Daily Print & Digital Suggested Reads: Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Hi everyone, here are our suggested daily recommended titles in print and digital formats.

Our Digital Catalog suggested title for today is the downloadable audiobook:

lab-girl

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren:

National Best Seller
Named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People”
A TIME and Entertainment Weekly Best Book of 2016 So Far

An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world

Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she’s studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book is a revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also so much more.

Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren’s remarkable stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom’s labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done “with both the heart and the hands”; and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, of scientific work.

Yet at the core of this book is the story of a relationship Jahren forged with a brilliant, wounded man named Bill, who becomes her lab partner and best friend. Their sometimes rogue adventures in science take them from the Midwest across the United States and back again, over the Atlantic to the ever-light skies of the North Pole and to tropical Hawaii, where she and her lab currently make their home.

Jahren’s probing look at plants, her astonishing tenacity of spirit, and her acute insights on nature enliven every page of this extraordinary book. Lab Girl opens your eyes to the beautiful, sophisticated mechanisms within every leaf, blade of grass, and flower petal. Here is an eloquent demonstration of what can happen when you find the stamina, passion, and sense of sacrifice needed to make a life out of what you truly love, as you discover along the way the person you were meant to be.

Here’s a link to the request page in the Digital Catalog:

https://stls.overdrive.com/media/2236922

And our Print Book Suggested Read for today is:

boat-rocker

The Boat Rocker: A Novel by Ha Jin:

From the award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash: an urgent, timely novel that follows an aspiring author, an outrageous book idea,and a lone journalist’s dogged quest for truth in the Internet age.

New York, 2005. Chinese expatriate Feng Danlin is a fiercely principled reporter at a small news agency that produces a website read by the Chinese diaspora around the world. Danlin’s explosive exposés have made him legendary among readers—and feared by Communist officials. But his newest assignment may be his undoing: investigating his ex-wife, Yan Haili, an unscrupulous novelist who has willingly become a pawn of the Chinese government in order to realize her dreams of literary stardom.

Haili’s scheme infuriates Danlin both morally and personally—he will do whatever it takes to expose her as a fraud. But in outing Haili, he is also provoking her powerful political allies,and he will need to draw on all of his journalistic cunning to emerge from this investigation with his career—and his life—still intact. A brilliant, darkly funny story of corruption, integrity, and the power of the pen, The Boat Rocker is a tour de force of modern fiction.

Here’s a link to the request page in StarCat:

https://goo.gl/DVYD63

Or 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.

Daily Print & Digital Suggested Reads: Thursday, November 3, 2016

Hi everyone, here are our suggested daily recommended titles in print and digital formats.

Our Digital Catalog suggested title for today is the e-book:

talking-as-fast-as-i-can

Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between) by Lauren Graham:

“In this collection of personal essays, the beloved star of Gilmore Girls and Parenthood reveals stories about life, love, and working as a woman in Hollywood—along with behind-the-scenes dispatches from the set of the new Gilmore Girls, where she plays the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore once again.

In Talking as Fast as I Can, Lauren Graham hits pause for a moment and looks back on her life, sharing laugh-out-loud stories about growing up, starting out as an actress, and, years later, sitting in her trailer on the Parenthood set and asking herself, “Did you, um, make it?” She opens up about the challenges of being single in Hollywood (“Strangers were worried about me; that’s how long I was single!”), the time she was asked to audition her butt for a role, and her experience being a judge on Project Runway (“It’s like I had a fashion-induced blackout”).

In “What It Was Like, Part One,” Graham sits down for an epic Gilmore Girls marathon and reflects on being cast as the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore. The essay “What It Was Like, Part Two” reveals how it felt to pick up the role again nine years later, and what doing so has meant to her.

Some more things you will learn about Lauren: She once tried to go vegan just to bond with Ellen DeGeneres, she’s aware that meeting guys at awards shows has its pitfalls (“If you’re meeting someone for the first time after three hours of hair, makeup, and styling, you’ve already set the bar too high”), and she’s a card-carrying REI shopper (“My bungee cords now earn points!”).

Including photos and excerpts from the diary Graham kept during the filming of the recent Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, this book is like a cozy night in, catching up with your best friend, laughing and swapping stories, and—of course—talking as fast as you can.”

