This site offers news and discussion mostly about books, with a sprinkling of information on personal technology and digital literacy.
Author: Linda Reimer
I am a librarian at The Southeast Steuben County Library in Corning, New York, where we love books, technology and life-long learning for patrons and ourselves too!
Hi everyone, here are our suggested daily recommended titles in print or media and digital formats.
Our digital suggestion for today is the e-book:
The Burial Hour: Lincoln Rhyme Series, Book 13 by Jeffery Deaver:
Forensic detective Lincoln Rhyme is back with his most harrowing case yet in this newest installment of Jeffrey Deaver’s New York Times bestselling series.
A businessman snatched from an Upper East Side street in broad daylight. A miniature hangman’s noose left at the scene. A nine-year-old girl, the only witness to the crime. With a crime scene this puzzling, forensic expertise of the highest order is absolutely essential. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are called in to investigate.
Soon the case takes a stranger turn: a recording surfaces of the victim being slowly hanged, his desperate gasps the backdrop to an eerie piece of music. The video is marked as the work of The Composer…
Despite their best efforts, the suspect gets away. So when a similar kidnapping occurs on a dusty road outside Naples, Italy, Rhyme and Sachs don’t hesitate to rejoin the hunt.
But the search is now a complex case of international cooperation–and not all those involved may be who they seem. Sachs and Rhyme find themselves playing a dangerous game, with lives all across the globe hanging in the balance.
Here’s a link to the checkout page in the Digital Catalog:
And our physical format suggestion for today is the book:
The Constitution of the United States of America
Inscribed & Illustrated by Sam Fink:
In 1787. . .
We were given the right to practice the religion of our choice.
We were given the right to say what we wanted without persecution.
It was written that our house and property were secure from unreasonable
search and seizure. We were given the right to a public trial.
Fifty-five men we will never know sat in a sweltering room and fought for us.
We were given our rights as citizens of the United States.
Every second fall, as we return again to the ballot box to decide the course of our country’s leadership, every voter must find their way back to that room in Philadelphia.
The Constitution of the United States of America, inscribed and illustrated by the master calligrapher, Sam Fink, brings to life the issues underlying the triumphs of this abiding document.
Originally published in pen and ink for Random House in 1987, Mr. Fink has gone back to his original black-and-white art and painted it anew, created a full-color masterpiece. The result is glorious. Each amendment, each article, each word so thoughtfully placed in The Constitution has been given Mr. Fink’s profound touch. With a powerful intelligence and a wonderful sense of humor, he has provided us with an entry point into this complex document, allowing us to read it with greater ease and understanding.
In 1787, we were entrusted with our most important living document, The Constitution of the United States of America. Have we kept it safe? To answer this, we must begin by reading it, each and every one of us—so that we may claim our own intimate knowledge of its content; so that we may never forget its tenets; so that we may remember the kind of world we want to live in. This, Sam Fink, in his direct and unadorned way, respectful and loving, helps us do.
You can also request items by calling the library at: 607-936-3713 x 502.
Have a great day!
Linda, SSCL
Online Catalog Links:
StarCat: The catalog of physical materials, i.e. print books, DVDs, audiobooks on CD etc. http://starcat.stls.org/
The Digital Catalog: The catalog of e-books, downloadable audiobooks and a handful of streaming videos: https://stls.overdrive.com/
Freegal Music Service: This music service is free to library card holders and offers the option to download, and keep, three free songs per week and to stream three hours of commercial free music each day: http://stlsny.freegalmusic.com/
Zinio: Digital magazines on demand and for free! Back issues are available and you can even choose to be notified by email when the new issue of your favorite magazine is available: https://www.rbdigital.com/stlschemungcony
About Library Mobile Apps:
You can access digital library content on PCs, Macs and mobile devices. For mobile devices simply download the OverDrive, Freegal or Zinio app from your app store to get started. If you have questions call the library at: 607-936-3713 and one of our Digital Literacy Specialists will be happy to assist you.
Hi everyone, here are our suggested daily recommended titles in print or media and digital formats.
Our digital suggestion for today is the e-book:
The Bones of Paradise by Jonis Agee:
“The award-winning author of The River Wife returns with a multigenerational family saga set in the unforgiving Nebraska Sand Hills in the years following the massacre at Wounded Knee—an ambitious tale of history, vengeance, race, guilt, betrayal, family, and belonging, filled with a vivid cast of characters shaped by violence, love, and a desperate loyalty to the land.
Ten years after the Seventh Cavalry massacred more than two hundred Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, J.B. Bennett, a white rancher, and Star, a young Native American woman, are murdered in a remote meadow on J.B.’s land. The deaths bring together the scattered members of the Bennett family: J.B.’s cunning and hard father, Drum; his estranged wife, Dulcinea; and his teenage sons, Cullen and Hayward. As the mystery of these twin deaths unfolds, the history of the dysfunctional Bennetts and their damning secrets is revealed, exposing the conflicted heart of a nation caught between past and future.
