No matter which end of the tea spectrum I choose to begin my careful exploration, I find the library has several books covering various topics related to the tea world that peak my interest.  First of all, I immediately relax with a book in my hand.  Now the choice is to plunge myself into the intriguing history of tea or learn more about the types of tea and where the plants are grown.  Proper water quality, water temperature and steeping times are critical to know.  Yet I do love thumbing through pages of photos of exquisite tea pots and tea cups.  And what about the irresistible recipes like miniature blackberry muffins and cucumber sandwiches?  Of course, when I finish my cup of tea I always have the leaves to read.  What about inviting a friend over for tea?

Start your tea party for one or more by looking through this list of books available at the library: Tea.

Author note: Karen is currently reading “The Street Sweeper” by Elliot Perlman.

“Swamplandia!” by Karen Russell

“Swamplandia!” is a hilarious and heartbreaking and beautifully written book about a family that runs an alligator theme park. Since Ava’s alligator-wrestling mother died (of cancer, not alligator wrestling) the park has struggled. Ava is trying to save the park, but she must also contend with being a child and with a sister that is hell-bent on reaching the underworld so that she can marry a ghost.

Karen Russell dispenses metaphors as fresh as the air in the middle of the ocean at the top of a mountain directly underneath a blimp used to manufacture environmentally friendly “Fresh Aire” air fresheners, and it would be easy to reread nearly every sentence for the pleasure of her wordsmithing were it not necessary to proceed to the next, chasing these fantastic characters. A+. Would read again. – Chris S.

“The Boy in the Moon” by Ian Brown

The Boy in the Moon is an absorbing and graceful story of a father helping to raise his “profoundly disabled” son.  It is a powerful examination of what it means to be a parent and what it means to be human.  Brown approaches this potentially somber topic with thoughtfulness and humor. – Melissa S.

“In Zanesville” by Jo Ann Beard

Beard expertly captures the bittersweet misery of coming of age in small town USA, of entering high school, discovering your weirdness, boys, the weirdness of boys, the agony of being ignored by the popular crowd and the agony of not being ignored by the popular crowd. By turns funny and tender, the fourteen-year-old narrator’s voice rings true, as do the stories of her babysitting disasters, awkward sleepovers and keggers in the woods. – L.

Ursa Corregidora, a young black lounge singer in post-WWII Kentucky, suffers the miscarriage of her first child and cannot bear any more children. This is at odds with the imperative driven into her since her birth for her to “make generations” to whom she can orally pass on the horrors of slavery (white plantation owners raping and impregnating black female slaves with impunity). This storytelling practice was begun by her great-grandmother, a former slave, and passed to her daughter and granddaughter. So what can Ursa do when her purpose in life is gone? That question was ever-present as I read, the first-person point of view making me feel every inch of Ursa’s dilemma. A cathartic read that will change any reader’s view of slavery.

For more reading recommendations related to Black History Month, see February’s Literary Links, a column that appears monthly in the Ovation section of the Columbia Daily Tribune.

Last week, Penguin Group became the third major U.S. publisher to refuse to license eBooks to public libraries.  They also chose to stop offering their downloadable audiobook titles.  Penguin is the publisher of many popular authors, including Nora Roberts, Patricia Cornwell and Tom Clancy.  We already have quite a few titles by these authors in our OverDrive catalog, which you will still be able to check out, but we will be unable to acquire any new titles or additional copies.  The other two publishers, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster, have never allowed libraries to license their eBooks.  Unfortunately, this means that if you are looking to check out Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs (Simon & Schuster) or the first sixteen books in the Stephanie Plum series (Macmillan) you are currently out of luck.

In addition, Penguin Kindle titles in our OverDrive catalog will no longer be delivered through a WiFi connection from Amazon.  These titles will need to be downloaded to your computer first and then transferred using a USB cord.  We offer instructions for transferring a Kindle book via USB in our Quick Start Guide.  Kindle titles from other publishers can still be delivered wirelessly.

