LibraryPoint Blog

This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids.  You can browse the book matches here.

Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace

Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult

Serial readers of the Tech Answers blog probably know that I would recommend either an iPad Mini or a Google Nexus 7 for an eReader tablet and that, though they are very pretty (the devices, not the blog readers, who could be pretty, but I wouldn’t know), I would guide most away from retailer-specific hardware like the Kindle Fire or the Barnes & Noble Nook.  But that overlooks one very important buying category: Cheap Tablets.  These are sub-$150 and often sub-$100 devices that you’ll find at convenience and drug stores.

This year the second floor of the Headquarters Library decided to do something a bit different for their holiday decorations. The Youth Services staff made the decision to have all of their decorations made from recycled and repurposed materials, specifically focusing on books weeded from the collection due to extreme damage. Then the system-wide Teen Council and teen volunteers from Headquarters handled the majority of the decoration creation. Over the course of three weeks these groups worked together to create the trees, snowflakes, paper chains and houses that make up the majority of the second floor decorations while staff members created the complementary hedgehogs. One fun twist that came from using old books was creating a game to go with the decorations.

Five trees created from old books are on the Youth Services Research Desk. We encourage all customers to come and try to guess which books were used to make the trees for a chance to win a prize. To go with the theme of recycled and repurposed decorations the Teen Council decided on the slogan “Go Green with the Grinch” to help tie all of the decorations together.

Check out this slideshow and view on Flickr to find out more about how some of the decorations were made.

If memoirs are written to both connect with the reader and exorcise the writer's personal demons, then Moshe Kasher had one gigantic, stinky, firebreathing, sword-wielding demon.

His debut book's title says it all: Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16. Sure the Salinger-inspired pun is as obvious as a rhino stampede, but Moshe Kasher has had quite a colorful life. A life that I would not want to wish on my worst enemy.

Now a stand-up comic, Kasher was born to not one, but two, deaf parents. Mom and Dad separated within a year of his birth, and his mother took him and his older brother from Brooklyn to Oakland where a life of food stamps, less than stellar public schools, and years of therapy awaited them. This menagerie of elements was perfect for young Moshe (who at the time went by the less-Semitic name Mark) to rebel.