Staff recommendations from Winter Reading

Congratulations to Matthew, our winner for Week 3, and Celeste, our winner for Week 4. They each win a $20 gift card! Keep your entries coming in! The next three weeks we will be drawing multiple weekly winners! Participants in this year's Winter Reading have read 89 books so far. Check out some of the books library staff members have enjoyed during Winter Reading:

	The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins Find it in the catalog! Rating: 5 out of 5 "Very engrossing. Katniss is a strong, intelligent teenage character, and if the people behind the movie version mess up the casting for her I will be mad. Collins presents a future in which Panem, formerly North America, is composed of districts, and each year, to atone for uprising against the Capitol, each district must select two kids to participate in the Hunger Games, where they are required to fight each other to the death. The games are televised, and homes in all the districts tune in to root for their tributes. The manipulation of the tributes throughout the Games reminds me of reality TV in our culture. You will not be able to put this book down." --DP
	Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris Find it in the catalog! Rating: 5 out of 5 "I'm going through the Sookie Stackhouse series for the second time because I love how Charlaine Harris writes. This book contains one of my favorite plotlines from the series -- Eric loses his memory and stays with Sookie while she tries to keep him safe from the witches who are after him. His complete change of character is quite funny, as he is frightened and unsure of himself when Sookie finds him running along the side of the road. Plus Alcide returns, the witches arrive, and the mysterious, secluded community of Hotshot is introduced. I hope the writers of the TV series True Blood incorporate the plotlines from this book in the next season!" --DP
	Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks Find it in the catalog! Rating: 4 out of 5 --GB A new woman in town keeps her past to herself and arouses suspicions of the townspeople. She eventually falls in love and then must face her past and decide between leaving or staying.
	House Rules by Jodi Picoult Find it in the catalog!  Rating: 4 out of 5 --GB In Picoult's latest, a teenager with Asberger's syndrome is on trial for murder.
	Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris by Sarah Turnbull Find it in the catalog! Rating: 5 out of 5 "I enjoyed reading about the author's experiences living in Paris. As an Australian she talks about the differences between her culture and that of the French. She also shares her struggle to find work as a freelance journalist. Although she lives with a Frenchman, she still feels like an outsider and it is difficult for her to find her place in the city. Especially intriguing is what happens when she gets a dog and then becomes subject to all sorts of unsolicited advice and comments from passerbys. I had no idea how serious the French were about their dogs!" --DP
	Dracula in Love by Karen Essex Find it in the catalog! Rating: 5 out of 5 "Essex retells the story of Dracula from the female point of view, with Mina, not Dracula, being the focus of the story -- the character we know as Dracula doesn't appear until more than a quarter of the way through the book. I actually think the way the author tells the story is very refreshing and something I had never read before in regards to literature about vampires. The writing is dark and sensual in a way that I had not expected. Dracula in Love is also a good work of historical fiction set in Victorian England, and I recommend it to readers who enjoy books set in that era. Just don't call it a "vampire book."--DP

Book Lust to Go

Book Lust to Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers
by Nancy Pearl
011.6 PEA
Find it in the catalog!

If you enjoy reading books set in far off countries and are wondering what to check out next, Book Lust to Go is a great guide. Nancy Pearl, Library Journal's Librarian of the Year, has compiled a detailed list of books dealing with travel from A to Z -- from "A is for Adventure" to "Zipping Through Zimbabwe." The types of books she includes are diverse as well. In addition to fiction and mysteries Pearl recommends armchair travel books, biographies, and history books. And if you're not necessarily looking to read about a specific place, you may find titles that are appealing in the chapters "See the Sea," "Making Tracks by Train," "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," or "Comics with a Sense of Place," just to name a few are Pearl's fun travel-themed categories. At the front of Book Lust to Go, in addition to the Contents page, is a Geographical Index. Pick your spot on the map and you'll see a line pointing to the page number for that chapter! This is a wonderful resource and I found the suggestions very helpful. After paging through chapters covering settings such as Malaysia, Japan, and Scotland, I found so many intriguing titles that I did not know which one to start reading first!

Winter Reading update and book recommendations

We are now into week 3 of Teen and Adult Winter Reading: Reading is Your Ticket to Travel. Congratulations to Emily, who is the winner of our week 2 drawing. She wins a $20 gift card to Dunkin' Donuts! Get your reading entries in for a chance to win in our weekly drawings or the grand prize of a $75 gift card!

These books have received high ratings and positive reviews from teen and adult participants in Winter Reading.

Rachel's Garden by Marta Perry LARGE TYPE FICTION PERRY Find it in the catalog!	The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Speckled Band by Sir A. Conan Doyle MYSTERY DOYLE Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Find it in the catalog!
Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher NEW MYSTERY BUTCHER Find it in the catalog!	Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro FICTION ISHIGURO Find it in the catalog!
The Exodus Quest by Will Adams FICTION ADAMS Find it in the catalog!	Million Dollar Dilemma by Judy Baer FICTION BAER Find it in the catalog!
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins TEEN COLLINS or JUV FICTION COLLINS Find it in the catalog!	Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor by Lisa Kleypas NEW FICTION KLEYPAS Find it in the catalog!

