A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

This is the fifth and final installment of the Staff Picks 2014 series.  It'll be back again next January with our picks for 2015!  To catch up on previous installments, you can click here , here , here , and here .  Today Miss Shayne, one of our library aides, shares some of her favorites from 2014. Favorite Books This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Opel, is an adventurous story of how a brother would go to extreme lengths to save his twin.  Miss Shayne enjoyed the excitement and the theme of the importance of family. The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger; Miss Shayne says the main character is very honest and explains everything in detail. Favorite Movies The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spiderman ; Miss Shayne says that both of these movies are good superhero films that were re-made with better special effects.

This is the fourth installment of our Staff Picks 2014 series.  To read previous installments, please click here , here and here .  In this installment Miss Cherrie, who is a volunteer here at the library, shares her favorites from the past year. Favorite Books Wonder by R.J. Palacio.  Miss Cherrie says, "This is a kid's book, but I loved it." The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and The Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin.  Miss Cherrie says, "I liked the beginning especially and the part about the presidents when they were younger. ... It was really long." Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult. "I liked it, and I couldn't put it down," Miss Cherrie says. Favorite Movies The Monuments Men Parkland

This is the second book I've read about the library field, and it was a pretty good book.  Marilyn Johnson's current release is Lives In Ruins ; it's about the field of archaeology and those who work in the field.  I'd read a review of Lives In Ruins,  and I thought it sounded interesting, and through the course of investigating that book, I found This Book Is Overdue .  Incidentally, at the beginning of this book Johnson explains how research for a previous book about obituaries lead her to write about librarians.  Based on how I much enjoyed this book, I will definitely check out some of her other books. Johnson sheds light on the field of library science by examining the many diverse, sometimes eccentric, personalities who work in the profession.  And while I could relate to some of the incidents recounted in the book, there were some that, thankfully ( very thankfully), I could not relate. Johnson covers one New York library system's bumpy online...

I may start reviewing DVD's a little more on this blog.  I recently watched, Chef and Transformers: Age of Extinction on DVD, so I'm sharing a short review of each movie today. Chef Chef Carl Casper's career implodes in the space of a week thanks to a poor review from a prestigious food critic, his own misunderstanding of the nature and lightening speed of social media, and a boss more concerned with the bottom line than with serving cutting edge cuisine.  Left jobless and without any future prospects for employment, Casper travels to Miami with his son and ex-wife.  But Casper's misfortunes are blessing in disguise because they allow him to return to developing and cooking new recipes rather than remain stagnant in a stifling job.  In Miami Casper buys a food truck, and he's finally happy again--he's serving food that he believes in, he's working with his best friend, Martin, and he's re-connecting and bonding with his son, Percy.  Once Casper ge...

Throughout the month of January I'm sharing our staff picks in a multi-part series.  You can read the previous installments here and here .  In today's installment I'm sharing my picks for the previous year.  All of my picks for books have been reviewed here on the blog, and I encourage you to click the link to read the review for each pick. Favorite Books An Inquiry Into Love and Death and Silence For The Dead , both by Simone St. James: thus far, I've read and reviewed all of St. James' novels after falling in love with her debut novel, The Haunting of Maddy Clare .  These novels are must reads for anyone who loves a good period piece with more than a dash of terror and/or suspense of the supernatural persuasion thrown in. The Secret Rooms: A True Story of a Haunted Castle, A Plotting Duchess & A Family Secret by Catherine Bailey: if it seems like these picks have theme so far, sorry, that's just the way my picks shook out this year.  I think ...

Throughout the month of January I'm sharing our staff picks of reads, movies, and websites that we enjoyed over the past year.  This is the second installment of the series.  To read the first installment, please click here to read about Miss Sheila's picks.  Today I'll share Timothy's picks for 2014.  Timothy is one of our assistants here at the library where he works part-time while attending college. Favorite books from 2014 (listed in no particular order): The Story of a Macaron-loving Girl Who Lived a Thousand Years Somehow by Karate Everything Is Going To Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways The World Wants You Dead by Robert Brockway Jam by Yahtzee Croshaw Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh Favorite movies from 2014 : Guardians of the Galaxy Puella Magi Madoka Magica: The Rebellion Story Timothy enjoys seeing what other people are read...

Changing The Way We Die: Compassionate End-Of-Life Care And The Hospice Movement was written by journalists, Fran Smith and Sheila Himmel.  The two women also write a blog of the same title for the magazine Psychology Today .  After vastly different experiences in the end of life care received by each author's respective father, they decided to explore hospice as a movement and a service.  The book itself is divided into several sections that explore different aspects of the movement. The first section explores the history of hospice both as a movement and a service provided for the dying and their families and caregivers.  This section recounts how the movement took hold in mid-twentieth century America as well as the differences between hospice in America and hospice in England where the first hospice in that country provided the spring board for its sister movement in the U.S.  It also addresses the challenges and struggles of the early movement to gain...

We're kicking off 2015 with a new series here on the blog!  Throughout the month of January, I will be sharing our Staff Picks of 2014.  This is the first part of a multi-part series in which library staff will share their favorite books, movies and/or literary websites or blogs from the previous year.  We're starting off with Miss Sheila's picks for 2014.  So keep on reading to find out what Miss Sheila's been reading over the past year! Although she has read many books during 2014, Miss Sheila is hard pressed to name her favorite novel.  That’s because all the books she enjoyed throughout the year fell into the nonfiction category.  Oddly enough, her favorite topic to read about is ... physics.   “The discoveries being made daily in the science of physics, as well as the discoveries made during the last one hundred years or so are nothing short of  fascinating”, Miss Sheila tells us.  “The ideas and theories brought together by t...