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Durham Public Library
7 Maple Avenue
Durham, CT 06422
860-349-9544

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10:00am - 9:00pm * Monday through Thursday
10:00am - 5:00pm * Friday and Saturday

blog description

"You see, I don't believe that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, and that's been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians."--Monty Python


Wednesday, May 25, 2011

PATRON PICKS--The Birchbark House

Tatiana's Pick:  The Birchbark House, by Louise Erdich

Synopsis:
Her name is Omakayas, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop, and she lives on an island in Lake Superior. It is 1850 and the lives of the Ojibwe have returned to a familiar rhythm: they build their birchbark houses in the summer, go to the ricing camps in the fall to harvest and feast, and move to their cozy cedar log cabins near the town of LaPointe before the first snows.

Satisfying routines of Omakayas's days are interrupted by a surprise visit from a group of desperate and mysterious people. From them, she learns that all their lives may drastically change. The chimookomanag, or white people, want Omakayas and her people to leave their island in Lake Superior and move farther west. Omakayas realizes that something so valuable, so important that she never knew she had it in the first place, is in danger: Her home. Her way of life.

In this captivating sequel to National Book nominee The Birchbark House, Louise Erdrich continues the story of Omakayas and her family.

Tatiana says:  This is a series book about a young [Native American] girl taken in by another tribe.  [It has] lessons you can't find in a text book.

PATRON PICKS--Dismantled

Yvonne's Pick:  Dismantled, by Jennifer McMahon
 
Synopsis:
Henry, Tess, Winnie, and Suz banded together in college to form a group they called the Compassionate Dismantlers. Following the first rule of their manifesto "To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart" these daring misfits spend the summer after graduation in a remote cabin in the Vermont woods committing acts of meaningful vandalism and plotting elaborate, often dangerous, pranks. But everything changes when one particularly twisted experiment ends in Suz's death and the others decide to cover it up.
 
Nearly a decade later, Henry and Tess are living just an hour's drive from the old cabin. Each is desperate to move on from the summer of the Dismantlers, but their guilt isn't ready to let them go. When a victim of their past pranks commits suicide apparently triggered by a mysterious Dismantler-style postcard it sets off a chain of eerie events that threatens to engulf Henry, Tess, and their inquisitive nine-year-old daughter, Emma.
 
Is there someone who wants to reveal their secrets? Is it possible that Suz did not really die or has she somehow found a way back to seek revenge?
 
Full of white-knuckle tension with deeply human characters caught in circumstances beyond their control, Jennifer McMahon's gripping story and spine-tingling plot prove that she is a master at weaving the fear of the supernatural with the stark realities of life.

Yvonne says:  Suspenseful and a quick read.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

STAFF PICKS--Alphabet of Dreams

Karyn's Pick:  Alphabet of Dreams, by Susan Fletcher (YA)

Synopsis:
Mitra and her little brother, Babak, are beggars in the city of Rhagae, scratching out a living as best as they can with what they can beg for--or steal. But Mitra burns with hope and ambition, for she and Babak are not what they seem. They are of royal blood, but their father's ill-fated plot against the evil tyrant, King Phraates, has resulted in their father's death and their exile. Now disguised as a boy, Mitra has never given up believing they can rejoin what is left of their family and regain their rightful standing in the world.

Then they discover that Babak has a strange gift: If he sleeps with an item belonging to someone, he can know that person's dreams. Mitra believes that they can use this gift to find passage back to the city of Palmyra and their remaining kinsmen. But soon Babak and his abilities come to the attention of a powerful Magus -- one who has read portents in the stars of the coming of a new king and the dawn of a new age. Soon Mitra and Babak find themselves on the road to Bethlehem...
 
The acclaimed author of Shadow Spinner returns to ancient Persia in this spellbinding saga -- a tale filled with the color of the caravansaries and the heat of the desert, a tale that reimagines the wonder and spirit of a lost age.

Karyn says:  It's like a prequel to Jesus' story, about the three wise men meeting and following prophecies and stars.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

PATRON PICKS--A Case for God

Shamsuddin's Pick:  A Case for God, by Karen Armstrong

Synopsis:
Moving from the Paleolithic age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the great lengths to which humankind has gone in order to experience a sacred reality that it called by many names, such as God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. Focusing especially on Christianity but including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Chinese spiritualities, Armstrong examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time, when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. Why has God become unbelievable? Why is it that atheists and theists alike now think and speak about God in a way that veers so profoundly from the thinking of our ancestors?
 
Answering these questions with the same depth of knowledge and profound insight that have marked all her acclaimed books, Armstrong makes clear how the changing face of the world has necessarily changed the importance of religion at both the societal and the individual level. And she makes a powerful, convincing argument for drawing on the insights of the past in order to build a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age. Yet she cautions us that religion was never supposed to provide answers that lie within the competence of human reason; that, she says, is the role of logos. The task of religion is “to help us live creatively, peacefully, and even joyously with realities for which there are no easy explanations.” She emphasizes, too, that religion will not work automatically. It is, she says, a practical discipline: its insights are derived not from abstract speculation but from “dedicated intellectual endeavor” and a “compassionate lifestyle that enables us to break out of the prism of selfhood.”

