The Hits Just Keep on Coming

How do you figure out what book to read next? I think a fair amount of us rely on a combination of serendipity while browsing and other people’s recommendations. There are a lot of areas in the library where you can get the best of both of those worlds. 

Courtesy of zen

Take for instance the somewhat hidden and mysterious Mullenbach Collection. Often shrouded in secrecy in the Rotary Heritage Room, all the books available in this collection are classics or contemporary favorites of literary quality. A few new titles are added each year so along with perennial picks such as The Catcher in the Rye you can find fresh copies of instant classics such as The Help. The first section of books across the Rotary Heritage Room is the Book Group Collection. This area features copies of past book club reads and is a great place to look if you are stumped on what to read next. Or if you never got around to reading “that book everyone keeps talking about” such as The Hunger Games.  

Another place to look for recommendations is the Positively Ellinwood Street blog display located on the third floor. We feature suggestions from our blog posts there, along with bookmarks and flyers on different topics such as popular teen books or books to read while you wait for your Fifty Shades of Grey hold to come in. 

Of course we are always available at the Readers Services desk if you are not sure where to look for your next great read. Beyond our powerful minds we can provide lists of similar authors to your favorite writer or similar materials to a book you just read and loved. One of my new favorite quotes about reading comes from Diane Duane’s So You Want to Be a Wizard: “Reading one book is like eating one potato chip”. If you feel the same way about reading, Des Plaines Public Library can easily be all that and a bag of chips for your reading tastes.  

How did you stumble across the last great book you read? And how will you find your next read? 

Winter Woeful-Land

Now that Labor Day has come and gone and the days are getting fractionally shorter with each sunset, the promise of a glorious autumn is imminent. Fall, though, like Spring is a fleeting season with very few days of its own, most of them belonging to either a fading summer or an all too eager winter. Indeed it's at about this time of year that I begin to think about the winter season. Holiday promotions begin to appear in magazines and shop windows and the bitter winds, slushy snow, and frosty nights of January seem no more than a blink away. While the twinkling white lights in the trees and enormous holiday meals shared with loved-ones bring some feeling of warmth to the dreary cold, the essence of a Chicago winter is a brutal and unforgiving one. It is a setting of low, blank skies and an overpowering sense of the color gray. It's an empty, forsaken time wherein one passes few people on the street and those who do pass by walk quickly and say nothing. 

Forthcoming from Arnaldur Indridason

While a Chicago winter might have little or no appeal as a vacation destination, its essence shares something special in common with the gritty atmosphere of many mystery novels put forth by several popular Scandinavian authors. Bitter cold and a sense of pervasive personal isolation feature heavily. For fans of murder and mayhem and for those whose sense of wonder is awakened by the chillingly sinister approach of another Chicago winter I've compiled a short list of new and forthcoming Scandinavian mysteries. Enjoy!

IMAX, why did it have to be IMAX?

In the midst of composing today's planned blog post, my machinations came to a screeching halt when I discovered Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark will be coming back to movie theaters, for one week, Sept. 7-13. In IMAX.

There are few instances in life when my schedule becomes instantly rearranged due to a piece of news: this is one such case. Now, I am not especially crazy about shelling out a chunk of cash on a suped-up movie viewing experience. Sure, there are some movies that just beg to be seen on the big screen (Marvel's the Avengers and Prometheus come to mind), but I have always viewed IMAX as a sort of overkill for the movie-going experience. I suppose my biggest fear is that I would feel that the quality of the movie would not stand up to the IMAX experience (and I'd feel like I wasted my hard-earned funds). Well, what better time to cut my teeth on a supposedly unbelievable way of watching a movie with a film that single-handedly personifies the term "larger than life"?

By the way, this whole Raiders-on-IMAX gig is meant to be a precursor to the release of the first three Indiana Jones movies (the real ones) on BluRay on Sept. 18. We'll have these at DPPL - keep an eye on our catalog for an opportunity to place these on hold!

Raiders of the Lost Ark is mine. Do you have a film that would make you drop everything and run to see it if it arrived back on the big screen?