Search results matching tags 'books' and 'nonfiction'

Double Take worth a look

myzticrhythmz@evpl — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:13:00 GMT

You're walking down the street and a legless man on a skateboard zooms by. Your first reaction--shock? disgust? pity?

Welcome to Kevin Michael Connolly's world.

Author of the recent memoir Double Take, Connolly was born without legs. Instead of being institutionalized or coddled, Connolly's parents allowed him the freedom to experience life and grow into a remarkable young man. He attended public school, made friends and got into the usual high school escapades (such as dousing a parade crowd with permanent red dye), became a professional skier, and graduated from Montana State University with degrees in film and photography.

On a trip abroad, Connolly began paying attention to the reactions he received from the people he passed on the streets. As a kind of catharsis, he began to photograph passersby. These photographs became the basis for an exhibit, The Rolling Exhibition, as well as this book, Double Take.

Connolly brings his own unique voice to this work, and it is wonderful to read. The prose is clear & direct, without being maudlin. There are moments of disappointment and sadness, but they are never dwelt on for long. As he finally reaches the limit of his frustration with people staring at him and starts firing back (with his camera), Connolly realizes through his photos the impact his appearance has on others. This awareness, along with a visit to Sarajevo where his leglessness is not out of the ordinary among Bosnian war survivors, suggests a burgeoning maturity and selflessness.

Be sure to check out the author's promotional trailer for Double Take, as well as a feature ABC's 20/20 did on Connolly in 2007.

It will be interesting to see where Kevin Connolly's skateboard takes him next, and what he will show us on the way.

Linnea

Shh_ImReading@evpl — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:57:00 GMT

Linnea's Windowsill Garden and Linnea in Monet's Garden by Christina Björk and Lena Anderson are two garden books that are great even in cold weather!

Linnea and I have something fun in common. We've both received amaryllis bulbs as Christmas presents. Amaryllis bulbs are not very pretty, but if you plant one and take good care of it, it grows a big, beautiful flower! I was about 9 or 10 years old when I got my amaryllis bulb and my copy of Linnea's Windowsill Garden for Christmas. When I opened the box, a bag of dirt was on top and I thought that's all I got! I had a lot of fun telling people I got dirt for Christmas. My mom helped me plant my bulb in a pot over Christmas break, but first we read about planting and taking care of the amaryllis on page 38 of the book. The amaryllis is just one neat plant project in this book of green growing activities.

Linnea in Monet's Garden is all about Linnea's trip to see the garden of the famous painter Claude Monet. Monet made his own garden very famous with his paintings. Some of his best-known paintings, beautiful impressionist paintings of water lilies and Japanese bridges, were done in his own garden. Now people travel to see the garden that inspired his painting. This book is a great introduction to Claude Monet, but if it leaves you wanting to know even more about Monet and impressionist painting, just ask! We have more books!

A smattering of new nonfiction selections

googler@evpl — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:03:00 GMT

Looking for something entertaining and informative to read? These nonfiction titles might be just the thing.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope tells how an enterprising teenager in Malawi builds a windmill from scraps he finds around his village and brings electricity, and a future, to his family. It was called "an autobiography so moving that it is almost impossible to read without tears" by Kate Vander Wiede in the Christian Science Monitor.

In Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day, Diane Ackerman "chose dawn as the subject of her new book because it's the beginning of each new day, a fresh start. Her book abounds in sensuous observations. A glimpse of starlings flocking at dawn segues into a visit with a friend’s hilarious talking bird; the morning light catches a sycamore tree shedding its parchment-like bark. She wants to help us capture the drama of seeing something for the first time. Her gift to us is the sheer pleasure teaching us to see the world through keen, sensitive eyes." (From Goerings Book Store reviews)

The Bedside Book of Beasts: A Wildlife Miscellany, which includes art, poetry, essays, stories, and science writing, is "a delightful mix of art and literature, of geographical range and of attitudes toward wild animals" (The Globe and Mail). It's a companion piece to the author's previous Bedside Book of Birds: An Avian Miscellany.

