Ghosts, Ghouls, Vampires and Witches. Oh My!

Do you love Halloween? Or do you find it daunting, dastardly, dangerous or downright demented? How about something in between? I guess I'm one of those in-between people because I love the pumpkins, candy, costumes and little kids trick-or-treating - notice I said little kids, not six-foot-tall teens banging on the door at 10 PM. I don't like the gory and gruesome side of the decorations or the mean spirited "tricks" of the holiday.

We live across the street from the "Haunted Yard" in Des Plaines. Every October the neighbors watch as the haunted yard expands to include a dining table of skeletons, a horse-drawn hearse, tombstones, coffins, the bride and groom from Beetlejuice, ghosts, witches and their cauldron, and a bloody selection of fake (at least we hope they're fake) body parts. Fog machines, torches, eerie music, motion sensitive devices, and live monsters are all in place on Halloween night. Last year we had over 300 kids stop by and yell "trick-or-treat" on their way over to the big display. Usually everyone behaves and has a super scary time, but I am always really glad once November 1st rolls around.

Just like the holiday, books related to monsters, ghosts and vampires, and Halloween in general are either terrifying and gory, or just slightly scary and maybe even cozy. Here are a few titles from our collections to help celebrate the holiday.

If you like your Halloween stories gory and gruesome:
The Awakening - Shannon Drake
The Mist - Stephen King
The Animal Hour - Andrew Klavan
The Relic - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

If you like cute pumpkins and baking cupcakes with orange icing:
Trick or Treachery - Donald Bain and Jessica Fletcher
Wolf in Sheep's Clothing - Ann-Jeanette Campbell
Halloween Murder - Shelley Freydont
Trick or Treat Murder - Leslie Meier

And finally, one of my favorite quotes for the holiday:
"If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day."
John Archibald Wheeler (the physicist who coined the term "Black Hole.)

Linda Knorr - Readers' Services

What Mood Are You In?

"Now What Do I Read?"

Here at the Readers’ Services desk on the third floor, one of the most common questions from our patrons is what to read next. A patron will say she finished a book or a series that she loved, but what next? If only there was an author who wrote in the same general style… If only there was a way to find this information…

Well, fret no longer. You can always ask one of us or call us on the phone or you can go to NoveList Plus. This is a subscription database at Des Plaines Public Library which is available on our library’s homepage under “References.” Because NoveList is online, you can search it here in the library or at home from your computer.

So what is NoveList? It’s a website which “suggests” books. For example, I happen to love books by Michael Connelly but I’ve read practically all of them. When I want suggestions for books to read that are similar to Connelly’s, I go to NoveList and type in his name. After a thorough explanation of his books, there’s a button called “read-alikes”, library-lingo for similar books. In this case, NoveList suggests titles by Ian Rankin, James Ellroy, James Lee Burke and Harlan Coben to name a few.

You can also find information on award winners or book discussion guides or book reviews. If you’d like, you can even keep your own private list of books on NoveList if you choose to create an account. (It’s free). NoveList isn’t only for adults either – there’s information for all ages, and we even have a separate database called NoveList Plus K-8 which can be found in the online reference section too.

NoveList is not the only resource of this type. One of my other favorites is WHICHBOOK because it's not only informative, it's fun and well, goofy. It’s like a mood ring that tells you what to read next. This free website at http://www.whichbook.net/ lists a series of moods, qualities and characteristics you might find in a book, for example, happy, sad, optimistic, short, unpredictable, serious etc. You click on the qualities which describe your mood and WHICHBOOK suggests some titles. I chose “funny” and “down to earth” and received a list of book suggestions, starting with Cynthia Ozick’s Puttermesser Papers.

Of course, as far as the Readers’ Services staff is concerned, the best way to get a suggestion is to ask us. We are all book-crazy, and for that matter, movie and music-crazy too. Come up and visit us and we’ll guess your mood!

Discover Classical Music @Your Library OR Beethoven: The Original Master of Funk

Over the years, a number of people have told me: "I don't really like classical music, but I love ___________." (Insert name of composer or composition here.) When people say this, I often wonder if there are other classical compositions they might enjoy—they just haven't discovered them yet.
You don't need a Ph.D. in music theory or years of music lessons to experience the pleasures of Beethoven and Brahms, just a library card and a sense of curiosity!
But where to begin? Let's say you love Beethoven's 5th Symphony, but you're not sure what to try next. You can dive into the rest of his symphonies: we have the complete Beethoven symphonies performed by the magnificent Chicago Symphony Orchestra under conductor Sir Georg Solti, as well as the complete symphonies performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under conductor Claudio Abbado. My personal favorite is Symphony No. 3 (the "Eroica")--the first movement really soars--and we have, in addition to the CDs mentioned above, a recording of Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic that also contains a lecture by Bernstein, entitled "How a Great Symphony Was Written." (Bernstein was an enthusiastic teacher as well as a composer and conductor.)

Want to sample a variety of Beethoven's work? Check out Essential Beethoven: 24 of His Greatest Masterpieces. This compilation includes movements--or sections--of symphonies, piano sonatas, violin concertos, string quartets and more.

If you want to explore symphonies not only by Beethoven, but by other composers as well, a fun place to start is Discover the Symphony, which contains movements of symphonies by composers including Mozart, Schubert, Brahms and Stravinsky.

Or, let's say you really enjoy violin music and you want to sample several composers and performers. There's an excellent series called "Mad About . . ." which includes the CD Mad About Violins: The Greatest Stars, The Greatest Music. The CD contains movements from works by Beethoven, Paganini and Tchaikovsky among others, performed by some of the best violinists around—Anne-Sophie Mutter, Gidon Kremer and Shlomo Mintz. Some of the other titles in this series are Mad About Italian Opera, Mad About Romantic Piano and Mad About American Music. One quibble with the American Music title: it doesn't include anything by American original Charles Ives. However, we have many CDs featuring Ives, including The American Album, which includes his startling and inventive Variations on "America," arranged for orchestra by another American composer, William Schuman. Once you've heard it, you won't forget it!

These are just a few of the CDs in our classical collection. We have many, many other others, including Maurizio Pollini's performance of my all-time favorite classical composition, Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, Opus 110. Although it was the second movement that first caught my attention—parts of it are as funky as anything Prince ever wrote—it's the third and fourth movements that keep drawing me back: there's an alternately thunderous and haunting, other-worldly quality to this music that makes me think that if we could hear the music of the spheres, it would sound like this.

Do you have a favorite piece of classical music? Do you have a favorite classical performer or composer? Is there music that you turn to for solace or inspiration?