At the center of The Bones of Paradise are two remarkable women. Dulcinea, returned after bitter years of self-exile, yearns for redemption and the courage to mend her broken family and reclaim the land that is rightfully hers. Rose, scarred by the terrible slaughters that have decimated and dislocated her people, struggles to accept the death of her sister, Star, and refuses to rest until she is avenged.
A kaleidoscopic portrait of misfits, schemers, chancers, and dreamers, Jonis Agee’s bold novel is a panorama of America at the dawn of a new century. A beautiful evocation of this magnificent, blood-soaked land—its sweeping prairies, seas of golden grass, and sandy hills, all at the mercy of two unpredictable and terrifying forces, weather and lawlessness—and the durable men and women who dared to tame it. Intimate and epic, The Bones of Paradise is a remarkable achievement: a mystery, a tragedy, a romance, and an unflagging exploration of the beauty and brutality, tenderness and cruelty that defined the settling of the American West.”
Here’s a link to the checkout page in the Digital Catalog:
And our print suggested read for today is the book:
Cake and the Rain: A Memoir by Jimmy Webb:
Jimmy Webb’s words have been sung to his music by a rich and deep roster of pop artists, including Glen Campbell, Art Garfunkel, Frank Sinatra, Donna Summer and Linda Ronstadt. He’s the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards for music, lyrics, and orchestration, and his chart-topping career has, so far, lasted fifty years, most recently with a Kanye West rap hit and a new classical nocturne.
Now, in his first memoir, Webb delivers a snapshot of his life from 1955 to 1970, from simple and sere Oklahoma to fast and fantastical Los Angeles, from the crucible of his family to the top of his longed-for profession.
Webb was a preacher’s son whose father climbed off a tractor to receive his epiphany, and Jimmy, barely out of his teen age years, sank down into the driver’s seat of a Cobra to speed to Las Vegas to meet with Elvis. Classics such as “Up, Up and Away”, “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”, “Wichita Lineman”, “Galveston”, “The Worst that Could Happen”, “All I Know”, and “MacArthur Park” were all recorded by some of the most important voices in pop before Webb’s twenty-fifth birthday: he thought it was easy.
The sixties were a supernova, and Webb was at their center, whipsawed from the proverbial humble beginnings into a moneyed and manic international world of beautiful women, drugs, cars and planes. That stew almost took him down―but Webb survived, his passion for music and work among his lifelines.
The Cake and The Rain is a surprising and unusual book: Webb’s talent as a writer and storyteller is here on every page. His book is rich with a sense of time and place, and with the voices of characters, vanished and living, famous and not, but all intimately involved with him in his youth, when life seemed nothing more than a party and Webb the eternal guest of honor.
You can also requests books by calling the library at: 607-936-3713 x 502.
Have a great day!
Linda, SSCL
Online Catalog Links:
StarCat: The catalog of physical materials, i.e. print books, DVDs, audiobooks on CD etc. http://starcat.stls.org/
The Digital Catalog: The catalog of e-books, downloadable audiobooks and a handful of streaming videos: https://stls.overdrive.com/
Freegal Music Service: This music service is free to library card holders and offers the option to download, and keep, three free songs per week and to stream three hours of commercial free music each day: http://stlsny.freegalmusic.com/
Zinio: Digital magazines on demand and for free! Back issues are available and you can even choose to be notified by email when the new issue of your favorite magazine is available: https://www.rbdigital.com/stlschemungcony
About Library Mobile Apps:
You can access digital library content on PCs, Macs and mobile devices. For mobile devices simply download the OverDrive, Freegal or Zinio app from your app store to get started. If you have questions call the library at: 607-936-3713 and one of our Digital Literacy Specialists will be happy to assist you.
Hi everyone, here are our suggested daily recommended titles in print or media and digital formats.
Our digital suggestion for today is the e-book:
Bella Poldark by Winston Graham:
The story of the Poldarks draws to a close in the 12th and final installment of this much–admired historical saga.
Cornwall 1818. We continue the tale of Ross and Demelza; of the wayward Valentine Warleggan, whose existence keeps open the old wounds of the feud between Ross and George; of Bella, the Poldark’s youngest daughter, whose precocious talent as a singer is encouraged by her old flame, Christopher Havergal, and by a distinguished French conductor, who has more in mind than Bella’s music; of Clowance, the Poldark’s widowed daughter, who considers remarriage to one of two rival suitors; and of a murderer who stalks the villages of west Cornwall.