In Steal This Style: Moms and Daughters Swap Wardrobe Secrets, Sherrie Mathieson shows moms how to update their wardrobe by stealing a few key pieces from their daughters, and shows daughers how to look a little more classic with a few things from mom's closet. "Sherrie does not get bogged down with designer names and details but shows us how to go for a look that's affordable and attainable for most women. The accompanying copy is loaded with well-written, solid advice," says this blogger.

Keep up with new books at the library by looking at our new titles list and reading the enewsletters!

The Ripest Moments by Norbert Krapf

Bufkinite@evpl — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:00:00 GMT

The Ripest Moments is a simple pleasure to read. While reading this memoir of growing up in the 40s and 50s in Jasper and rural Dubois County, Indiana, I found myself reminded over and over again of my own childhood in northern Indiana, and the cousins, aunts, and uncles we'd often visit in Ohio and West Virginia.

While this is primarily a book about place, and family, it's also a book about community, and the work ethic that built communities like Jasper - and like Evansville, for that matter - with materials and stock that, in the author's words, were "one generation removed from the farm, two or three generations removed from Germany, and a hundred years beyond the wilderness."

As the title suggests, there's quite a bit remembered about the importance of gardens, orchards, and farms in this book. Family garden plots were central to the survival of pre-suburban, working families. "Summers on the Farm," "The Rye Field," and "The Garden and the Strawberry Patch" are just a few of the more mouth-watering chapters.

If you were born & raised in southern Indiana, you'll find something familiar, and likely something warm, in this book. But even if you're a transplant, this book may speak to you. Quoting the author's preface: "I have always believed that any story set deeply in one time and place, if told well, speaks for other times, places, and people. To put it another way, a sense of time and place travels well. A life lived deeply anywhere resonates beyond the context of its specifics."

This one resonated with me.

The author's website.

Remarkable Story of an Owl and His Girl

wag.mado@evpl — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:13:00 GMT

Yes, that's the subtitle of the book I just finished. Wesley the Owl is a must for anyone who has ever been in love with an animal. The story is written by Stacey O'Brien, who was a lab assistant at Cal Tech when she adopted a 4-day-old barn owl after he suffered permanent nerve damage and could not survive in the wild.

The story, which spans close to 20 years, is filled with fascinating anecdotes of the relationship that developed between these two sentient beings. O'Brien's education as a biologist helps the reader understand many interesting facts about barn owls, but that does not keep her from falling deeply in love with Wesley. The story has a deeper meaning which is about unconditional love and commitment and is referred to many times in the book as "the way of the owl."

I found this memoir humorous, heartwarming, educational, compassionate, and I had a hard time putting it down. I'll never think of barn owls the same again.

A day after finishing the book, I tuned in to Oprah where she featured a man whose best friend is a Grizzly Bear. That segment was followed by a friendship between an elephant and a dog at the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald Tennessee -- the same place where Evansville's beloved "Bunny" lived out her last few years. Must have been my week for animal relationship stories!

Gardening

Shh_ImReading@evpl — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:43:00 GMT

This spring and summer, I've been working on making my yard a nice place to spend time. I grew up spending time in the yard at home or at my grandparents' house and I learned a lot from watching my mom and my grandparents take care of their yards. Now I'm checking out a lot of library books about gardening to try and add to what I already know. I hope that every year I will learn a little more.

If you think gardening sounds like fun, check out these books filled with gardening ideas, activities, stories and pictures!

Container Garding for Kids by Ellen Talmage; photographed by Bruce Curtis

Planting the Seed: A Guide to Gardening by Suzanne Winckler

Compost! Growing Gardens From Your Garbage by Linda Glaser; pictures by Anca Hariton

A Harvest of Color: Growing a Vegetable Garden by Melanie Eclare

Down to Earth: Garden Secrets! Garden Stories! Garden Projects You Can Do! Created by Michael J. Rosen with 41 children's book authors and illustrators

The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin

Over Under in the Garden: An Alphabet Book by Pat Schories

My Land is Dying, by Harry Caudill

Bufkinite@evpl — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 01:38:00 GMT

Why review a 38 year old book? When I spotted this book, I remembered the name Harry Caudill because of his book Night Comes to the Cumberlands. I read that book after reading a chapter about Harry Caudill in a book of essays by Wendell Berry called What Are People For?

