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Happiness, death, and tea
Fall's 2012 nonfiction offerings an eclectic mix |
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Last week we offered a preview of some of the hot fiction titles due for release this fall. For those who prefer a dose of reality to a bit of escapism, here are a few choice picks for soon-to-be-released nonfiction:
 Happier at Home, by Gretchen Ruben: In The Happiness Project, Ruben worked out general theories of happiness. Here she goes deeper on factors that matter for home, such as possessions, marriage, time, and parenthood. How can she control the cubicle in her pocket? How might she spotlight her family's treasured possessions? And it really was time to replace that dud toaster.
Each month, Ruben tackles a different theme as she experiments with concrete, manageable resolutions - and this time, she coaxes her family to try some resolutions, as well. Elsewhere, by Richard Russo: Anyone familiar with Russo's acclaimed novels will recognize Gloversville, once famous for producing that eponymous product and anything else made of leather. This is where the author grew up, the only son of an aspirant mother and a charming, feckless father who were born into this close-knit community. But by the time of his childhood in the 1950s, prosperity was inexorably being replaced by poverty and illness (often tannery-related), with everyone barely scraping by under a very low horizon.
A world elsewhere was the dream his mother instilled in Rick, and strived for herself, and their subsequent adventures and tribulations in achieving that goal - beautifully recounted here - were to prove lifelong, as would Gloversville's fearsome grasp on them both. Joseph Anton, by Salman Rushdie: On February 14, 1989, Valentine's Day, Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he had been "sentenced to death" by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being "against Islam, the Prophet and the Quran."
So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. He was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and combinations of their names; then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov - Joseph Anton.
How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? In this remarkable memoir Rushdie tells that story for the first time.  Mortality, by Christopher Hitchens: On June 8, 2010, while on a book tour for his bestselling memoir, Hitch-22, Hitchens was stricken in his New York hotel room with excruciating pain in his chest and thorax. As he would later write in the first of a series of award-winning columns for Vanity Fair, he suddenly found himself being deported "from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady." Over the next 18 months, until his death in Houston on December 15, 2011, he wrote constantly and brilliantly on politics and culture, astonishing readers with his capacity for superior work even in extremis.
In this riveting account of his battle with esophageal cancer, Hitchens poignantly describes the torments of illness, discusses its taboos, and explores how disease transforms experience and changes our relationship to the world around us. Interventions: A Life of War and Peace, by Kofi Annan and Nader Mousavizadeh: This is the story of Annan's remarkable time at the center of the world stage. After forty years of service at the United Nations, Annan shares here his unique experiences during the terrorist attacks of September 11; the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan; the war between Israel, Hizbollah, and Lebanon; the brutal conflicts of Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia; and the geopolitical transformations following the end of the Cold War. With eloquence and unprecedented candor, Interventions finally reveals Annan's unique role and unparalleled perspective on decades of global politics. We Are What We Pretend to Be: The First and Last Works, by Kurt Vonnegut: The first and last works of one of the 20th century's most influential writers.
In this fiction collection, published in print for the first time, exist Vonnegut's grand themes: trust no one, trust nothing; and the only constants are absurdity and resignation, which themselves cannot protect us from the void but might divert.
Along with the works of fiction, Vonnegut's daughter, Nanette, shares reminiscences about her father and commentary on these two works.
How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, by Ray Kurzweil: A provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization - reverse engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines.
Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence in addressing the world's problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness and envisions the radical possibilities of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating.
 The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook, by Emily Ansara Baines: You may not have a basement full of servants to pull these recipes together, but you can role play - first as the manor's snappish Mrs. Patmore, toiling in the kitchen, then as Cora, dining on her tea sandwiches. Fans of the series will enjoy such delicacies as Sybil's Ginger Nut Biscuits, Ethel's Beloved Crepes Suzette, and Mr. Bates' Chicken and Mushroom Pie. Have them ready for season 3, which premieres in early 2013!
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Coming Up at the Wallkill Public Library  The library will be closed for Labor Day Monday, Sept. 3.
Registration for fall Story Time is now underway!
The fall session will run from Sept. 11 through Oct. 24. Mommy and Me will be offered at 10 a.m. Wednesdays, Toddler Story Time at 11 a.m. Wednesdays, and Book Buddies at 10:30 a.m. Tuesdays or 1 p.m. Wednesdays.
Family Story Time will be offered at 4 p.m., Sept. 27. Come in and preview new books!
This year's Harvest Faire will take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29 (with a rain date of Sept. 30). The third annual festival will feature vendors of crafts, antiques, and garage sale items, food, entertainment, a bouncy house, Tricky Tray baskets and other prizes, and much more. Mums and pumpkins will be on sale, as well as used books and fresh produce from our local Farmer's Market. Zumba and karate demonstrations will also take place!
The next Book Talk meets at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 9. Absolutely Normal Chaos by Sharon Creech will be discussed.
Have a great holiday weekend! Good luck at school, kids! |
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Introducing this fall's trustee candidates
You may have noticed the clipboards atop the left portion of the circulation desk - these are petitions those interested in filling the four available trustee seat positions need filled in order to qualify to run in the Sept. 25 election.
