Frankfort Community Public Library

the less we seem to post on the blog.  I guess it should be the other way around.  We should tell you all the cool stuff that's happening here at the library in the midst of our being busy!

If you haven't visited the computers in the lower level recently, you haven't met Cassie!  Cassie is our new computer automated sign in system.  Gone are the clip boards that previously cluttered the reference desk and brought great stress to us, the reference staff, whenever all the computers were full and someone needed to use a computer.  Everyone seems to enjoy being able to walk right in and sign in at the computer of their choice.

We also have 3 new databases available for use in the library or remote access from your home.  Novelist, Small Engine Repair, and Auto Repair.   All 3 can be accessed from our main webpage.  

Coming in January...downloadable audio books! 

Just because there is a lack of blog entries, it doesn't mean we're not busy here at the library.  In fact, a lack of blog entries usually means we are very busy!

Encompassing a great amount of our time is the upcoming Big Read:  Clinton County Reads...Bless Me Ultima.   Check out all the events and information at www.fcplbigread.blogspot.com.  There are events for everyone, so be sure to come and be a part of this great event!

September 8 - October 6, 2007

Don't miss the kickoff Fiesta at TPA Park, Shelter # 4.  Live music by JVM, free ice cream provided by Glover's, and other fun!

Hey y'all!  You've done it...you've found our blog.  Unfortunately, we haven't been very dedicated to keeping it up to date lately....the reference staff stays very busy :)

 We're excited that you're participating in our Teen Summer Reading Program.  Thanks to all of you who have not only signed up, but are also stopping by the ref desk to chat and update your Bingo form.  We've been handing out DQ and Pizza Hut coupons, entries for grand prizes, and even books for those of you who have completed 3 bingos.

Now about the blog entry:  we'd like you to post your blog entry as a response to this one.  Just click on the Leave a Comment button under this to begin.  When you finish, click on Post Comment.  (Your comment may not immediately show up...it will be screened first!) 

We'd love to hear about your ideas of what you'd like to see and read about on the FCPL blog.  If you'd rather talk about something cool you've read or learned while participating in the Teen Summer Reading Program, that would be great too.

Can't wait to read your entries!

Sherry

Hey teens, stop by the reference desk and pick up a summer reading club bingo sheet.  Fill in bingo squares by listening to music CDs, cooking, watching a movie, blogging, and of course...reading!  What's in it for you? Cool stuff like Dairy Queen & Pizza Hut coupons, free books, and entries for the grand prize.   SRC begins May 29.  

Despite the lack of posting for a month, things are busy here at the library! 

Tonight is our 2007 Japanese Festival which includes an art exhibit,  tea ceremony, kimono style show, calligraphy demonstration, and a performance by JASC Tsukasa Taiko and musicians from Chicago.  All the events are free and open to the public.  The festival is sponsored by NHK Seating of America, Vicksmetal/Armco ASsociates and NTK Precision Axle Corporation. 

Our summer reading program for all all ages (children, teens, and adults) will begin on May 29.
 This year's theme is Get a Clue @ Your Library! 

Next Wednesday, April 4, at noon is our next Brown Bag Lunch.  Our guest will be Daniel FitzGibbon, author of To Bear Any Burden: A Hoosier Green Beret's Letters from Vietnam.   When  Dan was a young West  Point graduate serving in Vietnam in the late 1960s, he wrote letters home.  His book is a collection of those letters.  He will talk about some of his experiences and also about his return visit to Vietnam in 2002.

Everyone is cordially invited to this special lunch.  It should be an interesting hour!

Ms. Kathy

If you don't have time to read (or re-read) the classics, consider checking out a classic audio-book on CD or Playaway.  I have been listening to To Kill a Mockingbird narrated by Sissy Spacek and have about one hour left.   What a book!  It had been years since I had read it (in high school I think) and had forgotten many of the fine lessons and quotes too.  Sissy Spacek's voice is phenomenal and full of emotion as she reads this powerful story.  Her southern accent is just perfect for for the story told from Scout's viewpoint as a child.  Next I think I'll have to watch the movie (again).  :)

Happy reading (& listening)-
Sherry

It is time again for another Brown Bag Lunch.  Our guests for March are Dan & Mary Ann Nusbaum.  After they retired, they headed to Los Angeles to start a remarkable sea voyage.  They sailed to Hawaii and the Marshall Islands, then spent a year on Fiji.  The two will share stories and pictures from their Adventures on the Sea.

Join us for a delightful hour at noon on Wednesday, March 7, in Harry's Coffee Bar.

I recently listened to the book, The Memory Keeper's Daughter, by Kim Edwards.  At 11 hours long, it was no easy feat finding that much time to listen to a story amidst the chaos of my life.  Even so, the novel absolutely captivated me.  As I listened to it during 15-20 minute drives in my car, I became caught up in the lives of the characters and wondering what might happen next.  The narrator, Martha Plimpton (who I remember from the movie Goonies), made the story come to life with her rich portrayal of the characters through voices. 

The story begins with Dr. David Henry delivering his own twins with the help of one nurse during a snow storm.  His son is born healthy and perfect, but his daughter is born with Down's syndrome.  Instead of revealing this to his wife, he instead makes a decision to send his daughter away to an institution for children with handicaps and tells his wife the baby was stillborn.  He asks the nurse, Caroline, to take the baby and leave her at this "home".  This event becomes the crux of the story.  Instead of leaving the baby, Nurse Caroline instead decides to keep and raise the baby as her own.  The novel follows both twins and their families, comparing and contrasting their lives during 3 decades.  As I listened to this novel, again and again I thought about how just one decision changed the entire course of all the characters' lives. 

The Memory Keeper's Daughter is the type of story that you will remember long after the book is finished.  It is an emotional book, but it's not the Nicholas Sparks have a box of kleenex handy for the last 3 chapters kind.  It's more of an emotionally heavy book about the value of life, people, and differences.  To me, it was a compelling and captivating read.  I highly recommend this novel.

Sherry

On my way to and from work (it's half an hour each way), I usually listen to National Public Radio (NPR).  Whether it's Morning Edition or the Diane Rehm Show or All Things Considered, there is always something interesting - and something I won't hear anywhere else.  When I have time on Saturday, I listen to Click & Clack, Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know?, and Prairie Home Companion.  

We have the new book This I Believe here at the library.  Any NPR listener has probably heard some of these essays.  People from all walks of life complete the sentence "this I believe ..."  Some contributors are well known--from Helen Keller to John Updike--but some are average citizens like a hospital clerk or a salesman.  This is the kind of book you can pick up and read an entry or two; you don't have to read the whole thing through.  One woman's philosophy is to "be cool to the pizza dude."  Another believes "there is no job more important than parenting" or "natural links in a long chain of being" or "a morning prayer in a little church" or "the power of love to transform and heal" or "jazz is the sound of God laughing" or "there is no such thing as too much barbecue."

It is interesting to read about others' beliefs and philosophies, what is important and meaningful to them, what endures beyond the humdrum of everyday life.  It is also worthwhile to consider how I would complete "this I believe ..."

Ms. Kathy

I am not from Clinton County; I am not a person very interested in local history.  But our Brown Bag Lunch speaker makes this subject fun.  LEROY GOOD, Clinton County's unofficial historian, is a very informative and entertaining speaker.   His topic for the Febuary 7 Brown Bag Lunch is the military history of this area.  If you have not heard Leroy speak, this is your chance!  It is always standing room only when he is our special guest.

Join us at noon on Wednesday, February 7, in Harry's Coffee Bar.  

Ms. Kathy

I'm a girl who really doesn't enjoy football (ducking as objects are being thrown in my direction).  Actually, "doesn't enjoy" is putting it very nicely:  I really don't like it at all.  Nevertheless, this past week I watched 2 of our newest DVD releases which both center around the sport of football.  Guess what?  I enjoyed both movies immensely.  They are great family films (both are rated PG) that will inspire lots of meaningful conversations.

  Invincible stars Mark Wahlberg and is based on the true story of Vince Papale.  It's an incredible story of a fan who goes to an open tryout for his favorite NFL team and actually makes the team. 
  "Never give up.  Never back down.  Never lose faith."  Facing the Giants is an inspirational movie about a high school football coach in his 6th losing season.  It focuses on his coaching struggles, family pressures, and the incredible challenge that leads him to to believe the impossible can be possible when you look in the right places. 

Enjoy!
Sherry

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen is the first novel I have read it months.  It was genuinely moving.  Although, I thought as I read it that everyone in the story was vivid, except the main character who was a little flat.  To me it was a story of how and why people put up with abuse.  And how beauty, tenderness, and love can be born in the most brutal of circustances.  And then there was this amazing character of Rosie the elephant.  It was also a novel or retribution and the cost of that.  I enjoyed the relationship between Kinko, the midget clown and Jacob Jankowski the protagonist.  In fact the affection between these two was more real than the love between Jacob and Marlena.  The more that I think about it, the more it seems that the power in this book was in all the small moments described with a painful clarity.  The good were mostly virtuous and the bad were pretty evil, so the final triumph of good over bad was satisfying, but not very deep.

I have picked up the book, The Number again as i try to hash through how to save for retirement.  My wife and I are both bad about finances, but I am less bad so I get the unenviable task of trying to make sure we will have enough money after we are done working--or is that what it is about?  I keep thinking about my life and what I want to be doing in 10 or 20 years or even 30 (might be the crisis of someone who turned 50 this year).  Do I want to rolling around the country in an RV? Yuck! Do I want to live in a foreign country (my sister is planning to retire in Costa Rica)Not so much.  I'd like to live in a cohousing community, but not sure how to go about that.  Someplace where there were children and teens, and people in different stages of life--not just old farts.  Well back to 401Ks and Roth IRAs.

What I'm reading:  Second Touch by Bodie & Brock Thoene -- the second novel in their A.D. Chronicles series.  I heard this series advertised on American Family Radio and was intrigued by their tag line "Discover the truth...through fiction".

What I'm browsing:  Confessions of an Organized Homemaker  -- Not something I can relate to, but oh how I wish I could.   I'm tackling this book in hopes of changing my unorganized ways in 2007.

Better Sleep for your Baby & Child:  A Parent's Step by Step Guide to Healthy Sleep Habits -- I'm trying to help my 13 month old son learn to sleep through the night so I can too!

What I'm listening to:  The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards -- such an interesting, emotional story.
       
See the Morning by Chris Tomlin -- great CD with uplifting songs that stay with me all day long

Sherry

The January Brown Bag Lunch was about the experience of some Frankfort people in China.  It reminded me of a couple of books I read set in China.  They aren't books I read recently (probably in 2001 and 2004), but they are the sort of books that stay in one's mind.  

River Town by Peter Hessler recounts his two years on the Yangtze as a Peace Corps volunteer.  Peter, an eloquent writer and insightful observer, taught for two years in Fuling, China, a city of 200,000 previously closed to foreigners.  Author Ha Jin describes the book as "suffused with candor, compassion, insights, and intimate knowledge.  River Town eloquently portrays a contemporary China hardly known to the West.  A wonderful read."  By the way - Peter stayed on in China and now lives and writes in Beijing.  I need to read his second book Oracle Bones: A Journey between China's Past and Present.

John Dalton's Heaven Lake is a novel set in contemporary China.  Vincent Saunders, a naive young Christian missionary, goes to Taiwan to teach English and Bible study classes.  Vincent comes of age and learns the ways of the world as he leaves Taiwan and travels across mainland China.  The book is "absorbing and compelling ... a rich first novel about the mysteries of human yearning" (Chicago Tribune). 

If you in the mood for some out of the ordinary reading, I highly recommend either one of these books.

Ms. Kathy

I have been watching the fifth season of Friends and I have to admit I laughed more and harder than I have in years.  And the more I get "to know" them, the funnier it seems they are.  I think what I really like is their humanity.  They have such great flaws and the rest of the group knows what these are, makes fun of them and loves them anyway.  Somehow they just get you rooting for them. My goodness, Ross is such a whiner, and Rachel is so shallow, so splendidly shallow.  I think I like Monica the best--I recognize her compulsive streak in myself.  There is more psychology in one season of Friends than in all of Psych 120, that's for sure Horatio.

Tomcat

Just a quick note.  Been reading The World is Flat and find his argument interesting, and little bit scary.  "Anything that can be digitized will be digitized"  and once it is digitized the "work" on that bit of information can be done anywhere in the world.  Your catscan at the Frankfort Hospital might already be read by some doctor in India.  My favorite movie of the new year, Little Voice (1998) with Michael Caine and I think the woman is Jane Horrocks.  Not perfect, but oh what an excellent little fable and the acting is really fabulous and its fun.

Tomcat

I started keeping a reading log in 2005.  As an avid reader, I thought it would be interesting to keep track of the books I read.  I bought a small composition book and even took the time to cover it in snazzy paper and write "Books" on the cover with rub-on letters (yes, I am a scrapbooker...).  I kept it on my nightstand so I wouldn't forget to jot down a title after finishing it (sometimes in the wee hours of the morning).  At the end of the year, it was so interesting to look back through the different entries.  How many books did I read by a certain author, how many were books in a series, how many were young adult/children's lit...these were all questions I was able to easily answer with my handy dandy reading log.  I was also surprised by the number of books I had actually read.  I knew that I read a lot, but my goodness!

I've continued to keep a reading log this past year.  It's still the same snazzy composition book except now there aren't as many blank pages.  As a goal oriented person, I've become a bit anal about looking at the entries and even counting them.  (I know, I know...it's a bit compulsive)  My total number of books read this year is down quite a bit (I do have 2 children now), but the information is still there.  I can easily flip and find the name of that author I enjoyed and want to tell my sister about or the title of that book that enraged me by having a cliff-hanger ending. 

For 2007, I plan on again keeping a reading log.  Our new library cataloging system, Polaris, has a feature that  will allow me to view my reading history at any time.  I think that's a great thing, except my reading history already looks a bit funny.  Everything I've checked out shows up (as it should), but I don't keep track of the Henry and Mudge books I read my daughter or the Board Books I share with my son.  My reading history also shows the books I've checked out and turned in the next day because the story didn't grab me.  So, I'll stick to my old system of jotting down titles and thoughts in a small notebook.  Guess I better pick one up soon...only 3 days until the new year begins.

Happy reading!
Sherry

The first Brown Bag Lunch of the year -  Wednesday, January 3, at noon in Harry's Coffee Bar - will transport us to CHINA.  You may have heard about the group from the First Presbyterian Church that went to China last fall.  Two of the people who went on that trip - Peggy Williams and Suzie Ransom - will talk about their experience.  They will also bring along photographs and mementos to share.  It should be an interesting look at a fascinating country.
The Brown Bag Lunches are free and open to the public.  We'd love to see more people attend.  Please join us & bring a friend!

Ms. Kathy