Now, I've been an admirer of Wendell Berry for years, and enjoy his writing - and his thoughts - immensely. Like Berry, Caudill (1922-1990) was a person who willingly tied his life to a place - the Kentucky Cumberlands - and he spent his life living and working in that place, and protecting what he found valuable in it. What he found valuable, it turns out, was the landscape, the people, and the culture that the two - put together - formed.

Published in 1971, My Land is Dying is a detailing of the history the exploitation of the Cumberlands' resources - first the virgin forest that blanketed the region, later the coal, and always the people. He details how the collusion of state government with business interests first disenfranchised, then impoverished, and finally drove from the land the vast majority of the inhabitants of the land. Caudill knows what he's talking about; he was a lawyer, and a good one. But he defended the defenseless, and saw time & again how victories at the local level would be reversed by higher level courts in the capital of Frankfort. His narrative of this slow, inexorable death is accompanied by pictures that show the devastation, and he spends time talking about people. Not in the abstract, but real folks with real names, like the widow Ollie Combs, who was arrested on her own land when she delayed miners by laying down in front of bulldozers.

Written 38 years ago, this book's message should be read more urgently today, both because the stakes are higher, and the truths that it speaks are undiminished: "No nation was ever more abundantly endowed with natural beauty than ours. Yet it is clear from this continuing record that no nation has been more heedless of its legacy. And no chapter of that record is uglier or more threatening than the chapter that continues to be written by the mining interests, whether below or on the surface of the land."

This book may be old, but it deserves to be widely read.

Monster of Florence

wag.mado@evpl — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 22:20:00 GMT

Wow! That was what I was saying most of the way through Douglas Preston's bestselling book. To think I wandered around Florence in the dark four years ago without ever knowing of these crimes. It gives me goose-bumps. If you didn't pick it up while it was on the NY Times Best Sellers list last year, it's not too late.

This is a true-life crime story like no other. A serial killer began a killing spree in 1968 murdering young lovers all around the Tuscan countryside. It ended 20 years later with a total of 16 victims. Douglas Preston became fascinated with the story after moving to Florence in 2000, and soon became involved in writing a book about the mystery, after spending countless hours with crime reporter and co-author, Mario Spezi. The tale weaves, twists, zigzags, and finally turns you upside down, when the authors become part of the story itself.

"Monster" has all the hallmarks of a modern work of fiction - mystery, murder, body parts, police corruption, deception, satanic cults, revenge, and madness. Will the real killer be revealed? Preston and Spezi give us a final twist at the end and plenty to think about.

United Artists and Tom Cruise have acquired the movie rights to "Monster of Florence" and we'll see if the movie is as good as this book.

How to be fabulously green

librarianinheels@evpl — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:57:00 GMT

Looking for a way to maintain your super-fab lifestyle without ruining the planet? Then pick up The Eco Chick Guide to Life: How to be Fabulously Green by Starre Vartan. This tiny book is packed with information on 'greening' your life in every way possible - from beauty and clothing to food, housekeeping, and lawn care.

Vartan gives lots of good, pratical advice on how to remain fabulous and help save the environment at the same time. She includes links to producers of eco-friendly makeup and personal care products, advice on purchasing eco-friendly clothing (vintage, anyone?), and easy-to-follow directions on how to do things like compost in your backyard, grow your own organic tomatoes, and stuff like that.

So. If you want to save the environment, but you really can't give up those girly-girl routines, products, and other potentially eco-harmful ways, check out the Eco-Chick. She's got some good advice for you.

Strong at the Broken Places

wag.mado@evpl — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:55:00 GMT

This book's preface begins, "These are the faces of illness in America. Do not look away.......Quite simply, they are us." If you have ever known someone with a chronic or terminal illness, you probably already know that each person approaches their difficulties in a way that is all their own. Strong at the Broken Places by Richard M. Cohen is a book that demonstrates this. He features 5 people who have been given life changing diagnoses. Cohen interviews them over several years, asking them questions and observing them in their everyday life. The interviews speak of fear, loneliness, and anger - but also show the personal strengths that allow these people to thrive, revealing the common ground they all stand upon. Although it may sound depressing, I found this book full of life. To me the stories are all about living in the truth, with as much hope as one can muster. And after all, isn't that what we are all trying to do?