Shamsuddin says:  Very scholarly account of evolution of concept of God and why it still has relevence.

READ ANY GOOD BOOKS LATELY?


If you'd like to recommend a book, please use the comment box below.  Be sure to include the title & author and tell us why you liked it. 

Thanks!

Monday, May 9, 2011

STAFF PICKS--The Winter Ghosts, by Kate Mosse

Carol's Pick:  The Winter Ghosts, by Kate Mosse

Synopsis:
Kate Mosse is back with a haunting ghost story from the French mountains. From the bestselling author of LABYRINTH and SEPULCHRE - a compelling story of ghosts and remembrance. Illustrated throughout by Brian Gallagher.

The Great War took much more than lives. It robbed a generation of friends, lovers and futures. In Freddie Watson's case, it took his beloved brother and, at times, his peace of mind. In the winter of 1928, still seeking resolution, Freddie is travelling through the French Pyrenees. During a snowstorm, his car spins off the mountain road. He stumbles through woods, emerging in a tiny village. There he meets Fabrissa, a beautiful woman also mourning a lost generation. Over the course of one night, Fabrissa and Freddie share their stories. By the time dawn breaks, he will have stumbled across a tragic mystery that goes back through the centuries.

Carol says:  This new book was a great story of personal grief and the manner in which this character finds peace with loss and death through ghostly manifestations.  An interesting read.

Friday, May 6, 2011

PATRON PICKS--Dies the Fire; The Protector's War; A Meeting at Corvallis

Betty's picks:  (Trilogy) Dies the Fire, The Protector's War, and A Meeting at Corvallis, by S. M. Stirling

Synopsis:
The Change occurred when an electrical storm centered over the island of Nantucket produced a blinding white flash that rendered all electronic devices and fuels inoperable. What follows is the most terrible global catastrophe in the history of the human race—-and a Dark Age more universal and complete than could possibly be imagined.

Betty says:  It stretched my imagination.  Imagine what would happen in our world without electricity, technology, gas engines, automobiles.  One day there is "A Change" and the world as we know it ends.

Monday, May 2, 2011

PATRON PICKS: The Passions of Chelsea Kane

Rosemarie's pick:  The Passions of Chelsea Kane, by Barbara Delinsky

Synopsis:
After the death of her adoptive mother, thirty-six-year-old Chelsea Kane is consumed by the need to uncover her biological heritage. Taking a break from her successful architecture career, she arrives in the New Hampshire town where she was born, determined to learn the truth, her only clue a tarnished silver key.
 
One of her first discoveries, however, is something quite unexpected: the irresistibly attractive Judd Street. Buoyed by love and resolution, the determined Chelsea slowly begins to uncover the dark mystery of her past. But as she inches closer to the truth, she realizes that someone is trying to stop her, first by scaring her, then by trying to harm her. The danger escalates until one terrifying night when all secrets are laid bare.
 
With memorable characters and writing that will stir the hearts and minds of all readers, The Passions of Chelsea Kane is the kind of compelling narrative that has earned Barbara Delinsky an ever-widening readership.  (Barnes and Noble summary)

Rosemarie says:  Her search for answers keeps you on your toes.

PATRON PICKS: Geronimo Stilton: The Wild, Wild, West

Jacob's Pick:  The Wild, Wild West (Geronimo Stilton Series, #21), by Geronimo Stilton

Synopsis:
Jumpin' gerbil babies, I was so excited! I was heading to America for the first time ever. Thea, Trap, and Benjamin were all coming with me. And we were going to visit a real ranch and go riding and herding cattle cowboy-style! It was sure to be my most whisker-licking-good adventure yet.  (Barnes and Noble summary)

Jacob Says:  I liked that it had a lot of adventure in it.

PATRON PICKS: Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment

Trey's pick:  Maximum Ride:  The Angel Experiment, by James Patterson (YA)

Synopsis: 
In James Patterson's blockbuster series, fourteen-year-old Maximum Ride, better known as Max, knows what it's like to soar above the world. She and all the members of the "flock"—Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasman and Angel—are just like ordinary kids—only they have wings and can fly. It may seem like a dream come true to some, but their lives can morph into a living nightmare at any time...like when Angel, the youngest member of the flock, is kidnapped and taken back to the "School" where she and the others were experimented on by a crew of wack jobs. Her friends brave a journey to blazing hot Death Valley, CA, to save Angel, but soon enough, they find themselves in yet another nightmare—this one involving fighting off the half-human, half-wolf "Erasers" in New York City. Whether in the treetops of Central Park or in the bowels of the Manhattan subway system, Max and her adopted family take the ride of their lives. Along the way Max discovers from her old friend and father-figure Jeb—now her betrayed and greatest enemy—that her purpose is save the world—but can she?  (Barnes and Noble summary)