‘From the very first lines we tingle with the sense that we are in good hands, transported by Graham’s atmospheric prose back to 1818 and the treacherous coast of craggy Cornwall’ Daily Mail
For your convenience, here is a list of all the books in The Poldark Series:
1. Ross Poldark
2. Demelza
3. Jeremy Poldark
4. Warleggan
5. Black moon
6. Four swans
7. Angry tide
8. Stranger from the sea
9. Miller’s dance
10. Loving cup
11. Twisted sword
12. Bella Poldark
Here’s a link to the checkout page in the Digital Catalog:
New York Times bestselling authors Lisa Jackson, Nancy Bush, and Rosalind Noonan join together in a gripping novel of suspense, as a long-guarded secret plunges three friends into a new nightmare. NO WARNING In the photograph, three teenaged girls splash in the lake on a sweltering summer evening. Shiloh, Kat, and Ruth are unaware of the man who spies on them from the woods. They have no idea how their lives will be changed by the brutal violence that follows–and the vow of secrecy they take. CAN PREPARE YOU Fifteen years later, Ruth and Shiloh have both returned to Prairie Creek, Wyoming, where Kat is deputy sheriff. Though they’ve tried to leave their shared past behind, each has the feeling that someone is lurking in the shadows. When a local girl vanishes, Kat is convinced there’s a connection to that long ago night. But as the friends unite to find the missing teenager, a killer sends a chilling message. FOR A KILLER’S VENGEANCE He’s still there. And he hasn’t forgotten. For so long he’s made do with other victims, but they can’t compare to the ones who got away. The ones who keep searching for him, blind to the terrifying truth that they are not the hunters, but his prey…
You can also request items by calling the library at: 607-936-3713 x 502.
Have a great day!
Linda, SSCL
Online Catalog Links:
StarCat: The catalog of physical materials, i.e. print books, DVDs, audiobooks on CD etc. http://starcat.stls.org/
The Digital Catalog: The catalog of e-books, downloadable audiobooks and a handful of streaming videos: https://stls.overdrive.com/
Freegal Music Service: This music service is free to library card holders and offers the option to download, and keep, three free songs per week and to stream three hours of commercial free music each day: http://stlsny.freegalmusic.com/
Zinio: Digital magazines on demand and for free! Back issues are available and you can even choose to be notified by email when the new issue of your favorite magazine is available: https://www.rbdigital.com/stlschemungcony
About Library Mobile Apps:
You can access digital library content on PCs, Macs and mobile devices. For mobile devices simply download the OverDrive, Freegal or Zinio app from your app store to get started. If you have questions call the library at: 607-936-3713 and one of our Digital Literacy Specialists will be happy to assist you.
Hi everyone, here are our suggested daily recommended titles in print or media and digital formats.
Our digital suggestion for today is the e-book:
The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For
by David McCullough:
A timely collection of speeches by David McCullough, the most honored historian in the United States—winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among many others—that reminds us of fundamental American principles.
Over the course of his distinguished career, David McCullough has spoken before Congress, the White House, colleges and universities, historical societies, and other esteemed institutions. Now, at a time of self-reflection in America following a bitter election campaign that has left the country divided, McCullough has collected some of his most important speeches in a brief volume designed to identify important principles and characteristics that are particularly American. The American Spirit reminds us of core American values to which we all subscribe, regardless of which region we live in, which political party we identify with, or our ethnic background. This is a book about America for all Americans that reminds us who we are and helps to guide us as we find our way forward.
Here’s are links to the checkout pages in the Digital Catalog:
And our suggested print read for today is the book:
Ginny Moon: A Novel by Benjamin Ludwig:
See the world differently.
Meet Ginny Moon. She’s mostly your average teenager—she plays flute in the high school band, has weekly basketball practice, and reads Robert Frost poems in English class.
But Ginny is autistic. And so what’s important to her might seem a bit…different: starting every day with exactly nine grapes for breakfast, Michael Jackson, her baby doll, and crafting a secret plan of escape.
After being traumatically taken from her abusive birth mother and moved around to different homes, Ginny has finally found her “forever home”—a safe place with parents who will love and nurture her. This is exactly what all foster kids are hoping for, right?
But Ginny has other plans. She’ll steal and lie and exploit the good intentions of those who love her—anything it takes to get back what’s missing in her life. She’ll even try to get herself kidnapped.
Told in an extraordinary and wholly original voice, Ginny Moon is at once quirky, charming, heartbreaking, and poignant. It’s a story about being an outsider trying to find a place to belong and about making sense of a world that just doesn’t seem to add up. Taking you into the mind of a curious and deeply human character, Benjamin Ludwig’s novel affirms that fiction has the power to change the way we see the world.
StarCat: The catalog of physical materials, i.e. print books, DVDs, audiobooks on CD etc. http://starcat.stls.org/
The Digital Catalog: The catalog of e-books, downloadable audiobooks and a handful of streaming videos: https://stls.overdrive.com/
Freegal Music Service: This music service is free to library card holders and offers the option to download, and keep, three free songs per week and to stream three hours of commercial free music each day: http://stlsny.freegalmusic.com/
Zinio: Digital magazines on demand and for free! Back issues are available and you can even choose to be notified by email when the new issue of your favorite magazine is available: https://www.rbdigital.com/stlschemungcony
About Library Mobile Apps:
You can access digital library content on PCs, Macs and mobile devices. For mobile devices simply download the OverDrive, Freegal or Zinio app from your app store to get started. If you have questions call the library at: 607-936-3713 and one of our Digital Literacy Specialists will be happy to assist you.
Hi everyone, this week we’re concluding our cliff notes look at Early Sixties Soul Music.
