Hamden Library Blog

Charles Dickens - 200th Birthday!

2012-02-07T19:43:00.000-05:00

Charles Dickens was born 200 years ago, on Feb. 7, 1812.
When you come to the library this week, check out our display, or
click on these links to our online catalog to see what we have to offer on Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens - materials in our collection for children

Charles Dickens - materials in our collection for adults

Charles Dickens on DVD

Charles Dickens (talking books)

Charles Dickens on Videocassettes (VHS)

Books about Charles Dickens

Dickens 2012 (international events)

Charles Dickens Exhibit at the Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan

The Museum of London has created a free ipad and iphone app which takes users on a journey through the darker side of Charles Dickens' London.

And the Oscars go to ... books!

2012-02-03T11:29:00.000-05:00

The 84th annual Academy Awards Ceremony will honor the best films of 2011. It will take place on Sunday, February, 26, 2012 at the Kodak Theatre in the heart of historic Hollywood, California. But the real winners this year are books! Eleven literary adaptations received recognition in major award categories. Six out of the nine best picture nominations are based on books. Cinema depends on literature, on the written word. Woody Allen's original screenplay for "Midnight in Paris" is a love declaration for the literary world of T.S. Eliot, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

Don't just see the movies, read the books! Click on the book title for a link to our catalog, the statewide catalog, or worldcat.org.

Moneyball: the Art of Winning an Unfair Game. By Michael Lewis. (This author also wrote the source for the movie Blind Side)

"Explains how Billy Beene, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, is using a new kind of thinking to build a successful and winning baseball team without spending enormous sums of money."

My Week with Marilyn. By Colin Clark.

"Presents the author's diary accounts of the week he, an assistant on the set of the movie "The Prince and the Showgirl," bonded with Marilyn Monroe after she escaped the high-pressure set and toured the English countryside with him."

War Horse. By Michael Morpurgo.

"Joey the horse recalls his experiences growing up on an English farm, his struggle for survival as a cavalry horse during World War I, and his reunion with his beloved master."

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. By John Le Carré.

"Who is the mole buried within British intelligence, planted by Karla in Moscow years ago? George Smiley is back, in the first novel of The quest for Karla trilogy."

Albert Nobbs: a novella. By George Moore.

"Long out of print, George Moore's classic novella returns just in time for the major motion picture starring Glenn Close as a woman disguised as a man in nineteenth-century Ireland."

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. By Jonathan Safran Foer.

"Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center attacks, searches the five boroughs of New York City for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind."

The Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher. By John Campbell.

"Traces the life of Britain's only female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, from her upbringing in Grantham to her unexpected challenge to Edward Heath for leadership of the Conservative party and her eventual removal from power."

The Descendants. By Kaui Hart Hemmings.

"A descendant of royalty and one of the largest landowners in Hawaii, Matthew King struggles to deal with his out-of-control daughters--ten-year-old Scottie and seventeen-year-old Alex--as well as his comatose wife, whom they are about to remove from life
support."

The Invention of Hugo Cabaret: a novel in words and pictures. By Brian Selznick.

"When twelve-year-old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in 1931, meets a mysterious toyseller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized."

The Help. By Kathryn Stockett.

"In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another."

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. By Stieg Larsson.

"Forty years after the disappearance of Harriet Vanger from the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family, her octogenarian uncle hires journalist Mikael Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander, an unconventional young hacker, to investigate."

Edith Wharton was born 150 years ago

2012-01-24T19:17:00.000-05:00

Edith Wharton was born 150 years ago, on January 24, 1862 in New York City. She died August 11, 1937, at age 75 in France. She was an American novelist, short story writer, and designer. Her novel THE AGE OF INNOCENCE won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. She became the first woman to win the award.

Edith Wharton in our collection (books, CDs, DVDs, audiobooks, etc.)

The Mount - Edith Wharton's estate and gardens in Lenox, Massachusetts, designed by her

Edith Wharton Collection at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT

Edith Wharton - New York Times Topics

Eva Zeisel dies at 105

2012-01-11T14:26:00.001-05:00

Eva Zeisel, a ceramic artist, died December 30, 2011 in New York City, N.Y. at age 105. She saw her work as a "playful search for beauty". She was born in Budapest on November 13, 1906. Her maiden name was Eva Amalia Striker. An aunt's Hungarian peasant pottery collection inspired her to become a ceramist. In 1925 she visited Paris. In 1930 she moved to Berlin. In 1932 she visited the Ukraine. By 1935 she was working in Moscow, but was arrested in 1936, falsely accused by a colleague. She was imprisoned for 16 months. A friend, Arthur Koestler, drew upon her experience in writing his 1941 novel DARKNESS AT NOON. She was released without explanation in 1937 and went to Vienna. In 1938, upon the Nazi's arrival in Austria, she escaped to Britain. In London she was reunited with Hans Zeisel, a lawyer and sociologist whom she had met in Berlin. They married and then emigrated to the United States soon after. During her second day in New York, she went to the public library to look up addresses of trade publications. In 1939 she began teaching ceramics as industrial design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She left her teaching position in 1954 and then designed collections of ceramics, glass and metal, including rugs, furniture and lighting fixtures. Her book "Eval Zeisel on Design" was published in 2004. She remained active almost until the end of her life. Eva Zeisel is survived by a daughter and a son and three grandchildren. Her husband, Hans Zeisel, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, died in 1992. For more information on Eva Zeisel, check out:
Pictures of Eva Zeisel and her designs (outside link)

Eva Zeisel on Design

20th Century Dinnerware

Tools for Living: a sourcebook of Iconic Designs for the Home
China and Glass in America: 1880-1980

New Nonfiction Books in the 600s

2012-01-10T16:45:00.007-05:00

We have updated our LIFESTYLES bookletter. See what is new in fitness, health, cooking! Find inspiration, ideas, and information.

New Nonfiction Books in the 700s

2011-12-30T16:26:00.009-05:00

We just updated our Bookletter service for the following subject areas:

Crafts, Needleworks and Fashion Design

Architecture, Decorating and Garden Design

Art and Photography

More New Arrivals (Fiction, Nonfiction, DVDs, ...)

Sign up for Bookletter Email Alerts

A new public library for Stuttgart

2011-12-21T18:04:00.011-05:00

Stuttgart in southern Germany has a new public library! How does this innovative city (known as the "cradle of the automobile") envision a public library in the 21st century? Korean architect Eun Young Yi was chosen to deliver a stunning, yet refreshingly simple design! No doubt, Steve Jobs would have approved of it! Books and people are the focus throughout, delivering a multitude of colors in a mostly white interior, similiar to the design of the new Amsterdam Public Library. There is a Café with a very appealing and smartly chosen name. It is called Café LesBar which means Reading Bar, but "lesbar" in German means also readable! Coincidentally, we just added the book "Brilliant: White in Design" by Linda O'Keeffe to our collection. More pictures of the Stuttgart Library (outside link)

Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

2011-12-16T11:41:00.000-05:00

Christopher Hitchens, November 26, 2010

British-American polemicist Christopher Hitchens died Thursday, December 15, 2011, of pneumonia, a complication of his esophageal cancer, at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center of Houston, Texas. He is survived by his brother, Peter, his three children, and his second wife, Carol Blue. He was 62.
Hitchens was a well-known journalist and essayist, with too many credits to list here. You can read more about his life and death in the following obituaries, or read those Hitchens writings we have in our collection. (See individual issues of Vanity Fair for more.)

Polemicist Who Slashed All, Freely, With Wit (New York Times obituary)
Writer Christopher Hitchens Dies at 62 (NPR obituary)
In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens (Vanity Fair obituary - Hitchens was a Vanity Fair editor and contributor)

The above photograph was taken by Andrew Rusk, and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license

Jane Austen's 236th Birthday - Dec. 16

2011-12-14T13:49:00.005-05:00

Jane Austen was born 236 years ago on December 16, 1775 in Steventon, England. She died on July 18, 1817 at age 41 in Winchester, England. She is one of the most widely read writers in English literature.

A news article published in November 2011 revealed that Jane Austen might have died of arsenic poisoning. Arsenic was a common ingredient in medicines of the time.

Jane Austen's works in our library collection

Audio Recordings of her books on CD and ta pe

Movie Adaptations of her books on DVD

Books and films about Jane Austen and her works

Jane Austen Read-alikes

Newer book acquisitions of interest to fans of Jane Austen (click on the cover for link to the online catalog)

New Nonfiction DVDs - Arts

2011-12-12T16:00:00.000-05:00

We added the following titles to our collection of DVDs in the 700s. You will find them in the media room, in the nonfiction DVD collection arranged by Dewey Decimal Number. Links are provided to our online catalog.

Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies.
Produced by Arne Glimcher, Robert Greenhut, Martin Scorsese ; directed by Arne Glimcher.
Explores the influence of technological innovations, particularly cinema, on artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Features: three short films: Slippery Jim (1910), The great train robbery (1903), Frankenstein (1910).

Paris: Luminous Years.
Written, directed and produced by Perry Miller Adato.
Examines the role of the city of Paris in the Modernist art movement, and the people who came there from all over the world.

Building the Great Cathedrals. Written and produced by Gary Glassman ; produced and directed by Scott Tiffany.
Carved from a hundred million pounds of stone, soaring effortlessly atop a spiderweb of masonry, Gothic cathedrals are marvels of human achievement and artistry. But how did medieval builders reach such spectacular heights? Consuming the labor of entire towns, sometimes taking a hundred years to build, these architectural marvels were crafted from just hand tools and stone. Many now teeter on the brink of catastrophic collapse.

Hermitage Masterpieces.

A tour of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, one of the oldest and largest museum of the world which was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great. This digitally re-mastered series includes images and rarely seen treasures that represent the development of world culture and art from Ancient China to the 20th century. The Hermitage is home to 3 million masterpieces.

Every Picture Tells a Story.
produced by Mike Lerner ; directed by James Bluemel.
Profiles the the creations and legacies of eight masterpieces of Western art. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews by Gainsborough -- The anatomy lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt -- Tempest by Giorgione -- The birth of Venus by Botticelli -- Boy bitten by a lizard by Caravaggio -- Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci -- Le dejeuner sur l'herbe by Manet -- The Arnolfini marriage by Van Eyck.

American Photography: a Century of I mages.

Produced and directed by Muffie Meyer and Ellen Hovde.
The story of the pictures we have taken and where they have taken us. The series traces the profound effect photographs have had on American life-- influencing what we buy, how we dress, how we get the news, and in the matters of life and death, medicine, science, and war.

