Blog Category: Director's Notebook
Posted by KChin on Tue, Jul 30
Library Director’s NotebookAugust, 2013
Recently there has been a spate of imaginative writing about Queen Elizabeth II. The film The Queen with Helen Mirren as well as the book The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett come to mind, as does the recent telecast of the successful London production of The Audience, also staring Helen Mirren as the Queen. Remarkably, for such a very public and therefore possibly divisive...
Posted by KChin on Tue, Jul 02
Library Director’s NotebookJuly, 2013
Maeve Binchy, one of modern day Ireland’s most beloved writers died in 2012, leaving behind countless readers and friends to mourn her passing. Her last novel A Week in Winter was published posthumously and will no doubt be read with a certain bitter sweetness by her fans, who have come to rely on a new Binchy to read with pleasurable regularity.
Maeve Binchy was a storyteller who loved people, wanted them to be...
Posted by KChin on Sat, Jun 08
PLEASE NOTE: Sunday, June 9th is the last Sunday that the library will be open from 1-5 PM until September. The library’s weekly summer schedule begins on July 1st as follows: Monday-Thursday 9 AM-8 PM; Friday & Saturday 9 AM-5 PM; closed on Sunday. Sunday opening hours will resume on September 8th, 2013 from 1-5 PM. Library evening programs are not affected by these changes.
Posted by KChin on Wed, May 29
Library Director’s NotebookJune, 2013
The Yard by Alex Grecian is a vivid tale of fiction firmly anchored in fact. Reading The Yard with its detailed descriptions of vermin-infested slums, manure-slicked streets, and riversides roiling with sewage and not infrequently with dead bodies, you wonder how anyone would dare venture out into the London streets at night!
Jack the Ripper known as Saucy Jack was only one boogie man titillating...
Library Director’s NotebookMay 2013
The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb is about many...
Posted by KChin on Thu, May 02
Library Director’s NotebookMay 2013
The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb is about many things: love, freedom, courage, forgiveness, and food!
First, let’s talk about the food. This book, more than any other I’ve read lately ,is one that you cannot read without getting very, very hungry. The Beauty of Humanity Movement is primarily the story of Hung, a poor man who is rich in compassion, friends, and talent, especially the talent...
Posted by KChin on Tue, Apr 02
Library Director’s NotebookApril, 2013
Today we take for granted that the person elected to serve as the President of the United States will be surrounded at all times by highly trained, ever-vigilant professionals , willing to put their bodies on the line to protect the nation’s chief executive. Yet when Abraham Lincoln, newly elected president, made his way by railway across the country in February, 1861, a trip that was supposed to be triumphant, but which...
Posted by KChin on Wed, Feb 27
“Some will tell you to endure. You tell them you had rather prevail”.Dedication to her daughters from Divining Women by Kaye Gibbons
Library Director’s NotebookMarch, 2013
If there happens to be anyone around today who does not believe that “mental cruelty” is a reasonable grounds for divorce, they should read Divining Women by Kaye Gibbons as an irrefutable means of changing their minds.
In some ways, it does not matter that the book...
Posted by KChin on Tue, Jan 29
Library Director’s NotebookFebruary, 2013
At Home by Bill Bryson is a book with a rather dull title; but that is the only thing that is dull about it. In fact, I have rarely read a book so full of interesting information, including wide ranging topics running the gauntlet between science, literature, politics, art, discovery, child raising, personal hygiene, and the love affairs of the rich, famous, or the infamous, to name only a few.
Bill Bryson has developed his own...
Posted by KChin on Wed, Jan 02
Library Director’s NotebookJanuary, 2013
One of my resolutions this year is to get out of my comfort zone with reading material. If left to my own devices, I tend to gravitate towards literary fiction a la Margaret Atwood or quality historical fiction by writers like Andrea Barrett , mysteries of all kinds, , and non-fiction books about health, history, gardening and nature study.
There is certainly no dearth of choices in these categories of reading! ...
Posted by KChin on Thu, Nov 29
Library Director’s NotebookDecember, 2012
“Lions led by donkeys”. This scathing, often quoted rebuke refers to the brave British ground troops, drawn from all parts of the vast British Empire, who died by the hundreds of thousands in Europe from 1914 to 1918, vainly trying to follow the absurd and arrogant commands of their generals.
We are drawn to books and movies about World War I, such as All Quiet On The Western Front or Gallipoli because we cannot...
