Check It Out! 4-27-10

Hi All!

Today's book of poetry is What Goes On by Stephen Dunn. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his collection of poetry Different Hours which the library also owns.

Here's the description:

"Brilliant new poems and an expansive gathering from six collections by a Pulitzer Prize winner celebrated as "indispensable." "Good poems are triumphs over the unlikely," Stephen Dunn says. "They make us pay attention in new ways." In his second new and selected collection, Dunn subtly enlarges our sense of possibility."

Come check out some poetry today!

Next up, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba. This sounds like a fascinating book.

Here's a video of the author introducing it

Here's the author doing a TED talk.

And here's a description:

"William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, Africa, a country plagued by AIDS and poverty. Like most people in his village, his family subsisted on the meager crops they could grow, living without the luxuries—consider necessities in the West—of electricity or running water. Already living on the edge, the situation became dire when, in 2002, Malawi experienced the worst famine in 50 years. Struggling to survive, 14-year-old William was forced to drop out of school because his family could not afford the $80-a-year tuition.

Though he was not in a classroom, William continued to think, learn—and dream. Armed with curiosity, determination, and a library book he discovered in a nearby library, he embarked on a daring plan—to build a windmill that could bring his family the electricity only two percent of Malawians could afford. Using scrap metal, tractor parts, and blue-gum trees, William forged a crude yet working windmill, an unlikely hand-built contraption that would successfully power four light bulbs and two radios in his family’s compound. Soon, news of his invention spread, attracting interest and offers of help from around the world. Not only did William return to school but he and was offered the opportunity to visit wind farms in the United States, much like the ones he hopes to build across Africa.

A moving tale of one boy’s struggle to create a better life, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is William’s amazing story—a journey that offers hope for the lives of other Africans—and the whole world, irrefutably demonstrating that one individual can make a difference."

Check It Out! 4-21-10

Hi All!

Today's book of poetry is Fancy Beasts by Alex Lemon. I personally found Alex's poems to be quite moving and funny and think you would too. Here's a description from Milkweed Editions:

"Scorching away the false distinctions between body and spirit, this collection gives brilliant expression to the turning point in an extraordinary life. Set primarily in California, and riffing on the 2008 election, plastic surgery, Larry Craig, wildfires, Wal-Mart, and rampant commercialism, these poems are a workout—vigorous and raw. Yet they are also composed and controlled, pared down and sculpted, with a disarming narrative simplicity and directness. Taken together, they offer a frank, funny, and inimitably frenetic vision of postmillennial America. A stunning achievement."

I also found this link to Alex's blog...Enjoy the Fancy Beasts!

Check It Out! 4-19-10

Earth Day is coming! Please check out some of our related materials. Masabobu Fukuoka's The One-Straw Revolution was first published in 1978 and is considered a seminal work on natural farming and permaculture. It has been republished in celebration of its 30th anniversary, and is available in the IHCC library. Walk, don't run, to find it on our Earth Day display!

More about this book from the publisher's site:

"Call it “Zen and the Art of Farming” or a “Little Green Book” Masanobu Fukuoka’s manifesto about farming, eating, and the limits of human knowledge presents a radical challenge to the global systems we rely on for our food. At the same time, it is a spiritual memoir of a man whose innovative system of cultivating the earth reflects a deep faith in the wholeness and balance of the natural world. As Wendell Berry writes in his preface, the book “is valuable to us because it is at once practical and philosophical. It is an inspiring, necessary book about agriculture because it is not just about agriculture.”
Trained as a scientist, Fukuoka rejected both modern agribusiness and centuries of agricultural lore. Over the next three decades he perfected his so-called “do-nothing” technique: commonsense, sustainable practices that all but eliminate the use of pesticides, fertilizer, tillage, and perhaps most significantly, wasteful effort.
Whether you’re a guerrilla gardener or a kitchen gardener, dedicated to slow food or simply looking to live a healthier life, you will find something here—you may even be moved to start a revolution of your own."

Check it out! 4-14-10

April 11-17 is National Library Week! In celebration, we will be offering cake in the IHCC Library--on a first-come, first-served basis-- today after 1 p.m. Come join us!
This annual event, sponsored by the American Library Association, is intended to raise awareness of the contributions of library services and library staff.

This librarian humor, Gorilla Librarian, is from Monty Python's Flying Circus. If translation is needed, check out the script as well.