Art of the Western World.

Directed by Tony Cash. 3 DVDs.
Explores the history of Western art from the classical ideals created by ancient Greeks to modern-day works. The classi cal ideal -- A white garment of churches : Romanesque and Gothic art -- The early Renaissance -- The high Renaissance -- Realms of light : the Baroque -- An age of reason, an age of passion -- A fresh view : Impressionism and post-Impressionism-- Into the 20th century -- In our own time.

Between the Folds: a film about finding inspiration in unexpected places.
Written, directed & produced by Vanessa Gould.
"Between the Folds chronicles the stories of ten fine artists and intrepid theoretical scientists who have abandoned careers and scoffed at hard-earned graduate degrees -- all to forge unconventional lives as modern-day paperfolders"--Production company's website.

Typeface.
Produced and directed by Justine Nagan
A look at the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, WI which is considered the birthplace of graphic design.

Art & Copy.
Produced by Jimmy Greenway & Michael Nadeau ; directed by Doug Pray.
A powerful film about advertising and inspiration. It reveals the wor k and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creatives of our time, people who've profoundly impacted our culture. Their work grabbed the attention of millions and truly moved them. The social and cultural impact of their ads are brought to light in this dynamic exploration of art, commerce, and human emotion.

Craft in America: Family
Craft in America is a groundbreaking, comprehensive visual exploration of the history, vitality, and cultural significance of America's craft movement. Features Paul and Dante Marioni, Lisa Sorrelli, Philip and Matt Moulthrop, and Cliff and Holly Lee.

David Macaulay: Pyramid.
Based on the book by David Macaulay ; executive producer Ray Hubbard ; written by Mark Olshaker ; produced by Larry Klein and Mark Olshaker. Explore the process of building an ancient Egyptian pyramid and visit various historic sites and rare artifacts, including the mummy of Ramses II.

1500 government posters digitized

2011-12-06T19:23:00.013-05:00

More than 1500 government posters are now av ailable online.
They have been digitized through a partnership between the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) and the University of Iowa Libraries, as part of the GPO's Federal Depositary Library Program. The posters were issued from before World War II to the 1990s.

If you are interested in graphic design, we recently added some interesting titles to our collection:

T h e Po s t er
T y p ef ace [D VD]
T h e E lem e nts of Graphic Design
Menu Design in America 1850-1985
Just My Type: A Book about Fonts
A History of Design from the Victorian Era to the Present
Graphic Design: a new history

New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2011

2011-12-05T12:35:00.012-05:00

New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2011 - selected by the Sunday Book Review

(titles are linked to our online catalog, or the statewide catalog)

FICTION & POETRY

THE ANGEL ESMERALDA: Nine Stories. By Don DeLillo. (Scribner, $24.) DeLillo’s first collection of short fiction, compiling stories written between 1979 and 2011, serves as a liberating reminder that terror existed long before there was a war on it.

THE ART OF FIELDING. By Chad Harbach. (Little, Brown, $25.99.) This allusive, Franzen-like first novel, about a gifted but vulnerable baseball player, proceeds with a handsome stateliness.

THE BARBARIAN NURSERIES. By Héctor Tobar. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) A big, insightful novel about social and ethnic conflict in contemporary Los Angeles.

BIG QUESTIONS. Or, Asomatognosia: Whose Hand Is It Anyway? Written and illustrated by Anders Brekhus Nilsen. (Drawn & Quarterly, cloth, $69.95; paper, $44.95.) In this capacious, metaphysically inclined graphic novel, a flock of finches act out Nilsen’s unsettling comic vision about the food chain, fate and death.

THE BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC. By Julie Otsuka. (Knopf, $22.) Through a chorus of narrators, Otsuka unfurls the stories of Japanese women who came to America in the early 1900s to marry men they’d never met.

CANTI. By Giacomo Leopardi. Translated by Jonathan Galassi. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $35.) With this English translation, Leopardi may at last become as important to American literature as Rilke or Baudelaire.

THE CAT’S TABLE. By Michael Ondaatje. (Knopf, $26.) Ondaatje grants that this novel, about three daring Ceylonese schoolboys on a sea journey to England, sometimes uses the “coloring and locations of memoir.”

CHANGÓ’S BEADS AND TWO-TONE SHOES. By William Kennedy. (Viking, $26.95.) In Kennedy’s most musical work of fiction, a newspaperman attains a cynical old-pro objectivity as Albany’s political machine pulls out the stops to head off a race riot in 1968.

COME ON ALL YOU GHOSTS. By Matthew Zapruder. (Copper Canyon, paper, $16.) Much of the poetry here, displaying a consistent stillness and confidence, is the strongest of Zapruder’s career.

11/22/63. By Stephen King. (Scribner, $35.) A meditation on memory, loss, free will and necessity, King’s novel sends a teacher back to 1958 by way of a time portal in a Maine diner. His assignment is to stop Lee Harvey Oswald — but first he must make sure of Oswald’s guilt.

THE FREE WORLD. By David Bezmozgis. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) Bezmozgis overturns clichéd expectations of immigrant idealism in his first novel, which follows a Soviet Jewish family awaiting visas in Rome in 1978.

GHOST LIGHTS. By Lydia Millet. (Norton, $24.95.) Millet sends an I.R.S. agent on a mission to a Central American jungle, providing a fascinating glimpse of what can happen when the self’s rhythms and certainties are shaken.

THE GRIEF OF OTHERS. By Leah Hager Cohen. (Riverhead, $26.95.) Complex but fundamentally decent characters hurt one another and are hurt by forces greater than themselves, as a family sinks beneath the weight of a terrible secret.

GRYPHON: New and Selected Stories. By Charles Baxter. (Pantheon, $27.95.) Beneath the shadowless Norman Rockwell contours of Baxter’s Midwest lurks a chilling starkness and sense of isolation reminiscent of the bleakly beautiful work of Edward Hopper.

HOUSE OF HOLES: A Book of Raunch. By Nicholson Baker. (Simon & Schuster, $25.) Hilarious and extremely dirty, this episodic assortment of fantasies — part Plato’s Retreat, part Fantasy Island — celebrates desire, frailty and the comedy of life.

THE LAST WEREWOLF. By Glen Duncan. (Knopf, $25.95.) A wry, world-weary and hyper-articulate werewolf, morally as well as physically ambiguous, is tortured by the spirits of his victims and ready to surrender to his pursuers.

THE LEFTOVERS. By Tom Perrotta. (St. Martin’s, $25.99.) In this novelistic version of the biblical prophecy known as the Rapture, Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims as well as Christians mysteriously disappear.

LIFE ON MARS. By Tracy K. Smith. (Graywolf, paper, $15.) Smith’s impressive range is on full display in her third poetry collection, in which she mourns her father, who worked on the Hubble Telescope.

THE LONDON TRAIN. By Tessa Hadley. (Harper Perennial, paper, $14.99.) Hadley’s artfully constructed, socially realistic novel is split between two characters who react in opposite ways to their old affair.

LONG, LAST, HAPPY: New and Selected Stories. By Barry Hannah. (Grove, $27.50.) Hannah, who died last year, had a refined eye for the outrageous; this collection shows he retained full command of his powers to the end of his life.

LOST MEMORY OF SKIN. By Russell Banks. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $25.99.) This novel, about a paroled sex offender, bravely tries to find humanity in people whom society often despises.

THE MARRIAGE PLOT. By Jeffrey Eugenides. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.) Eugenides adeptly renders the patter of college intellectuals and the sweet banter of courtship, and is particularly astute on the uncertainties awaiting after graduation.

A MOMENT IN THE SUN. By John Sayles. (McSweeney’s, $29.) Sayles’s reimagining of America at the turn of the last century nods to both Harriet Beecher Stowe and Thomas Pynchon.

MR. FOX. By Helen Oyeyemi. (Riverhead, $25.95.) This playful tale is presented in the alternating voices of a slasher novelist, his wife and his muse, the last of whom urges the writer to embrace intimacy over violence and death.

MY NEW AMERICAN LIFE. By Francine Prose. (HarperCollins, $25.99.) Prose’s sardonic novel of a young Albanian immigrant in New Jersey sets America in high relief, mordant and comic, light and dark.

1Q84. By Haruki Murakami. Translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel. (Knopf, $30.50.) This voluminous novel, set in 1984, is simultaneously a mystery, a love story and a dystopian fantasy that raises questions of psychology and ethics.

OPEN CITY. By Teju Cole. (Random House, $25.) The peripatetic hero of Cole’s indelible novel reflects on his adopted New York, the Africa of his youth, today’s America and a Europe wary of its future.

THE PALE KING: An Unfinished Novel. By David Foster Wallace. (Little, Brown, $27.99.) Unfolding on an epic scale, this coherent, if uncompleted, portrayal of our age is a grand parable of “late capitalism,” set in the innards of the Internal Revenue Service.

PARALLEL STORIES. By Peter Nadas. Translated by Imre Goldstein. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $40.) This nearly 1,200-page novel opens in 1989 and is centered, roughly, on a Budapest apartment building whose residents have been trapped in the torpor of Communist tyranny.

SAY HER NAME. By Francisco Goldman. (Grove, $24.) Goldman’s passionate, moving narrative takes as its subject his tragically short marriage to the writer Aura Estrada, who died in a bodysurfing accident in 2007, when she was 30.

SCENES FROM VILLAGE LIFE. By Amos Oz. Translated by Nicholas de Lange. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $22.) In these powerful linked stories of longing and disappointment, Oz returns to a spare, almost allegorical style.

THE SENSE OF AN ENDING. By Julian Barnes. (Knopf, $25.) In this Booker Prize winner, an unexpected bequest forces a man to re-evaluate his relationships, present and past.

SEVEN YEARS. By Peter Stamm. Translated by Michael Hofmann. (Other Press, paper, $15.95.) Stamm’s protagonist, an aspiring architect in 1980s Germany, wanders between his charming, frigid wife and plain but devoted mistress.

SHARDS. By Ismet Prcic (Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, paper, $14.99.) The Bosnian hero of Prcic’s absorbing and unsettling first novel is shattered by war.

SPACE, IN CHAINS. By Laura Kasischke. (Copper Canyon, paper, $16.) What may be the most ambitious, and disturbing, of Kasischke’s eight books of poems strives to comprehend first and last things.

STONE ARABIA. By Dana Spiotta. (Scribner, $24.) A faded heroine struggles with the loss of her brother, an unrecognized rock star, in this acerbic and deeply sad narrative.

THE STRANGER’S CHILD. By Alan Hollinghurst. (Knopf, $27.95.) Hollinghurst’s sharply drawn novel tells the story of relatives and scholars grappling with the legacy of a Rupert Brooke-like poet killed during World War I.

THE SUBMISSION. By Amy Waldman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) This resonant and darkly comic novel, by a former New York Times journalist, imagines an uproar over a proposed Sept. 11 memorial.

SWAMPLANDIA! By Karen Russell. (Knopf, $24.95.) Russell’s exuberant first novel, an expansion of her story “Ava Wrestles the Alligator,” concerns the pleasures and miseries of life in a failing theme park in the Everglades.

TALLER WHEN PRONE: Poems. By Les Murray. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24.) Viscerally smoldering anger, the signature quality of Murray’s poetry, turns conventional pieties inside out.

TEN THOUSAND SAINTS. By Eleanor Henderson. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $26.99.) Henderson’s fierce, elegiac novel follows a group of friends, lovers, parents and children through the straight-edge music scene and the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

THIS BEAUTIFUL LIFE. By Helen Schulman. (Harper/HarperCollins, $24.99.) A family’s Manhattan life comes apart when their 15-year-old forwards a sexually explicit video made for him, unsolicited, by a girl two years younger.

THE TIGER’S WIFE. By Téa Obreht. (Random House, $25.) In her first novel, Obreht uses fable and allegory to illustrate the complexities of Balkan history, unearthing the region’s patterns of suspicion, superstition and everyday violence.

THE TRAGEDY OF ARTHUR. By Arthur Phillips. (Random House, $26.) Phillips’s splendidly devious novel consists of a Shakespearean play of his own virtuosic creation and an “introduction” that devastatingly reveals the psychological life of its author.

TRAIN DREAMS. By Denis Johnson. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $18.) The taming of the American West is encompassed in Johnson’s novella, whose orphaned hero is sent by train in the 1890s into the woods of the Idaho panhandle.

NONFICTION

AND SO IT GOES. Kurt Vonnegut: A Life. By Charles J. Shields. (Holt, $30.) From Dresden to his mother’s suicide, the early death of a beloved sister, serial unhappy marriages and literary anxiety, Vonnegut earned his status as Man of Sorrows, as this diligent and often heartbreaking biography shows.

ARGUABLY: Essays. By Christopher Hitchens. (Twelve, $30.) Hitchens’s esophageal cancer inevitably throws a shadow over this spirited, provocative, prodigiously witty collection.

THE ART OF CRUELTY: A Reckoning. By Maggie Nelson. (Norton, $24.95.) Nelson examines representations of violence in the media, largely aiming her laments high up the cultural ladder — at the fine arts, literature, theater and even poetry.

ASSASSINS OF THE TURQUOISE PALACE. By Roya Hakakian. (Grove, $25.) In gripping style, Hakakian recounts the 1992 killings of four Iranian opposition members in Berlin, which ultimately implicated the top levels of Iran’s leadership.

THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY: Explanations That Transform the World. By David Deutsch. (Viking, $30.) Deutsch’s inexhaustibly curious exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge pivots on the European Enlightenment.

BELIEVING IS SEEING: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography. By Errol Morris. (Penguin Press, $40.) The filmmaker is chiefly interested here in the nature of knowledge, in figuring out where the truth lies.

THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE: Why Violence Has Declined. By Steven Pinker. (Viking, $40.) Are humans essentially good or bad? Has the past century seen moral progress or moral collapse? Pinker addresses these questions and more.

BLOOD, BONES AND BUTTER: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. By Gabrielle Hamilton. (Random House, $26.) This memoir by the chef at the Manhattan restaurant Prune is a story of hungers specific and vague.

BLUE NIGHTS. By Joan Didion. (Knopf, $25.) Mourning the 2005 death of her daughter, Didion presents herself as defenseless against the pain of loss in this elegantly written memoir.

THE BOY IN THE MOON: A Father’s Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son. By Ian Brown. (St. Martin’s, $24.99.) The truth Brown learns from his severely disabled child is a rare one: the life that seems to destroy you is the one you long to embrace.

CARAVAGGIO: A Life Sacred and Profane. By Andrew Graham-Dixon. (Norton, $39.95.) Caravaggio’s painting was deeply affected by the squalor, violence and energy of Roman street life.

CATHERINE THE GREAT: Portrait of a Woman. By Robert K. Massie. (Random House, $35.) Massie provides a sweeping narrative about the impressive minor German princess who became empress of Russia.

CLARENCE DARROW: Attorney for the Damned. By John A. Farrell. (Doubleday, $32.50.) In this biography, Darrow’s unsavory side is on view, from his personal callousness to his purchasing of testimony.

COCKTAIL HOUR UNDER THE TREE OF FORGETFULNESS. By Alexandra Fuller. (Penguin Press, $25.95.) Fuller’s mother is the star of this funny and affecting memoir, a companion to “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight.”

DESTINY OF THE REPUBLIC: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President. By Candice Millard. (Doubleday, $28.95.) A deranged man shot James Garfield, but it was his incompetent doctors who killed him.

THE ECSTASY OF INFLUENCE: Nonfictions, Etc. By Jonathan Lethem. (Doubleday, $27.95.) Lethem’s extraliterary enthusiasms are all over this hefty collection, which includes essays on film, comics, music, Brooklyn and, of course, fiction.

1861: The Civil War Awakening. By Adam Goodheart. (Knopf, $28.95.) In this account of the war’s first stage, Goodheart turns his lens upon fascinating figures who loomed large at the time but have now been mostly forgotten.

EXAMINED LIVES: From Socrates to Nietzsche. By James Miller. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.) Miller shows philosophers becoming ever more inclined to reflect on their own petty failings, and suggests this makes their lives more, not less, worth studying.

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. By Charles C. Mann. (Knopf, $30.50.) This follow-up to “1491” argues that ecological encounters since Columbus have shaped much of subsequent human history.

GEORGE F. KENNAN: An American Life. By John Lewis Gaddis. (Penguin Press, $39.95.) Gaddis has written a magisterial biography of the man who both invented the cold war policy of containment and was one of its most perspicacious critics.

GREAT SOUL: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India. By Joseph Lelyveld. (Knopf, $28.95.) While many of Gandhi’s aspirations (a Muslim-Hindu alliance, a full end to untouchability) remain largely unfulfilled, it is his role as a social reformer that most interests Lelyveld.

HARLEM IS NOWHERE: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America. By Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. (Little, Brown, $24.99.) A Harlem transplant documents her own and others’ experiences there, working not to define the neighborhood, but to revise received ideas.

HOLY WAR: How Vasco da Gama’s Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations. By Nigel Cliff. (Harper/HarperCollins, $29.99.) The Portuguese explorer hoped to find Christians in India and enlist them in an alliance against Islam.

IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin. By Erik Larson. (Crown, $26.) The experiences of the ambassador William E. Dodd and his lusty daughter, Martha.

INFERNO: The World at War, 1939-1945. By Max Hastings. (Knopf, $35.) Hastings has a sober, unromantic and realistic view of battle that puts him in a different category from the armchair generals whose gung-ho attitude to war fills the pages of so many military histories.

THE INFORMATION: A History. A Theory. A Flood. By James Gleick. (Pantheon, $29.95.) Gleick argues that information is more than just the contents of our libraries and Web servers: human consciousness, life on earth, the cosmos — it’s bits all the way down.

INSIDE SCIENTOLOGY: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion. By Janet Reitman. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $28.) Reitman has rendered the most complete picture of Scientology so far.

IS THAT A FISH IN YOUR EAR? Translation and the Meaning of Everything. By David Bellos. (Faber & Faber, $27.) Against the orthodox view that a translation can’t substitute for the original, a scholar argues that the two need not be the same, but only similar.

JERUSALEM: The Biography. By Simon Sebag Montefiore. (Knopf, $35.) Three thousand years, packed with telling detail, in the life of the holy city.

THE KEATS BROTHERS: The Life of John and George. By Denise Gigante. (Belknap/Harvard University, $35.) A Stanford professor’s clever pairing of the lives of the poet Keats and his brother, who emigrated to the American backcountry.

KNOCKING ON HEAVEN’S DOOR: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World. By Lisa Randall. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $29.99.) A Harvard professor meditates on the nature of science and where physics is headed.

MALCOLM X: A Life of Reinvention. By Manning Marable. (Viking, $30.) This careful biography presents a more complete and unvarnished version of its subject’s life than the one found in “The Autobiography.”

THE MEMORY CHALET. By Tony Judt. (Penguin Press, $25.95.) Before Judt died last year of a disease that left him clearheaded but immobile, he dictated these vivid autobiographical sketches, the best of which recall life in his native England.

MIDNIGHT RISING: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War. By Tony Horwitz. (Holt, $29.) One of America’s most troubling historical figures is the subject of Horwitz’s deft narrative.

MOBY-DUCK: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them. By Donovan Hohn. (Viking, $27.95.) Where those rubber toys came from, where they drifted, and why.

MY SONG: A Memoir. By Harry Belafonte with Michael Shnayerson. (Knopf, $30.50.) The international calypso star, actor and mainstay of the civil rights movement recalls his life.

THE NET DELUSION: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. By Evgeny Morozov. (PublicAffairs, $27.95.) In this challenging and often contrarian book, Morozov explores how the Internet is used to constrict or even abolish political freedom.

ONE DAY I WILL WRITE ABOUT THIS PLACE: A Memoir. By Binyavanga Wainaina. (Graywolf, $24.) The author describes fiction as his refuge from the confusing realities of politics and adolescence in his native Kenya.

THE ORIGINS OF POLITICAL ORDER: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. By Francis Fukuyama. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $35.) What countries are capable of “getting to Denmark”? Fukuyama’s answer emphasizes the role of contingency.

PAULINE KAEL: A Life in the Dark. By Brian Kellow. (Viking, $27.95.) Kellow’s is a fair-minded and deeply reported biography of the provocative and maddening writer whose essays about movies transformed American pop-culture criticism.

PULPHEAD. By John Jeremiah Sullivan. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, paper, $16.) These thrumming, intelligent magazine essays highlight Sullivan’s interest in the rare cultural nexus where genuine artistry intersects with commercial popularity.

THE QUEST: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World. By Daniel Yergin. (Penguin Press, $37.95.) This comprehensive study makes clear that energy policy is not on the right course anywhere.

RIGHTS GONE WRONG: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality. By Richard Thompson Ford. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) The Stanford professor argues that the progressive left and the colorblind right are guilty of the same error: defining discrimination too abstractly and condemning it too categorically, with similarly perverse results.

