Happy New Year

 Don't forget that you can connect with the library and check out audio books, ebooks, e-reference, educational videos, and more with our digital resources listed below.

Also remember that we will be closing at 5:00 pm on December 27th, 28th, and 29th. We will be closed December 30th through January 1st and will re-open on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2024.

New Audiobooks in Our Libby App

Grace Cho has penned an evocative memoir of food and family history with her book Tastes Like War. Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. They were one of few immigrants in a xenophobic small town during the Cold War, where identity was politicized by everyday details—language, cultural references, memories, and food. When Grace was fifteen, her dynamic mother experienced the onset of schizophrenia, a condition that would continue and evolve for the rest of her life. Part food memoir, part sociological investigation, Tastes Like War is a hybrid text about a daughter’s search through intimate and global history for the roots of her mother’s schizophrenia. In her mother’s final years, Grace learned to cook dishes from her parent’s childhood in order to invite the past into the present, and to hold space for her mother’s multiple voices at the table. And through careful listening over these shared meals, Grace discovered not only the things that broke the brilliant, complicated woman who raised her—but also the things that kept her alive.

Under an Outlaw Moon is the latest from author Dietrich Kalteis. Meet Depression-era newlyweds Bennie and Stella. He’s reckless, she’s naïve. Longing for freedom from tough times, they rob a bank, setting off a series of events that quickly spin out of their control. This story is based on the true story of Depression-era bank robbers Bennie and Stella Mae Dickson. She’s a teenage outsider longing to fit in. He’s a few years older and he’s trouble. They meet at a local skating rink and the sparks fly. They marry and Stella dreams of a nice house with a swing out back, while Bennie figures out how to get enough money to make it happen. Setting his sights on the good life, he decides to rob a bank. Talking Stella into it, he lays out his plan and teaches her to shoot. The newlyweds celebrate her 16th birthday by robbing a local bank. They pull it off, but the score is small, and Bennie realizes the money won’t last long, so he plans a bigger robbery. What lays ahead is more than either of them bargained for. After J. Edgar Hoover finds out they crossed state lines, he declares them public enemies number one and two ― wanted dead or alive. So much for the good life. The manhunt is on, and there’s little room for them to run.

David R. Boyd's novel Thirst for Justice is a political thriller ripped from today’s headlines. Lawyer and environmental activist David R. Boyd writes a riveting thriller about the psychological toll of a humanitarian crisis. Filled with tension and courtroom drama, Thirst for Justice will have you questioning what you believe about right versus wrong. Michael MacDougall is a talented trauma surgeon whose life in Seattle is slowly unraveling. Frustrated as an ER doctor and with his marriage in trouble, he volunteers with a medical aid charity in the Congo. Disconsolate at the lives he cannot save in the desperate conditions of the region, he is shattered by a roadside confrontation with the mercenary Mai Mai that results in unthinkable losses. Back home in Seattle, he is haunted by his experiences in Africa and what he sees as society’s failure to provide humanitarian aid to those who most desperately need it. Locked in a downward spiral, he becomes obsessed with making his government listen to him and dreams up an act of terrorism to shock his nation awake. Activist and lawyer David Boyd’s debut novel is a taut political thriller that begs the question: how far is too far when you’re seeking justice?

Every City is Every Other City is the first in a new series by John McFetridge. Behind the scenes, nothing is what it seems. Gord Stewart, 40 years old, single, moved back into his sub­urban childhood home to care for his widowed father. But his father no longer needs care and Gord is stuck in limbo. He’s been working in the movie business as a location scout for years, and when there isn’t much filming, as a private eye for a security company run by ex-cops, OBC. When a fellow crew member asks him to find her missing uncle, Gord reluctantly takes the job. The police say the uncle walked into some dense woods in Northern Ontario and shot himself, but the man’s wife thinks he’s still alive. With the help of his movie business and OBC connections, Gord finds a little evidence that the uncle may be alive. Now Gord has two problems: what to do when he finds a man who doesn’t want to be found, and admitting that he’s getting invested in this job. For the first time in his life, Gord Stewart is going to have to leave the sidelines and get into the game. Even if it might get him killed.

