Category: Books

If You Find this Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

- Stephanie Leave a comment

if you find this letterIn today’s world, it’s not uncommon to see many people concentrating more and more on their screens and less and less on the people in front of them. This sad fact hit Hannah Brencher when she moved to New York right after she graduated from college. As she was exploring her new home, she discovered that instead of the warm and welcoming place she expected it to be, she was surrounded by people who knew exactly what they wanted to do, who knew exactly where they needed to be, and who were not the least bit concerned about a young girl who was just trying to figure things out and looking for help.

Feeling somewhat defeated one day at the subway station, she saw an old woman who seemed to be in a similar lonely situation. Brencher was drawn to the woman and could not look away. Staring at her, she remembered how her mother used to write her love letters and how that simple piece of paper always made her feel better because that meant someone else understood and cared about you. She decided then and there to write the woman a love letter. Sitting curled up on the train, Brencher hurriedly scrawled a note to this woman, wrote “If you find this letter, it’s for you…” on the front, and dropped it. Feeling better, she began leaving love notes all over the city and eventually created the blog The World Needs More Love Letters.

Seeking help when her inbox reached over 400 requests for love letters, she created a campaign that you can subscribe to join to write love letters to perfect strangers. If You Find this Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers is a memoir Brencher wrote describing her love-letter writing journey in her new home, how she began to feel more connected to the people around her, and how this simple letter writing campaign has helped her restore her belief in the goodness of people.

Dictatorship of the Dress by Jessica Topper

- Stephanie Leave a comment

dictatorship of the dressWhen I was growing up, I always had a secret hope that I would meet my significant other on a plane and we would magically fall in love, travel to an exotic location, and live happily ever after. When I reached high school, I realized that my plane-phobic self would actually have to get WILLINGLY on a plane(and not freak out) to do this… My child self was crushed. I would have to continue to look for those fairy tales in books.

Just last week, I stumbled upon a fiction romance novel called Dictatorship of the Dress by Jessica Topper that allowed me to live out my childhood fantasy of travel love. In this novel, Topper weaves together the lives of Laney Hudson, the dress bearer for her mother’s wedding, and Noah Ridgewood, a software designer on his way to his bachelor party. Laney is sick of hauling her mother’s dress around, as her mother seems to care only if the dress actually makes it to the wedding, not her daughter. As she carries the giant dress bag through the airport, she is constantly mistaken for the bride, a mistake Laney uses to her advantage so she can be bumped up to first class. Here she is seated next to Noah, who the flight crew mistakenly thinks is her husband-to-be. Enter in horrible winter weather, missed flights, Laney’s lost love, and an overbearing fiancé, Laney and Noah soon find themselves grounded in the last available honeymoon suite. The two must wrestle with events in their past that are holding them back from catching this new love connection.

AsapSCIENCE: Answers to the World’s Weirdest Questions, Most Persistent Rumors & Unexplained Phenomena

- Stephanie Leave a comment

asap scienceGrowing up, I was always curious about anything and everything and I still am. As a result, my poor parents, and really any adult who happened to be near me, were often subjected to my numerous questions: Why is the sky blue? Is cracking my fingers really bad for me or do you just find it annoying? Are my eyeballs really going to pop out of my head if I sneeze with my eyelids open? And many many more questions…

Now that I’m an adult, I find myself on the receiving end of those questions every day as well as having questions of my own. How do I answer these questions? Well, I look them up either online or in books. One of my favorite places to look for answers when I don’t have books nearby is a YouTube Channel called AsapSCIENCE. (They also have another channel called AsapTHOUGHT where they add a social conscience twist to science.) On the AsapScience channel, Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown have made hundreds of YouTube videos about a wide variety of science subjects.

As I was walking the new shelves, I discovered that Moffit and Brown had come out with a book called AsapSCIENCE: Answers to the World’s Weirdest Questions, Most Persistent Rumors & Unexplained Phenomena that goes into more detail than their YouTube channel does on certain popular questions, rumors, and unexplained things that are populating our everyday lives. Filled with illustrations as well as easy to understand definitions of difficult terms, Moffit and Brown tackle the important questions: What are eye boogers? How can I cure my hangover? Is binge watching tv really bad for me? Crack open this book to answer those burning questions about the 5 second rule, what would happen if you stopped sleeping, and even if the zombie apocalypse could really happen. They even have the answers to my blue sky, cracking fingers, and sneezing questions!