RIN TIN TIN: The Life and the Legend. By Susan Orlean. (Simon & Schuster, $26.99.) How the soulful German shepherd, born on a World War I battlefield, conquered Hollywood and became a familyfriendly symbol of cold war gunslinging.

[SIC]: A Memoir. By Joshua Cody. (Norton, $24.95.) A young composer’s account of his cancer sidesteps the issue of sentimentality by mocking it, in prose bright and jazzy and meandering.

THE STORM OF WAR: A New History of the Second World War. By Andrew Roberts. (Harper/HarperCollins, $29.99.) In a clear, accessible account of the war in all its theaters, Roberts asks how the Wehrmacht, the best fighting force, wound up losing.

THE SWERVE: How the World Became Modern. By Stephen Greenblatt. (Norton, $26.95.) The legacy of the Roman poet Lucretius, and the Renaissance book hunter who saved his great poem from oblivion.

THINKING, FAST AND SLOW. By Daniel Kahneman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30.) Kahneman, a psychologist who won the Nobel in economic science in 2002, presents a lucid and profound vision of flawed human reason in a book full of intellectual surprises and self-help value.

TO A MOUNTAIN IN TIBET. By Colin Thubron. (Harper/HarperCollins, $24.99.) Weighed down by grief after the death of his mother, the author makes a pilgrimage to Mount Kailas, venerated by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and others.

TO END ALL WARS: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918. By Adam Hochschild. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $28.) This stirring account concentrates on the appalling losses in the ranks and on the courage of those who decided the war in Europe was not a just one.

A TRAIN IN WINTER: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France. By Caroline Moorehead. (Harper/HarperCollins, $27.99.) Moorehead meticulously traces the fates of 230 Frenchwomen sent to Auschwitz as political prisoners of the Reich.

VAN GOGH: The Life. By Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. (Random House, $40.) Was Van Gogh a high-I.Q. aesthete or an earnest simpleton? A frugal bohemian or a big spender? A man who took his own life or a man who was murdered? This hulking and energetic biography complicates the picture.

WHO’S AFRAID OF POST-BLACKNESS? What It Means to Be Black Now. By Touré. (Free Press, $25.) The author’s interviews with 105 prominent African-Americans suggest that today’s “black identity” has cleared the way to a liberating pursuit of individuality.

WHY THE WEST RULES — FOR NOW: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future. By Ian Morris. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $35.) A Stanford historian argues that we face an immediate choice — East-West cooperation or catastrophe.

A WORLD ON FIRE: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War. By Amanda Foreman. (Random House, $35.) While Union and Confederate guns blazed, a battle was also being waged for English hearts and minds, at both the elite and popular levels.

Living with Books

2011-12-05T12:02:00.009-05:00

Here are some of our newer titles on living with books:

Living With Books

Books Make a Home

Of related interest are these recent newspaper articles:

Selling Books By Their Guilded Covers,

Should I Store My Messy Collection of Books?

See also my earlier posting about Designing with Books.

Bookpage Best Books of 2011

2011-11-26T16:08:00.000-05:00

Bookpage Best Books of 2011

1. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
2. The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
3. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
4. Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie
5. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
6. The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta
7. The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer
8. Townie by Andre Dubus III
9. What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes
10. In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

Library Science Exhibition at Artspace New Haven

2011-11-23T15:52:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, November 8, 2011-Saturday, January 28, 2012
50 Orange Street
New Haven, CT 06510

Artspace is pleased to present Library Science, an exhibition curated by Rachel Gugelberger, Senior Curator at Exit Art, New York. Bringing together a selection of work by 17 international artists, Library Science contemplates our personal, intellectual and physical relationship to the library as this venerable institution—and the information it contains—is being radically transformed by the digital era.

Through drawing, photography, sculpture, installation, painting and web-based projects, the artists in Library Science explore the library through its unique forms, attributes and systems: from public stacks to private collections, from unique architectural spaces to the people who populate them, from traditional card catalogues to that ever-growing “cyber-library,” the World Wide Web.

Library Science takes its title from two sources: the interdisciplinary field of library and information science, and Eleanor Antin’s 1971 conceptual work of the same name, which used library classification methods to represent and archive the identities of living women.

Artists include: Erica Baum (New York), Jorge Méndez Blake (Mexico), David Bunn (California), Chris Coffin (New York), Madeline Djerejian (New York), Melissa Dubbin & Aaron S. Davidson (New York), Philippe Gronon (France), José Hernández (New Jersey), Candida Höfer (Germany), Nina Katchadourian (New York), Reynard Loki (New York), Loren Madsen (California), Allen Ruppersberg (New York), Mickey Smith (New York), Blane De St. Croix (New York) and Xiaoze Xie (California).

http://artspacenh.org/galleries/gallery1/Libraryscience

Anne McCaffrey, 1926-2011

2011-11-23T13:15:00.000-05:00

Prolific science fiction author Anne McCaffrey, "Annie" to friends and fans, died at home in Ireland last Monday, November 21, 2011. She is survived by her one daughter and two sons, one of whom is Todd McCaffrey, her collaborator on the most recent Pern books.

Anne McCaffrey published nearly 100 books in her lifetime, starting with Restoree in 1967, which she described as a "jab" at the way women were portrayed in science fiction. The Dragonriders of Pern series, for which she is best known, was conceived one day in the same year, starting with the idea "what if dragons were the good guys?". By the time her children got home from school that day, she knew the first line of the first Pern story: "Lessa woke cold". (That story was originally published in Analog magazine and later became part of Dragonflight, the first full Pern novel.)

To close, I will quote two others who wrote of her death, author Neil Gaiman and BlogCritics blogger Anna Meade. Tweeted Gaiman, "She was a wonderful goodhearted funny lady. Goodbye Annie. I'm glad I knew you."

Meade wrote one the most beautiful lines I've ever read of an obituary post, and the lines I will leave you with:

"She allowed us to fly. So ride the dragon's wings to your well-deserved rest, Anne. Pern awaits."

Anne McCaffrey's awards include:
Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award (2005)
Gandalf Award (1979)
Golden Pen Award (1982)
Hugo Award (1968)
L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Lifetime Achievement Award (2004)
Margaret A. Edwards Award, awarded by the Young Adult Library Services Association (a division of the American Library Association) for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults. (1999)
Nebula Award (1969)

Publisher Del Rey's announcement of Anne's death

New York Times obituary (published November 24, 2011)

Our collection of Anne McCaffrey's works

National Book Awards

2011-11-17T11:59:00.012-05:00

At the 62nd National Book Awards Benefit Dinner and Ceremony yesterday evening in New York City, the following awards were presented: Poet John Ashbery received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Mitchell Kaplan, co-founder of the Miami Book Fair International, received the Foundation’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Contribution to the American Literary Community.

National Book Award for Fiction

Salvage the Bones
By Ward, Jesmyn
Bloomsbury Publishing

National Book Award for Nonfiction

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
By Greenblatt, Stephen
W. W. Norton & Company
interview

National Book Award for Poetry

Head Off & Split: Poems
By Finney, Nikky
Triquarterly Books
interview

National Book Award for Young People's Literature

Inside Out & Back Again

By Lai, Thanhha
Harper
interview

Publisher's Weekly: Best Books of 2011

2011-11-09T14:49:00.019-05:00

The No v. 7, 2011 issue of Publisher's Weekly contains a listing of the
Ten Best Books of 2011:

The Marriage Plot. Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
"Like many of the heroines of the Victorian novels she favors, Madeline Hanna, Brown University class of 1982 English major, must choose between men: the hungry wanderer Mitchell Grammaticus or the brilliant but troubled Leonard Bankhead. Madeline goes with the latter, sidelining her own intellectual pursuits in favor of riding a manic depressive's roller-coaster through the dawn of semiotics, post-structuralism, identity politics, and psychopharmacology. A coming-of-age novel that's as unapologetically erudite as it is funny, fun, and profound."

The Devil All the Time. Author: Donald Ray Pollock
(Doubleday)
"Take a man from Ohio who's worked blue collar, send him for an M.F.A., and set him loose. Pollock, whose debut collection, Knockemstiff, was a knockout, strikes again with a terrifying cast of rural characters: the haunted WWII veteran, the husband and wife serial killers who target young men along the Interstate, the predatory revival preacher and his wheelchair-bound guitar-playing cousin, all tied together with violence, sin, and gorgeous prose into a mesmerizing slice of Americana."

S tat e of W onder. Author: Ann Patchett
(Harper)
"The best two female adversaries in recent memory cut a swath through the Amazon rain forest in Patchett's exotic, intelligent, ambitious, and engaging novel. A straitlaced, sincere research scientist from Minnesota is sent to find and assess the progress of the unorthodox septuagenarian doctor who's gone native while on a fact-finding mission to extend female fertility."

After the Apocalypse. Author: Maureen McHugh
(Small Beer)
"Incisive, contemporary, and always surprising, McHugh's second collection confronts near-future life with an ironic and particular eye. Her characters live with zombies, struggle to make ends meet on the Arizona–Mexico border, and cope with China's descent into capitalism in stories that stretch the boundaries of imagination. "

Bossypants. Author: Tina Fey
(Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur)
"We know Fey's wit from her writing (and acting) in SNL, 30 Rock, and whatever movie she stars in, but she adds to her wit a disarmingly frank and uncensored account of her life, stitching together the serious and the comic."

Catherine the Great. Author: Robert K. Massie
(Random)
"Pulitzer-winning biographer Massie—of Nicholas and Alexandra and of Peter the Great—now relates the life of a German princess, Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, who became Empress Catherine II of Russia. Once again Massie delivers, with this masterful, intimate, and tantalizing portrait of a majestic monarch."

There but for the. Author: Ali Smith
(Pantheon)
"One night at an unruly dinner party, a guest named Miles goes upstairs, locks himself in the spare bedroom, and refuses to come out—for months. Smith uses this absurd bit of theater to explore some serious issues, privacy (reference is made to the U.K.'s carpet of CCTV cameras) and authenticity among them. But it's the author's effortlessly inventive form (narration comes from four different characters, none of whom knows Miles well), and her playful, breathlessly ebullient style that make this book a gem."

Hemingw ay's Boat. Author: Paul Hendrickson
(Knopf)
"There's never been a biography quite like this one. Hendrickson covers Papa's rise and fall by focusing on his most steadfast companion: his boat, Pilar. She was the stage on which Hemingway fished, brawled, wrote his novels, ranted about his poor reviews, raised his sons, and seduced other men's wives. The stories are rich with contradiction and humanity, and so raw and immediate you can smell the salt air."