Just as a reminder, each weekly recommended music posting features the following sections:
I. Very Brief Artist Bios
II. Freegal Music Recommendations (streaming music)
III. CD Music Recommendations Of The Week
IV. Videos Of This Week
V. Wild Card Print Book Recommendation Of The Week
VI. References (for those who’d like to know a bit more about the artists of the week).
This week we’ll we’ll check out the music of Gene Chandler, Major Lance and a selection of some of the great artists that recorded for the legendary label Stax Records during the sixties and seventies. And next week we’ll kick off a month long look at the artists and groups of the first British Invasion – the one that started with The Beatles performances on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, and was succeeded by a second British Invasion of more experimental sixties rock, that roughly began with the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band in June of 1967.
I. Very Brief Artist Bios
Gene Chandler: Gene Chandler was born Eugene Dixon on July 6, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. Chandler began his singing career in Chicago in the late fifties singing a mixture of traditional rock n’ roll and R&B as a member of the group The Du-Kays, also seen spelled The Dukays.
The Dukays recorded several cool albums which wove sounds of traditional R&B and rock with doo-wop and, you can hear the emerging sound of Soul music in their early sixties hits. The band had two minor charting singles during the early sixties: The Girl is Evil and Owl Night, and actually recorded a version of the soul classic Duke of Earl. Just after the band recorded their version of Duke of Earl, Gene Dixon decided to go solo and he re-recorded Duke of Earl on a new label and with a new stage name – Gene Chandler. And the song went all the way to the top of the pop charts in 1962. Duke of Earl became Chandler’s signature song and he even went on to perform concerts wearing long robes and a crown as if he truly was an earl.
As a solo artist Chandler stepped away from the Doo Wop style and began singing music that combined the musical elements of Soul Music – traditional Rock N’ Roll and R&B. He never again had a huge cross over hit. However, he continued to hit the R&B charts during the sixties era with several other cool songs including: Just Be True,Bless Our Love and Groovy Situation.
And although the sixties were Chandler’s charting heyday, he continued recording through the seventies and had several more hits including Get Down and Does She Have A Friend.
Today, Chandler lives in Chicago and continues to play concerts.
Major Lance: Major Lance was born in Winterville, Mississippi on April 4, 1939 and moved to Chicago as a youth. Lance sang Gospel music as a child and attended Chicago’s Wells High School where he met two other future Soul & R&B greats, Impressions co-founders Curtis Mayfield and Jerry Butler. Early in his career Lance sang with the Five Gospel Harmonaires and with Otis Leavill and his Floats. And it was Lance’s connection with Leavill, who like Mayfield and Butler was a childhood friend, that landed him his first recording contract with Okeh Records in 1962. Lance’s first single, the Mayfield written tune Delilah, was not a hit; however, his second single, The Monkeytime, was a major league smash. The Monekytime brought Lance to the front and center of attention of pop and R&B fans. The song was a huge crossover hit, cracking the top ten on both the R&B and Pop charts and establishing Lance as a solid member of the new Soul Music scene. Lance had a number of other hits in the sixties including: Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, The Matador, Come And See, Hey Little Girl, Think Nothing About It, Rhythm, Ain’t No Soul (In These Rock ‘N’ Roll Shoes) & Too Hold To Hold.
Lance’s musical heyday was in the sixties, and he sporadically recorded in the seventies and eighties and played concerts until his health failed in the nineties.
Major Lance died in 1994 at the young age of 55 leaving behind some great soul music.
Stax Records: Stax Records was founded in Memphis in 1959 as Volt Records by siblings Jim Stewart and Estelle Stewart Axton. Stewart and Axton changed the name of the label in 1961 by combining the first two letters of their last names.
And many, many artists recorded for Stax and, became well known to music fans as a result, including their house band Booker T. & The MG’s, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Albert King, Johnnie Taylor, Delaney & Bonnie, Eddie Floyd, Isaac Hayes, Little Milton, Mavis Staples, The Bar-Kays, The Dells, The Mar-Keys, William Bell, The Staple Singers and Rufus and Carla Thomas.
During the sixties and early seventies Stax recording artists had a whopping 410 singles hit the charts!
Stax music, collectively, sits at the crossroads of soul, traditional rhythm and blues and traditional rock music; you can hear the elements of all three styles woven into the music of Stax artists. And even though we’re now decades away from the years that saw those charting singles recorded, somehow they still sound as fresh and vibrant today as if they were recorded yesterday.
II. Freegal Music Recommendations (streaming music):
Gene Chandler:
The Very Best of Gene Chandler:
This album contains a selection of Chandler’s sixties hits including: Duke of Earl, Night Owl, You Threw A Lucky Punch, Just Be True, What Now? and more.
The music on this album falls outside the genre of sixties soul instead offering the great sounds of seventies soul with elements of funk woven in — but it is a great album so I thought I’d include it!
Songs on this album include: Get Down, Does She Have a Friend (For Me?) and When You’re # 1.