Have more questions that this book doesn’t answer? Come visit the library and our reference librarians can help you find the answers.

New Mad Men Landmark

- Rachel Leave a comment
mad-men-statue
Actor Jon Hamm sits on the Don Draper Bench in front of the Time-Life Building in New York City. The silhouette of Hamm is used in the opening credits of the show Mad Men.

Are you a fan of the TV show Mad Men?  Are you travelling to New York City this summer?  Then you will want to head to 1271 Avenue of the Americas in Rockefeller Center, home of the Time-Life Building which houses the fictional Sterling Cooper & Partners office.  Outside of the building is a new Mad Men fixture called, The Draper Bench and a street sign that says Mad Men Ave and Don Draper Way.  The second half of season 7 premieres on Sunday, April 5th on AMC.  If you have not watched Mad Men, the library owns seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and part one of the last season of the show.

If you need other ideas on things to do and see while you are in New York City, the library has different travel guides available for checkout.  Frommer’s Easy Guide to New York City, Explore New York and Lonely Planet’s New York City are a few examples of travel guides you may be interested in.

 

 

 

I Could Pee on This

- Stephanie Leave a comment

i could pee on thisI have a dilemma. I think cats are adorable, but I’m allergic, so I can never own one. I get my cat fix by visiting my friends who own cats, where I’m forced to admire them from afar and not get too close. Let me tell you something that I’ve noticed: cats are WEIRD. Don’t get me wrong, I admit cats are significantly smarter than my dogs, but I can never be 100% sure what exactly is going on in any cat’s head.

Enter in I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats. This book has become my go-to manual for figuring out what that tabby cat is thinking as it stares me down from the corner of the room. Ever wondered how they feel about catnip, laser pointers, traveling, or even that new fuzzy kitten you brought home? Let the cats tell you all about it. The next time you decide to try to sleep in, are wondering what happened to your curtains or couch, or are even curious about why your cat seems to change his mind so quickly, turn to this book to gain a humorous understanding of why cats behave the way they do(and then maybe swing by the pet store on your way home and pick up some catnip and a brand new toy – they’re not opposed to bribery).

Parenting: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Parenting: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures is a book put together by Amber Dusick. The idea for this book came about when she was looking for a way to vent about her frustrations and joys of being a parent. As a result, her blog, Illustrated with Crappy Pictures, was born and morphed to include anything and everything that she needed to vent about in her life, not just parenting. It became so popular that she decided to turn her blog posts into a book. She just came out with one about marriage as well. Go Amber!

Dusick describes her family throughout her book as Crappy Baby, Crappy Boy, and Crappy Husband, though she stresses multiple times that none of them are in fact crappy, JUST her drawings! Since she wanted to tell people about the things that happened in her day-to-day life, she figured drawing crappy pictures, the only kind that she can draw, to go along with her stories would help illustrate her frustration.

Parenting: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures is broken up into ten different chapters, each detailing one major part of parenting that Dusick and other parents can completely relate to, from the difference in your life before and after kids, how to deal with sickness in your house, remembering the good stuff about being a parent, and also what she calls the “50 Crappy Laws of Parenting”.

Follow Dusick as she regales you with stories about how you just can’t get your kids to BE QUIET while on a road trip especially on a plane, how family dinner time is never actually family dinner since that would require everyone to sit at the table at the same time, and just how much you should treasure sleep because babies, for some reason, do not sleep at all!

The Bro Code

- Stephanie Leave a comment

bro codeAre you a fan of the hit CBS show, How I Met Your Mother, which ended last March? If so, you might be familiar with The Bro Code that Barney Stinson lives by. The Bro Code has a deep and righteous place of holiness within Barney’s life. Some people live by a code of morals, some by a guardian angel, some by religion or the Constitution, but Barney instead runs his life by a code of awesome.

Lucky for fans of the show, Barney Stinson and Matt Kuhn came out with a book version of The Bro Code. Barney is very clear, both on the television show and in the introduction to this book, that these are “rules for social decorum” that determine how bros should live their lives. For those confused about the show, who Barney is, and what exactly is a bro, Barney has you covered. He breaks down all the necessary details in the introduction, the origin story of the bro code, his section on just what is “the bro” and the subsequent glossary in the back of the book. The articles of the bro code range from the simple (Article 1: Bros before hos) to the complex (how to pick a good wingman and how to maneuver the Hot/Crazy scale).

People looking for a good laugh and fans of the show will enjoy this book.