Check It Out! 4-13-10

The library just recieved a generous donation of Movie Scripts! This collection of 100 screenplays features many popular Hollywood classics like Tootsie, Apocalypse Now, The Karate Kid, Forrest Gump, Up In The Air, and Lethal Weapon. These are a great resource for anyone interested in screenwriting or in movie making. Many of the scripts are drafts written before the production so one can gain insight into how the scripts evolved into the classics they are today. There are screenplays by such screenwriting giants as William Goldman, Shane Black, Lawerence Kasdan, and Nora Ephron. All titles are located at the call number PN1997. Go there and you'll find them all. Here's a complete list!

A Civil Action
Absolute Power
Air Force One
Airplane
American Beauty
Analyze This
Annie Hall
Apocalypse
Body Heat
Bourne Identity
Bridges of Madison County
Captain Starshine: Galaxy Quest
Cast Away
Charlie Wilson's War
Children of a Lesser God
Chinatown
City Slickers
Clear and Present Danger
Dances With Wolves
Dead Poets Society
Entrapment
Fargo
Field of Dreams
Finding Forester
Forrest Gump
French Kiss
Get Shorty
Good Will Hunting
Gran Torino
Grand Canyon
Grosse Point Blank
Hotel Rwanda
House of Sand and Fog
Intolerable Cruelty
Jerry Maguire
Lethal Weapon
Lone Star
Matchstick Men
Meet the Parents
Men of Honor
Miss Congeniality
Moonstruck
Mr. Holland's Opus
My Cousin Vinny
Mystic River
No Way Out
Northern Exposure
O Brother, Where Art Thou
Parenthood
Prince of Tides
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Rain Man
Road To Perdition
Rocky
Schindler's List
Sense and Sensibility
Silence of The Lambs
Sleepless in Seattle
Sneakers
Stand By Me: The Body
The American President
The Big Lebowski
The Cider House Rules
The English Patient
The Firm
The Freshman
The Godfather
The Karate Kid
The Long Kiss Goodnight
The Man with One Red Shoe
The Milagro Beanfield War
The Piano
The Usual Suspects
The Verdict
The War of the Roses
Thelma and Louise
Tootsie
Traffic
Ulee's Gold
Unforgiven
Unstrung Heros
Up in the Air
Wag the Dog
When Harry Met Sally
While You Were Sleeping…
Wonder Boys
You've Got Mail

Check It Out! 4-12-10

Today's featured book of poetry is If I were wrtiting this by Robert Creeley. He was a wonderful poet and has a style quite approachable by anyone not familiar with poetry.

Here's a write-up from the publisher's website and a quote:

"If I were writing this was the last book of poems completed by Robert Creeley and published during his lifetime (New Directions, 2005). The words he wrote to describe this book are oddly prophetic: "Age brings experience, not wisdom; age makes time actual - each day another - until there is no more. These poems have been my company, my solace, my feelings, my heart. When they cannot speak it will all be silence." Though Creeley died in 2005, his poems are not silent - they vibrantly continue to embrace life while acknowledging, with no self-pity, the inevitability of death. The message (as he always ended his letters) is "Onward!"

The second featured book today is Subterranean Twin Cities by Greg Brick. This is a fascinating book that details the history of the system of underground caves, caverns and sewers that criss cross the Twin Cities.

Here's an article about the book and author from the Star Tribune last year. A quote:

"Greg Brick's tour of the dark caverns and damp passageways of the Twin Cities underground isn't for claustrophobic readers. Nor is it for those too squeamish to relish Brick's frequent immersions in raw sewage, his encounters with fetid air and sulfurous smells, and his meditations on the origins of the gelatinous "sewer slime" that coats the walls of St. Paul brewery cellars."

Check It Out! 4-7-10

Today is the 90th birthday of legendary Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar. If you like this YouTube, check out the 2-disc Essential Ravi Shankar. He also did the music for the Satyajit Ray's remarkable Apu Trilogy films, which we also have in the library!

Check It Out! 4-6-10

So, how cool are librarians? So cool in fact that none other than Keith Richards has always harbored a secret ambition to be one. Read the article here. Check out this quote:

“When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is a great equaliser.”

Could not have said it better myself.

Moving on to our featured poetry book of the day -- Chronic by D.A. Powell.

