Fireside Fiction

Posted: December 22, 2009

The theme for our latest rotating book display (located near the adult library catalog computers) is

November 2009 Titles

Posted: October 22, 2009

The following books by popular authors are due out in November. You can use the links below to browse the catalog or place your requests.

Nonfiction

Open - Andre Agassi
Finding It - Valerie Bertinelli
Robert Redford - Michael Callan
Last Words - George Carlin
Paul McCartney - Peter Carlin
Thank Heaven - Leslie Caron
Michael - Jason Fine
Lit - Mary Karr
One Simple Act - Debbie Macomber
It's Your Time - Joel Osteen
Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog - Lisa Scottoline
High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly - Donald Spoto

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

2009 Nobel Prize in Literature

Posted: October 8, 2009

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Herta Muller.

The Nobel Foundation posted the official announcement and a video at their website.

For more informaton:

Comments? or Questions?

Read.gov

Posted: September 28, 2009

The Library of Congress' Center for the Book has created a new website in support of the National Book Festival and to promote reading:

Read.gov

There are some really unique offerings here for all ages, such as:

The Exquisite Corpse Adventure - an unpredictable story in the making
Classic books you can read online, such as The Baby's Own Aesop or The Secret Garden.
Booklists with reading suggestions on topics such as U.S. Presidents, American Inventors, Sports, National Parks, Civil War, the Great Depression, African-American History, Hispanic-American History, Asian-American History, Native Americans, Mysteries, and more

2008 - Authors: Arthur and Pauline Frommer, Bob Schieffer, Brad Meltzer, Cokie Roberts, Dionne Warwick, Geraldine Brooks, Jan Brett, Jon Scieszka, Kay Ryan, Kimberly Dozier, Louis Bayard, Marisa de los Santos, Michelle Singletary, Peter Robinson, Philippa Gregory, R.L. Stine, Walter Isaacson, Warren Brown, Joseph Bruchac, Sharon M. Draper.
2007 - Authors: Carmen Agra Deedy, Charles Simic, David Baldacci, David Wiesner, Holly Black, Ken Burns, Maria Celeste Arrarás, Megan McDonald, Patricia MacLachlan, Rosemary Wells, Sanjay Gupta, Shelia P. Moses, Terry Pratchett, Victoria Rowell.
2006 - Authors: John Hope Franklin, Donald Hall, Khaled Hosseini, Marcus Samuelsson, Lisa Scottoline, Judith Viorst.

For more on this national celebration of books, authors, and readers, please click here to access the National Book Festival website, which includes a young reader's toolkit.

Comments? or Questions?

September 2009 Titles

Posted: August 26, 2009

Posted: May 1, 2009

Our rotating book display (near the adult catalog computers) has a new theme:

Family Portraits: Stores of Families Large and Small

Here you will find fiction, from literary classics to contemporary works, focusing on families and family life.

We invite you to check out as many items from this display as you like the next time you visit the library.

You can also click here to browse our RAVES! Readers Advisory service for reader-recommended books involving the theme of "family" in some way.

If a title in RAVES! interests you, you can check the catalog to see if it is available and even reserve it, if you like.

If you know of a good fiction (or nonfiction) book about families (or any other theme, for that matter!), please feel free to submit your recommendation to RAVES! right now so other readers might consider reading it.

If you would like to see what else is available within the library system catalog, click here to search for "family - fiction" in the catalog.

Comments? or Questions?

World Digital Library Online

Posted: April 30, 2009

Back in April 2007, we blogged about the Library of Congress' intention to create a new online archive of writings and other cultural treasures from around the world.

The World Digital Library is now a reality!

Library of Congress announced the achievement in its blog:

"The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and 32 partner institutions today launched the World Digital Library, a website that features unique cultural materials from libraries and archives from around the world. The site - located at www.wdl.org - includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, prints and photographs."

Click here to read the Library of Congress blog post in its entirety.

You can click here to access the World Digital Library.

Comments? or Questions?

