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Keep up-to-date with the latest news about the Central Rappahannock Regional Library.
Sun and Sand Film Series: South Pacific
Christie Hoerneman, Classic Films, LibraryPoint Blog, musicals, Arts Blog
08/13/2010 - 5:21pm

Come join the Central Rappahannock Regional Library as we present South Pacific, the final film in the Sun and Sand film Series at the Salem Church Library on Saturday, August 14th at 2:00 pm.

A young American nurse from Little Rock (Mitzi Gaynor) meets the handsome and mysterious French planter (Rossano Brazzi) on a South Pacific island during World War II. Seeking respite from the battles around them, they find refuge in each other as their romance blooms in the lush tropical paradise. (1958)

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New Database: Book & Authors
Authors, Bestsellers, Book Lists, LibraryPoint Blog, Reading Recommendations, Samantha Thomason
08/13/2010 - 1:55pm

Designed for book groups and individual readers to enhance the experience of the book they are reading, dig deeper into its themes and origins, or learn how the author's life and times contributed to the work. Easy-to-follow menus allow users to broaden and narrow their searches according to author, title, series, awards and other criteria. An "if you like" search connects readers to themes and genres that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.

Get instant access with your library card. Give it a try!

Books & Authors

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The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Adventurous Escapades, Allegory, Bible stories, Coming of Age, LibraryPoint Blog, Pilgrims and pilgrimages, Virginia Johnson, Shelf Life Blog, Reading Room Blog, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
08/26/2010 - 3:19pm

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, is one of those simple, spiritual tales that captures modern-day imaginations and becomes a best-seller. As I read it on the beach, I felt the brush of Jonathan Livingston Seagull’s wings—or perhaps those were the wings of the laughing gull trying to steal my son’s peanut butter sandwich.

In this extended fable, the teenage shepherd Santiago has chosen his free and lonely life over a more respectable one that would have bound him tightly to his community and family. Content as he is with the wisdom he gained while wandering the Spanish hills, he is nonetheless being drawn to change his path. The dark-eyed daughter of a prosperous merchant awaits his marriage proposal, but Santiago’s prophetic dream in an abandoned and ruined church leads him further away from his homeland than he ever imagined.
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Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce
Action & Adventure, Caroline Parr, LibraryPoint Blog, Shelf Life Blog, Book Buzz Blog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Kids Blog
08/12/2010 - 8:14am

You know how, once in a great while, you finish a book and it was so good that you want to start reading it all over again? That’s what happened to me with Frank Cottrell Boyce’s “Cosmic.”

As the book opens, Liam Digby is explaining that he’s not really on a school trip, as he told his parents. Instead, he’s lost in outer space aboard the rocket ship Infinite Possibility and he’s “all right…ish.” How did he get there?
 
Liam is a twelve-year-old kid who’s so tall that he’s easily mistaken for an adult, as he discovers when he and his classmate Florida wander around town together after school. Stopping by a car dealership, Liam is approached by the salesman, who assumes Florida is his daughter. Soon enough Liam finds himself invited to take a flashy Porsche for a test drive. To his relief, his taxi-driving father brings this unnerving experience to an end before Liam has to actually put the car in gear.  
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Beyond Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys
Caroline Parr, LibraryPoint Blog, Reading Room Blog, Mystery
08/11/2010 - 2:16pm

     Ask any group of school-age kids what kind of books they like to read, and one response comes up over and over again: “a mystery.” Kids who enjoy puzzling out mysteries have long been fans of Donald Sobol’s “Encyclopedia Brown” series. Ten-year-old Encylopedia’s head full of facts and his talent for noticing details make him a detective good enough to help out his father, the chief of police. Short chapters, a small-town ambiance, and finding the solutions to each mystery at the back of the book make this series a perennial favorite of readers nine and up.

 
          A new twist on the puzzle-solving genre is Michael D. Beil’s “The Red Blazer Girls: the Ring of Rocomadour.” Three seventh-grade girls at a Catholic school in New York City get caught up in a mystery when one of them spots the face of a woman high up in a window in the church opposite their school. 
  
