WAB Consutling – Page 9 – Cold Spring Harbor Library

Dear Residents,
Welcome to 2013! Some people fear the number 13, while others consider it lucky. Personally, 13 has been a lucky number in my life, and therefore I approach this New Year with a sense of excitement about the future.

For many, Hurricane Sandy was very unlucky; in fact, devastating. In our community, there was loss, but also a renewed sense of cooperation, generosity, and support. Your librarians welcomed over 1,000 residents in the days after the storm. You came clutching your devices, seeking power, light, warmth, and information. You filled all the nooks and crannies, met your neighbors, swapped stories, and many of you rediscovered what a terrific resource your library truly is for all ages. Despite personal hardships at home, your library employees were back to work as soon as the power was restored in Cold Spring Harbor. Their professional commitment to service makes me very proud.

It’s time again to analyze the past, and prepare for the next budget, fiscal year 2013-2014. During this time of fiscal constraint, and with a mandated Tax Cap in NYS, we may wish we had a crystal ball to see into our future. Some things are very clear. You want choices, you want expertise, you want space, and you want cooperation. Gone are the days of buying multiple copies of a hardcover book; we now purchase multiple formats, including print, audiobooks, and eBooks. The librarians are always learning about new resources to fulfill your information needs, and now those sources are more likely to be software apps for your smartphone. Who takes a Fodor’s Guide to Europe in their carry-on bag or a street map of Paris? Now, we look online for sources, and hope the information is accurate and trustworthy. You can rely upon your librarians to guide you to the best online information.

Demand for meeting space for study groups, book clubs, committees, and organization meetings continues to increase. The calendar on our website is filled with these varied uses, and a copy of the application to reserve a room is also available online. Perhaps most important to meeting your needs in these tough economic times is cooperation between your library and other educational organizations. These partnerships enable us to bring you excellent educational opportunities and entertaining events at modest expense. So, what can you expect to see in 2013? More of what you really want: programs and services for all ages, offered by a kind and knowledgeable staff. Even without a crystal ball, this is very clear!

During any storm this winter season, you may wonder whether your library is open. Information about emergency closings due to weather will be posted on our website, www.cshlibrary.org, and at News 12, WALK, and WBLI radio. I also update the answering machine with any changes in the library’s hours of operation (unless we have no power in Cold Spring Harbor).

What about your plans for the future? If those plans include a career change or a return to work, then please plan to attend one or more of the Career Workshops in February. If those plans include college, there will be two college preparatory sessions in January for students and their parents.

New York Times Notable Books of 2012: Nonfiction

Notable nonfiction selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.

Notable nonfiction selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.

All We Know: Three Lives by Lisa Cohen
The vanished world of midcentury upper-class lesbians is portrayed as beguiling, its inhabitants members of a stylish club.

American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama by Rachel L. Swarns
A Times reporter’s deeply researched chronicle of several generations of Mrs. Obama’s family.

American Triumvirate: Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, and the Modern Age of Golf by James Dodson
The author evokes an era when the game was more vivid and less corporate than it seems now.

Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel
Bechdel’s engaging, original graphic memoir explores her troubled relationship with her distant mother.

Barack Obama: The Story by David Maraniss
This huge and absorbing new biography, full of previously unexplored detail, shows that Obama’s saga is more surprising and gripping than the version we’re familiar with.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo (audio download, eBook)
This extraordinary moral inquiry into life in an Indian slum shows the human costs exacted by a brutal social Darwinism.

Belzoni: The Giant Archaeologists Love to Hate by Ivor Noël Hume
The fascinating tale of the 19th-century Italian monk, a “notorious tomb robber,” who gathered archaeological treasures in Egypt while crunching bones underfoot.

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss (eBook)
The first Alexandre Dumas, a mixed-race general of the French Revolution, is the subject of this imaginative biography.

Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History by Florence Williams
Williams’s environmental call to arms deplores chemicals in breast milk and the vogue for silicone implants.

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 by Charles Murray (audio download, eBook)
The author of “The Bell Curve” warns that the white working class has abandoned the “founding virtues.”

Darwin’s Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution by Rebecca Stott
Stott’s lively, original history of evolutionary ideas flows easily across continents and centuries.