May 2009 Titles

Posted: April 29, 2009

The following books by popular authors are due out in May. Click below to request them now:

Nonfiction

Fiction

Seducing an Angel - Mary Balogh
Cold Choices - Larry Bond
Rogue Forces - Dale Brown
Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child
The Scarecrow - Michael Connelly
The Wildwater Walking Club - Claire Cook
Shadows Still Remain - Peter de Jonge
Nightwalkers - Peter Deutermann
Flinx Transcendent - Alan Dean Foster
Intent to Kill - James Grippando
Dead and Gone - Charlaine Harris
The Last Child - John Hart
Beach Trip - Cathy Holton
Marine One - James W. Huston
The Increment - David Ignatius
The Sign - Raymond Khoury
Strong Enough to Die - Jon Land
Road Dogs - Elmore Leonard
The Secret - Beverly Lewis
The Family Man - Elinor Lipman
Best Intentions - Emily Listfield
The Stalin Epigram - Robert Littell
Summer on Blossom Street - Debbie Macomber
The Four Corners of the Sky - Michael Malone
Razor Sharp - Fern Michaels
Maneater - Mary Morrison
Pygmy - Chuck Palahniuk
Stone's Fall - Iain Pears
The Way Home - George Pelecanos
Cemetery Dance - Douglas Preston
Vision in White - Nora Roberts
Diamondhead - Patrick Robinson
Wicked Prey - John Sandford
Shanghai Girls - Lisa See
Assegai - Wilbur Smith
Flowers on Main - Sherryl Woods

Comments? or Questions?

Da Vinci Code Fans Rejoice

Posted: April 21, 2009

Dan Brown has completed his Da Vinci Code Trilogy.

The Lost Symbol is due out on September 15th and will feature Robert Langdon from the Da Vinci Code and its prequel Angels and Demons.

Look for a record in the catalog in the near future.

The movie version of Angels and Demons, directed by Ron Howard, will be released in theaters on May 15th.

For more information on Dan Brown, his books, and the movies, you can visit the author's website: DanBrown.com

Comments? or Questions?

April 2009 Titles

Posted: March 27, 2009

The following books by popular authors are due out in April. Click below to request them now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

New Display: Yes You Can!

Posted: March 13, 2009

Our rotating book display (near the adult catalog computers) has a new theme:

Yes You Can! Adventures in Optimism, Hope, and New Beginnings

Here you will find decidedly positive fiction and non-fiction works that promise to uplift, inform, and inspire you in all areas of life, from personal considerations to professional aspirations.

We invite you to check out as many items from this display as you like the next time you visit the library.

You can also click any of the subject links below to browse (and reserve, if you wish) even more thematically-related topics and titles available throughout the library system:

Comments? or Questions?

March 2009 Titles

Posted: February 23, 2009

The following books of interest are due out in March 2009.

Please use the links below to put your requests in now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Paths of Glory - Jeffrey Archer
In a Gilded Cage - Rhys Bowen
She Shoots to Conquer - Dorothy Cannell
The Lost Quilter - Jennifer Chiaverini
Oolong Dead - Laura Childs
Long Lost - Harlan Coben
Corsair - Clive Cussler
Lavender Morning - Jude Deveraux
Manna from Hades - Carola Dunn
Still Life - Joy Fielding
Cream Puff Murder - Joanne Fluke
Love Mercy - Earlene Fowler
In the Dark - Brian Freeman
Don't Look Twice - Andrew Gross
Dare to Die - Carolyn Hart
Malice - Lisa Jackson
The Color of Lightning - Paulette Jiles
True Detectives - Jonathan Kellerman
A Quiet Flame - Philip Kerr
Take One - Karen Kingsbury
Smooth Talking Stranger - Lisa Kleypas
Temptation and Surrender - Stephanie Laurens
Oh, Johnny - Jim Lehrer
Life Sentences - Laura Lippman
Revenge of the Spellmans - Lisa Lutz
Natural Elements - Richard Mason
Mother's Day Murder - Leslie Meier
Lords of Corruption - Kyle Mills
Long Fall - Walter Mosley
Dear Husband - Joyce Carol Oates
The Last Dickens - Matthew Pearl
Execution Dock - Anne Perry
Handle with Care - Jodi Picoult
Schemers - Bill Pronzini
Shadow and Light - Jonathan Rabb
Pursuit - Karen Robards
Shatter - Michael Robotham
Bleeding Heart Square - Andrew Taylor
The Birthday Present - Barbara Vine
Dead Silence - Randy Wayne White
Aftershock and Others - F. Paul Wilson

The following titles are first novels that are receiving a lot of attention.

