wednesday february 03
Have you heard? This year's title for
On the Same Page, our annual community-wide reading program, is
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. During February and March, we hope you'll join with neighbors from across the county to read and
discuss this award-winning 2008 novel.
The Hunger Games is a gripping survival story. It's also a thought-provoking, sometimes shocking critique of our society's media culture, violence, and economic injustice.
In the far future, America is ruled by a totalitarian government. The country’s rebellious districts are forced to send teenaged “tributes” to take part in televised games devised by the government to punish resistance.
Katniss volunteers to take her sister’s place in this to-the-death competition. Her lifelong struggle to keep her family from starvation has made her a fierce survivor, but it has not prepared her for the anguish of watching her competitors die--or prepared her to trust her partner's love for her.
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tuesday february 02
When I travel, I like to stop in at a market or small grocery. It tells me what the local people are all about. Author Jake Tilson would understand this completely, I think, as a cook/traveler/artist/amateur anthropologist. I've just discovered his delightful book from 2006, A Tale of 12 Kitchens.
Tilson grew up surrounded by artists in 1960's London, and has since lived in New York, Scotland, and southern California. For him, cooking is central to life; his cuisine of choice is what I might call "fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants" cooking, from diners, sidewalk cafes, and farmhouses.
Autobiography, scrapbook, cookbook, travel memoir - it's all in here, in no particular order. This book is a true feast for the eyes, to be savored with time, an atlas, and a sturdy glass of wine.
friday january 29
Friday night is often pizza night at our house—either bought frozen at the store, delivered from a pizza chain, or—best of all—handmade by my husband. He really does make the best pizzas!
Made from a simple dough pressed onto a pizza stone, smothered with tomato sauce and topped with our favorite fixings (he claims the secret ingredient is provolone cheese), we can have slice after delicious slice at an economical price.
The library has a great collection of pizza recipe books for you to make your own pie as well. Here are just a few—enjoy!
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Full of gore, blood and zombie skullduggery,
Plague of the Dead : the Morningstar Strain is utterly unputdownable. Set in several locales across the globe, military personnel scramble to contain a virus known as the Morningstar Strain. This virus, transmitted through bodily fluids, turns an average human being into a frothy former humanoid hungry for you and your neighbor.
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wednesday january 27
Are the days seeming nasty, brutish, and short? Winter in Cincinnati can have that effect. Enjoy some virtual sunshine with The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness.
This volume is a collection of essays from Greater Good Magazine, a publication of the University of California, Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, which publishes interdisciplinary pieces on the biological and evolutionary sources of altruism. The aim is to discover whether goodness is as biologically determined as generations have assumed that violence, aggression, and selfishness are.
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friday january 22
Armistead Maupin known for his Tales of the City deviates from this series to create
The Night Listener. It is about a boy, Pete Logan, who writes an incredible book. Protagonist Gabriel Noone has a late-night radio show and Logan is a regular listener. Pete sends his book to Noone's publisher and both the editor and Noone finish the book in less than an evening. A father-son relationship develops between Noone and Logan and is copacetic until Noone's lover discovers a flaw in the Logan’s story; the voice of Logan and Logan's mother are one in the same. Noone embarks on a journey of discovery only to find that perhaps Pete Logan truly exists or perhaps he doesn't.
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wednesday january 20
I'm not sure quite why I was thinking about this book today, since it's more than a decade old. Maybe because in my branch bookclub this morning we were talking about odd authorial choices, and in a completely different context I was talking to someone about a fencing demonstration. (Coming soon at the Mariemont Branch!) But the combination of those two thoughts brought to mind Australian writer Sean McMullen's 1999 science fiction novel, Souls in the Great Machine.
It's certainly odd! It's a wonderful loopy, wildly inventive work of imagination. And it features swashbuckling librarians. (You knew we studied more than cataloging in library school, didn't you?)
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