Art Imitates Life

I will start off by saying this book covers some very difficult topics - but it made me think and want to discuss it with people and frankly, two weeks after I finished reading it, the exact same topic was in the newspaper. So even though it is difficult I think it is worth reading and discussing Priscille Sibley's novel The Promise of Stardust.

This is a Cookbook by Max and Eli Sussman

Max Sussman, a "Rising Star" James Beard Award nominee in 2012, and his partner Eli have concocted a fun and concise cookbook for serious foodies and rank kitchen amateurs to enjoy. As a former chef and one of those "serious foodies", This Is A Cookbook surprised me with how many innovative and easy to follow recipes it provided for a wide range of tastes and culinary skill levels.

Their approach to main dishes and starters is amazing and I still use their '48 Hour Pickle' recipe as a staple in my home. Trust me here . . . the Sussmans know what they're doing. Their collection of food ideas will hopefully be a staple in your home as well.

- Guest blogger Mark W.

Good Reads

It seems we spend most of our time in distracted reading – quickly scanning a webpage, an online article, or a report for work – without actually taking time to connect the concepts to other thoughts and ideas. “In a world of endless information,” writes David Ulin, “How do we pause when we must know everything in an instant? How do we ruminate when we are constantly expected to respond? How do we immerse in something when we are no longer willing to give ourselves the space to reflect?” He discusses why books are still important in The Lost Art of Reading

There are so many good books out there, but sometimes it’s hard to find the right one. Your favorite authors are in between novels, and nothing you pick up seems to fill the void.  You start those first few pages and quickly lose interest. It’s a reading rut. Did you know, on our catalog page, under Popular Links is a link to get an emailed list of personalized good reads?

We’ll ask you a couple questions and within a week, you will receive a response from one of our fabulous readers’ advisory staff. They might recommend titles, authors or both, depending on what you’ve enjoyed in the past. In 2013, we sent tailored suggestions out to 111 community members. Help us double our numbers for 2014 and fill out the form now!

~ Betsy

Children's Blizzard

January 12th, 1888 began as an unseasonably mild day in the upper Midwest prairie. For the first time in months, immigrant children walked to school without coats and gloves. Farmers flocked to their fields to finish chores abandoned when winter descended in November. Then suddenly and without warning, the clear skies turned gray and a wall of ice dust and freezing temperatures blasted in from Canada, covering 780 miles and dropping temperatures to 47 degrees below zero in parts of Minnesota. The Children's Blizzard, by David Laskin, rivetingly recounts how this treacherous and unanticipated storm blanketed the Dakota Territories, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota, catching people unawares and leaving in its wake a death toll estimated at nearly 500.

Cook Fight

Cook fight : 2 Cooks, 12 Challenges, 125 Recipes : an Epic Battle for Kitchen Dominance pits New York Times food writer Kim Severson against fellow food writer and friend Julia Moskin in a spirited series of culinary challenges - not only testing ingredients but the very core of their friendship. The blame lies with office mate and

Community Picks

Any librarian or bookseller will tell you, if a book is marked as a "Staff Pick" it will get snatched off the shelves immediately. I'm sure somewhere a sociologist has written a dissertation about why this is so. I'd like to turn the tables a bit and see what happens when the community picks the books for display. We will have a display shelf at the Main library starting early January that shows off books that are loved by various community members.

Let It Snow

Ah, the holidays. This is the time of year when families come together in perfect harmony, cheerful parties go off exactly as planned, and we all just sort of float blissfully from one stack of attractively-wrapped gifts to the next while bells jingle and Yule logs crackle somewhere in the distance. Or that's how we always imagine it, anyway. But sometimes the idyllic holiday we picture falls by the wayside when the cookies burn, the dog eats all the pigs-in-a-blanket when nobody's looking, and the car breaks down on the way to Grandma's house. Sometimes real life gets in the way. But that's when the magic happens--at least, according to John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle.

In Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances, three interlinked stories feature a circle of friends in a small Southern town who find love and laughter while making their way through one night where nothing goes as planned--a record snowstorm, travel delays, unrequited crushes, dead cellphone batteries, a Waffle House full of stranded cheerleaders, and a search for a pet pig (it’s a long story). A pinch of holiday magic turns these less-than-ideal circumstances into a night full of friendship, romance, hilarity, and the kind of stuff that holidays are really about--the kind of interesting, real-life enchantment that happens when plans go awry. The best gifts, after all, are the most unexpected ones.

Fans of the authors especially won’t want to miss out on this special and offbeat treat.