This month's candidates include Ken Simon, Michael Palmer, Elaine Schultz, and Ed Rubinstein. Each needs the signature of 50 qualified district voters (registered voters who reside in the Town of Shawangunk, within the Wallkill School District) by Sept. 12 to participate in the election. If you meet the above criteria, feel free to add your name to the petitions! Filling the board's vacant seats with vibrant, engaged library users like these will only make the library an even more dynamic hub of the community. Thanks to all for your support! |
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Do you know what your card can get you? September is library card sign-up month, and if you're reading this you probably already have your own card. But you may not be aware of all the luxuries that card entitles you to (for free!). With your card, you can:
- Use any of the RCLS system's other 46 libraries, in addition to Wallkill
- Drop borrowed items off at any of the libraries in the RCLS system (including the new, conveniently located Newburgh Town Branch in the Newburgh Mall!). If you prefer to pick up your ordered items at a library other than your home branch, you can do that, as well!
- Go online 24/7 and order books, DVDs, music, and more
 Gain access to periodicals like Allure, People, Cosmo, and more, as well as to newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and Times Herald-Record that would otherwise cost a small fortune in subscriptions- Do in-depth online research using reliable, informative, and free sites and references available on library websites...including valuable resources like ERIC, which provides free access to more than 1.2 million bibliographic records of journal articles and other education-related materials and, if available, includes links to full text
This is just a small sampling of the benefits of being a library card holder. Pass them along to your friends! And remember - you no longer need to wait until your child's 6 to get him/her the "essential school supply" teachers have on their lists this semester - as soon as your little one is about to enter kindergarten, he/she can get a card! |
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Broadway tickets to see Annie on sale  There will be a bus trip into the city Saturday, Oct. 13, to see Annie on Broadway.
Tickets for the 2 p.m. performance are $59 for rear mezzanine seats. The bus ride will be $25 per person.
The bus will be leaving the library at 9 a.m. and will arrive in the city before 11 a.m., allowing for lunch and some shopping before the show. Those interested in attending must pay for the tickets by Sept. 5! Contact Adrienne at dramapearl@aol.com or 895-8712 to reserve your tickets. |
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Fitness fest slotted for early September  The Tru Grit Obstacle Course Race and Fall Fitness Festival will be put on by the Town of Shawangunk and Wallkill Lions Club Sunday, Sept. 9, at Verkeerderkill Park in Pine Bush.
Three races will feature obstacles that will include mud pits, mud crawls, climbing walls, balance beams, tunnel crawls, and more. The three-mile race is for ages 15 and up; ages 8-14 can participate in the 1.5 mile race, and those 4-7 can run in the half-mile. Registration is $40 for adults 18 and older, $20 for ages 8-17, and $10 for those 4-7. The first 300 registered participants get a free T-shirt and medal. After the race, kick back with WRWD's Tommy Lee Walker and enjoy music, food, local vendors, zumba, yoga, and much more! Registration forms are available at the town hall at 14 Central Ave. If you're interested in being a volunteer, sponsor, or vendor at the event, contact Christine at 775-1705 or Lisa at 531-9785. Good luck, runners! |
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Queens Museum of Art day trip Sept. 15  A bus will be leaving the Desmond Campus of Mount Saint Mary College at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 15, for a visit to the Queens Museum of Art.
Enjoy a tour of the many exhibits and be sure to visit The Panorama, the jewel in the crown of the museum's collection. Built by Robert Moses for the 1964 World's Fair, this 9,335-square foot architectural model includes every single building constructed before 1992 in all five boroughs; a total of 895,000 individual structures! Enjoy the surrounding park and board the bus at 5 p.m. for the return trip. The fee for the day is $60. Call 565-2076 to register. |
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An easier way zoom on your computer  Adjusting the view in a document or web browser has been simplified by Microsoft and OpenOffice with sliders in the lower right corner of documents. For those who want an even easier way to zoom in or out, try the following:
In Vista and Windows 7, when the CTRL key is held and the scroll wheel is rolled forward (away from you), the view size, including the text and images, is increased. With the CTRL key pressed, roll the wheel backwards (towards you), and the view size decreases. If you're using this technique in a browser window and you'd like to return to normal size, hold down the CTRL key and hit the zero key. |
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Even mortality is funny in Tropper's hands  One Last Thing Before I Go, by Jonathan Tropper
You don't have to look very hard at Drew Silver to see that mistakes have been made. His fleeting fame as the drummer for a one-hit wonder rock band is nearly a decade behind him. He lives in the Versailles, an apartment building filled almost exclusively with divorced men like him, and makes a living playing in wedding bands. His ex-wife, Denise, is about to marry a guy Silver can't quite bring himself to hate. And his Princeton-bound teenage daughter Casey has just confided in him that she's pregnant - because Silver is the one she cares least about letting down.
So when he learns that his heart requires emergency, lifesaving surgery, Silver makes the radical decision to refuse the operation, choosing instead to use what little time he has left to repair his relationship with Casey, become a better man, and live in the moment, even if that moment isn't destined to last very long. As his exasperated family looks on, Silver grapples with the ultimate question of whether or not his own life is worth saving. |
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Gear up for fall elections with website  With the RNC having just wrapped up and the DNC on the horizon, you might be interested in giving your kids (or yourself!) a refresher in political science.
GovSpot.com is a non-partisan government information portal designed to simplify the search for the best and most relevant government information online. This free resource offers a high-utility collection of top government and civic resources hand-selected for their quality, content and utility. A virtual resource center for U.S. citizens, students, educators, business people, government employees and anyone exploring the Web for government information, GovSpot.com makes it easy to find the best government websites and documents, facts and figures, news, political information and much more. |
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