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Philip K. Dick and History Unrealized
Allegories, Alternate history, Androids, Drug Abuse, Hugo Award winner, John Gaines, LibraryPoint Blog, Mental illness, Nazis, Reading Matters, Robots, Satire, Weekly Feature Articles, unRequired Reading Blog, Teen Blog, Seriously Sci-Fi, Science Fiction
08/12/2010 - 9:57am

The late Philip K. Dick's works were one of the strongest influences on science fiction writers in the first decade of the 21st century, including the fields of alternate history and paranoid thrillers.

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Share your reads with us on Facebook!
CRRL Staff, Facebook, LibraryPoint Blog, Teen Blog
08/11/2010 - 2:18pm

We want to see your vacation pics! Post a picture on our Facebook wall between August 1-31 of you & your library book (or video, cd, etc.) on your vacation (or staycation). A random winner will be chosen to receive a CRRL t-shirt. The winner will be announced September 1.
Have fun and be creative!

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WWW: Wake by Robert Sawyer
Artificial Implants, Blindness, Chuck Gray, LibraryPoint Blog, Post-Cyberpunk, Science Fiction, Teen Book, Web Culture, Women Mathematicians, Shelf Life Blog, Teen Blog, Science Fiction
08/11/2010 - 8:46am

For science fiction aficionados, the premise of WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer initially sounds, well, perhaps a bit contrived (even beyond the normal contrivances of science fiction).  But keep reading: the protagonist, Caitlin Dector, is a young blind millennial who has never known a world without the Internet, a world she can navigate with ease through the use of assistive technologies.  Caitlin becomes the subject of an experimental procedure to restore sight.  However, when her vision is "switched on" she does not see the physical world, but an abstract representation of the World Wide Web.  While exploring her strange new ability, she discovers a growing intelligence emerging from within the Web . . .   see what I mean?  My first thought after hearing this description was, "That sounds like the plot of a bad 90s Outer Limits episode."  After cracking the book open however, I found WWW: Wake tells a fascinating story, blending the best of both science fiction and hard science as well as cyberculture, blind culture, information theory, epidemiology, world politics, family dynamics, pedagogical theory, teenage culture, and probably a few other things I'm not thinking of.  All of that in one book.  And it's really, really good. 

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A Painted House by John Grisham
1950s, Arkansas, Coming of Age, Farm Life, LibraryPoint Blog, Migrant Labor, Southern gothic, Southern Literature, Virginia Johnson, Shelf Life Blog, Reading Room Blog, Historical Fiction
08/12/2010 - 9:19am

Rural 1950s Arkansas is the setting for John Grisham’s Southern thriller, A Painted House. It’s the beginning of a summer full of sweltering days, acres of cotton to pick, dangerous desire, and deadly secrets to keep. 

This season--at its start the same as every other--finds the Chandler family on the road in their dusty pick-up looking for migrant workers to hire. Young Lucas is certain from what he has observed in his short life that once the season’s work is done, his family will go back to its quiet ways, sitting through another winter, readying for another spring planting with Grandpa, “Pappy” Chandler, heading the household.
 
Lucas’ family has worked the land for generations, and this summer’s batches of migrant help—Mexicans and hill people--will work alongside them to bring in the crop before the weather destroys their chance to make a little profit on the farm or at least get further out of debt. Lucas expects the workers to come stay for a few months, do their assigned work, and then go their way—never leaving a lasting impression on his family and their way of life.
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New eAudiobooks: August 2010
LibraryPoint Blog, New eAudiobooks, Samantha Thomason
09/13/2010 - 4:02pm

For August we've added 30 adult titles, 23 of which are are available in MP3 format (suitable for iPods, iPhones, iPads, etc.). We also received 7 new children's/young adult titles (3 available in MP3). Check out our most recent additions!

Browse our newest downloadable audiobooks in the library catalog,  or go directly to the NetLibrary web site (free account needed) or Media Center (install required) to download. If you don't have a NetLibrary account, follow these simple instructions to create one.

New eAudiobooks for August

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