QC Museum Week is June 18-26

qcmuseumweekQC Museum Week is quickly approaching! Have you started planning what museums you’re going to visit? Do you have your favorites picked out. QC Museum Week runs June 18-26th this year. This event is put on by the Quad Cities Convention & Visitors Bureau, as well as local museums.

This year’s theme is Quad Cities mysteries! Be sure to stop in to one of our many local museums to enjoy exhibits, events, special admissions, and learn more about some Quad City mysteries.

Visit the QC Museum Week website to learn more about the offers that each museum is running. You will also find the websites and contact information for each museum!

(Some of the museums are also participating in the Quad Cities Museum GeocacheGeocaching is a treasure hunt where participants are given a specific latitude and longitude that they have to travel to in order to find the treasure. )

Participating Museums

  • Afro-American Heritage Center
  • Augustana’s Fryxell Geology Museum
  • Augustana Teaching Museum of Art
  • Buffalo Bill Museum
  • Buffalo Bill Cody Homestead
  • Butterworth Center & Deere Wiman Houses
  • Catich & Morrissey Galleries
  • Colonel Davenport House
  • Dan Nagle Walnut Grove Pioneer Village
  • Davenport School Museum
  • Family Museum
  • Figge ARt Museum
  • German American Heritage Center
  • Hauberg Center – Historical Tulip Mansion
  • Hauberg Indian Museum
  • Iowa 80 Trucking Museum
  • Karpeles Manuscript Museum
  • Palmer Family and Chiropractic History Museum
  • Pine Creek Grist Mill
  • Putnam Museum & Science Center
  • Rock Island Arsenal Museum
  • Rock Island County Historical Society

Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen

lost lakeThe first time Eby Pim saw Lost Lake, it was on a picture postcard. Just an old photo and a few words on a small square of heavy stock, but when she saw it, she knew she was seeing her future. That was half a life ago. Now Lost Lake is about to slip into Eby’s past. Her husband George is long passed. Most of her demanding extended family are gone. All that’s left is a once-charming collection of lakeside cabins succumbing to the Southern Georgia heat and damp, and an assortment of faithful misfits drawn back to Lost Lake year after year by their own unspoken dreams and desires. It’s a lot, but not enough to keep Eby from relinquishing Lost Lake to a developer with cash in hand, and calling this her final summer at the lake. Until one last chance at family knocks on her door.

Lost Lake is where Kate Pheris spent her last best summer at the age of twelve, before she learned of loneliness, and heartbreak, and loss. Now she’s all too familiar with those things, but she knows about hope too, thanks to her resilient daughter Devin, and her own willingness to start moving forward. Perhaps at Lost Lake her little girl can cling to her own childhood for just a little longer… and maybe Kate herself can rediscover something that slipped through her fingers so long ago. One after another, people find their way to Lost Lake, looking for something that they weren’t sure they needed in the first place – love, closure, a second chance, peace, a mystery solved, a heart mended. Can they find what they need before it’s too late?

At once atmospheric and enchanting, Lost Lake shows Sarah Addison Allen at her finest, illuminating the secret longings and the everyday magic that wait to be discovered in the unlikeliest of places. (description from publisher)

See the USA

At last! Summer is here! Time to get up off that couch and see something of the world. And what better part of the world to explore than our own beloved USA? There’s no shortage of exciting and interesting places to visit and lucky us, many of the most beautiful, most historic, most fragile have been set aside and protected, for us and for future generations – the National Parks.

National Geographic’s Complete National Parks of the United States is a great place to start if you’re not sure where you want to go. In fact, it might make you to realize you’d like to go everywhere, the pictures are so enticing and beautiful. The descriptions of each park are short and to the point – you will want to do more research if you are planning a major stay – but this gives you the highlights and must-sees. It’s also useful to show you places you might want to stop along the way – maybe schedule a stop at the lesser known Black Canyon of the Gunnison on your way to the Grand Canyon, or reroute to visit to the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site when heading to the Everglades.  Website and contact information is included for each site.

Now there’s no excuse for not getting out and participating in the great American summer vacation (Chevrolet optional!)

The Armchair Traveler – Staycation, All I Ever Wanted…

Staycation2Here we are – already getting to the end of vacation season. Many  fellow library workers and customers are talking about all the fun trips they have planned before school starts (the New Windsor rodeo, Tabor Home Vineyards & Winery, the windmill in Fulton, Illinois, the Iowa State Fair) or the fun things they’ve done on their days off. If you’re one of them, we’d like to hear from you; the best ideas will win a prize.  The following rules apply:

The destination must be within a 1-day drive (round-trip) of the Quad-Cities.

Ok, there’s only the one rule.

Submit a comment to this post by August 21st , and you may be a winner! The Putnam Museum and IMAX Theatre have generously donated 2 tickets to Kilimanjaro: To the Roof of Africa (showing through October). A perfect choice for all you travelers, armchair and otherwise. The winner will be announced August 25 – good luck!

On the Road Again….

car travelIt’s the American thing to do – despite the dismal state of the economy and the need to cut back, a lot of people hit the road each summer on vacation. Something about our vast collection of interstate highways, our love of cars, our need to explore – it’s all part of the American character. And seeing more of this beautiful country – mountains, plains, cities – keeps us going around “just one more” corner. Of course, there are stretches of road – Nebraska comes to mind as does, quite frankly, large chunks of Illinois – that you must get across just to get where you’re going. Thank goodness for that super-slick CD player, built right into the car – just the thing to keep you and everyone in the car happily occupied!

Now, what to feed it? Let’s turn to our own librarians for their recommendations.

Lynn reminds us that a lot depends on who’s on the car with you. If you’re traveling with multi-generations, you need to look for something that will engage the kids, but is interesting to adults too. She suggests The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford, the classic (travel!) story of three pets separated from their family. A perilous journey with cute, smart animals and a happy ending – a winner for everyone. She also suggests West with the Night by Beryl Markham (another travel story!), an incredibly beautiful description of Markham’s life in Africa of the 20s and 30s. Although probably not of interest to children, Lynn also loved The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, a poignant story of love and loyalty.

According to Lynn, another thing to consider when choosing a book on tape is the narrator. A good reader can make a so-so book interesting, while a bad reader can ruin even a great book. For this reason she recommends anything read by Audie Award winner Barbara Rosenblat who has narrated a variety of titles including the Amanda Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters and mysteries by Nevada Barr and Lisa Scottoline. Jim Dale, beloved award winner reader of the Harry Potter series is another narrator that makes listening a pleasure.

Ann just listened to The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith, part of the No. 1 Ladies Detective series. Nothing terribly dramatic happens during the course of the book – read these stories for the evocative setting of Botswana, the various characters that you grow to love, the belief that kindness and politeness can improve any situation. This is a slow-paced book – sometimes almost too slow – but that’s also what makes it wonderful – calm and leisurely, leaving the reader/listener feeling the same.

Rita recommends the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlene Harris. They’re funny and fast-paced and you may find yourself believing that vampires really could be walking among us. She also liked Downhill Lie by Carl Hiaasen, a non-fiction account about returning to golf after a long absence. Read by the author, it’s filled with dry humor and great insights for fellow golfers.

Rita also reminds us that you there are hundreds of titles you can download from NetLibrary, a free service that allows you to transfer audio books to your MP3 player (which you can then hook up to the CD player in your car) Sign up for an account at either of the Davenport libraries, then access it from any computer, any time.

With so many great books to listen too, you might be tempted to take the long way home! What about you – do you have any favorite books-on-CD that you’d recommend for a long trip?