As we continue to increase the size of our eBook collection, we hope you understand some of the limitations that are placed on us.  It is our mission to provide a wide variety of reading materials to a diverse group of readers, and we are always willing to take suggestions.

If you would like to contact the publishers mentioned above about their eBook licensing policies, please find their contact information below:

Macmillan Publishing
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
888.330.8477
customerservice@mpsvirginia.com

Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
(212) 698-7000
http://simonandschuster.com/about/contact_us

Penguin Group
375 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
(212) 366-2000
ecommerce@us.penguingroup.com

In celebration of Black History Month, we’d like to build upon the previous posts in this blog series (including an overview of Black History Month and a feature on African-American female authors and poets). Since the 2012 theme is “Black Women in American Culture and History,” this week we’ve decided to showcase the library’s CDs by and DVDs about African-American female musicians.

In addition to the works of these artists (listed below), you may also enjoy this list of music CDs featuring African-American gospel, folk, blues, R&B, jazz and other musical styles, as well as the DVD tribute to African-American women titled “I Will.” Last but not least, be sure to check out related events at the library, including tomorrow night’s showing of Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair at Center Aisle Cinema, Doug Hunt’s presentation of Boone County slave Sanford Shirkey’s unlikely emancipation and upcoming performances by storyteller Lyn Ford.

African-American Female Musicians at DBRL

Credits:

• Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune photo by Gordon Parks, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Ella Fitzgerald photo by William P. Gottlieb, William P. Gottlieb/Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress. (Part of the Golden Age of Jazz collection that entered the public domain on February 16, 2010.)
• Marian Anderson photo by Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Shirley Chisholm photo by Thomas J. O’Halloran, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Collage format courtesy of Photovisi.com.

As a child, I hated my mother’s insistence on healthy eating and preference for fresh foods over processed and packaged ones. As an adult, I am completely grateful to her. And both then and now I appreciate how she set aside her strict rules each Valentine’s Day. The same woman who looked scandalized when we asked for Lucky Charms or Oreos baked each of us an entire heart-shaped cake of our own every February 14. We would carve off and eat huge slabs of cake each night after dinner until nothing but crumbs were left.

Now I have two kids of my own, and like my mom, I’m hyper aware of what they put in their bodies, frequenting farmers markets and buying organic when I can afford it. My cupboards don’t contain Oreos either. This Valentine’s Day, I also plan on making a cake for my girls in the same (now dented) heart-shaped pan in which she baked mine.

I’m not sure what chocolate cake recipe mom used, but I plan on making what is now my favorite baked treat of all time, Molly Wizenberg’s “Winning Hearts and Minds” cake. Wizenberg writes the food blog Orangette, and she compiled some of her writing – including the story of this cake – into the food memoir, “A Homemade Life.” She served her wedding guests this dense, rich and fudgey dessert, which is made of butter, chocolate, sugar, eggs and just a tablespoon of flour. What better expression of love than something that tastes so sweet and good?

For your Valentine’s Day, enjoy this list of books exploring food and love, love of food and how sharing a meal provides so much more than simply physical nourishment. I hope you will be inspired to make something sweet for your own sweeties. Enjoy!

As the generations turn, as our family expands, the table and its simple pleasures–never just the food, but the food and the talk, the food and the laughter, the food and the tears, the jokes, the memories, the hopes–still hold us in place, well anchored in a safe harbor.

– from “Keeping the Feast” by Paula Butturini

To get back the feeling of accomplishment from finishing a book once in awhile, I’ve started seeking out shorter books. In the new books section alone, we have several that are right around 100 pages. This week, I chose one and read in stolen minutes: while eating lunch, waiting for an oil change and just before going to sleep. Guess what? I finished the book in three days!

Below is my review for the book I just read, but stay tuned for more posts on ”Short Books for Busy Readers,” coming soon!

