The Holiday Seasons are Here

Hello all! I hope you are all getting ready to enjoy a restful Thanksgiving. The library will be closed tomorrow (Thursday) and Friday for the holiday, but we'll be back to business on Saturday at 10:00 a.m., and we'll be running two special programs this December.

From now until the end of the year, the library is holding its Holiday Donation Drive. For this holiday season, please consider supporting your community by making a tax-deductable donation to the Giles County Public Library. If you make a donation in honor or memory of a loved one anytime this year, you will receive:

• A card notifiying the recipient of your gift
• Recognition of your donation in the front of a new library book
• A 2013 tax-deduction receipt
• Removal of late fees equal to double your donation amount!

Starting Monday, November 26th and continuing on to Sunday, December 9th (those are the two weeks following the Thanksgiving holidays) the library will also offer Two Weeks of Fine Forgiveness. If you have overdue books stashed away at home, you can bring them by the library at any time during the coming two weeks and any accrued overdue fines will be waived from those items. So, if you have any books that you've been afraid to return, bring them over on the 26th!

If you have any questions about these programs or other library events in December, feel free to call us at (931) 363-2720.

Have a safe holiday,
Chris

The National Book Award and the After Hours Book Club

The winners of the National Book Award were announced this week. The National Book Foundation selected Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers for the Nonfiction prize, David Ferry's Bewilderment for poetry, William Alexander's Goblin Blood for young people's literature. Last but not least, Louise Erdrich's The Round House won out over a group of heavy-hitting contenders for the fiction prize, and I'd like to note that the library's After Hours Book Club was a couple weeks ahead of the National Book Foundation. They chose The Round House for November's book club read. That's all the more reason to check out Ms. Erdrich's novel and join us for snacks and a discussion on Monday, November 26th at 7:00 p.m. The rest of the NBA winners are available at the library, so be sure to come by and check them out or add your name to the reserve list.

On a related note, the Best of the Year lists are rolling out already, and Amazon.com has recently posted theirs. You can find some real stand-outs in that list, so look it over and look them up at the library!

Keep Reading,
Chris

Book Review - Telegraph Avenue

I'd like to share with all of you a real knockout read that I finished recently -- namely, Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon. Chabon may be best known for his 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a book "about" the golden age of comic books during the World War II. It was a jam-packed book with a full cast of characters, and Telegraph Avenue is no different on that front. Telegraph covers the lives of several paired characters (primarily record store owners Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe, their wives and midwifery practitioners Gwen and Aviva, and a pair of young sons, Julie Jaffe and Titus Joyner, Archy's surprise, long-lost son), but the story itself is as much informed by its setting as it is by its people. Telegraph Avenue represents a melting pot neighborhood that joins the traditionally white Berkely with traditional black Oakland. Chabon masterfully encapsulates the major issues of race relations and the survival of tightly-knit communities by infusing them into the world of the story and the daily life of his characters, rather than subjecting us to a full rant. He invokes the spirit of this neighborhood and paints such unique and stunning portraits of its denizens that the book makes for quite an absorbing read, with plenty of pay-off at the end. It is good to know that an author can lay out so many characters and subplots and still weave them together by the novel's end.

Keep reading,
Chris

Of Newsletters and New Selections

The library is back to business and has sent out the latest newsletter this morning! Check your mail (or e-mail) boxes for library news, event dates, and reviews. If you haven't joined our online mailing list, you can sign up to receive the library newsletter by email. Just contact us at glibrary@bellsouth.net and put "Newsletter" in the subject of the email.

As for the latest word in "Book News," autumn brings book awards season, and the finalists for the National Book Award have just been announced. The fiction list has packed in some heavy hitters this year, several of which have made the front pages of the New York Times Book Review, from Pulitzer Prize Winner Junot Diaz to debut novelist Kevin Powers. I'm rooting for Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. This one's a beautifully written and true-to-life story of a squad of Iraq War soldiers who have returned home briefly for a wild, highly publicized "Victory Tour." Nonfiction contenders include the much-talked-about Behind the Beautiful Forevers (the story of a makeshift town built in the shadow of a Mumbai airport) and Robert A. Caro's latest installment in his biography of Lyndon Johnson, covering the Johnson's transition from Vice President to President. Both of these have been listed on Amazon.com's list of the Best Books of the Year So Far . For a full list of the nominees in each category, check out the National Book Foundation's website. And you can always check these books out for yourself at the library. We have a display set up near the front desk. If the book you're looking for is already checked out, be sure to put your name on the reserve list at the front desk! Before the winners are announced on November 14th, why not go through the contenders and make your own picks?

Until next time,
Chris

Puppet Shows Coming Soon

Attention all puppet lovers! The Travelling Tales Puppet Theatre will return for two farewell shows in the coming weeks. Mark your calendars for shows on

Friday, September 28th at 10:15 a.m.

Wednesday, October 10th at 10:15 a.m.

These will be our last puppet shows, as our puppeteer extraordinaire Anna Hudson will be retiring October 10th after a great 6 year run as library director.

YA Book Review: A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix

In this sci-fi novel from the author of Sabriel we meet Khemri, a young man just starting his life as a Prince of the Empire, a sprawling collection of planet and galaxies throughout space ruled by the Emperor and the 10,000 Princes. Though the holdings of the Empire are far-flung, they are connected by a series of wormholes and a psychic communication network called the Imperial Mind that connects all Princes to the Emperor. Young children are selected to be Prince Candidates and are removed from their families before undergoing rigorous alterations that make them into superhuman servants of the Empire. The Princes lead lives of privilege, but also of danger: not only must they perform sometimes dangerous tasks for the Empire, but violence among them is also common, from assassinations to duels. Fortunately, Princes in good standing can be reborn again and again. This story of Prince Khemri’s life and three deaths is filled with action, adventure, and mystery as he tries to find his place in an Empire that may not be exactly as he was led to believe.

I found A Confusion of Princes to be a refreshing addition to the Young Adult collection. Science fiction is rare among teen books, and good sci-fi even more so. Though some of the tek advancements are a bit fanciful, Nix manages to keep his novel out of the space fantasy void that authors tend to fall into, but also refrains from being so science-heavy as to be confusing for anyone without a physics degree. If you are looking for a fun read filled with adventure and suspense, this is the book for you!

The After Hours Book Club -- September 24th

The library's evening book club for adults, the After Hours Book Club, will meet again next Monday (September 24th) at 7:00 p.m. at Common Ground. If you haven't heard yet, we're doing things a little differently this month. We've put together a packet of some definitive contemporary short stories, with authors ranging from Vladimir Nabokov to recent Pulitzer Prize nominee Karen Russell. There's sure to be something for everyone, so pick up a packet (which includes audio CDs with recordings of 6 stories ) at the library's Lynnville Branch and dive in!