One D a y I will Write About this Place. Author: Binyavanga Wainaina
(Graywolf)
"A Kenyan Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, this sublime word-drunk memoir from the Caine Prize–winning author describes a coming-of-age rent by political troubles and suffused by a love affair with language."

Arguably: Essays. Author: Christopher Hitchens
(Hachette/Twelve)
"As a political, cultural, and literary critic, Hitchens stands alone, as demonstrated by this major collection of mostly recent essays and reviews covering a range of topics, from America's founding fathers to the state of the English language. You don't always have to agree with this fearless polemicist to appreciate his erudite mind."

Fallingwater - 75th anniversary

2011-11-01T19:12:00.026-04:00

America's most iconic residence - Fallingwater - was constructed in 1936, 75 years ago. It is located southeast of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, above a mountain stream called Bear Run. The architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) was 68 years old in 1935 when he designed Fallingwater as a weekend house for Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann who owned and operated Kaufmann's department store in Pittsburgh. Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece is considered the most important building of the 20th century based on a poll conducted by the American Institute of Architects. To commemorate the 75th anniversary of Fallingwater, a book with newly commissioned color photographs by Christopher Little was published in 2011 by Rizzoli. The book's editor, Lynda Waggoner, is the Director of Fallingwater.

What was it like to live and work in this special house? Find out with the Fallingwater Cookbook. It features recipes and anecdotes by Elsie Henderson, the longtime cook and baker for the Kaufmann family. Elsie Henderson, born in 1913, recently celebrated her 98th birthday. She grew up the youngest of 13 children and lost her father at age 2. In her own words: "I had a library card by the time I was six and I used it.” Even though she left school after 11th grade, she never lost her love of the printed word. Her mother taught her some baking and cooking, and she also took a cooking class at the Red cross. With little formal culinary training, she became a sought after cook among wealthy Pittsburgh families. She worked for the Kaufmanns at Fallingwater, from 1947 to 1964.
Other books of interest:
The Iconic House: Architectural Masterworks since 1900 By Dominic Bradbury, 2009.

Frank Lloyd Wright: American Master
By Alan Weintraub, 2009.

Overdrive and Apple iOS5

2011-10-25T12:33:00.001-04:00

Important Notice for those using portable Apple devices. If you upgrade to iOS5, you will need to unistall, then reinstall, the Overdrive Media Console.

1. Press the home button.
2. Press and hold your finger over the OverDrive icon until it starts to shake.
3. Tap the 'X' in the upper-left hand corner of the icon to uninstall the app.
4. Open the app store and download/install OverDrive.

Once these steps have been performed, please navigate to your library and checkout/download a title. The library will automatically add itself to the list once the title has been downloaded.

Fall-O-Ween Festival at Mystic Aquarium

2011-10-24T16:09:00.007-04:00

The Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, CT offers a Fall-O-Ween Festival October 27 - 30. It includes sea lion shows, a haunted maze, underwater pumpkin carvers, magic shows, scavenger hunts, ice carvings and entertainment. Admission price differs from day to day. For more information, click here.
If you are a Hamden resident with a valid Hamden Library card, you can check out our museum pass to Mystic Aquarium and receive a discounted admission price. Each pass enables patrons to save $6 off Adult admission and $4 off Children admission (limit of 2 Adult and 2 Children admission per pass). For pass status check here. Pass cannot be reserved or renewed. First come, first serve. One pass per family. The pass can be checked out overnight during the week. It is due the next day before the library closes. If you check it out on a Saturday, it is due Monday, before 9 pm, since the library is closed on Sundays.

Museum Pass List Hamden Public Library

Halloween Fun at the Shore Line Trolley Museum

2011-10-24T15:20:00.004-04:00

The Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven, CT offers a "Pumpkin Patch" with all kinds of Halloween fun for children. It runs every Saturday and Sunday in October from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Pumpkin Patch includes pumpkin decorating, toy trains, refreshments and other fun, with one free pumpkin per child admission while supplies last.

If you are a Hamden resident with a valid Hamden library card, you can check out our museum pass to the Shore Line Trolley Museum and save 50% of the admission price for up to six visitors. Check the pass out at the info desk at Miller Library. If you borrow the pass on a Saturday the library is open, it will be due on Monday, before 9 p.m. If you borrow the pass on a Friday, it is due on Saturday, before 5:30 p.m. Check for pass status here. Passes cannot be reserved or renewed.

The Shore Line Trolley Museum also offers "THE HAUNTED ISLE" which features "ghoulish frights for mature audiences" every Friday and Saturday night in October, beginning at 7 p.m.
The last trolley leaves at 10 p.m.

Connecticut Science Center Coupons

2011-10-24T14:36:00.007-04:00

We received coupons to the Connecticut Science Center in Hartford. Each coupon is good for 20% off general admission for up to four people. Coupons expire December 31, 2011. Request a coupon at the info desk with your Hamden library card. One coupon per family.

The Connecticut Science Center in Hartford opened in June 2009. It offers 150 interactive exhibits, 3D movies, live science, a gift shop, a cafe and more. Daily activities include Story Time and Talks and Tours. For more information on the Connecticut Science Center click here or call 860-724-3623.

Spooktacular Science Weekend October 29 & 30:
"The Connecticut Science Center gets kooky and spooky at the Spooktacular Science Halloween celebration. Make your own slime, have a hair raising experience with electricity and enjoy tricks, treats and plenty of surprises. Seasonal family fun at every turn." For more info click here
For a listing of Hamden Library's new Science and Nature books click here.

Horror and Halloween movies at Hamden Library

2011-10-22T11:26:00.000-04:00

It's that time of year again! Autumn is officially here, and Halloween is right around the corner. If you can't get out to one of the many Halloween events sponsored in the state and region-- including the "Graveyard Shift Ghost Tours" of the Mark Twain House-- check out some horror or Halloween-themed movies.

No, really. Come in and check them out from us! We have over 130 movies to choose from, in a variety of genres. Slasher or suspense, vampire, werewolf, or family, it's likely we have a movie for your Halloween pleasure.

There is, of course, the movie named for the holiday, Halloween. Directed by John Carpenter and staring Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence, this is a good one to watch if you like slasher movies. Sure, the series shows every year on AMC, but if you don't get the channel or you don't want to sit through commercials, come in and see if Halloween's available. We have it on DVD and VHS.

Also available is Wes Craven's series (1996-2011), Scream. Part horror movie, part send-up of that genre, the Scream series uses a lot of familiar faces, including Drew Barrymore and Heroes' Hayden Panettiere, to great effect.

If Hayden's haircut in Scream 4 is more familiar than her face, your Halloween movie of choice might be Alfred Hitchcock's suspenseful-- and much less bloody-- The Birds. As with all his movies, The Birds is a classic and can be found in our Classics and Hidden Gems section, along with sci-fi classics like The Incredible Shrinking Man and classic monster movies like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari.

Classic stories more your thing than classic movies? We have the 1999 version of Sleepy Hollow.

If you like your vampires newer than Nosferatu but meaner than Twilight, try The Lost Boys (available only on VHS), the original Fright Night, or the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. If you prefer werewolves, check out Red Riding Hood. Giant lizards? Gojira (Godzilla, in English) may be your best choice.

As I said, the list goes on.

Don't think it's only scary movies that we have available! Along with family classic, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, we have Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride as well as special Halloween episodes of favorite childrens' series.

Don't see your favorite Halloween movie on our shelves? Just talk to us about requesting it, and you might see it next year!

Mark Twain House - Haunted Tours

2011-10-11T15:56:00.010-04:00

The Mark Twain House in Hartford, CT offers Graveyard Shift Ghost Tours: Friday, October 14, 15, 21, 22, 27 and 28; tours step off at 6 p.m., 7 p.m., 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.

"Reported ghostly apparitions, mysterious bangs, and other unexplained phenomena, along with visits from Syfy’s Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters Academy, have led us to reprise our popular Graveyard Shift Ghost Tours this year. Hear spooky tales – and learn about Mark Twain’s own interest in the supernatural. The one-hour tour takes guests through all three floors of the house, plus the Servants’ Wing and the spooky basement. Reservations are required, as these tours sell out well in advance."

Check out our pass to the Mark Twain House. Mark Twain House and Museum, 351 Farmington Avenue, Hartford, CT 06105, 860-247-0998. Pass Status. This elaborate Victorian mansion with rare interiors by Louis Comfort Tiffany was the author's home for 17 years (1874-1891). 19 furnished rooms including many of Twain's possessions. Pass entitles the visitor to either one complimentary adult admission OR two complimentary child admissions with purchase of one adult admission.

You might also be interested in the book: American Writers at Home which discusses how living spaces reflected personalities and influenced writings. The book contains a chapter on Mark Twain's House in Hartford, CT.

Last Chance - Historic Deerfield Pass

2011-10-06T15:52:00.003-04:00

Our two passes to HISTORIC DEERFIELD will expire at the end of October. We will not renew this pass.
Each pass offers free admission for up to 4 visitors. Historic Deerfield is a 330 year old village with more than 11 museum houses which can be explored with guides, two are available for self guided tours. Experience early American life from the 1704 Deerfield Raid and the French and Indian War, to the American Revolution and the first decades of the new Republic. View world-class collections of antiques, special exhibitions, or enjoy an outdoor garden and meadow walk (seasonal). In addition there are family programs, hands-on activities in the Apprentice's Workshop at Dwight House, special events, distinctive shopping, and a tavern lunch.
Historic Deerfield is open daily from 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. from April 16 to November 27, 2011 with the exception of Thanksgiving, Nov. 24. Driving time from Hamden is about one hour and forty minutes. More information about events and exhibits is available online at http://www.historic-deerfield.org/ or from the Hamden Library at 203/287-2680.

Check out our other museum passes

OneClickDigital eAudiobooks

2011-10-04T16:43:00.000-04:00

Our former downloadable audiobook program has been discontinued, but never fear! We've moved our collection to new source, and added over 2000 titles! Now you can access Hamden OneClickDigital when you want to listen to eAudiobooks on your computer or digital audio player. You must be a Hamden resident to sign up to access Hamden's collection. Other Connecticut residents with a valid library card may sign up for ICONN OneClickDigital, which is provided by The Connecticut State Library.

There are some changes you need to know about before you start using this service, so please take a look at our OneClickDigital Getting Started page to learn how to set up a new account. Our OneClickDigital FAQ page will help answer general questions about the services, as well as questions about lending rules.

Banned Books Week

2011-09-22T13:30:00.003-04:00

Check out our display during

BANNED BOOKS WEEK,
Sept. 24, 2011 to Oct. 1, 2011

Banned and challenged classics

Top ten most frequently challenged books in 2010

Most frequently challenged authors by year

Come to a special meeting of our book discussion group on Monday, September 26, 2011, at 7 pm. We will discuss a banned book: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe. This discussion will be led by Joan Hedrick, a history professor at Trinity College. Prof. Hedrick received a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for her biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life.

New and Forthcoming Nonfiction Books

2011-09-08T14:21:00.010-04:00

The following listings of NEW and FORTHCOMING nonfiction books have been recently updated:

Art and Photography

Lifestyles (Cooking, Health, ...)

Architecture, Decorating and Garden Design

Crafts, Needleworks and Fashion Design

Check out our READERS' CORNER to find out about our other new acquisitions.
You can sign up for bookletter e-mail alerts here.

Yale Dean to Discuss Poetry of Donald Hall

2011-08-02T20:25:00.003-04:00

Mark Schenker, Assistant Dean of Students and Lecturer at Yale University will discuss the poetry of Hamden native Donald Hall in the Friends Room of the Miller Memorial Library on Wednesday, September 14 at 7 p.m. In a free program designed to give readers an opportunity to familiarize themselves with Mr. Hall's work prior to the Friday evening celebration of Mr. Hall's life and work, Schenker will take participants through several pre-selected poems that will be made available to all those who register for the program. For further information and to register for this presentation, call 203 287-2680.

Hamden Celebrates its Native Son, Poet, Donald Hall

2011-08-02T20:10:00.002-04:00

Former U.S. Poet Laureate and recent recipient of the National Medal of the Arts, Donald Hall who was born and raised in Hamden will be honored by his hometown on Friday, September 16 at 7 p.m. in Thornton Wilder Hall at the Miller Memorial Library Complex, 2901 Dixwell Ave. The event will mark Mr. Hall's 83rd birthday and the publication of his latest book of poetry, The Back Chamber.

Grandson of Henry Hall, one of the founders of Hamden's Brock-Hall Dairy, Mr. Hall grew up in the Whitneyville neighborhood of Hamden during the 1930s and 40s, attended Spring Glen Grammar School and Hamden High before going on to Philips Exeter Academy, Harvard and Oxford Universities. His youth in Hamden has figured prominently in several of his poems as well as his most recent memoir, Unpacking the Boxes. The winner of numerous prizes for his poetry and other contributions to literature, he has lived on his maternal grandparents' farm in rural New Hampshire since 1975.

Mr. Hall plans to travel to Hamden for this event which will include presentations by Mayor Scott Jackson, Hamden Historian, Eric Lehman and The Connecticut Poetry Society. The program is free and open to the public.

New eBooks for July 2011

2011-07-25T11:49:00.002-04:00

Here are the latest additions to our eBook collection:

NEW FICTION

Beach Lane - Sherryl Woods
Bel-Air Dead - Stuart Woods
The Book of Eleanor - Pamela Kaufman

Born To Die - Lisa Jackson
The Borrower - Rebecca Makkai
Buried Prey - John Sandford

Caleb's Crossing - Geraldine Brooks
Cold Wind - C. J. Box
Dick Francis's Gamble - Felix Francis
Dreams of Joy - Lisa See
Flirting with Disaster - Sherryl Woods
A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin
Handwriting - Michael Ondaatje
Merciless - Diana Palmer
New Tales of the Vampires - Anne Rice
One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde
The Silver Boat - Luanne Rice
The Vampire Chronicles Collection - Anne Rice

NEW NONFICTION

The 4-Hour Body - Timothy Ferriss
Autobiographies of American Women: an Anthology - Jill Ker Conway
Fathers and Sons and Sports - Mike Lupica
The Psychopath Test - Jon Ronson

2011 CT State Parks and Forests Day Pass

2011-07-22T12:15:00.001-04:00

Thanks to the generosity of the Friends of the Hamden Public Library, we have now three copies of the popular 2011 CT State Parks and Forests Day Pass in circulation.

Check availablity here. The passes cannot be reserved. Passes are checked out on a first come, first serve basis. Hamden residents with a valid Hamden library card can check out the pass overnight at the info desk at Miller library. One pass per family. Passes are due the next day before the library closes. During the summer, when the library is closed on Saturdays, if the pass is checked out an a Friday, it is due on Monday before the library closes at 9 pm. Passes need to be returned to the info desk at Miller library.

The passes are valid until December 31, 2011 and cover the cost of parking at state parks and forests where there is a charge. This includes beach state parks as well as inland state parks. The passes also cover admission for two adults and four children at state historical sites and exhibit centers at Dinosaur, Fort Trumbull and Gillette Castle State Parks. The passes are not valid for groups or vehicles carrying more than 12 passengers. They are offered as part of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection’s NO CHILD LEFT INSIDE initiative.

For more information call the information desk at 203/287-2680. See a listing of our other museum passes here.

New Tote Bags

2011-07-15T10:14:00.000-04:00

Tote bags featuring our new library logo are now available for just $10! You can get yours at the Checkout Desk at Miller Central Library (coming soon the the branches).

Perfect for all your summer activities. Show your support the library wherever you go!

International Year of Forests 2011

2011-07-08T16:55:00.004-04:00

The United Nations General Assembly has declared 2011 the International Year of Forests. Almost half the world's original forests have been destroyed, most during the past three decades.

In Arboret um America: A philosophy of the forest, author Diana Beresford-Kroener describes 20 different tree groups and how these specific trees can be used to promote health and to counteract the effects of pollution and global warming.

The Book of Leaves by Allen J. Coombes is a leaf-by-leaf guide to six hundred of the world's great trees. The leaves are reproduced at their actual size.

Wildwood: a journey through trees is the last book by British nature writer Roger Deakin which was published after his death in 2006. In his travels he meets artists and scientists who work with forests all over the world.

Brush Cat: On trees, the wood economy, and the most dangerous job in America byJack McEnany, recounts a year in the life of men who perform one of the most dangerous jobs in America--logging New England's vast forests for timber used in hundreds more ways than most realize.

Th e Sibley Guide To Trees, written and illustrated by David Allen Sibley, identifies more than 600 tree species in North America.

A Shared Landscape: A guide and history of Connecticut's State Parks and Forests by Joseph Leary, published in 2002, contains descriptions, photos and maps of 92 Connecticut state parks and 32 state forests.

Also check out:

Other Related Books (by subject)

Connecticut Forest & Park Association

2011 the International Year of Forests

New Arrivals

2011-07-08T11:48:00.005-04:00

We just published a new edition of our LIFESTYLES bookletter.

This bookletter is published online on the 7th day of each month. We list new cookbooks, fitness books, health books, etc.

Check what is new and forthcoming in fiction and nonfiction in GOOD READS.

Top Ten Biographies

2011-07-07T13:45:00.005-04:00

Booklist recently published a listing of the TOP TEN BIOGRAPHIES
which were reviewed during the past year.

Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty. By Phoebe Hoban. St. Martin’s

"Judicious and ardent, Hoban has created a galvanizing portrait of a “rebel artist” who remained true to her humanist convictions."

Colonel Roosevelt. By Edmund Morris. Random

"Morris completes his fully detailed, dynamic triptych of the restless, energetic, on-the-move first President Roosevelt."

A Complicated Man: The Life of Bill Clinton as Told by Those Who Know Him. By Michael Takiff. Yale

"What Takiff delivers is an astonishing collection of 171 interviews, collectively offering an intimate portrait of former president Bill Clinton."

Edward Kennedy: An Intimate Biography. By Burton Hersh. Counterpoint

"For readers exhausted at the thought of another Ted Kennedy book, this one is beautifully written and exquisitely detailed with plenty of new material."

Fab: The Life of Paul McCartney. By Howard Sounes. Da Capo

"This is the first comprehensive, candid, and up-to-date portrait of Sir Paul McCartney."

Galileo. By John Heilbron. Oxford

"A complete portrait illuminating how a bold pioneer forged surprising links between science and the humanities."

How to Live; or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at anAnswer. By Sarah Bakewell. Other

"By casting her biography of Michel de Montaigne as 20 chapters, each focused on a different answer to the question “How to live?” Bakewell limns Montaigne’s ceaseless pursuit of this most elusive knowledge."

Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter. By Patricia Albers. Knopf

"Painter Joan Mitchell is no mere “second-generation abstract expressionist,” Albers avers in the first comprehensive biography of this ruthlessly independent, flagrantly blunt, highly educated artist."

Washington. By Ron Chernow. Penguin

"This magisterial biography is a vastly enlightening, overwhelmingly engaging treatment of a great man."

Will Eisner: A Dreamer’s Life in Comics. By Michael Schumacher. Bloomsbury

"In addressing the life of Will Eisner, now known as the father of the graphic novel, seasoned biographer Schumacher zeroes in on the essence of Eisner’s success."

Check out a museum pass

2011-07-01T13:08:00.004-04:00

If you are a Hamden resident with a valid Hamden library card, you can check out our museum passes.

Passes are available at Miller Library, at the info desk. If you check out a pass this Friday, July 1, you can keep it until Wednesday, July 6, due to the 4th of July Holiday Weekend. The library is open today Friday until 5:30 pm. We are closed Saturday, Sunday, Monday and will open again Tuesday, July 5, at 10 am. During the week passes can be checked out overnight. Passes cannot be reserved. We have passes which offer either free admission or a discount.

Mango Languages App from iTunes

2011-06-29T15:30:00.000-04:00

We are pleased to announce that Mango is now offering an app of their foreign language program for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Get free access to more than 34 foreign language courses and 14 English as a second language courses in the palm of your hand with your Hamden Library account. Just visit the iTunes store to download the Mango Languages app. Mango makes learning a new language fast, easy, and incredibly effective!

You will need create a user login on the web-based version of Mango before you can use the app. To get started, the Hamden Library's Mango Languages database. After entering your library card number, create a Mango account (email address and password), then use that email address and password to log in to the app.

Android, Blackberry, and other mobile users may use the Library's web-based version of Mango Languages with their device's web browser.

Xbox Video Games

2011-06-20T13:55:00.000-04:00

The Library has added Xbox 360 games to our Young Adult collection! Games go out for 7 days, no renewals. Two games may be checked at a time, and you are allowed to reserve titles. Late charges are $1 a day.

Games include:
Kinect Sports
Forza Motorsport 3
Dance Central
Batman, Arkham Asylum
NBA 2K11
Skate 3
Marvel vs. Capcom 3 : Fate of Two Worlds
Rock Band 3
Enslaved : Odyssey to the West

Audiobook Appreciation Month

2011-06-13T16:34:00.001-04:00

June is Audiobook Appreciation Month.

New Audiobooks in the Library

Downloadable Audiobooks

Audiobook Award Winners

Keith Richard: LIFE , read by Johnny Depp & Joe Hurley, featuring Keith Richards, is the "Audiobook of the Year" winner.

Orange Prize for Fiction

2011-06-13T14:08:00.007-04:00

The Serbian-American author Téa Obreht won the Orange Prize for Fiction for her debut novel THE TIGER'S WIFE.
The award is given annually for the best novel in English by a woman and comes with about $49,000. Téa Obreht is the youngest winner of the Orange Prize. She is 25 years old.

"Téa Obreht was born in 1985 in the former Yugoslavia and raised in Belgrade. In 1992 her family moved to Cyprus and then to Egypt, where she learned to speak and read English, eventually immigrating to the United States in 1997. After graduating from the University of Southern California, Téa received her MFA in Fiction from the Creative Writing Program at Cornell University in 2009."

Previous Winners of the Orange Prize for Fiction

Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum Pass

2011-06-10T14:47:00.006-04:00

We received two new passes to the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT. Each pass admits the pass-holder and accompanying family members for free. The museum is open Tuesday - Sunday, 12 noon to 5 pm. Closed on Mondays and New Year's Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. The museum is open on the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and Labor Day. The passes can be checked out by Hamden residents only with valid Hamden Library cards (first come, first served).

Pass Status

List of Museum Passes

New Art and Photography Books

Summer's almost here!

2011-06-09T10:45:00.008-04:00

If you've been keeping up with Totem Tom-- and we hope you have-- you know the library's new air-conditioning is beating back the heat and humidity that's typical of our New England summers. Come in to beat the heat, and stay to browse our "good reads".

As a reminder, all children's books are two-week books starting Monday, June 20, 2011. NO RENEWALS! You will also not be able to place reserves on children's books during this time. This lasts for the duration of our summer reading program, and regular borrowing periods resume in September.

Also, summer hours start the week of Monday, June 20 and are as follows:

Monday-Wednesday: 10 am-9 pm
Thursday, Friday: 10 am-5:30 pm
Closed Saturdays and Sundays

Regular hours resume after Labor Day.

Institute for American Indian Studies Pass

2011-06-07T20:00:00.001-04:00

Last chance to check out the pass to the Institute for American Indian Studies, 38 Curtis Road in Washington Depot, CT 06793 (Map). The pass will expire at the end of June and will not be renewed. Hours: Mon-Sat 10 am to 5 pm; Sun 12 to 5.
The pass admits a family
for free.

“Located just off Route 199, this museum and educational center focuses on the indigenous peoples of northwestern Connecticut, the Woodland Indians of New England. Changing exhibits highlight Native American culture from across America, while permanent exhibits focus on American Indian living traditions of the northeast. Outdoor exhibits include a replicated Algonkian Village and simulated archaeological site. Spend the afternoon and enjoy our four hiking trails, healing plants garden and picnic areas. The Museum Gift Shop offers the best in Native American jewelry, crafts, pottery, books and more. “

The library's Museum Pass Program is funded by the Friends of the Hamden Library. Passes may be borrowed only by Hamden residents with a valid Hamden library card. They are checked out for one day (overnight) with no renewals and no reserves. Overdue fines are $10 per day. Please call our reference desk (203) 287-2680 for more information.

Author Visit

2011-06-07T16:09:00.002-04:00

Salt March Diary Author Mark Seth Lender
Tuesday, June 21 at 7 p.m. in the Miller Memorial Central Library Friends’ Room.

In its continuing series of Author Talks, Hamden Public Library has invited Mark Seth Lender, photographer, syndicated columnist, and contributor to NPR’s Living on Earth to speak about his recently published Salt Marsh Diary: A Year on the Connecticut Coast.

Lender’s book was reviewed in Library Journal as a “lively work” that will “appeal to the poetic at heart and nature lovers alike, particularly those who feel the gulf between the world they live in and the simplicity of the world outside.” From Audubon Magazine: “Lender has an artist’s eye, a poet’s ear, and a reporter’s grasp… he inserts you in the planet’s most productive habitat--the rich, fragrant interface of sea and land where the only real “news,” as Thoreau called it, happens throughout the year, and all of it is good and beautiful.” His blog at connecticutrivergazette.com/blog combines samples of his photographic work and writings with information about upcoming field work.

Author Talks are free and open to the public. For further information, call the library at 203-287-2680.

The series are coming? The series are coming!

2011-05-26T12:20:00.007-04:00

Our YA patrons asked, and Pam and Elise answered! In the next few weeks, look in our YA section for hit CW series "Gossip Girl", "One Tree Hill", "Supernatural", and "The Vampire Diaries", as well as ABC Family series "The Secret Life of the American Teenager".

In the meantime...

If you've already read our Gossip Girl books, you may want to try something from The A-List or The Clique.

If you've already read our Vampire Diaries books, you may want to try something from the Twilight series.

If you're a fan of Supernatural, you may want to try Neil Gaiman's American Gods, or some of our nonfiction books about ghosts, monsters, or urban folklore.

Or ask our reference librarians for other recommendations!

Top Ten Science Fiction/Fantasy books

2011-05-25T17:24:00.026-04:00

Booklist recently compiled a listing of "particularly tantalizing" Science Fiction and Fantasy Fiction books which were published during the last twelve months.

"The ninth Rachel Morgan novel finds our tough and feisty witch on a mission to get her shunning rescinded; this is an excellent series entry that is guaranteed to satisfy the author’s following."

The Spirit Thief. By Rachel Aaron.
"Aaron’s outstanding fantasy debut is the first in a trilogy about unrepentant thief Eli Monpress, whose goal is to amass $1 million in gold."

Thirteen Years Later. By Jasper Kent.
"Kent has magically blended history, folklore, and storytelling to produce a superb account of the Dekabrist revolt in 1825 Russia."

What the Night Knows. By Dean Koontz.
"This novel is deliberate, highly supernatural, somber throughout, and motivated by religious dread—one of Koontz’s weightiest performances."

All the Lives He Led. By Frederick Pohl.
"It’s 2079 and Pompeii has become a theme park. Pohl is a master of everything that goes into a cracking good novel, and for this one, he has clearly boned up on vulcanology to boot."

The Best of Larry Niven. By Larry Niven. Ed. by Jonathan Strahan.
"Niven excels at creating possible futures that are the outcome of current ideas stretched to the extreme. This is a collection to love."

A Discovery of Witches. By Deborah Harkness.
"Diana Bishop is the last of the Bishops, a powerful family of witches, but she has refused her magic ever since her parents died. Essential reading across literary mystery and epic and fantastic romance genres."

Dragon Haven. By Robin Hobb.
"The second volume of the Rain Wilds Chronicles shows Hobb again working at the highest level of contemporary fantasy, to which her creativity with dragons adds majesty."

Hellhole. By Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson."This is a militaristic sf story of galactic proportions that also offers characters easy for the reader to believe in."

Midsummer Night. By Freda Warrington.
"Set after the end of the Great War, this novel should please classic- and urban-fantasy fans, romance readers, and anyone looking for a good, fey story."

Pale Demon. By Kim Harrison.

Philip Roth wins Man Booker International Prize

2011-05-19T13:24:00.012-04:00

Philip Roth is the winner of the fourth Man Booker International Prize. He was chosen from a list of 13 eminent contenders.

"The Man Booker International Prize, worth £60,000, is awarded for an achievement in fiction on the world stage. It is presented once every two years to a living author for a body of work published either originally in English or widely available in translation in the English language. It has previously been awarded to Ismail Kadaré in 2005, Chinua Achebe in 2007 and Alice Munro in 2009."

Books by Philip Roth in our library
Movie based on a novel by Philip Roth
Information on Philip Roth and his novels in NoveList Plus database

May 18 - International Museum Day

2011-05-18T15:25:00.021-04:00

International Museum Day is May 18 - today!

This day is celebrated every year since 1977 to raise awareness of the importance of museums in the development of society. The Advisory Council for the International Council of Museums chose "Museum and Memory" as this year's theme.

Our library has lots of books on museums for children and adults and offers Hamden residents free museum passes which are funded by the Friends of the Hamden Library.

Connecticut Landmarks
Connecticut Open House Day Saturday, June 11, 2011

Check out this listing of the most visited art museums in the world! Can you guess number one?

And what were the
highest attended exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art?

Lots to explore!

2011 James Beard Foundation Book Awards

2011-05-17T14:05:00.018-04:00

The following cookbook authors received awards from The James Beard Foundation:

American Cooking
James Villas
Pig: King of the Southern Table

Cookbook Hall of Fame

Harold McGee

On Food and Cooking: The Science & Lore of the Kitchen

Cookbook of the Year
Diana Kennedy
Oaxaca al Gusto: An Infinite Gas tronomy

Reference and Scholarship
Mark Bitterman
Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral with Recipes

Single Subject
James Peterson
Meat: A Kitchen Education

Healthy Focus
Jessie Price
The Simple Art of Eatingwell

Baking and Dessert
Kim Boyce
Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours

General Cooking
Amanda Hesser
The Essential New York Times Cook Book: Classic Recipes for a New Century

International
Grace Young
Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge: The Ultimate Guide to Ma stery with Authentic Recipes and Stories

Writing and Literature
Paul Greenberg
Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food

Best Chef: New York City
Gabrielle Hamilton
Blood, Bones and Butter

Best Chef: Southeast
Andrea Reusing
Cooking in the Moment

Cooking from a Professional Point of View +
Photography
Redzepi, René
Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine

Beverage
Jordan Mackay and Rajat Parr
Secrets of the Sommeliers: How to Think and Drink like the Worlds' Top Wine Professionals

Celebrate National Preservation Month

2011-05-16T15:40:00.003-04:00

Celebrate National Preservation Month and visit Historic Deerfield this May.
Thanks to the generous support of the Friends of the Hamden Public Library, Hamden residents with valid Hamden Library cards may borrow a Museum Pass to Historic Deerfield in Deerfield, MA. Each pass offers free admission for up to 4 visitors. Historic Deerfield is a 330 year old village with more than 11 museum houses which can be explored with guides, two are available for self guided tours. Experience early American life from the 1704 Deerfield Raid and the French and Indian War, to the American Revolution and the first decades of the new Republic. View world-class collections of antiques, special exhibitions, or enjoy an outdoor garden and meadow walk (seasonal). In addition there are family programs, hands-on activities in the Apprentice's Workshop at Dwight House, special events, distinctive shopping, and a tavern lunch.
Historic Deerfield is open daily from 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. from April 16 to November 27, 2011 with the exception of Thanksgiving, Nov. 24. Driving time from Hamden is about one hour and forty minutes. More information about events and exhibits is available online at http://www.historic-deerfield.org/ or from the Hamden Library at 203/287-2680.

Check out our other museum passes

Author Visits

2011-05-06T12:12:00.003-04:00

The Miller Library on 2901 Dixwell Avenue will be hosting two Connecticut author visits in May. The programs are free and open to the public, no registration required. For further information, call 203-287-2680.

Tuesday, May 10th at 7:00 PM
Cruising Connecticut with a Picnic Basket Author Jann Mann
Held in the Friends' Room

Jan Mann will be discussing her book, Cruising Connecticut with a Picnic Basket. The book gives detailed descriptions of forty-two diverse Connecticut destinations with activities suitable to a variety of ages and interests and recipes for picnic fare, will share her experiences and advise participants on trip planning and food preparation appropriate to a variety of surroundings. Ms. Mann, founder of the Open Circle Writer’s Group and member of Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association, explains that in her book, now in an updated 2nd edition, readers will “be introduced to new places as well as get updates on well-known tourist spots” whether they wish to spend an entire day or just need a short interlude “away from the routine in order to get re-energized.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday, May 18th at 7:00 PM
The Old Leather Man Author Dan DeLuca
Held in Thornton Wilder Hall

Dan W. Deluca will be discussing The Old Leather Man. Mr. DeLuca has researched the Leatherman story for more than two decades. His book, a compilation of newspaper accounts, first-person remembrances and rare photographs of the subject, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2008. Mr. DeLuca will discuss the history, the lore and the current battle over The Leatherman’s remains.

For those not familiar with the story, The Leatherman, so named because he dressed in hand-sewn leather garb, travelled a 34-day, 365 mile route on foot through western Connecticut and eastern New York during the late 1800’s, becoming a familiar sight in the towns through which he passed. He slept in a series of caves and lean-tos along his route, keeping his own gardens nearby. He died at age 50 in 1889, his real name unknown. Since then, his legend and the desire to learn his identity has grown in both New York and Connecticut. Those following the latest developments in The Leatherman’s saga know there is currently a heated controversy concerning the possibility of exhuming The Leatherman’s body from it gravesite in Ossining, New York in hopes of using DNA testing to determine the true identity of The Leatherman.

Holocaust Remembrance Day Observance May 6

2011-05-02T16:42:00.005-04:00

"Mayor Scott D. Jackson has proclaimed the week of May 1st through May 8th 2011 as Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust. The Town will host a Holocaust Remembrance Day observance on Friday, May 6th at noon in Thornton Wilder Hall, Miller Library Complex. The ceremony is open to all members of the public. This year’s theme is Justice and Accountability in the Face of Genocide. 2011 marks the 65th anniversary of the verdicts at the first Nuremberg trial and the 50th anniversary of the trial of Adolf Eichmann."

Library materials on the Holocaust by subject headings

Library materials on Adolf Eichmann and his trial

Library materials on the Nuremberg Trial

Snapshot Day 2011

2011-04-21T11:17:00.002-04:00

Did you visit a Hamden Library on April 13th? If you did, you were among 1,143 people who were counted during library’s second annual “Snapshot Day”. On that day 1,463 items were checked out, 15 new cards issued and 154 reference questions answered. 131 people used the library’s free computers, 335 people accessed the library’s website and 112 people attended programs.

Download the special Snapshot Day Edition of our Library Newsletter!

On Snapshot Day library users were also asked to respond to a survey to record the purpose of their visit for the day. From those surveys it was determined that 78% of visitors came to the library to check out materials, 29% to use computers, 27% for quiet study, 19% for research, and 10% to attend a program. Users also provided a variety of comments about the library. John M. said “I couldn’t survive without the library.” Cheri B. said, “The library helped me decide where to buy my home.” Meagan J. said, “It’s a place of peace to read,” while Chelsea N. said, “It’s a place where you can engage with people from all walks of life who live in our community.”

For further information about Snapshot Day results statewide and to see photos taken in many libraries, including Hamden, go to http://snapshotctlib.wordpress.com/about/. For further information about Snapshot day in Hamden, call 287-2680.

Things to do during National Poetry Month: Poem In Your Pocket Day

2011-04-14T10:00:00.001-04:00

Today is national Poem In Your Pocket Day! According to the Poem In Your Pocket Day page on Poets.org, "The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends."

If you're still looking for a poem for your pocket, may I first suggest our librarian Phil's poetry display on the main floor, or our new books section? If you don't find something there, you can look in the children's section or up on our third floor.

For those of you who won't be in today, there's also the poetry and poets search on Poets. org, as well as the Poetry Foundation's archive.

Poets in Hamden Libraries: Amber Tamblyn

2011-04-13T10:00:00.002-04:00

No, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and House actress Amber Tamblyn is not scheduling a trip to Miller Memorial Library, but she is a published poet. You can find one of her collections, Free Stallion in the Young Adult area of Miller Library.

From her blog bio:

Amber Tamblyn was born and raised in Venice, California and is a 3rd generation Californian. She has been a writer and actress since the age of 9. She has been nominated for an Emmy, Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award for her work in television and film. In 2007 she won the Berlin Film Festival award for Best Actress for “Stephanie Daley”, in which starred opposite actress Tilda Swinton... Amber is most recognized for her work as Joan on the CBS television program “Joan of Arcadia”.

Tamblyn is also one of many writers for Blog: Harriet, a feature on The Poetry Foundation's website. The Poetry Foundation is a 501 (c)(3) foundation and the publisher of the oldest monthly publication dedicated to poetry.

The above photo was taken by T. Carrigan onMay 16, 2010, and found here, through Flickr. It is protected by a Creative Commons copyright license.

150th Anniversary of the Civil War

2011-04-12T14:43:00.003-04:00

April 12 marks the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War:

"The War started on April 12, 1861, when Confederate Troops fired on Fort Sumter, a U.S. military post in Charleston, South Carolina. It ended four years later. On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattax Court house, a small Virginia settlement." (quotation from World Book Encyclopedia)

Events in CT

Library materials on the Civil War divided by specific subject headings

DVDs on the Civil War in our library

Talking books on the Civil War in our library

Music CDs on the Civil War in our library

VHS cassettes on the Civil War in our library

To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, iCONN has prepared a web page with links to rich resources.

Performance Poetry: Slam

2011-04-07T14:00:00.001-04:00

Poetry slam is conventionally defined as the art of competitive performance poetry. Invented in the 1980s by a Chicago construction worker named Marc Smith, slam is a fast-paced competition where poets have a limited amount of time to impress judges randomly selected from the audience. Performers use all the tricks of storytelling, songwriting, theatre, stand-up comedy, and cold hard poetry to wheedle points out of the judges from 0.0 (terrible) to 10.0 (perfect!).

(from the "What is poetry slam?" page of this year's National Poetry Slam website)

If you've seen the HBO series "Def Poetry Jam" or the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics, you know what slam poetry sounds like, but have you ever seen it performed? Did you know that Connecticut has its own Youth Slam Poetry team? The team competes in national youth poetry slams, including the first one in Hartford, CT, in 1998. You can learn more about them at Upwords, "a resource for young poets".

Below is a recording of Connecticut Youth Slam alumnae Alexandra Hart and Emily Oliver performing their collaborative poem during the Providence Slam in 2006.

(Please note that the poets slam about eating disorders and self-harm. If these issues trigger you, watch at your own discretion.)

Things to do during National Poetry Month: Memorize a poem

2011-04-06T10:00:00.002-04:00

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

What is the rest of that poem? Have you read the remaining four quatrains? Do you remember them?

I don't, but I think I might like to learn how to remember them. Poets.org has a site with tips for memorizing any poem, not just one by Emily Dickinson, or one that rhymes. Just make sure it's a favorite! That tends to help.

National Poetry Writing Month

2011-04-05T10:00:00.002-04:00

Unlike National Poetry Month, National Poetry Writing Month ("NaPoWriMo") is not a celebration officially recognized by any state or US governmental office. Instead, it's a challenge to those who want to write poetry: finish 30 poems in 30 days.

NaPoWriMo was unofficially "started" by poet Maureen Thorson, of Washington, DC, back in 2003. She wrote 30 poems over the 30 days of April, and posted them on her blog. When other people wrote poems, she'd link to them. After a few years, the community grew so large that Thorson decided to create a website just for NaPoWriMo. You can go there and click on the Participants' sites link to read poems by people participating this year, or submit your site if you want to accept the challenge and publish your poems for others to see.

NaPoWriMo is not affiliated with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) or National Script Writing Month, but it is still a non-profit endeavor.

The above photo was taken by Steve McLauglin and found here, through Flickr. The photo is protected by a Creative Commons copyright.

Poets in Connecticut: Poet Laureate Dick Allen

2011-04-04T10:00:00.005-04:00

Did you know that Connecticut has its own Poet Laureate? I didn't, but we do! The position was created in 1985, and according to the state's Culture and Tourism page about the position, the role of the Poet Laureate is to serve "as an advocate for poetry and [promote] the appreciation of and participation in poetry and literary arts activities among Connecticut citizens".

Dick Allen has been our Poet Laureate since 2010, and will continue to fill the position until 2015. You can read more about him on his website, his publisher's website or the Connecticut Culture and Tourism page about the Poet Laureate.

You can also check out one of Mr. Allen's poetry collections, Present Vanishing, from Miller Memorial Library.

National Poetry Month 2011

2011-04-01T10:00:00.015-04:00

It's National Poetry Month again!

National Poetry month, first established in 1996, is a month-long, national celebration of poetry established by the Academy of American Poets. The concept is to widen the attention of individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic range and concern.

Read Jessica's post about last year's National Poetry Month, or visit the Poets.org site for information during this year's National Poetry Month, including their calendar of events. Additionally, find out about the Connecticut Poetry Society (which meets here at Hamden Library!) or check out some chapbooks or books about poetry from Miller or our branches.

This year's Poem in Your Pocket Day is April 14, 2011.