Comments? or Questions?

February 2009 Titles

Posted: January 27, 2009

The following books of interest are due out in February 2009.

Please use the links below to put your requests in now.

Nonfiction

The following books of interest are due out in January 2009.

Please use the links below to put your requests in now.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Nemesis - William Bernhardt
Dark of Night - Suzanne Brockmann
Messenger - Jan Burke
Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell
Kiss - Ted Dekker
Plum Spooky - Janet Evanovich
Associate - John Grisham
Darker Place - Jack Higgins
Devil's Punchbowl - Greg Iles
Eclipse - Richard North Patterson
Runner - Thomas Perry
Best of Everything - Kimberla Lawson Roby
Breath of God - Harry Turtledove
Mounting Fears - Stuart Woods

October Publications

Posted: September 26, 2008

The following titles come out in October. Use the links below to place your requests in the catalog!

Nonfiction

Fiction

The Tale of Briar Bank - Susan Wittig Albert
Slaying in Savannah - Donald Bain
Too Close to Home - Linwood Barclay
A Spoonful of Poison - M.C. Beaton
Hounded to Death - Rita Mae Brown
Quilter's Kitchen - Jennifer Chiaverini
The Brass Verdict - Michael Connelly
Scarpetta - Patricia Cornwell
The Gate House - Nelson DeMille
Grace - Richard Paul Evans
Extreme Measures - Vince Flynn
I See You Everywhere - Julia Glass
Night of Thunder - Stephen Hunter
Dark Summer - Iris Johansen
Exposed - Alex Kava
Clean Cut - Lynda La Plante
Most Wanted Man - John Le Carre
The Given Day - Dennis Lehane
Burn Out - Marcia Muller
The Fire - Katherine Neville
Rough Weather - Robert B. Parker
The Letters - Luanne Rice
Testimony - Anita Shreve
Midnight - Sister Souljah
Poe's Children - Peter Straub
Hell Bent - William Tapply
The Widows of Eastwick - John Updike
An Outrageous Affair - Penny Vincenzi

Comments? or Questions?

September Selections

Posted: August 25, 2008

The following titles due out in September are bound to be popular. You may use the links below to place requests in the catalog.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Comments? or Questions?

A New Literature Information Guide

Posted: August 20, 2008

Literary booklovers, we have wonderful news to share with you!

Thrall's Literature information guide on the web has been thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded.

Our new guide contains two sections:

In the "Literature in the Library" section you will find categories including:

Rediscovering Literature
How Literature is Classified
Classics in the Library Catalog
Databases & Virtual Reference Titles
Literary Reference Materials in Print

The "Classics in the Library Catalog" link leads to our Literature Explorer, where you will find convenient links to popular literary authors and titles.

Clicking on any link in that area will direct you to the library catalog, where you can:

determine if an item is available
request it be held for you
read summaries/chapter excerpts/reviews (for items that offer such information in the catalog)
or locate other titles by an author or other books with similar topics

In the "Reference Materials" section our guide alludes to a number of materials you may consult in Middletown Thrall Library's Reference collections.

Thrall has extensive volumes of literary criticism and many other reference materials covering all modes and movements of literature. We also have a number of comparable items in our circulating collections (in the 800s aisles).

The "Databases" section in our guide describes and directs you to some of the most powerful literary research and discovery tools available to members of our library. Log in with your Thrall library card number and enjoy high quality information written and reviewed by scholars!

The "Literature on the Web" section of our Literature guide highlights some of the best and most interesting literary websites out there.

