What’s Next?

Welcome to DBRL Next, the library’s blog for adults! Here you’ll discover authors, programs, area events and learning resources. Visit often and find your next good book. Unravel the mysteries of new technologies or learn a language. Read about upcoming films, lectures and computer classes. Participate in Adult Summer Reading. Find a volunteering opportunity, a new hobby and more. What’s next? Scroll down to find out!

Relaxing With a Cup of Tea

Have you ever found yourself tapping your foot and staring at the microwave to hurry up and heat your cup of water?  Tea is supposed to be relaxing, and here I am apparently thinking that staring and tapping heats the water up faster.  The tea ceremony is such a lovely, patient ritual that I have spoiled with a few hurried plunges of my tea bag into tepid water.  I think my New Year’s resolution to relax could use some tweaking.

No matter which end of the tea spectrum I choose to begin my careful exploration, I find the library has several books covering various topics related to the tea world that peak my interest.  First of all, I immediately relax with a book in my hand.  Now the choice is to plunge myself into the intriguing history of tea or learn more about the types of tea and where the plants are grown.  Proper water quality, water temperature and steeping times are critical to know.  Yet I do love thumbing through pages of photos of exquisite tea pots and tea cups.  And what about the irresistible recipes like miniature blackberry muffins and cucumber sandwiches?  Of course, when I finish my cup of tea I always have the leaves to read.  What about inviting a friend over for tea?

Start your tea party for one or more by looking through this list of books available at the library: Tea.

Author note: Karen is currently reading “The Street Sweeper” by Elliot Perlman.

Staff Picks Book List: Alligator Wrestling, Parenting a Disabled Child and Teen Angst

Staff of the Daniel Boone Regional Library share their recently read favorites.

Book cover for Swamplandia! by Karen RussellSwamplandia!” by Karen Russell

“Swamplandia!” is a hilarious and heartbreaking and beautifully written book about a family that runs an alligator theme park. Since Ava’s alligator-wrestling mother died (of cancer, not alligator wrestling) the park has struggled. Ava is trying to save the park, but she must also contend with being a child and with a sister that is hell-bent on reaching the underworld so that she can marry a ghost.

Karen Russell dispenses metaphors as fresh as the air in the middle of the ocean at the top of a mountain directly underneath a blimp used to manufacture environmentally friendly “Fresh Aire” air fresheners, and it would be easy to reread nearly every sentence for the pleasure of her wordsmithing were it not necessary to proceed to the next, chasing these fantastic characters. A+. Would read again. – Chris S.

Book cover for The Boy in the Moon by Ian BrownThe Boy in the Moon” by Ian Brown

The Boy in the Moon is an absorbing and graceful story of a father helping to raise his “profoundly disabled” son.  It is a powerful examination of what it means to be a parent and what it means to be human.  Brown approaches this potentially somber topic with thoughtfulness and humor. – Melissa S.

Book cover for In Zanesville by Jo Ann BeardIn Zanesville” by Jo Ann Beard

Beard expertly captures the bittersweet misery of coming of age in small town USA, of entering high school, discovering your weirdness, boys, the weirdness of boys, the agony of being ignored by the popular crowd and the agony of not being ignored by the popular crowd. By turns funny and tender, the fourteen-year-old narrator’s voice rings true, as do the stories of her babysitting disasters, awkward sleepovers and keggers in the woods. – L.

Review: Corregidora

Book cover for Corregidora by Gayl JonesThe following review was submitted by a DBRL patron during our 2011 Adult Summer Reading program.

Ursa Corregidora, a young black lounge singer in post-WWII Kentucky, suffers the miscarriage of her first child and cannot bear any more children. This is at odds with the imperative driven into her since her birth for her to “make generations” to whom she can orally pass on the horrors of slavery (white plantation owners raping and impregnating black female slaves with impunity). This storytelling practice was begun by her great-grandmother, a former slave, and passed to her daughter and granddaughter. So what can Ursa do when her purpose in life is gone? That question was ever-present as I read, the first-person point of view making me feel every inch of Ursa’s dilemma. A cathartic read that will change any reader’s view of slavery.

For more reading recommendations related to Black History Month, see February’s Literary Links, a column that appears monthly in the Ovation section of the Columbia Daily Tribune.

Why Doesn’t the Library Have the eBook I Want?

Greetings, eBook readers.  When I help people navigate our OverDrive catalog of eBooks, two questions I am commonly asked are, “Why don’t you have the specific book I am looking for?” and, “Why don’t you have any books by this particular author?”  The answer to these questions, at least in many cases, is that the publisher simply won’t allow us access to those titles.

Last week, Penguin Group became the third major U.S. publisher to refuse to license eBooks to public libraries. 
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Black History Month 2012: African-American Female Musicians

Black History Month Collage
Pictured above: Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune (founder of Bethune-Cookman University and unofficial advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt), Ella Fitzgerald (musician and first African-American woman to win a Grammy Award), Marian Anderson (contralto singer and first African-American to sing at the New York Metropolitan Opera), and Shirley Chisholm (politician and first African-American woman elected to U.S. Congress)

In celebration of Black History Month, we’d like to build upon the previous posts in this blog series (including an overview of Black History Month and a feature on African-American female authors and poets). Since the 2012 theme is “Black Women in American Culture and History,” this week we’ve decided to showcase the library’s CDs by and DVDs about African-American female musicians.

In addition to the works of these artists (listed below), you may also enjoy this list of music CDs featuring African-American gospel, folk, blues, R&B, jazz and other musical styles, as well as the DVD tribute to African-American women titled “I Will.” Last but not least, be sure to check out related events at the library, including tomorrow night’s showing of Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair at Center Aisle Cinema, Doug Hunt’s presentation of Boone County slave Sanford Shirkey’s unlikely emancipation and upcoming performances by storyteller Lyn Ford.
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Food of Love (Let Them Eat Cake!)

chocolate cakeIn my childhood home, there were no sugar cereals or packaged cookies. We did not eat at McDonalds. Ever. A backyard garden produced squash, tomatoes, carrots, berries, asparagus and other fresh foods for our table. My brother and I had milk with dinner and were only allowed soda (one can a day) when on vacation.

As a child, I hated my mother’s insistence on healthy eating and preference for fresh foods over processed and packaged ones. As an adult, I am completely grateful to her. And both then and now I appreciate how she set aside her strict rules each Valentine’s Day. The same woman who looked scandalized when we asked for Lucky Charms or Oreos baked each of us an entire heart-shaped cake of our own every February 14. We would carve off and eat huge slabs of cake each night after dinner until nothing but crumbs were left.
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