LibraryPoint Blog

This interview airs beginning September 1.
Anita Wills’s quest for information about her family uncovered fascinating information all the way back to Colonial days. She joins Debby Klein on CRRL Presents, a Central Rappahannock Regional Library production.  

Find out more about CRRL Presents.

The plot of Charlie Higson's The Enemy reads like an inverted fairy tale: one day, everyone over the age of 16 starts getting sick. Some of them die early on, and others leave their families voluntarily to try to protect them. The unlucky ones become something else: boil-covered, dim-witted zombies whose only goal is to consume flesh.

The kids who are left behind face incredible odds against their survival. The older ones are responsible for eluding the zombies, taking care of the young ones, and finding food in a precarious world where there is little left of anything, including hope. The Enemy follows groups of kids in London-- particularly, the "Waitrose kids," so named for the supermarket that they have secured and defended for the last year. They are lead by Arran, a natural leader who is both sensitive and fearless; defended by the gifted fighter Achilleus; and kept peaceful by Maxine, the second in command. But their resources are running low, and "the grown-ups" (their name for the zombies) are becoming more daring, picking them off one at a time.

One day a strange boy in a multicolored coat appears at their gate, bringing them tales of a peaceful life that another group of kids has made for themselves at Buckingham Palace. Allegedly, the kids live in security, where they are well-fed by the fruits of their own garden. He invites the Waitrose kids to join them, and they decide to embark on the dangerous journey from Waitrose to Buckingham Palace.

I'm a big fan of Bravo TV's Top Chef  (currently in its seventh season) so I was thrilled to get my hands on How to Cook Like a Top Chef by the creators of the show (foreword by Rick Bayless, text by Emily Miller, photos by Antonis Achilleos).

Top Chef contestants and judges from all six seasons, including Top Chef Masters,  take you through appetizers & sides, proteins, seafood, cooking with ethnic flavors, advanced culinary techniques, and desserts. Although the book is more or less organized around courses, it's slightly chaotic in structure (cooking tips and Q & A's with "cheftestants" and judges are  thrown in sort of haphazardly amongst the recipes), but I don't mind a bit. It has the feel of yearbook more than a typical cookbook, which makes it a fun overview of the past six seasons.

Meggy Swann can swear with the best of them: “ye toads and vipers,” “gleeking goat’s bladder,” “swag-bellied maggot,” and “bloviating windbag” are some of her favorites. If these sound like strange epithets, mayhap you are not from the late 16th century like 13-year-old Meggy, the heroine of Alchemy and Meggy Swann by Karen Cushman.

Meggy was born with legs that “did not sit right in her hips,” and, as a result, has to use two walking sticks to move around with an “awkward swinging gait.” Meggy calls it “wabbling,” a lighthearted nickname for a condition that has brought her ridicule from her rural village, for she lives during a time when a physical handicap is seen as a punishment for a sinful nature. As a result, Meggy has developed a tough hide and a large lexicon of threats.

Our England Run Library was recently featured in this article by the Free Lance-Star. The book shelves are in, the books have been delivered, and now it's just up to a team of staff and volunteers to stock our newest library in time for opening day on Monday, October 4.

I’m a fan of the Moosewood Collective and own a lot of their cookbooks. Last year, I was given another entry to their line, Cooking for Health. I was pleased to see their fresh and easy philosophy of the 1970s had been updated for modern tastes. Never heard of Moosewood? Not everyone has, yet they were named one of 13 most influential restaurants of the 20^th century by Bon Appétit magazine, and our own Sammy T’s seems to have drawn on them for vegetarian inspiration. 

I loved Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Dark Shadows on TV when I was a kid, Anne’s Rice’s rock’n’roll vampires, and I even discussed what team I would join in the ‘tween Twilight Saga. I also devour vampire novels with “punny” titles such as Undead and Unappreciated by Mary-Janice Davidson, but I put The Passage on request at the library because of an article I read in Time Magazine that stated that vampires are scary again, and I do love a character that bites.

This is Week 12 of a 12-Week series of blog posts reviewing new young adult books. To see all of the reviews, click here.

In Kathryn Erskine's "Mockingbird," Caitlin’s world is black and white, and she likes it that way, whether it’s her view of life or her meticulous monotone drawings. Since The Day Our Life Fell Apart when her brother Devon was killed in a school shooting, she and her widowed father keep to simple routines. This is important to kids like Caitlin, a fifth grader with Asperger’s Syndrome. Clear boundaries make it easier to cope, especially when she’s trying hard to follow her counselor’s advice to Look At The Person and Mind Your Manners. 

This is not the kind of book I normally read, but I'm glad I did. War by Sebastian Junger describes Junger's time embedded with the U.S. Army's Second Platoon, Battle Company during 2007 and 2008 while deployed in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan, a small area seeing the heaviest fighting in the entire country.

My only experience with military/war literature is Jarhead, so it remains a little hard for me to see past all the jargon regarding weapons and combat maneuvers. Junger begins the story fast and furious, which left me feeling a little disoriented just as I can only imagine combat would seem to soldiers. Soon enough, though, a more cohesive picture emerges as he begins to fill in the gaps with background information about the area and our movements there and personal details about some of the soldiers. Junger uses humor and candor to describe the restlessness, tension and boredom that comes in times when attacks are less frequent, and the resulting pranks, hijinks and an odd kind of loving violence amongst the soldiers.

 A friend witnessed the future of the book on the Metro the other day. A mother and daughter were sitting side by side, reading. Nothing unusual there – but my friend was amused to see that the mother was reading a book on her Kindle, the e-book reader from Amazon, while the daughter was listening to “Black Beauty” on her MP3 player. At one point, the girl’s face crumpled and tears sprang to her eyes as she listened, prompting the mother to reach out and pat her daughter’s hand. Clearly, “Black Beauty” can still reduce readers – and listeners – to tears, whether they are reading a physical book or listening to a digital audio edition.