Start Your Resolution at Des Plaines Public Library

One last holiday stands between us and the end of the holiday season (not to mention year). As per usual, as we plan our parties and festivities for New Year's Eve we simultaneously plan to change our lives the very next day. New Year's resolutions though dubious are commonplace. Just check out this current list of the most common resolutions this year.

worldofcalvinandhobbes.blogspot.com

While I can't promise you will stick to your resolution(s), the library is here to help with tons of information to keep you on track! Here are some popular resolutions and links to items (books, ebooks, DVDs, audiobooks) we have to help give you a kick start. Just place a hold on the items in the catalog or give us a call and we can place the hold for you.

Losing Weight

Managing Personal Finances

Managing Stress 

Manage Time Effectively 

Developing Healthy Eating Habits

Landing the Job

Green Living

Start Volunteering  

In addition to these guides, the Reader Services department will have a display of inspiring fictional characters to help keep you on track!  Do you have a resolution this year or fictional character who inspires you?

two one four six eight zero zero * * * * * * *

A patron marveled as I demonstrated the downloadable ebook product and typed in my library card number by heart. While not a particularly unique feat among librarians with a couple years under their belt, it's kind of fun (and handy) to show others you can memorize a 14 digit number.

This episode and two books I have read recently highlight this fascinating human function - memory. Moonwalking With Einstein is a journalist's story of his involvement in the US Memory Championships. Joshua Foer not only explains how the champions accomplish amazing feats but he provides a cultural history of man's need for memory. We don't need to remember for survival in the 21st century but it kept people alive before paper, pencil,printing presses and computers.

The loss of memory is the subject of the novel Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante. It is a literary mystery with an Alzheimer sufferer as the main character. The reader gets to know the once powerful surgeon Jennifer during her lucid and foggy moments while her loved ones and police question her about the suspicious death of her best friend.

Both these books are available at the library and through our ebook/audiobook catalog MyMediaMall.net. Have your library card number ready if you are signing into MyMediaMall -- and here's a hint - the first seven digits are 2146800.

A Change Will Do You Good

In January 2010 I resolved to stop thinking so much about food; specifically, to stop READING so much about food. I was spending quality time with cookbooks, cooking magazines, Eat Pray Love . . . you get the picture. Since reading about food tweaked my appetite, I was often combining the two “vices”. And then switching on The Food Network.

When all my pants became too tight, I decided to switch to books and magazines and TV about fitness and fashion. I started taking home issues of Shape and Women’s Fitness and Oxygen and Women’s Health from the library. I exploited a loophole by deciding it was all right to read the recipes in those magazines. I discovered there was a fitness channel – who knew?

Best of all, I found a world of great fashion guides on the fourth floor of the library. 646.34 became my favorite Dewey number! We’ve come a long way since Dress for Success and Color Me Beautiful helped women discover how to tie a floppy foulard tie and figure out whether they were a Summer or a Spring. (At that time I was told I was an Autumn and that my best colors were leaf mold and pond scum.)

Nina Garcia of Marie Claire magazine and Project Runway has written several great books on breaking out of a fashion rut and looking your best. Try The One Hundred: A Guide to the Pieces Every Stylish Woman Must Own . Kim Johnson Gross, the founder of Chic Simple, has several great books out as well, her newest being What to Wear for the Rest of Your Life: Ageless Secrets of Style.

But fashion isn’t all about shopping. One of my top ten books for 2010 is The Thoughtful Dresser by Linda Grant. In the most accessible and erudite way, she looks at why every human culture for thousands of years has decorated the body in one way or another, what fashion and dress mean to her personally, and what fashion meant to a woman named Catherine Hill, who survived Auschwitz to bring couture first to Canada and then to Manhattan. It’s the Ph. D. version of Love, Loss and What I Wore , a lovely, brief biography in clothes by Ilene Beckerman.

I can't explain it, but reading about my interests seems to amplify the enjoyment of that preoccupation. There’s a kind of amplification or boost to the experience when you share your enthusiasm with someone else, even if it’s a writer you’ll never meet. And if you lose a few pounds because of that enthusiasm, that's just the silver lining.