Online Titles To Help With Your Holiday

 The following titles are available on our Hoopla platform to help you with your Thanksgiving Feast.

"Cooking Thanksgiving dinner is a bit of a project—but a rewarding one—and with this inspiring collection of recipes from Mark Bittman, author of the award-winning How to Cook Everything series, anyone can be confident preparing the big meal. Here is a quick reference that's sure to be your kitchen companion for many holidays to come. How to Cook Everything Thanksgiving includes 20 of Bittman's favorite celebration recipes—plus 29 variations and helpful how-to illustrations—to ensure you feast well without all the hassle. Complete with both beloved classics and non-traditional ideas, from easy appetizer dips and autumnal sides to the iconic turkey, vegetarian mains, and delicious, make-ahead desserts, this is one guest that's always invited to Thanksgiving dinner." (from Amazon.com)

"Fall is here, and so is a busy season of Thanksgiving parties and cooking for big groups. But don’t let stress get in the way—simply take out your slow cooker and prepare holiday meals for the entire family with ease and joy. Here, we have collected the very best slow cooker recipes and fan favorites that capture the spirit of fall. Wow your guests and loved ones with healthy and delicious seasonal offerings that cover appetizers, soups and stews, meaty and vegetarian mains, breakfast, beverages, and desserts. Selected from some of the best home cooks across the country, these more than 150 super-easy family-friendly meals will be the life of the party: 

• Butternut Squash and Apple Soup
• Fast and Fabulous Brussels Sprouts
• Honey-Maple Sweet Potatoes
• Applesauce Meatloaf
• Tortellini with Broccoli
• Overnight Scalloped Chicken Casserole
• Autumn Harvest Pork Loin
• Meatless Shepherd’s Pie
• Pumpkin-Pecan Pie
• Hot Mulled Cider

Accompanied with gorgeous, festive photographs, as well as tips on how to use your slow cooker, Fix-It and Forget-It Best of Fall Recipes is your one-stop solution for the country’s best-loved meals during everyone's favorite time of the year. Happy fall and happy cooking!" (Amazon.com)

"The weather turning cooler brings the buzz and excitement around all things pumpkin—from the lattes we can’t wait to sip to the roasted seeds harvested from Halloween jack-o’-lanterns to our favorite Thanksgiving pie. With savory and sweet recipes for all meals of the day—including a mouthwatering pumpkin dessert chapter—it’s the cookbook your home shouldn’t be without during the fall and winter months. Homemade pumpkin spice latte variations, along with wholesome meals ideal for the every day and holidays, are tucked into this plentiful pumpkin volume. Utilizing pumpkin flesh, pumpkin purée, pumpkin seeds, pumpkin spice, pumpkin seed oil, and heirloom pumpkins, there’s something in Purely Pumpkin for every craving, festivity, time constraint, and cooking level. As enjoyable to cook from as it is to flip through while curled up next to a crackling fire, there’s no better way to celebrate, share, and savor the pumpkin harvest this season." (from Amazon.com)

Don't Forget About Our Digital Resources

 

And don't forget that you can watch a weekly story time on our Facebook page at:

https://www.facebook.com/WCVPLibrary

More (Digital) Cookbooks to Tease Your Palate

These featured cookbooks are available on our hoopla digital app. Enjoy flipping through these recipes and not messing up your book while trying a few of them out for your family!

The New Homemade Kitchen: 250 Recipes and Ideas for Reinventing the Art of Preserving, Canning, Fermenting, Dehydrating, and More is by Joseph Shuldiner. Revive the lost arts of fermenting, canning, preserving, and creating your own ingredients. The Institute of Domestic Technology Cookbook is a collection of 250 recipes, ideas, and methods for stocking a kitchen, do-it-yourself food-crafting projects, and cooking with homemade ingredients. The chapters include instructions on how to make your own food products and pantry staples, as well as recipes highlighting those very ingredients-for example, make your own feta and bake it into a Greek phyllo pie, or learn how to dehydrate leftover produce and use it in homemade instant soup mixes. Each chapter includes instructions to make your own pantry staples, like ground mustard, sourdough starter, and miso paste. Complete with recipes that utilize the very ingredients you made. Filled with informative and helpful features like flavor variation charts, extended tutorials, faculty advice, and instructional line drawings. Also included are features like food-crafting charts, historical tidbits, 100+ photos and illustrations, how-to's, and sidebars featuring experts and deans from the Institute, including LA-based cheese-makers, coffee roasters, butchers, and more. From the Institute of Domestic Technology, a revered food-crafting school in Los Angeles, each chapter is based on the school's curriculum and covers all manners of techniques-such as curing, bread-baking, cheese-making, coffee-roasting, butchering, and more. Complete with beautiful food photography, this well-researched and comprehensive cookbook will inspire chefs of all levels. Great gift for food-crafters, food geeks, food pioneers, farmers' market shoppers, as well as people who feel nostalgic for a slower way of life.

American drummer, DJ, producer, designer, culinary entrepreneur, music educator, and bestselling author Questlove brings you Mixtape potluck: a cookbook. What if Questlove threw a potluck dinner, and everybody came? He picked the guests. The guests picked the recipes. The result is the ultimate potluck cookbook. Questlove is best known for his achievements in the music world, but his interest in food runs a close second. He has hosted a series of renowned Food Salons and conversations with some of America's most prominent chefs. Now he is turning his hand to creating a cookbook. In Mixtape Potluck Cookbook, Questlove imagines the ultimate potluck dinner party, inviting more than fifty chefs, entertainers, and musicians-such as Eric Ripert, Natalie Portman, and Q-Tip-and asking them to bring along their favorite recipes. He also pairs each cook with a song that he feels best captures their unique creative energy. The result is not only an accessible, entertaining cookbook, but also a collection of Questlove's diverting musical commentaries as well as an illustration of the fascinating creative relationship between music and food. With Questlove's unique style of hosting dinner parties and his love of music, food, and entertaining, this book will give readers unexpected insights into the relationship between culture and food.

Half the Sugar, All the Love: a family cookbook features 100 easy, low-sugar recipes for every meal of the day is by Jennifer Tyler Lee and Anisha I. Patel, MD, MSPH. Would you feed your child a candy bar for breakfast? Of course not. And yet today our children routinely consume three times the recommended daily allowance of added sugar, which puts them at an unprecedented risk for type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, excess weight, and even nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. These doctor-approved recipes that cut the sugar (by half—or more!) without sacrificing the flavors our families love. It’s an eye-opening education, a program of healthy eating, and a cookbook chock-full of easy, delicious recipes all in one. Pass the breakfast bars!

Let's Fix Lunch! by Kat Nouri makes it easy (and fun!) to prepare meals that are good for you and good for the planet. This eco-friendly cookbook features delicious, waste-free recipes for sandwiches, salads, soups, snacks, and more. An inspiring guide for anyone who wants to do their small part to save the earth, Let's Fix Lunch! makes it simple to create a sustainable, waste-free home. - Easy-to-make recipes for all home cooks - Includes more than 50 simple tips for reducing food waste and plastic use - Features a handy guide to buying in bulk, meal prepping, and food storage This eco-conscious cookbook is written by Kat Nouri, founder of the beloved, environmentally friendly kitchen brand Stasher. Let's Fix Lunch! is the perfect kitchen companion for eco-conscious parents and office workers. - Brims with bright, vivid photographs of tasty dishes and beautifully packed lunches - Perfect for anyone who tries to live a waste-free, low plastic, and environmentally friendly lifestyle - Packed with inspired, accessible meal-prep ideas and techniques.

Digital Resources for Those With a Library Card

Because we are closed to the public through May 18th, this week’s blog features the digital resources available to our patrons and to the general public who have a library card. You will need to go to our homepage: https://wcvpl.biblionix.com and scroll down the page until you find the following resource links on the left. We are proud to be able to offer these services especially in times like these.

If you happen to have a library card and know your PIN, you may wish to take advantage of our RBdigital resources. RBdigital offers audiobooks, eBooks, digital graphic novels, and magazines. You can also check out Acorn TV (which contains shows from Great Britain, Canada, and Australia) for one week at a time, The Great Courses for learning and personal development courses, Hoonuit for video-based software learning, and Artistworks which offers video-based art and music instruction. 

RBdigital is available as an app on both Apple and Android devices. When you go to our page https://wcvpl.biblionix.com, you will need to login with your library card number and PIN (password) in the upper right-hand corner. Then scroll down and select the RBdigital resource on the left side of the page. This should take you to the RBdigital homepage where you will choose “Register” in the upper right corner if you do not have an account. Follow the instructions for setting up your account and then download the app onto your phone or tablet.  The only downside to this is that if your library account has a fine or needs to be updated, or if you are having trouble setting up your account, you will have to wait until we reopen to clear up any problems. 

hoopla is a digital app that allows you to check out up to 3 e-audio books or e-books per month. There is a wide selection of adult fiction and nonfiction as well as juvenile and young adult titles. Some of the juvenile titles also have a read along function allowing your child to follow along as the story is read to them. hoopla is easy to use. Set up an account with your email address and library card number.

One last thing, we would like our patrons to remember that we will not attach any fines to the materials you have checked out for as long as we remain closed. Please remember that audio CDs, DVDs, Playaways, Playaway Views, and any learning games and toys checked out from downstairs cannot be put in the book drop. Hang on to those and we will be happy to take those once we re-open.

Digital Resources. No Library Card Required!

Because we are closed to the public through May 18th, this week’s blog features the digital resources available to our patrons and to the general public who may not have a library card. The only thing necessary to access these resources is an internet connection and a computer, tablet, or smartphone. We are proud to be able to offer these services especially in times like these. 

First, I would like to cover those resources that do not require a login and can, therefore, be accessed directly from our catalog page: https://wcvpl.biblionix.com. As you scroll down, on the left side of the page, you will find a list of resources available. The following items on that list do not require a library card to use: AudioBookCloud, RomanceBookCloud, TeenBookCloud, TumbleBooks, and TumbleMath. (These resources will not require a login through August 31st since the parent company has decided it would be a good idea to make them open to everyone during the COVID-19 crisis.)  

AudioBookCloud is on online collection of audio books available for libraries and schools to have access to classic literature, nonfiction, young adult, new titles, and Spanish language audio books. You can search for your favorite author or title as well as browse through the various genres. There is no software to download, because you stream directly from the website. The downside is that you cannot listen while offline. 

Both RomanceBookCloud and TeenBookCloud are like the AudioBookCloud in that there are multiple genres to choose from and they must be read online. RomanceBookCloud has a core collection of more than 1700 eBook titles from the various romance sub-genres—Contemporary, Inspirational, Historical, Regency, Paranormal, and Sci-fi. TeenBookCloud is a collection of eBooks for grades 7-12. The selection includes graphic novels, enhanced novels, classic literature, National Geographic videos, and audiobooks. It also includes a Common Core portal for grade level reading. 

TumbleBooks is an online collection of animated, talking picture books which help to teach young children the joys of reading. Some of the titles even have a read-along function that allows your child to follow along as the story is read to them. TumbleBooks also has a variety of Story books, read-alongs, eBooks, graphic novels, nonfiction, videos as well as some puzzles and games to keep children engaged. There is also Accelerated Reader information so that your child can keep up with their AR reading. 

Finally, we have TumbleMath which offers math picture books, lesson plans, and quizzes in everything from counting, addition, and subtraction to graphing, probability, and finance. The picture books have subtle animation and narration to help your child learn to love math. The quiz section has quizzes just for TumbleMath, but also a selection of Common Core based quizzes. 

One last thing, we would like our patrons to remember that we will not attach any fines to the materials you have checked out for as long as we remain closed. Please remember that audio CDs, DVDs, Playaways, Playaway Views, and any learning games and toys checked out from downstairs cannot be put in the book drop. Hang on to those and we will be happy to take those once we re-open.