A Disposition to Be Rich: How a Small-Town Preacher’s Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated Man in the United States by Geoffrey C. Ward
The author’s ancestor was the bane of Ulysses S. Grant.

Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon
This passionate and affecting work about what it means to be a parent is based on interviews with families of “exceptional” children.

Flagrant Conduct. The Story of Lawrence v. Texas: How a Bedroom Arrest Decriminalized Gay Americans by Dale Carpenter
Carpenter stirringly describes the 2003 Supreme Court decision that overturned the Texas sodomy law.

The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life by Robert Trivers
An intriguing argument that deceit is a beneficial evolutionary “deep feature” of life.

The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness by Kevin Young
A poet’s lively account of the central place of the trickster figure in black American culture could have been called “How Blacks Invented America.”

Haiti: The Aftershocks of History by Laurent Dubois
Foreign meddling, the lack of a democratic tradition, a humiliating American occupation and cold-war support of a brutal dictator all figure in a scholar’s well-written analysis.

How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough (audio download)
Noncognitive skills like persistence and self-control are more crucial to success than sheer brainpower, Tough maintains.

How Music Works by David Byrne
This guidebook also explores the eccentric rock star’s personal and professional experience.

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum
An overwhelming and convincing account of the Soviet push to colonize Eastern Europe after World War II.

Kayak Morning: Reflections on Love, Grief, and Small Boats by Roger Rosenblatt
This thoughtful meditation on the evolution of grief over time asks the big questions.

Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History by John Fabian Witt
A tension between humanitarianism and righteousness has shaped America’s rules of warfare.

Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
A beautifully written and deeply reported account of America’s troubled involvement in Afghanistan.

Memoir of a Debulked Woman: Enduring Ovarian Cancer by Susan Gubar
A feminist scholar recounts her experience and criticizes the medical treatment of a frightening disease in a voice that is straightforward and incredibly brave.

My Poets by Maureen N. McLane
Part memoir and part criticism, this friendly book includes essays on poets canonical and contemporary, as well as lineated poem-games.

The Obamas by Jodi Kantor
Michelle Obama sets the tone and tempo of the current White House, Kantor argues in this admiring account, full of colorful insider anecdotes.

Oddly Normal: One Family’s Struggle to Help Their Teenage Son Come to Terms With His Sexuality by John Schwartz
A Times reporter’s deeply affecting account of his son’s coming out also reviews research on the experience of LGBT kids.

On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson by William Souder (audio download, eBook)
An absorbing biography of the pioneering environmental writer on the 50th anniversary of “Silent Spring.”

On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines — and Future by Karen Elliott House
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist unveils this inscrutable country, comparing its calcified regime to the Soviet Union in its final days.

The One: The Life and Music of James Brown by RJ Smith
Smith argues that Brown was the most significant modern American musician in terms of style, messaging, rhythm and originality.

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro (eBook)
The fourth volume of Caro’s magisterial work spans the five years that end shortly after Kennedy’s assassination, as Johnson prepares to push for a civil rights act.

The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw
This riveting history captures the sweep of Kennedy’s life — as Wall Street speculator, moviemaker, ambassador and dynastic founder.

People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished From the Streets of Tokyo — and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up by Richard Lloyd Parry
An evenhanded investigation of a murder.

Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay: Reflections on Art, Family, and Survival by Christopher Benfey
Mixing memoir, family saga, travelogue and cultural history.

Rule and Ruin. The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party: From Eisenhower to the Tea Party by Geoffrey Kabaservice
Pragmatic Republicanism was hardier than we remember, Kabaservice argues.

Saul Steinberg: A Biography by Deirdre Bair
A gripping and revelatory biography of the eminent cartoonist.

Shooting Victoria: Madness, Mayhem, and the Rebirth of the British Monarchy by Paul Thomas Murphy
An uninhibited and learned account of the attempts on the life of Queen Victoria, which only increased her popularity.

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan
A deft portrait of the man who made memorable photographs of American Indians.

The Social Conquest of Earth by Edward O. Wilson
The evolutionary biologist explores the strange kinship between humans and some insects.

Sometimes There Is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider by Zakes Mda
The South African novelist and playwright absorbingly illuminates his wide, worldly life.