Topics in this section include:

American Literature, Authors on the web, Awarded Books, Blogs/Discussions, Classical Literature, Comparative Literature, Criticism/Literary Theory, Databases, eBooks/eTexts, Drama, English Literature, Essays, History, Jane Austen, Literary Journals, Literary Terms, Novels, Poetry, Quotations, Short Stories, Study Guides, Literary Trivia, William Shakespeare, and World Literature.

We encourage you to explore this truly epic resource and discover (or rediscover) some true literary treasures!

Comments? or Questions?

When You're in the Mood

Posted: August 1, 2008

Inspired by 1001 Books for Every Mood by Hallie Ephron, Ph.D., our latest rotating book display ("When You're in the Mood") arranges select books from our collections according to specific moods.

Whatever you're in the mood for -- a good laugh, a good cry, to be swept off your feet, to escape to faraway lands, to be encouraged, shocked, or astounded -- you will almost certainly find something interesting to read here!

The display is located by the adult library catalog computers.

We invite you to check it out and borrow as many titles as you like the next time you visit the library. As you do so, more titles will be added in the coming weeks.

Comments? or Questions?

A New Poet Laureate

Posted: July 29, 2008

Kay Ryan is the latest person to be granted the title of Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress for 2008-2009.

You can read about this development in the official press release.

What does it mean to be Poet Laureate? The Library of Congress website explains what the position means and entails.

If you would like to learn more about Kay Ryan, here are some sites:

An Online Resources Guide - Provided by the Library of Congress
Biography and Poems of Kay Ryan - From the American Academy of Poets
Kay Ryan article - From Wikipedia (note their disclaimers)

If you'd like to learn more about previous persons named to the post, the Library of Congress has a list of past poet laureates.

You can also click here to find some books by Kay Ryan in the library catalog.

Comments? or Questions?

August Beach Reading

Posted: July 25, 2008

The following books by popular authors are due out in August. You can place requests for them using the links below:

Lie Down With the Devil - Linda Barnes
Mars Life - Ben Bova
Being Elizabeth - Barbara Taylor Bradford
Into the Fire - Suzanne Brockmann
Smoke Screen - Sandra Brown
Legally Dead - Edna Buchanan
Cypress Nights - Stella Cameron
It Only Takes A Moment - Mary Jane Clark
Foreign Body - Robin Cook
The Assassin - Stephen Coonts
The Bible Salesman - Clyde Edgerton
Forced Out - Stephen Frey
Good-Bye and Amen - Beth Gutcheon
Rough Justice - Jack Higgins
Left To Die - Lisa Jackson
Damage Control - Judith A. Jance
Aztec Fire - Gary Jennings
The People Who Walk in Darkness - Stuart Kaminsky
A Job to Kill For - Janice Kaplan
The Mercedes Coffin - Faye Kellerman
Acheron - Sherrilyn Kenyon
First Daughter - Eric Van Lustbader
Death's Half Acre - Margaret Maron
Ash Wednesday - Ralph McInerny
Who's Loving You - Mary Morrison
The Turnaround - George Pelecanos
Devil Bones - Kathy Reichs
Last Kiss - Luanne Rice
The Faces of Fear - John Saul
Off Season - Anne Rivers Siddons
Fractured - Karin Slaughter
Cold case - Kate Wilhelm

Comments? or Questions?

Random Reads!

Posted: July 18, 2008

Finding something "new and interesting" to read can sometimes present a formidable challenge.

Even with all the great books and authors available, sometimes it can be difficult to choose, especially if you don't know where to begin to look or if you don't have a strong sense of what you'd like to read next.

This is definitely an area where Thrall's Reference Department is more than happy to try to help you!

Over the years we have created print and electronic publications (such as Beyond the Bestsellers and Future Title Watch), services on the web (such as RAVES! and a library catalog Subject Explorer), and rotating thematic displays in the library to help you come into contact with new and notable books and authors.

We also established a dedicated and substantial Reader's Advisory Center right at Reference, so you can locate authors and books similar to those you enjoy.