Here’s a link to stream Gene Chandler’s Greatest Hits (of the seventies): https://goo.gl/wWBAA0
Major Lance:
The Very Best Of Major Lance:
This best of collection features sixteen songs including: The Monekytime, Mama Didn’t Know, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um,Too Hot To Hold and more – here’s a link to stream the Very Best of Major Lance album:
And if you find you love the music of Gene Chandler here ‘s a link to stream a 40 song double album put out by Epic Records simply titled The Essential Major Lance:
Live: 1989 Memphis Music & Heritage Festival by Carla Thomas:
This is short album by Carla Thomas featuring just six songs: Let Me Be Good To You, Stand By Me-Chain Gang Medley, Neither One Of Us, The Birth of the Blues, Little Red Rooster and Gee Whiz. If you haven’t heard Carla Thomas’s music before this is a good introduction that will leave you wanting to hear more!
Here’s a link to stream the album Live: 1989 Memphis Music & Heritage Festival: https://goo.gl/2sUlF3
The RZA Presents Shaolin Soul Selection: Vol. 1 by Various Artists:
This collection features songs by Stax artists including William Bell, Isaac Hayes, Johnnie Taylor, Booker T. & The MG’s, Little Milton & Albert King as well some other great artists/groups including The Sweet Inspirations with Cissy Houston.
Here’s a link to stream The RZA Presents Shaolin Soul Selection: Vol. 1 album: https://goo.gl/SzOV0R
Former Stax Artists Collection:
926 East McLemore – A Reunion of Former Stax Artists, Vol. 1
This set features a number of great artists that recorded for Stax including: Rufus Thomas, The Bar-Kays, Ollie Nightingale & The Mad Lads.
The Girl Don’t Care:
One of Chandler’s best, chock full of midtempo grooves, succulent ballads and jump tunes like “Good Times.” Curtis Mayfield’s “Nothing Can Stop Me” is spiced with punchy horns and choral backing vocals for Gene to play his cool, swaggering tenor against. The pain in his voice is undeniable on “Here Come the Tears,” where he literally cries the agonizing lyrics. He gets philosophical on “The Girl Don’t Care,” an intense ballad that always seems too short. This could almost pass for a greatest-hits LP, since at least six of the selections were released as A-sides. “Fool for You,” as well as the others mentioned above, got their share of plays on soul stations, and all should have been bigger hits. The B-sides occupy most of side two and are just a couple of notches below the plug sides. It’s amazing how overlooked and underappreciated these gems were.
Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um:
Sales didn’t reflect it, but this is probably Curtis Mayfield’s best production, and Lance’s best album: every track is a winner. “Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um,” “Hey Little Girl,” and “The Monkey Time” were major busters for Major Lance; all had a mock cha-cha beat. And the unheralded tracks are just as good: Lance’s “Gypsy Woman” is as haunting as the Impressions’ original; “Think Nothing About It” is endearing and marvelously simplistic, one of Mayfield’s best compositions (Gene Chandler recorded it later). If Okeh had released “That’s What Mama Say” as a single, it would have done some damage (both the Impressions and Walter Jackson recorded the tender mama-done-told-me song, and although Jackson’s version scored an R&B hit, it lacks the bite of Lance’s version). “You’ll Want Me Back” is serene and beautiful; it was also done by the Impressions, but Lance’s rendition stirs the pot. Lance had a more dynamic voice than Mayfield, his childhood friend — it was heavier and had more teeth than Mayfield’s light tenor — yet Mayfield had more all-around skills and became far more successful. The Impressions sing background on most of the tracks, and you can hear the rainbowing of voices with Lance’s cutting through and dominating like a dictator. Take “Little Young Lover,” a good song by the Impressions, but a candidate for hitsville when Lance does it. He does an excellent job on “It’s All Right,” “I’m the One Who Loves You,” and “Gotta Right to Cry”; the latter sounds like a group recording with Lance leading, and the Impressions — Mayfield (first tenor), Fred Cash (baritone), and Sam Gooden (tenor) — trying to win a harmony contest. One listen to this LP, and you’ll be a Major Lance (and Curtis Mayfield) fan for life.
–AllMusic Review by Andrew Hamilton–
Here’s a link to request the CD Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um:
Stax 50th Anniversary Collection by various artists:
When Concord Music purchased Fantasy Records in 2006, the bulging Stax catalog came along for the ride. Not a bad deal, especially since Stax remains one of the richest and most vital sources of ’60s and ’70s soul, blues, and R&B. The newly reactivated label’s debut release is a lavishly boxed double-disc set of 50 highlights–as opposed to hits–from the Memphis label’s voluminous vaults to celebrate its 50th anniversary. All the usual suspects appear, including Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Isaac Hayes, Johnnie Taylor, Eddie Floyd, Albert King, and the Staple Singers. But the compilers deliver a well-rounded, even eclectic collection by including tracks from such relatively obscure acts as the Astors, Ollie & the Nightingales, the Mad Lads, Linda Lyndell, and Mable John, whose “Your Good Thing (Is About to End)” is one of the great lost soul treasures. Propelled in large part by house band Booker T. & the MGs, the majority of these songs have become integral threads in the fabric of American soul. Even at two and a half hours, there’s not a dull moment here. That is a testament not just to the Stax musicians, but to a label whose artists defined a classic sound that remains as timeless, relevant, influential, and electrifying as when it was recorded.