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen
Quammen’s meaty, sprawling book chronicles his globe-trotting scientific adventures and warns against animal microbes spilling over into people.

The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food by Lizzie Collingham
Collingham argues that food needs contributed to the war’s origins, strategy, outcome and aftermath.

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham
This readable and well-researched life celebrates Jefferson’s skills as a practical politician, unafraid to wield power even when it conflicted with his small-government views.

Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution by Linda Hirshman
Written with knowing finesse, this expansive history of gay rights from the early 20th century to the present draws on archives and interviews.

When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God by T. M. Luhrmann
Evangelicals believe that God speaks to them personally because they hone the skill of prayer, this insightful study argues.

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
Winterson’s unconventional and winning memoir wrings humor from adversity as it describes her upbringing by a wildly deranged mother.

Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt
An elegant and witty writer converses with philosophers and cosmologists who ponder why there is something rather than nothing.

New York Times Notable Books of 2012: Fiction & Poetry

Notable fiction & poetry selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.

Notable fiction & poetry selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson
A young hacker on the run in the Mideast is the protagonist of this imaginative first novel.

Almost Never by Daniel Sada
In this glorious satire of machismo, a Mexican agronomist simultaneously pursues a prostitute and an upright woman.

An American Spy by Olen Steinhauer
In a novel vividly evoking the multilayered world of espionage, Steinhauer’s hero fights back when his C.I.A. unit is nearly destroyed.

Arcadia by Lauren Groff (eBook)
Groff’s lush and visual second novel begins at a rural commune, and links that utopian past to a dystopian, post-global-warming future.

At Last by Edward St. Aubyn
The final and most meditative of St. Aubyn’s brilliant Patrick Melrose novels is full of precise observations and glistening turns of phrase.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (eBook)
Walter’s witty sixth novel, set largely in Hollywood, reveals an American landscape of vice, addiction, loss and disappointed hopes.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
The survivors of a fierce firefight in Iraq are whisked stateside for a brief victory tour in this satirical novel.

Blasphemy by Sherman Alexie
The best stories in Alexie’s collection of new and selected works are moving and funny, bringing together the embittered critic and the yearning dreamer.

The Book of Mischief: New and Selected Stories by Steve Stern
Jewish immigrant lives observed with effusive nostalgia.

Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (audio download, CD book, large print book)
Mantel’s sequel to “Wolf Hall” traces the fall of Anne Boleyn, and makes the familiar story fascinating and suspenseful again.

Building Stories by Chris Ware
A big, sturdy box containing hard-bound volumes, pamphlets and a tabloid houses Ware’s demanding, melancholy and magnificent graphic novel about the inhabitants of a Chicago building.

By Blood by Ellen Ullman (audio download)
This smart, slippery novel is a narrative striptease, as a professor listens in on the sessions between the therapist next door and her patients.

Canada by Richard Ford (CD book, eBook, MP3 CD)
A boy whose parents rob a bank in Montana in 1960 takes refuge across the border in this mesmerizing novel, driven by fully realized characters and an accomplished prose style.

Carry the One by Carol Anshaw (large print book)
Anshaw pays close attention to the lives of a group of friends bound together by a fatal accident in this wry, humane novel, her fourth.

City of Bohane by Kevin Barry
Somewhere in Ireland in 2053, people are haunted by a “lost time,” when something calamitous happened, and hope to reclaim the past. Barry’s extraordinary, exuberant first novel is full of inventive language.

Collected Poems by Jack Gilbert
In orderly free verse constructions, Gilbert deals plainly with grief, love, marriage, betrayal and lust.

Dear Life: Stories by Alice Munro
This volume offers further proof of Munro’s mastery, and shows her striking out in the direction of a new, late style that sums up her whole career.

The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle
LaValle’s culturally observant third novel is set in a shabby urban mental hospital.

Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison
Harrison’s splendid and surprising novel of late imperial Russia centers on Rasputin’s daughter Masha and the hemophiliac czarevitch Alyosha.

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (eBook, large print book)
An Appalachian woman becomes involved in an effort to save monarch butterflies in this brave and majestic novel.

Fobbit by David Abrams
Clerks, cooks and lawyers at a forward operating base in Iraq populate this first novel.