Here's a quote from a review in the LATimes:

"Writing in the shadow of AIDS, Powell is a modern romantic: obsessed, enraged and turned about by love. His language is infiltrated by songs, phrases from movies, the treacle-sweet soundtracks of so many musicals. "Love," he writes in one poem, "is the chorus waiting to be born."

Since baseball season has begun I thought I'd feature a great book about one of the greatest players of all time, Willie Mays. There's a great chapter about "The Catch" that's worth reading alone.

Here's a link to a nice review in the NYTimes.

Check It Out! 4-5-2010

Here's the poetry book for the day.

Face by Sherman Alexie.

This is a great book of poems for people who might not ordinarily read poems. This review from Booklist sums it up:

"Booklist - Alexie is not an overtly poetic poet. His tone is conversational, his language plain. But his high-beam insights are provoking, and his humor irreverent. It’s exciting to read Alexie in this more concentrated form, liberated from the demands of his spiky fiction, including the shape-shifting tale Flight (2007) and his National Book Award–winning young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007). But his storytelling impulse is irrepressible. His poems have a narrative drive; he slips into prose and fringes his poetry with bemusing footnotes. Ironic and audacious, Alexie makes fun of himself, expresses love for his wife, remembers his father, and marvels over his sons. He writes of blood, mirth, anger, patriotism, pretension, sex, the fruitful collision of cultures, and calcified ideas about what it means to be a Native American, a writer, a man, a human being. Skirmishes with insects and animals illuminate our conflicts over nature, and musings about the toll of creativity inspire poems about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Richard Pryor. A bountiful, keen, and inspiriting collection. — Donna Seaman, April 15, 2009."

Here's a link to Sherman Alexie's website with more reviews of the book.

http://www.fallsapart.com/face.htm

Moving on, I'd like to point out this nice box set of Woody Guthrie that we just recieved -- The Asch Recordings. There are four discs in this set and each one is chock full of some of the best American folk and topical songs ever recorded.

Here's a description from the Smithsonian Folkways website:

"The first in a series of four, this recording presents many of Woody Guthrie's best known songs taken from the original masters. Included here is the original version of Woody's anthem "This Land Is Your Land," which contains never-before issued lyrics. A major force in the urban folk song revival, Guthrie created an intimate portrait of America—its land and people. He has influenced many contemporary artists, among them Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Billy Bragg, and Bruce Springsteen. During the 1930s and 40s, Woody Guthrie wrote more than a thousand songs, recording hundreds of them for Folkways founder Moses Asch. The surviving masters now reside in the Folkways archive at the Smithsonian Institution. Running time: 72 minutes; 36-page booklet includes historical and biographical notes on Woody Guthrie. Compiled by Jeff Place and Guy Logsdon. "The single finest Guthrie Collection Available." — Music Central ."

Check It Out! 4-1-2010

In honor of National Poetry Month we'll be putting a spotlight on some choice selections from the world of poetry on the blog along side the usual picks of interesting material. First up we have In the Heart of the Beat: The Poetry of Rap by local author and University of Minnesota professor Alexs Pate.

Here's a description:

"Despite its extraordinary popularity and worldwide influence, the world of rap and hip hop is under constant attack. Impressions and interpretations of its meaning and power are perpetually being challenged. Somewhere someone is bemoaning the negative impact of rap music on contemporary culture. In In the Heart of the Beat: The Poetry of Rap, bestselling author and scholar Alexs Pate argues for a fresh understanding of rap as an example of powerful and effective poetry, rather than a negative cultural phenomenon.

Pate articulates a way of "reading" rap that makes visible both its contemporary and historical literary values. He encourages the reader to step beyond the dominance of the beat and the raw language and come to an appreciation of rap's literary and poetic dimensions. What emerges is a vision of rap as an exemplary form of literary expression, rather than a profane and trendy musical genre. Pate focuses on works by several well-known artists to reveal in rap music, despite its penchant for vulgarity, a power and beauty that is the heart of great literature."

The second pick for today is The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. At first I picked this because of the amazing cover art. Elephants + Zeppelins + Futuristic Skyscrapers = Awesome.

Now, after reading the even more amazing description and seeing the awards it's been given I think this could be quite a good read.

From the dust jacket:

"Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko...

Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

What Happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of "The Calorie Man" ( Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and "Yellow Card Man" (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these poignant questions."

April is National Poetry Month

Check out the Poetry Month book display. Look for the red cart and enter a poem of your own--signed or not. We may "publish" your entry on the wall behind the circulation desk.