–Hal Horowitz, Amazon Review–
Here’s a link to request the CD Stax 50th Anniversary Collection:
V. Wild Card Print Book Recommendation Of The Week:
Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon
This week I’m going to stay with the monthly musical subject of Sixties Soul and suggest you check out a book and DVD with the same name on that very subject!
The book and DVD are both titled Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion. The book was written by Robert Gordon and here is the starred review from Publishers Weekly: In the late 1950s, Jim Stewart, and his sister, Estelle Axton, moved their little fledgling recording studio into the defunct Capitol Theater in Memphis, Tenn., opening their doors and establishing the record label that gave birth to gritty, funky soul music. A masterful storyteller, music historian Gordon (It Came from Memphis) artfully chronicles the rise and fall of one of America’s greatest music studios, situating the story of Stax within the cultural history of the 1960s in the South. Stewart, a fiddle player who knew he’d never make it in the music business himself, one day overheard a friend talking about producing music; he soon gave it a try, and eventually he was supervising the acclaimed producer Chips Moman in the studio as well as creating a business plan for the label; Estelle Axton set up a record shop in the lobby of the theater, selling the latest discs but also spinning music just recorded in the studio and gauging its market appeal. Gordon deftly narrates the stories of the many musicians who called Stax home, from Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, and Otis Redding to Isaac Hayes, Sam and Dave, and the Staples Singers, as well as the creative marketing and promotional strategies—the Stax-Volt Revue and Wattstax. By the early 1970s, bad business decisions and mangled personal relationships shuttered the doors of Stax. Today, the Stax sound permeates our lives and, in Gordon’s words, became the soundtrack for liberation, the song of triumph, the sound of the path toward freedom.
–Publishers Weekly Review–
The DVD is a documentary based upon Gordon’s book and it can be found in our Non-Fiction DVD Section:
Here’s a link to request the bookRespect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion :
P.S. If you have any questions about how to download or stream free music through the Freegal Music service to a desktop or laptop computer or how to download and use the Freegal Music app let us know! Drop by the library or give us a call at: 607-936-3713
*You must have a library card at a Southern Tier Library System member library to enjoy the Freegal Music Service. Your card can be from any library in the system, and the system includes all public libraries in Steuben, Chemung, Yates, Schuyler and Allegheny Counties and including our own Southeast Steuben Count Library in Corning, New York. Library cards are free and at our library you can obtain one by visiting the Circulation Desk and presenting staff with a form of ID that features both your name and your current address.
Hi everyone, here are our suggested daily recommended titles in print or media and digital formats.
Our digital suggestion for today is the e-book:
Eileen: A Novel by Ottessa Moshfegh:
Shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize and chosen by David Sedaris as his recommended book for his Fall 2016 tour.
So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes—a prison for boys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to use his name for such a place feels appropriate. In a week, I would run away from home and never go back.
This is the story of how I disappeared.
The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys’ prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings.
Played out against the snowy landscape of coastal New England in the days leading up to Christmas, young Eileen’s story is told from the gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much older narrator. Creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimely funny, in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and early Vladimir Nabokov, this powerful debut novel enthralls and shocks, and introduces one of the most original new voices in contemporary literature.
Here’s a link to the checkout page in the Digital Catalog:
And our physical format suggestion for today is print book:
The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science
by Marcus du Sautoy:
“Brilliant and fascinating. No one is better at making the recondite accessible and exciting.” —Bill Bryson
A captivating journey to the outer reaches of human knowledge
Ever since the dawn of civilization we have been driven by a desire to know. But are there limits to human knowledge? Are some things beyond the predictive powers of science and the capacities of the human brain? Or are those challenges the next big discovery waiting to happen?
In The Great Unknown, one of the world’s most brilliant mathematicians takes us into the minds of science’s greatest innovators as he probes the many mysteries we have yet to solve. From the very large to the very small, from the distant future to the deep past, from the complexities of the human brain to the infinities of mathematics, Marcus du Sautoy invites us to join him on a journey to the seven frontiers of knowledge, the outer edges where scientists are actively grappling with the unknown. Can we locate consciousness in the brain? What is dark energy made of? Can we speak of time before the Big Bang? Is it possible to predict the future?
At once exhilarating and mind bending, The Great Unknown will challenge you to think in new ways about every aspect of the known world. Du Sautoy reminds us that major breakthroughs were often ridiculed at the time of their discovery and invites us to consider big questions—about who we are and the nature of God—that even the most creative scientists have yet to answer definitively.
You can request the book by clicking on the following link to StarCat:
StarCat: The catalog of physical materials, i.e. print books, DVDs, audiobooks on CD etc. http://starcat.stls.org/
The Digital Catalog: The catalog of e-books, downloadable audiobooks and a handful of streaming videos: https://stls.overdrive.com/
Freegal Music Service: This music service is free to library card holders and offers the option to download, and keep, three free songs per week and to stream three hours of commercial free music each day: http://stlsny.freegalmusic.com/
Zinio: Digital magazines on demand and for free! Back issues are available and you can even choose to be notified by email when the new issue of your favorite magazine is available: https://www.rbdigital.com/stlschemungcony
About Library Mobile Apps:
You can access digital library content on PCs, Macs and mobile devices. For mobile devices simply download the OverDrive, Freegal or Zinio app from your app store to get started. If you have questions call the library at: 607-936-3713 and one of our Digital Literacy Specialists will be happy to assist you.
Hi everyone, here are our suggested daily recommended titles in print or media and digital formats.
Our digital suggestion for today is the downloadable audiobook:
The House of Shattered Wings, Dominion of the Fallen Series, Book 1,
written by Aliette de Bodard, narrated by Peter Kenny:
Multi-award-winning author Aliette de Bodard brings her story of the War in Heaven to Paris, igniting the City of Light in a fantasy of divine power and deep conspiracy.
In the late twentieth century, the streets of Paris are lined with haunted ruins. The Great Magicians’ War left a trail of devastation in its wake. The grands magasins have been reduced to piles of debris, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine has turned black with ashes and rubble and the remnants of the spells that tore the city apart. But those that survived still retain their irrepressible appetite for novelty and distraction, and the great houses still vie for dominion over France’s once-grand capital.
Once the most powerful and formidable, House Silverspires now lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.
Within the house, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful fallen angel, an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction, and a resentful young man wielding spells of unknown origin. They may be Silverspires’ salvation—or the architects of its last, irreversible fall. And if Silverspires falls, so may the city itself.
Here’s a link to the checkout page in the Digital Catalog:
And our physical format suggestion for today is the book:
Where the Water Goes: Life and Death Along the Colorado River
by David Owen:
A downstream adventure into the heart of one of America’s most important water systems examining where our water comes from and where it all goes
The Colorado River is a crucial resource for a surprisingly large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claimed by someone. David Owen traces all that water from the Colorado’s headwaters to its parched terminus, once a verdant wetland but now a million-acre desert. He takes readers on an adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, reservoirs, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and RV parks, to the spot near the U.S.–Mexico border where the river runs dry.
Water problems in the western United States can seem tantalizingly easy to solve: just turn off the fountains at the Bellagio, stop selling hay to China, ban golf, cut down the almond trees, and kill all the lawyers. But a closer look reveals a vast man-made ecosystem that is far more complex and more interesting than the headlines let on.
The story Owen tells in Where the Water Goes is crucial to our future: how a patchwork of engineering marvels, byzantine legal agreements, aging infrastructure, and neighborly cooperation enables life to flourish in the desert, and the disastrous consequences we face when any part of this tenuous system fails.
StarCat: The catalog of physical materials, i.e. print books, DVDs, audiobooks on CD etc. http://starcat.stls.org/
The Digital Catalog: The catalog of e-books, downloadable audiobooks and a handful of streaming videos: https://stls.overdrive.com/
Freegal Music Service: This music service is free to library card holders and offers the option to download, and keep, three free songs per week and to stream three hours of commercial free music each day: http://stlsny.freegalmusic.com/
Zinio: Digital magazines on demand and for free! Back issues are available and you can even choose to be notified by email when the new issue of your favorite magazine is available: https://www.rbdigital.com/stlschemungcony
About Library Mobile Apps:
You can access digital library content on PCs, Macs and mobile devices. For mobile devices simply download the OverDrive, Freegal or Zinio app from your app store to get started. If you have questions call the library at: 607-936-3713 and one of our Digital Literacy Specialists will be happy to assist you.
Hi everyone, here are our suggested daily recommended titles in print or media and digital formats.
Our digital suggestion for today is the e-book:
House of Earth: A Novel by Woody Guthrie:
Finished in 1947 and lost to readers until now, House of Earth is legendary folk singer and American icon Woody Guthrie’s only finished novel. A powerful portrait of Dust Bowl America, it’s the story of an ordinary couple’s dreams of a better life and their search for love and meaning in a corrupt world.
Tike and Ella May Hamlin are struggling to plant roots in the arid land of the Texas panhandle. The husband and wife live in a precarious wooden farm shack, but Tike yearns for a sturdy house that will protect them from the treacherous elements. Thanks to a five-cent government pamphlet, Tike has the know-how to build a simple adobe dwelling, a structure made from the land itself—fireproof, windproof, Dust Bowl-proof. A house of earth.
A story of rural realism and progressive activism, and in many ways a companion piece to Guthrie’s folk anthem “This Land Is Your Land,” House of Earth is a searing portrait of hardship and hope set against a ravaged landscape. Combining the moral urgency and narrative drive of John Steinbeck with the erotic frankness of D. H. Lawrence, here is a powerful tale of America from one of our greatest artists.
An essay by bestselling historian Douglas Brinkley and Johnny Depp introduce House of Earth, the inaugural title in Depp’s imprint at HarperCollins, Infinitum Nihil.
Here’s a link to the checkout page in the Digital Catalog:
And the physical item for today is the print book:
Arnie: The Life of Arnold Palmer by Tom Callahan:
In this definitive biography, veteran sportswriter Tom Callahan shines a spotlight on one of the greatest golfers ever to play the game, Arnold Palmer.