The Forgetting Tree by Tatjana Soli
In Soli’s haunting second novel, a mysterious Caribbean woman cares for a cancer patient on an isolated California ranch.

Gathering of Waters by Bernice L. McFadden
Three generations of black women confront floods and murder in Mississippi.

Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru
Related stories, spanning centuries and continents, and all tethered to a desert rock formation, emphasize interconnectivity across time and space in Kunzru’s relentlessly modern fourth novel.

HHhH by Laurent Binet
This gripping novel examines both the killing of an SS general in Prague in 1942 and Binet’s experience in writing about it.

A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers (CD book, MP3 CD)
Eggers’s novel is a haunting and supremely readable parable of America in the global economy, a nostalgic lament for a time when life had stakes and people worked with their hands.

Home by Toni Morrison (audio download, eBook)
A black Korean War veteran, discharged from an integrated Army into a segregated homeland, makes a reluctant journey back to Georgia in a novel engaged with themes that have long haunted Morrison.

Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander
Hilarity alternates with pain in this novel about a Jewish man seeking peace in upstate New York who discovers Anne Frank in his attic.

How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
The narrator (also named Sheila) and her friends try to answer the question in this novel’s title.

In One Person by John Irving
Irving’s funny, risky new novel about an aspiring writer struggling with his sexuality examines what happens when we face our desires honestly.

A Land More Kind than Home by Wiley Cash (audio download, eBook)
An evil pastor dominates Cash’s mesmerizing first novel.

Married Love: And Other Stories by Tessa Hadley
Hadley’s understatedly beautiful collection is filled with exquisitely calibrated gradations and expressions of class.

NW by Zadie Smith
The lives of two friends who grew up in a northwest London housing project diverge, illuminating questions of race, class, sexual identity and personal choice, in Smith’s energetic modernist novel.

On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths by Lucia Perillo
Taut, lucid poems filled with complex emotional reflection.

Pure by Julianna Baggott (audio download)
Children battle for the planet’s redemption in this precisely written postapocalyptic adventure story.

The Right-Hand Shore by Christopher Tilghman
A dark, magisterial novel set on a Chesapeake Bay estate.

The Round House by Louise Erdrich (eBook)
In this novel, an American Indian family faces the ramifications of a vicious crime.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (eBook)
A pregnant 15-year-old and her family await Hurricane Katrina in this lushly written novel.

San Miguel by T. Coraghessan Boyle
Two utopians from different eras establish private idylls on California’s desolate Channel Islands; this novel preserves their tantalizing dreams.

Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer
This thought-provoking debut novel presents a geeky astronaut and his pregnant wife.

Shout Her Lovely Name by Natalie Serber
The stories in Serber’s first collection are smart and nuanced.

Silent House by Orhan Pamuk
A family is a microcosm of a country on the verge of a coup in this intense, foreboding novel, first published in Turkey in 1983.

The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont
Dermont’s captivating debut novel, whose narrator is a boarding school student and a sailor, takes pleasure in the sea and in the exhilarating freedom of being young.

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan (CD book, eBook, MP3 CD)
The true subject of this smart and tricky novel, set inside a cold war espionage operation, is the border between make-believe and reality.

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy
In this spare, disturbing and frequently funny novel, a troubled young woman tests the marriages of two couples.

Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon (eBook)
Chabon’s rich comic novel about fathers and sons in Berkeley and Oakland, Calif., juggles multiple plots and mounds of pop culture references in astonishing prose.

The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin
This beautiful work takes power from the surprises of its language and its almost shocking characterization of Mary, mother of Jesus.

This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz
The stories in this collection are about love, but they’re also about the undertow of family history and cultural mores, presented in Díaz’s exciting, irresistible and entertaining prose.

Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye
In loosely linked narratives, three women from Senegal struggle with fathers and husbands in France. This subtle, hypnotic novel won the Prix Goncourt in 2009.

Toby’s Room by Pat Barker
This novel, a sequel to “Life Class,” delves further into the lives of an English family torn apart by World War I.

Watergate by Thomas Mallon
This novelistic reimagining of the “third-rate burglary” proposes surprising motives for the break-in and the 18-minute gap, and has a sympathetic Nixon.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories by Nathan Englander (audio download, eBook)
Englander tackles large questions of morality and history in a masterly collection that manages to be both insightful and uproarious.