Here’s a link to the request page in the Digital Catalog:

https://stls.overdrive.com/media/2729822

And our Print Book Suggested Read for today is:

thrice

Thrice The Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d by Alan Bradley:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Hailed as “a combination of Eloise and Sherlock Holmes” by The Boston Globe, Flavia de Luce returns in a much anticipated new Christmas mystery from award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Alan Bradley.

In spite of being ejected from Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy in Canada, twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce is excited to be sailing home to England. But instead of a joyous homecoming, she is greeted on the docks with unfortunate news: Her father has fallen ill, and a hospital visit will have to wait while he rests. But with Flavia’s blasted sisters and insufferable cousin underfoot, Buckshaw now seems both too empty—and not empty enough. Only too eager to run an errand for the vicar’s wife, Flavia hops on her trusty bicycle, Gladys, to deliver a message to a reclusive wood-carver. Finding the front door ajar, Flavia enters and stumbles upon the poor man’s body hanging upside down on the back of his bedroom door. The only living creature in the house is a feline that shows little interest in the disturbing scene. Curiosity may not kill this cat, but Flavia is energized at the prospect of a new investigation. It’s amazing what the discovery of a corpse can do for one’s spirits. But what awaits Flavia will shake her to the very core.

You can request the title by clicking on the following link to StarCat:

https://goo.gl/aSojsI

Or 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.

Daily Print & Digital Suggested Reads: Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Hi everyone, here are our suggested daily recommended read in print and digital formats.

And the digital suggestion for today is a streaming video from the STLS Digital Catalog:

Sunlight Jr

Sunlight Jr. (2013):

Starring Naomi Watts, Matt Dillon, Norman Reedus & Tess Harper: Melissa and Richie live below the poverty line, surviving on Richie’s monthly disability check and Melissa’s small hourly wage from her job at a convenience store. Desperately poor but very much in love, they are ecstatic when they discover that Melissa is pregnant. But when the restraining order she placed on her obsessive ex-boyfriend, Justin, is lifted, her problems suddenly become magnified. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Laurie Collyer Sunlight Jr was nominated for Best Narrative Feature at 2013’s Tribeca Film Festival. Featuring stand-out performances from Naomi Watts and Matt Dillon and rising star Norman Reedus in a menacing, electrifying role, this is indie filmmaking at its very best.

Here’s a link to the description page in the Digital Catalog:

https://stls.overdrive.com/media/1420956

Print Book Suggested Read:

Utopia Park

Greetings from Utopia Park: Surviving a Transcendent Childhood

by Claire Hoffman:

In this engrossing, provocative, and intimate memoir, a young journalist reflects on her childhood in the heartland, growing up in an increasingly isolated meditation community in the 1980s and ’90s—a fascinating, disturbing look at a fringe culture and its true believers.

When Claire Hoffman’s alcoholic father abandons his family, his desperate wife, Liz, tells five-year-old Claire and her seven-year-old brother, Stacey, that they are going to heaven—Iowa—to live in Maharishi’s national headquarters for Heaven on Earth. For Claire’s mother, Transcendental Meditation—the Maharishi’s method of meditation and his approach to living the fullest possible life—was a salvo that promised world peace and enlightenment just as their family fell apart.

At first this secluded utopia offers warmth and support, and makes these outsiders feel calm, secure, and connected to the world. At the Maharishi School, Claire learns Maharishi’s philosophy for living and meditates with her class. With the promise of peace and enlightenment constantly on the horizon, every day is infused with magic and meaning. But as Claire and Stacey mature, their adolescent skepticism kicks in, drawing them away from the community and into delinquency and drugs. To save herself, Claire moves to California with her father and breaks from Maharishi completely. After a decade of working in journalism and academia, the challenges of adulthood propel her back to Iowa, where she reexamines her spiritual upbringing and tries to reconnect with the magic of her childhood.

Greetings from Utopia Park takes us deep into this complex, unusual world, illuminating its joys and comforts, and its disturbing problems. While there is no utopia on earth, Hoffman reveals, there are noble goals worth striving for: believing in belief, inner peace, and a firm understanding that there is a larger fabric of the universe to which we all belong.

You can request the book by clicking on the following link to StarCat:

http://goo.gl/1QhXZm
Or 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.