Cookbook Nook

There's nothing us librarians love more than food (even more than books!) and now we have our own pseudo kitchen at the library. Even better yet, it's full of cookbooks, which you can check out and make actual delicious food with!

Read chapter 1 of the next Sookie Stackhouse book

The next installment in the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris, Dead Reckoning, is due to be released in May. Fans who are looking for their Sookie fix can read the first chapter, all nineteen pages of it, on Charlaine Harris' official site. Are you all caught up with reading this series? If you're working your way through the books or are a newcomer to the series, here are the books (not including short stories featuring Sookie), listed in order:

• Dead Until Dark
• Living Dead in Dallas
• Club Dead
• Dead to the World
• Dead as a Doornail
• Definitely Dead
• All Together Dead
• From Dead to Worse
• Dead and Gone
• Dead in the Family
• Dead Reckoning (coming in May 2011)

Since we already have Dead Reckoning listed in the catalog as being "on order" you are now able to put yourself on hold for the book! If you do a title search for Dead Reckoning or a words or phrase search for "charlaine harris and sookie stackhouse" the book will appear in your results list.

Have you signed up for Winter Reading yet?

Reading is Your Ticket to Travel is the theme for Teen and Adult Winter Reading this year. When you sign up at the Information Desk, you will receive a reading log where you can write down the books you listen to or read. There is no requirement for a certain number of books to read. Read 1 book. Read 5. Read 15! Grab more entries from the Information Desk if you need them. Each book you read enters you into the weekly gift card prize drawings. All entries must by in by Saturday, March 5 before we close at 5:30 PM.

Winter Reading prizes:
Weekly gift card drawings: $20 to Dunkin' Donuts, Classic Cinemas, or Target
Grand prize for adults: $75 gift card to Target
Grand prize for teens: $75 gift card to Target

If you will read at least one book between now and March 5, be sure to sign up and fill out an entry slip! That $75 Target gift card could be yours!

The Pyramid: The First Wallander Cases

Inspector Kurt Wallander made his first appearance in Henning Mankell's 1991 novel, Faceless Killers; an intelligent, elegantly plotted police procedural set in the small Swedish community of Ystad. At the time of that first introduction, Wallander is approaching middle age, divorced, intermittently estranged from his father, consumed by the responsibilities of his profession, and yet ambivalent about the value of police-work. He is a complex character, and one not given to undue self-examination. In Faceless Killers and subsequent novels in the series, we learn that Wallander suffered a life-threatening injury early in his career, that he has loved opera virtually all his life, and that the roots of his father's disapproval are oblique. With the publication of The Pyramid: The First Wallander Cases, Mankell has chosen to elaborate on these hints at his creation's past. The book is comprised of five short mysteries: Wallander's First Case, The Man with the Mask, The Man on the Beach, The Death of the Photographer, and the novella-length The Pyramid. (It seems fitting that this "prequel" is structured around Wallander's investigations, as the cases he's worked are unquestionably the defining experiences of his life.) Mankell establishes connections between these narratives, often foreshadowing events that are well known to readers of the series. Some of these connections, though subtle, are quite touching. There is something thrilling, and yet bittersweet, in our first glimpse of Wallander as a brash young man. Something like seeing an old photograph of your father, stronger and younger than you can remember him. We get a sense of the character's innate gifts for investigation, and some revealing hints at his deteriorating private life. I was particularly affected by the scenes involving Wallander's mentor and senior detective, Rydberg. In a scene that takes place on New Year's Day, Wallander and Rydberg shake hands before parting, "as if to mark the occasion." More than just a touching example of how colleagues express their affection, it's an indicator of how much Wallander values his older friend, whose absence casts a long shadow over the series. Mankell does a fine job of portraying the passage of time from one case to the next. In Wallander's First Case, the twenty-three-year-old cavalierly tells his father that he never gets sick, and his father replies, "Wait ." By the last narrative in the book, 40-year-old Wallander is following leads while nursing a cold and a fever, carrying toilet paper in his pocket to wipe his endlessly running nose. The author wisely holds back as much as he reveals, never quite specifying the cause of enmity between the father and the son, but The Pyramid does provide a powerful example of how similar and yet divergent are the personalities of these two characters. In light of these new cases, it seems clear that Wallander's aptitude for investigative work is innate, and not something that was completely taught. Wallander's progression as a detective can be seen as an ongoing refinement of temperament. The brash young police officer of Wallander's First Case is still alive and well, tempered by experience, maturity, and some regret.

The Pyramid: The First Wallander Cases
Find it in the catalog!