The winner of more than ninety championships, including four Masters Tournaments, Arnold Palmer was a legend in twentieth century sports: a supremely gifted competitor beloved for his powerful hitting, his nerve on the greens, and his great rapport with fans. Perhaps above all others, Palmer was the reason golf’s popularity exploded, as the King of the links helped define golf’s golden age along with Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player.
In addition to his talent on the golf course, Palmer was a brilliant entrepreneur off it, and one of the first sportsmen to create his own successful marketing brand. Forging an alliance with sports agent Mark McCormick, Palmer parlayed his popularity into lucrative deals, and helped pave the way for the multi-million-dollar contracts that have become standard for stars across all sports. But beyond his business acumen, Palmer was always a larger-than-life character, and Arnie recounts a host of unforgettable anecdotes from a long life in the spotlight.
Tom Callahan knew Palmer well for many years, and now pays tribute to this golfing icon. Filled with great stories from the key people in Palmer’s life, Arnie is an entertaining and illuminating portrait of a remarkable man and his extraordinary legacy.
Here’s a link to the StarCat request page for the book:
You can also requests books simply by calling the library at: 607-936-3713 x 502.
Have a great day!
Linda, SSCL
Online Catalog Links:
StarCat: The catalog of physical materials, i.e. print books, DVDs, audiobooks on CD etc. http://starcat.stls.org/
The Digital Catalog: The catalog of e-books, downloadable audiobooks and a handful of streaming videos: https://stls.overdrive.com/
Freegal Music Service: This music service is free to library card holders and offers the option to download, and keep, three free songs per week and to stream three hours of commercial free music each day: http://stlsny.freegalmusic.com/
Zinio: Digital magazines on demand and for free! Back issues are available and you can even choose to be notified by email when the new issue of your favorite magazine is available: https://www.rbdigital.com/stlschemungcony
About Library Mobile Apps:
You can access digital library content on PCs, Macs and mobile devices. For mobile devices simply download the OverDrive, Freegal or Zinio app from your app store to get started. If you have questions call the library at: 607-936-3713 and one of our Digital Literacy Specialists will be happy to assist you.
Hi everyone, here are our suggested daily recommended titles in print or media and digital formats.
Our digital suggestion for today is the downloadable e-book:
What Happened on Beale Street: Secrets of the South Mysteries by Mary Ellis:
What Happened on Beale Street is an exciting addition to the Secrets of the South Mysteries from bestselling author Mary Ellis. These standalone, complex crime dramas follow a private investigator’s quest to make the world a better place…solving one case at a time. A cryptic plea for help from a childhood friend sends cousins Nate and Nicki Price from New Orleans to Memphis, the home of scrumptious barbecue and soulful blues music. When they arrive at Danny Andre’s last known address, they discover signs of a struggle and a lifestyle not in keeping with the former choirboy they fondly remember. Danny’s sister, Isabelle, reluctantly accepts their help. She and Nate aren’t on the best of terms due to a complicated past, yet they will have to get beyond that if they want to save Danny. On top of Danny’s alarming disappearance and his troubled relationship with Isabelle, Nate also has to rein in his favorite cousin’s overzealousness as a new and eager PI. Confronted with a possible murder, mystery, and mayhem in the land of the Delta blues, Nate must rely on his faith and investigative experience to keep one or more of them from getting killed.
Here’s a link to the checkout page in the Digital Catalog:
The story of two girls and the wild year that will cost one her life, and define the other’s for decades
Everything about fifteen-year-old Cat’s new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter until she meets her neighbor, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat is quickly drawn into Marlena’s orbit and as she catalogues a litany of firsts―first drink, first cigarette, first kiss, first pill―Marlena’s habits harden and calcify. Within the year, Marlena is dead, drowned in six inches of icy water in the woods nearby. Now, decades later, when a ghost from that pivotal year surfaces unexpectedly, Cat must try again to move on, even as the memory of Marlena calls her back.
Told in a haunting dialogue between past and present, Marlena is an unforgettable story of the friendships that shape us beyond reason and the ways it might be possible to pull oneself back from the brink.
StarCat: The catalog of physical materials, i.e. print books, DVDs, audiobooks on CD etc. http://starcat.stls.org/
The Digital Catalog: The catalog of e-books, downloadable audiobooks and a handful of streaming videos: https://stls.overdrive.com/
Freegal Music Service: This music service is free to library card holders and offers the option to download, and keep, three free songs per week and to stream three hours of commercial free music each day: http://stlsny.freegalmusic.com/
Zinio: Digital magazines on demand and for free! Back issues are available and you can even choose to be notified by email when the new issue of your favorite magazine is available: https://www.rbdigital.com/stlschemungcony
About Library Mobile Apps:
You can access digital library content on PCs, Macs and mobile devices. For mobile devices simply download the OverDrive, Freegal or Zinio app from your app store to get started. If you have questions call the library at: 607-936-3713 and one of our Digital Literacy Specialists will be happy to assist you.