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
A young private and his platoon struggle through the war in Iraq but find no peace at home in this powerful and moving first novel about the frailty of man and the brutality of war.

National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35

The National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 program honors five young fiction writers selected by past National Book Award Winners and Finalists. The 2012 5 Under 35 Honorees Are:

Jennifer duBois, A Partial History of Lost Causes
Selected by Andrew Krivak, Fiction Finalist for The Sojourn, 2011

Stuart Nadler, The Book of Life
Selected by Edith Pearlman, Fiction Finalist for Binocular Vision, 2011

Haley Tanner, Vaclav & Lena (audio download, eBook)
Selected by Téa Obreht, Fiction Finalist for The Tiger’s Wife, 2011 (audio download, CD book, eBook, large print), and 5 Under 35 Honoree, 2010

Justin Torres, We the Animals
Selected by Jessica Hagedorn, Fiction Finalist for Dogeaters, 1990

Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn
Selected by Julie Otsuka, Fiction Finalist for The Buddha in the Attic, 2011 (audio download, CD book, eBook)

Letter from the Director

Dear Residents,
You have many choices today about how and where to get information, and your librarians are constantly seeking out reliable and verifiable sources. Now more than ever, the notion of trust plays a key role in our decision-making process. Whether you are faced with challenges or opportunities for yourself or your family, the public library is your gateway to sources that educate, enlighten, and entertain.

On Tuesday, October 2, the first Community Conversation was held at the South Huntington Public Library. Over 90 people attended the event, which was sponsored by all the public libraries in the Town of Huntington and the Leadership Huntington Foundation. A distinguished list of panelists and facilitator Joye Brown of Newsday listened and responded to audience questions about living, working, and thriving in the Town of Huntington. There are two more programs planned for early next year: Growing Community in March 2013 and Suburbs for the Next Generation in May 2013. Learn more by visiting Community Conversations on Facebook.

If you are looking for good conversation and great literature, then plan to attend an extra-special event honoring our veterans on Wednesday, November 7 at 1:00 p.m. Rev. David Ware of St. John’s Church and Andy Roberts, from the Rosen Center at North Shore-LIJ, will join me to discuss Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.

We read to educate and entertain ourselves. In NYS, schoolchildren will now be required to read nonfiction in Kindergarten. Your librarians are collaborating with school librarians to develop appropriate reading selections. Many nonfiction titles are available today, and new items will be added throughout the school year.

Each month, hundreds of items are requested and renewed online. As of today, you may also renew DVDs. If you want to be reminded to pick up or renew an item, you can now modify your online record and give us your cell phone number. No more arriving home to find a message on your answering machine.

This holiday season, we are pleased to be a Marine Corps Toys for Tots drop-off location. When you visit the library, please bring a new unwrapped toy for needy children on Long Island. This act of generosity will bring joy to both the giver and receiver.

Once again, the Library Foundation has inserted a donation envelope into this issue. Funds from the foundation enable your public library to offer music programs, museum passes, and special events for families and children. All donations are tax deductible and really make a difference. Thank you.

Best Wishes for a happy and healthy New Year!

Happy Halloween!

Celebrate Halloween with a scary movie!

The Amityville Horror (1979)

The Amityville Horror (2005)

The Birds

The Blair Witch Project

The Cabin in the Woods

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark

Drag Me to Hell

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

The Haunting in Connecticut

The Last House on the Left

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Saw: The Final Chapter

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Or, enjoy a book about the paranormal and supernatural!

National Book Awards Finalists

The mission of the National Book Foundation and the National Book Awards is to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America. The 2012 Finalists are:

FICTION

This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers (CD book, MP3 CD book)

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

NONFICTION

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945 – 1956 by Anne Applebaum

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo (audio download, eBook)

The Passage of Power: The Tears of Lyndon Johnson, volume 4 by Robert Caro (eBook)

The Boy Kings of Texas by Domingo Martinez

House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid (audio download)

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Freedom to Read

September 30-October 6 is Banned Books Week! Celebrate the Freedom to Read with one of the banned and/or challenged books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century: