Enjoy the last week of Audiobook Month!

There is still some time left as Audiobook Month comes to a close to enjoy listening to a good book.

Our library has a sizable collection of different authors and titles available in both CD and MP3 format as well as many titles that can be accessed on the Web.

Perfect for listening to on summer road trips as well as for enjoyment while working around the house or sunbathing.  Check out our selection of titles in our A/V Department.

Crime and History

Cyberbullying and the Wild Wild Web: What Everyone Needs to Know by J.A. Hitchcock is a small tome with a great deal of very pertinent information. As more and more of our interactions take place via the world wide web, humanity seems to be losing its ability to be civil with one another. There is a great deal of anonymity on the internet and some people think that gives them open license to say and do whatever they want. Some even resort to cyberbullying. This book tells you what cyberbullying is and how you can avoid it and stay safer online. Hitchcock shares stories to help victims and parents to relate to and understand the unfortunate reality of this growing problem.

The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson tells the story of what actually happened to the fourteen-year-old from Chicago who was murdered in the Mississippi Delta in 1955. Just the mention of this young man's name brings to mind racial injustice and the terrorism that arose in the south after the United States Supreme Court declared school segregation to be unconstitutional in 1954. This book turns what we thought we knew about the case on its head. Part true crime drama and part political history, this book also includes the only interview by Carolyn Bryant, the white woman in whose name Till was killed.

A Graphic Retelling of an Iconic Story

There are few short stories that I read in my youth that I remember as vividly as 'The Lottery'.  Only around seven pages long, but the impact of it was enormous and it has been called one of the most terrifying stories written in this century.

First published in The New Yorker in 1948, the story initially generated a large negative feedback with reader reactions ranging from cancelling their subscriptions to sending hate mail.  Shirley Jackson is reported to have said that in over three hundred letters, only thirteen were positive.

In this graphic novel, Miles Hyman, the grandson of Shirley Jackson, reenvisions the story in graphic form as a tribute to his grandmother,

It and over 100 other graphic novels are now available for check-out at our library.  See the shelves near the Reference Desk to view our current selection.

June is Bridal Season

June is traditionally thought of as the month of brides and all things bridal. In fact, in the U.S. it is the busiest month for the wedding industry. I thought I would showcase a few books to help you with your bridal needs. One is specifically about weddings; two feature entertaining tips and tricks; and the last one helps you to let go if things in the marriage go south.

Weddiculous: An Unfiltered Guide to Being a Bride by Jamie Lee (with Jacqueline Novak) is a fresh, funny look at all things bridal. The author--a stand-up comedian, TV writer, and actress—talks about her experience planning her own wedding and gives practical and hilarious tips to other brides on how to not run yourself (and others) crazy during this stressful process. Jamie opens each chapter with a snippet of the kind of advice that big bridal business gives to potential brides; she then blows that advice out of the water! This book is worth the read even if you’re not planning a wedding.

Looking for ideas on entertaining in general? Why not check out Modern Hospitality: Simple Recipes with Southern Charm by Whitney Miller or How to Celebrate Everything by Jenny Rosenstrach?

Whitney Miller was the Season 1 winner of MasterChef hosted by Gordon Ramsay. This young woman hales from Poplarville, Mississippi and is a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi. Her book contains more than 75 original southern-style recipes, ideas for entertaining, and stories from her own family and traditions.

Jenny Rosenstrach includes more than 100 recipes in her book; each one designed to celebrate those days most special to your family. She includes complete menus for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve as well as ideas for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Super Bowl Sunday. She also includes notes on her own family rituals for holidays and birthdays and why it is important for families to celebrate together.

If your wedding doesn’t pan out into eternal wedded bliss, then, The Optimist’s Guide to Divorce by Suzanne Riss and Jill Sockwell may be worth reading. When their own marriages began falling apart, the authors looked and looked for advice to help them through their tough times. They both realized that they needed the support of other women who understood what they were going through. In this book they bring together that practical advice on everything from deciding to divorce, custody battles, and moving house to making a plan, budgeting for your new life, and jumping back in the dating pool. Most importantly, they teach women that it’s okay to hurt, but there is hope and healing on the horizon.

Vocabulary Power!

Follow WCVPL on Facebook (@WCVPLibrary), Twitter (@WCVPLibrary), or Pinterest (www.pinterest.com/wcvpl/) to see what our current Word of the Week is!

So far this year, we have already covered the alphabet once,  featuring the following words - many of which can be found on the SAT exams :

1. acquiesce
2. bibliophile
3. cumulative
4. divergent
5. euphemism
6. formative
7. gesticulate
8. hubris
9. infamy
10. juxtaposition
11. knave
12. literary
13. maculate
14. narcissist
15. onomatopoeia
16. pedagogy
17. quash
18. refutation
19. specious
20. tertiary
21. unstable
22. vaunt
23. wane
24. xenophobia
25. yonder
26. zaftig

Summer Library Program -- For Adults

The theme for this year's Summer Library Program is "Build a Better World." The Summer Library Program's (SLP) kick-off party for children is Monday, June 5, 2017 and the closing party is on Thursday, July 20, 2017. In between, there are plenty of activities and challenges for the kids and families to participate in, but that doesn't mean that those without children and those who are young-at-heart cannot participate.

I am issuing an Adult SLP reading challenge for any adult who wants to participate.Come into the library and check-out a book, audio book, mp3 audio book, or go online and check-out any e-book or e-audio book. Need ideas on what to read? We will have a table front-and-center of book selections that fit with this year's theme (both fiction and non-fiction). Once you've finished, let us know how you liked it. You can write a mini review on our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/WCVPLibrary), or our Twitter account (@WCVPLibrary use #AdultSLP). If you want, we'll have cards you can fill out and leave at the display table.
Why would you want to do any of this? Well, for one thing, it's fun and, more importantly, it helps us to see what our patrons like to read. You might also find some new author or genre to add to your reading list and you will definitely be setting a good example for any young people you know. So... Build A Better World: Read!

The 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead was this year's winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Following is the description as provided by the publisher :

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.

     In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

     Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share. 

This novel can currently be found on our Adult New Fiction shelves.

New Playaways for Your Enjoyment

The titles I'm featuring this week are available in the Audio/Visual Department on our Playaway Audio players. These are compact and extremely convenient all-in-one audio books that make listening to your favorite authors a breeze. Enjoy!

In the novel Little Nothing by Marisa Silver, Pavla Janacek is the much-longed-for, late-in-life child of a plumber and his wife, who are chagrined to discover the daughter they tried so hard to have is a dwarf. Nicknamed "Little Nothing ," she is beloved for her ethereal beauty and good nature. Worrying about her fate after their passing, the elderly Janaceks decide to "fix" her, employing dubious folk and pseudo-medical "remedies." Danilo is a tinkerer indentured to a charlatan, Dr. Smetanka, in order to repay a family debt. Smetanka orders the handy Danilo to build a moving table that becomes an instrument of torture, transforming Pavla into a decidedly lupine creature. First, she begins traveling with a circus sideshow and eventually, she joins a wolf pack. Here the tale becomes as much that of Danilo, the teenage "doctor's assistant" who first meets Pavla in the midst of a brutal "stretching" attempt and falls in love with her. Their paths diverge and cross as war and terror envelop the land, leaving Danilo to wonder if Pavla—in any form—was ever real at all.

The Sun is Also a Star is a novel by Nicola Yoon. One summer morning in New York City, Daniel and Natasha wake up as strangers. Natasha, whose family is facing deportation to Jamaica, and Daniel, a first-generation Korean American with a poet’s sensibility will ponder the age-old question, “Is it fate or chance that brings people together?” The teens’ eventful day begins at a New York City record store, where they see someone shoplifting.  Despite the rest of the day being packed with Natasha’s desperate race against time and a tangled system, and Daniel’s difficult tug-of-war between familial pressures and autonomy, love finds a way in, takes hold, and changes them both forever.

The Orphan Mother by Robert Hicks takes place during the years immediately following the Civil War. Mariah, a successful midwife in Franklin, Tennessee, becomes an “orphan mother” when her politically ambitious son is shot at a rally. In the early days of Reconstruction, justice for blacks might be a dubious concept, but Mariah is determined she will have hers. Mariah becomes acquainted with George Tole, a free black New Yorker whose reputation as a sharp-shooting assassin precedes him to Franklin. However, she doesn’t know George has been coerced by an evil Franklin magistrate, Elijah Dixon, to assassinate Mariah’s son, Theopolis. This story is about a mother fighting deeply ingrained racism to get justice for her beloved son and what that means for those determined to hold onto backward beliefs and prejudices.

New Biography of a Rock Icon

Hard as it might be for those of us who grew up listening to Queen to think of, Freddie Mercury would now be seventy years old.  The man himself said he thought seventy would be boring, but in looking through Mark Blake's tribute, it's hard to imagine ever using the word boring to describe Freddie Mercury, whatever age he might be.

Author Mark Blake attended numerous Queen concerts as well doing several interviews with the founding members of Queen and that familiarity shows as he covers Freddie Mercury's life.  The book is also full of some spectacular photography and liberally sprinkled with quotes from Mercury such as "Mercury isn't my real name, dear.  I changed it from Pluto."

In addition to covering Freddie Mercury's life, the volume also contains a full discography of his work with and without Queen.  Definitely a worthwhile read for any fan of Mercury or Queen.

New Biographies for Movie Fans!

For movie fans, new biographies of two of the most influential and successful directors in recent years.

George Lucas : A Life by Brian Jay Jones

On May 25, 1977, a problem-plagued, budget-straining independent science-fiction film opened in a mere thirty-two American movie theaters. Conceived, written, and directed by a little-known filmmaker named George Lucas, the movie originally called The Star Wars quickly drew blocks-long lines, bursting box-office records and ushering in a new way for movies to be made, marketed, and merchandised. It is now one of the most adored-and successful-movie franchises of all time.

If Star Wars wasn't game-changing enough, Lucas went on to create another blockbuster series with Indiana Jones, and he completely transformed the world of special effects and the way movies sound. His innovation and ambition forged Pixar and Lucasfilm, Industrial Light & Magic, and THX sound.

With interviews from Lucas's colleagues and competitors, Brian Jones offers tantalizing glimpses into his life. 

Steven Spielberg : A Life in Films by Molly Haskell

“Everything about me is in my films,” Steven Spielberg has said. Taking this as a key to understanding the hugely successful moviemaker, Molly Haskell explores the full range of Spielberg’s works for the light they shine upon the man himself. Through such powerhouse hits as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Jurassic Park, and Indiana Jones, to lesser-known masterworks like A.I. and Empire of the Sun, to the haunting Schindler’s List, Haskell shows how Spielberg’s uniquely evocative filmmaking and story-telling reveal the many ways in which his life, work, and times are entwined.