Throughout the year we host various book discussions, bringing new and familiar faces together to enjoy some amazing stories and storytellers.

On our website we also have a place where you can request your very own personalized reading plan.

We also have this blog and its corresponding Booklovers web guide.

As you can see, we are altogether serious about putting good books in your hands!

Today, we're giving you another option, a fun way to discover authors, titles, and topics on your own: Random Reads!

By going to www.thrall.org/randomreads or by clicking on the "Random Reads" link in the "Booklover's Lane" section of our home page, you can instantly explore a variety (in the truest sense of the word!) of writers, works, and topics.

If anything interests you, just click on it! Don't like what you see? You can ask for another group of selections! It's fast, easy, and fun.

Random titles are drawn from our RAVES! database. Additional topic and author links take you right into the library catalog, where you can browse items available throughout the entire library system.

If you see something you like in the catalog, you can attempt to reserve it. We can show you how that works if you've never done that before.

So, the next time you find yourself wondering what you will read next, please consider giving any of these services a try and remember: you can always come to our Reference Deparment for reading recommendations or other helpful tips. You can also call us at 341-5461 or ask us over the web.

Enjoy the rest of your summer, and happy reading!

Comments? or Questions?

July's Hot Titles

Posted: June 20, 2008

The following books by popular authors are due out in July. You can use the links below to place requests for them now:

Nonfiction

Fiction

Posted: May 1, 2008

The following are new titles by popular authors due out in May.

You can locate titles in the library catalog and place reserves by clicking the title links below.

Comments? or Questions?

April Fiction & "Spring Selections"

Posted: March 28, 2008

April Fiction

The following titles by popular authors are due out in April. Requests may be made now using the links below.

Spring Selections

At the library we have a fresh book display located near the new books area. It's called "Spring Selections." There you'll find a seasonal blend of fiction and nonfiction.

We invite you to come and check out any titles you find interesting!

Comments? or Questions?

The Virtual NewsStand

Posted: March 19, 2008

We have created a new area at our website called the Virtual NewsStand.

The Virtual NewsStand offers a clickable list of many popular publications we currently subscribe to at Thrall. These publications include popular magazines, journals, newspapers, and newsletters.

The primary benefit of this list is that you can, from one page, access our most popular periodicals in up to three locations: the publication's home page on the web, issues of publications listed in our library catalog, and, wherever available, articles or abstracts from the publication indexed in our general article databases.

There are three kinds of links you will find:

If you click the title of a publication, you will be taken to that publication's website. A number of such websites offer free content and other things, such as audio and videos, that complement their print editions.
"Library catalog" links (located under the title of a publication) will let you search our online catalog to see if a particular issue is available at Thrall or one of the other libraries in the Ramapo Catskill Library System (RCLS).
If articles from a publication are searchable within our general article databases, you will see a "database" link. Clicking that will take you to an "A-to-Z" index page, where you will find specific database links, which you can follow (logging in with your Thrall library card number) to locate abstracts and articles.

The following is a list of books by popular authors due out in March. The links below will lead to the library catalog so that you can place your requests now:

Nonfiction

Fiction

Teach me Tonight - Subtitled "Musings on Romance Fiction from an Academic Perspective," this blog is authored by professors of English literature who enjoy and/or write romance. Besides the blog, there is an excellent collection of links to websites for romance readers.
RomancingtheBlog - "What's hip, what's now, what's tomorrow in the romance world." The columnists on this website are readers, writers, aspiring writers, and bestselling writers of romance. Reading this blog should keep you current with trends in the genre.
MyRomanceStory Blog - The blog portion of MyRomanceStory contains essays on various aspects of the genre. MyRomanceStory also has reviews, a good set of romance links and two free graphic romance novellas changed daily.

Comments? or Questions?

Posted: August 1, 2007

If you recently finished reading J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and are interested in continuing your reading adventures and discovering comparable stories and themes, consider these titles and authors:

Lloyd Alexander: ("The Chronicles of Prydain" series) The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, The High King
Clive Barker: "Abarat" series
T. A. Barron: "Lost Years of Merlin" series
Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson: Peter and the Starcatchers, Peter and the Shadow Thieves
L. Frank Baum: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Marion Zimmer Bradley: Mists of Avalon
Terry Brooks: "Shannara" series
Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking-Glass
Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Paulo Coelho: The Alchemist
Eoin Colfer: ("Artemis Fowl" series) The Artic Incident, The Eternity Code, The Opal Deception, The Lost Colony
Susan Cooper: ("Dark Is Rising" series) Over Sea, Under Stone, The Dark Is Rising, Greenwitch, The Grey King, Silver on the Tree
Peter Dickinson
Diane Duane: ("Young Wizards" series) So You Want to Be a Wizard, Deep Wizardry, High Wizardry, A Wizard Abroad, A Wizard's Dilemma, A Wizard Alone, Wizard's Holiday, Wizards at War
Jeanne DuPrau: The City of Ember, People of Sparks
Edward Eager
Cornelia Caroline Funke: Dragon Rider, Thief Lord
Neil Gaiman
Frances Hodgson: The Secret Garden
Diana Wynne Jones
Robert Jordan: ("Wheel of time" series) Eye of the World, The Great Hunt, The Dragon Reborn, The Shadow Rising, The Fires of Heaven, The Lord of Chaos, A Crown of Swords, A Path of Daggers, Winter's Heart, Crossroads of Twilight, Knife of Dreams
Ursula Le Guin
C. S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia
George R.R. Martin: ("Song of Ice and Fire" series) A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows
Madeline L'Engle: A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters
Anne McCaffrey: Dragon Series books
Robin McKinley: The Blue Sword, The Hero and the Crown
Jenny Nimmo: "Charlie Bone" series
Garth Nix: "Sabriel" series
Christopher Paolini: Eragon, Eldest
Terry Pratchett: Wee Free Men
Philip Pullman: ("His Dark Materials" series) The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass
Mary Stewart: ("Merlin, the Enchanter" series) The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment, The Wicked Day
Jonathan Stroud: The Amulet of Samarkand, The Golem's Eye, Ptolemy's Gate
J. R. R. Tolkien: The Hobbit; The Lord of the Rings; The Silmarillion
T. H. White: The Sword in the Stone; The Once and Future King
Jane Yolen

Click on any of the above author names or titles to search for them in the library catalog. Some entries include summaries, chapter excerpts, and reviews, which can help you decide if the book is something you'd like to read.

Some other "if you like Harry Potter" lists exist on the web:

Fantasy Books for Harry Potter Fans - From the American Library Association (ALA)
Harry Potter Readalikes - from Waterboro Library in Maine. Also includes links to similar lists from other libraries
If You Like Harry Potter - from Vancouver Public Library in Canada
If You Like Harry Potter You Might Want to Try... - from Fairfax County Library in Virginia

Even more reading recommendations can be found easily using these free services:

Beyond the Bestsellers - Electronic version of our quarterly printed publication of "new and notable titles not necessarily found on bestseller lists"
Booklovers Web Guide - Websites for readers just like you!
FicionConnection - Locate books and authors by topic. Available only to Thrall patrons.
Novelist - Find similar authors, titles, and series. Available only to Thrall patrons.
RAVES! - Locate titles and authors recommended by other readers, and even make your own recommendations!
Request a personalized reading plan - Tell us who and what you like to read, and we will present you with a list of reading choices! Available only to Thrall patrons.

In addition to this you can also come to the Reference Department and browse our extensive reader's advisory materials, which include many easy-to-use directories arranged conveniently by reader interests and genres as well as age groups.

You can also ask any of our librarians to show you how to locate reading suggestions using any of these available services. Reference can be reached by telephone at 341-5461. If you have Internet access and an e-mail account, consider taking advantage of our Ask a Librarian service.

Comments? or Questions?

August Beach Reading

Posted: July 27, 2007

Need a book for the beach? Look for these titles to be out in August:

Reading's always in season, but if you have a little extra time this summer, consider catching up on some books you've always been meaning to read!

At Thrall we have a new book display called "Celebrity Favorites." This display features titles chosen by local area "celebrities," including local authors and journalists, entertainers, and legislators. These people were asked by our Library Director to share with us their favorite adult and/or children's books. Some additional favorite titles were selected by Thrall staff members.

Still looking for something good to read? Consider these suggestions...

Read this blog post: July's Hot Titles
Explore our latest edition of Beyond the Bestsellers
Check out the latest titles featured on our RAVES readers advisory service
There's also the Ophrah Book Club Summer 2007 Selection, the novel Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
You might also consider getting a jump start on these books for our upcoming Fall 2007 Book Discussion Series called Animal Tales: A Menagerie of Creatures Great and Small:
  > Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
  > Animal Farm by George Orwell
  > Straight Man by Richard Russo
  > Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Comments? or Questions?

Pre-Overdue Notices

Posted: July 9, 2007

If you are a member of Middletown Thrall Library and are currently registered to receive e-mail notifications, a new service is now automatically being provided to you for free! This new service, known as Pre-Overdue Notices, sends you e-mail reminders when one or more items are due to be returned soon to the library, which can help you avoid costly overdue fines!

Another benefit is that materials returned on time can be made available to other patrons more promptly. If you have Internet access but are not already signed up for our free e-mail notification service, you can go to our library catalog and click the "register for e-mail notices" button.

Comments? or Questions?

July's Hot Titles

Posted: June 25, 2007

The following fiction titles due out in July by favorite authors are bound to be hot. Place your holds on them now!

Posted: April 27, 2007

"Know your own happiness."
- Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

Happiness often makes for brighter and better days, wouldn't you agree? Well, have you read anything that made you smile or laugh out loud lately? We all could probably use a giggle or two every so often to keep our lives in balance and egos in check.

With that in mind, we invite you to come to the library and browse our latest book display, "A Sense of Humor." We have some titles here that are almost guaranteed to make you smile :-)

Located near the library catalog computers, this display features titles spanning the spectrum of humor, from downright silly to thought-provoking.

While you're at it, you can also check our library catalog for more titles yet to help you cheer up. Click these any of these links to browse the catalog by subject: affirmations, amusements, comedians, comedy, comedy films, contentment, happiness, humor, jokes, joy, satire

If you're in the mood to explore the deeper side of happiness and related topics, you can try any of these catalog searches for more titles: depression, happiness (psychology), positive thinking peace of mind, relaxation, self-acceptance, self-actualization, self-deception, self-esteem, self-evaluation, self-perception, self-realization, success

Not long ago we prepared a special publication for anyone interested in Self-Help information. You can access that special guide here to help you possibly discover more paths to inner happiness.

The American Psychological Association (APA) also offers a variety of interesting articles on the topic of happiness at their website. Below are some examples:

Elsewhere on the web you might consider visiting HelpGuide.org's Humor and Laughter: Health Benefits and Online Resources.

Even more articles on health and well being exist in our article databases (especially in the Health and Wellness Resource Center) and our Health blog.

We hope this all goes to show how far we are willing to go here at the library just to put a smile on your face. Be happy, be well, and remember we're always here and eager to help you find things to make your life more informed, enjoyable, and fulfilling!

Comments? or Questions?

World Digital Library

Posted: April 25, 2007

The Library of Congress has announced its intentions to assist in the creation of what is being called The World Digital Library.

This project plans to make multilingual resources freely available: "significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials."

The World Digital Library is said to be created in hopes of promoting "international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness."

You can read more about this undertaking at their About page.

Comments? or Questions?

2007 Pulitzer Prize Winners

Posted: April 16, 2007

The 2007 Pulitzer Prizes have been named.

The following titles in their respective categories were awarded:

Fiction: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Drama: Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire
History: The Race Beat by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanof
Biography: The Most Famous Man in America by Debby Applegate
Poetry: Native Guard by Natasha Trethewe
General Nonfiction: The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
Music: Sound Grammar by Ornette Coleman

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Archived Blog Posts
(earlier posts back to 2007)