“Follow Me Down”
by Kio Stark
110 pages

When she can no longer deal with the heartache that her addict brother causes her, Lucy moves to a new city. After settling in, she spends almost all of her free time taking photographs of urban decay, but she never takes pictures with people in them unless they will appear blurred from motion. Her fascination with the world “after people” and “the ruins we leave behind” hints at a simultaneous distraction from and underlying obsession with the emotional wreckage in her own life.

Then a letter that has been lost in the mail for 20 years is mistakenly delivered to her new apartment, and Lucy becomes determined to find out who originally sent it and why. However, it is not really clear if she’s driven by a desire to get further away from her brother or closer to him. Themes of identity and belonging are interwoven in this novel to create a truly interesting character: one who is seen by almost everyone but known by no one, who circulates in many places but belongs in none, who interacts so easily with others in a variety of social settings yet seems deeply uncomfortable with certain aspects of herself.

February is Black History Month, and this year’s theme is “Black Women in American Culture and History.” As part of the library’s celebration of Black History Month, we would like to honor African-American female authors and poets by promoting their literature, so we’ve created a list of authors (below) with links to their works in the DBRL library catalog.

While this list focuses on female authors who write literature for adults rather than children’s literature (including writers of urban fiction and urban christian fiction, among other genres including novels, short stories, poetry, and some non-fiction), we have made an effort to cover the library’s collection as comprehensively as possible. Please leave a comment if you notice mistakes or omissions.

Happy reading!

African-American Female Authors and Poets at DBRL:

Many thanks to the University of Pennsylvania for their excellently researched list of female African-American authors, which was heavily used in compiling this list.

Credits:

• Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune photo by Gordon Parks, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Ella Fitzgerald photo by William P. Gottlieb, William P. Gottlieb/Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress. (Part of the Golden Age of Jazz collection that entered the public domain on February 16, 2010.)
• Marian Anderson photo by Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Shirley Chisholm photo by Thomas J. O’Halloran, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
• Collage format courtesy of Photovisi.com.

Charles Dickens was born 200 years ago today, on February 7, 1812. He lived most of his life in London, receiving a sparse formal education, but observing everything and reading voraciously. He suffered the effects of poverty first-hand, spending a stint working in a factory at the age of twelve to support his family, while his father served a term in debtors’ prison. These experiences influenced his literary work, where he examined class issues again and again. “Hard Times” described the poor working conditions in industrial settings of the day, while “Oliver Twist” showed the lives of characters even further down the economic ladder – workhouse residents and street children.

Many biographies of Dickens have been published in recent years. Two of the newer ones are “Becoming Dickens” by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst and “Charles Dickens, a Life” by Claire Tomalin. To read more about Charles Dickens’ life, work and times, check out some of the articles in the Literature Resource Center database, or try our catalog list, titled “Charles Dickens.”

There are many titles in the DBRL collection on card making that run the gamut from very simple to complex card types, including pop-up cards.  Alisa Golden is a book artist, but many of her simpler book designs make beautiful cards.  Her instructions are clear, and there is much inspiration to be found in her work.  I checked out her titles so frequently that I finally broke down and purchased them.

Wondering what to say in that card you just hand-made?  Let the romantic poetry books on this list fuel your personal sentiments.  Or perhaps include another’s poem if you are feeling at a loss for words–a good way to spread around poems like “We Were Love” by Yaedi Ignatow.

Moving on to sweets and zeroing in on chocolate, here is a list of cookbooks featuring chocolate desserts, cookies and candy. What about making a dark chocolate truffle tart to wow your sweetie?  Nicole Hunn has this easy recipe on her blog Gluten-Free on a Shoestring (which also happens to be a book in DBRL’s collection).  I made it recently for my son’s 16th birthday, at his request, and the artful looking tart was divinely rich and delicious.  If gluten is not a dietary issue for you, simply use a regular pastry crust for this tart.

On February 9 the Southern Boone County Public Library has a Valentine’s Card Party providing an opportunity for kids to get in on the card making, and the weekend of February 11 the Friends of the Columbia Public Library are having a book sale featuring romance novels, among other genres.  Check out our online program guide for details.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Read more posts by Larkspur on DBRL Next.