You can wander up to the 4th floor and visit 646.34, or click here for a selection of new fashion, color and clothing books available at the library. Or if that doesn’t move you, tell me what hobby YOU like to read about in the comments!

National Book Awards 2009

On Wednesday November 18, the winners of the 2009 National Book Awards were announced at a ceremony in New York City. This is the award's 60th anniversary year, and the books recognized have something to offer everyone.

The winning author in Fiction, for a novel centered around Philippe Petit's famous tightrope walk between the Twin Towers, was Irish-born Colum McCann. Other contributing authors add further international appeal, tracing their origins to Uganda and Pakistan. The Nonfiction category includes biographies of some of history's heavy-hitters, alongside works illuminating the natural world. Two Poetry finalists have already received multiple honors from the National Book Foundation. The Young People's Literature category had some surprises, as well. Three of its five finalists were nonfiction titles, including a graphic novel and the biography of little-known civil rights activist, Claudette Colvin.

I confess, I have yet to read any of these books. But just reading the list of finalists is like standing first in line at a literary smorgasbord. There's so much to choose from, I'm not sure where to begin. I believe I'll start with Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose. Little known points of history fascinate me. Peruse the titles below. Like I said, there's something here for everyone.

What would you read first?

FICTION

Winner: Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

Finalists: Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage
Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
Jayne Ann Phillips, Lark and Termite
Marcel Theroux, Far North

NONFICTION

Winner: T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Finalists: David M. Carroll, Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook
Sean B. Carroll, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in Search of the Origins of Species
Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
Adrienne Mayor, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy

POETRY

Winner: Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy

Finalists: Rae Armantrout, Versed
Ann Lauterbach, Or to Begin Again
Carl Phillips, Speak Low
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Open Interval

YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE

Winner: Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

Finalists: Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith
David Small, Stitches
Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times
Rita Williams-Garcia, Jumped

DISTINGUISHED CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN LETTERS

Gore Vidal

Born October 3 1925, Gore Vidal is a playwright, novelist, essayist, journalist, screenwriter, actor, and political activist. His extensive body of work spans several artistic genres over sixty years, beginning with his first novel in 1946 and continuing to the present day. He has had a powerful impact on American writing.


LITERARIAN AWARD

Dave Eggers

This prolific author, editor, and philanthropist is well known for A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, The Wild Things - a novel based on Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, and Zeitoun. He has edited many publications and founded the independent publishing house, McSweeney's. He also co-founded 826 Valencia, a non-profit tutoring and writing center for children.

I Am Not a Crook

But he was of course, wasn't he?

A few weeks ago I was completely immersed in the politics of 40 years ago. I saw Frost/Nixon in the theaters, watched Nixon at home, and read Nixonland every free minute. 2008 was an election year, and politics is still very much on everyone's mind. John Adams won multiple Emmys, and our new President has four books on the audiobook bestseller list.

I was an indifferent history student in school. I never met a textbook that didn't put me to sleep, full of dry paragraphs and small pictures of middle-aged white men who looked like their teeth hurt. I couldn't connect the dates and events in my mind in any linear way. It wasn't until I started reading historical fiction that I began to understand history as people: making difficult choices, acting as their conscience or their fears drove them.

But some people are too big for fiction. Nixon is a character only real life could create. Smart but never charming, deeply faithful in marriage but terribly profane in speech. He felt victimized even as he betrayed others, lied constantly while professing honesty. He abused power in many, many ways, and yet he remains one of the most interesting presidents we've had. Perhaps you've heard the saying, "Only Nixon could go to China." Only a politician so obviously and fiercely anti-Communist could make the overture to Mao without being perceived as soft on Communism.

When I walk the shelves in U. S. History, the major events of the last 200 years leap out at you. Here are the wars, the "conflicts", the great acts of legislation and social upheaval. I was a little surprised this afternoon to see how many books there are on the Iraq war. Thanks to Watergate and Alger Hiss and the Nixon/Kennedy debates and Vietnam, there are dozens of books on our 37th president. You can even watch the original Frost/Nixon interviews if you've a mind to.

I reassure myself that though I may not watch the news, I am still political - because I visit the 970s (U. S. History), go to the movies, and read lots of new historical fiction.

How do you get your daily dose of politics?