A Bollywood Affair

- Stephanie Leave a comment

a bollywood affairLet me tell you about one of my favorite places in the library: the new shelves. The new shelves are the first place I look whenever I go into any library. They let me see what reading mood I am in before I decide to trek through the whole library, since I can never come into a library and leave in less than an hour… When I’m pressed for time, I wander the new shelves because I’m bound to find something, usually more than one something, that I want to read.

My latest new shelf discovery was A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev. In this fiction romance, Dev has woven a classic story of love, loyalty, and confusion. Mili Rathod was promised and married to her husband when she was 4 years old and hasn’t seen him since. For years, she waited for her husband to come back and rescue her. When he never shows up, Mili takes it upon herself to go to America to get an education, so she can become a more perfect modern bride. Enter in Samir Rathod, a famous Bollywood director, who just happens to be Mili’s brother-in-law. After an accident has injured his brother, Samir is sent to Michigan to convince Mili to sign the divorce papers. This should be easy, right? WRONG. Enter in last-name confusion, accidents, Samir’s writer’s block, and Mili’s crazy roommate’s love story, and readers are guaranteed to be hooked into this story and rooting for Mili to finally get her happily ever after.

Spring Has Sprung!

- Ann Leave a comment

It was a little touch-and-go there for awhile, but it looks like spring really will be back. That means it’s time for getting outside again and getting into the garden. In other words, it’s the best time of the year! Here are some new garden books to inspire you:

small space vegetable gardensSmall Space Vegetable Gardens by Andrea Bellamy – Here are the basics of growing a bounty of edibles in a minimal amount of space: how to find and assess a space, and how to plan and build a garden. Bellamy also highlights the top sixty edible plants and offers complete information on how to sow, grow, and harvest them.

 

 

 

 

designing and planting a woodland gardenDesigning and Planting a Woodland Garden by Keith Wiley – Woodlands are magical places and even small gardens can capture the atmosphere with a carefully chosen tree and some shade-loving plants. Selecting the right plant for the right place is essential and expert plantsman Keith Wiley explains how to combine plants that will thrive together and even how to create shade if you don’t already have it.

 

 

 

 

flower farmers yearFlower Farmer’s Year: How to Grow Cut Flowers for Pleasure and Profit by Georgie Newbery –  how to plant, maintain, and keep evolving a productive cut-flower garden. Whether you want to devote a corner of your garden to a stand of sweet peas and some cosmos, take up flower production for gate sales, or make a livelihood from cut flowers, Georgie Newbery will take you through everything from planning your garden to budgeting and marketing.

 

 

 

 

right size flower gardenRight Size Flower Garden by Kerry Ann Mendez –  We’re busy, we’re aging, and the demands of the garden can feel overwhelming. What to do? Make smarter use of the space we have and the plants we select, says garden expert Kerry Ann Mendez. She shares her successful recipe for having a garden we can manage and love again…the right-size, low maintenance, drought tolerant garden. The goal is ditching 50% of the work by choosing high-value plants and making simple design changes.

 

 

 

tao of vegetable gardeningThe Tao of Vegetable Gardening by Carol Deppe – explores the practical methods as well as the deeper essence of gardening. In her latest book Carol Deppe focuses on some of the most popular home garden vegetables – tomatoes, green beans, peas, and leafy greens – and through them illustrates the key principles and practices that gardeners need to know to successfully plant and grow just about any food crop.

March 20th is National Proposal Day!

- Stephanie Leave a comment

proposal dayDid you know that March 20th is National Proposal Day? The date, March 20th, was chosen as it was said to signify the beginning of spring(it is the first day of spring!) and is also the vernal/spring equinox. If you missed the March 20th proposal day, don’t worry! There is another “National Proposal Day” on September 23rd, the autumnal equinox or the first day of fall. Both the vernal equinox and the autumnal equinox were chosen as National Proposal Days as the length of both night and day are equal, so proposing on this day is seen to put both people on a balanced scale and to symbolize their equality as they enter into marriage (I personally love the idea of linking it to the first day of a season!).

Once the proposal is over though, the fun part begins. The couple chooses venues, finds dresses and tuxes, picks flowers, and decides just who is going to be in their wedding party. If you’re lucky enough to be closely related to the engaged couple or even in the wedding party, you may find yourself on the receiving end of having to give a speech at the reception. I don’t know about you, but I simultaneously DREAD and LOVE the speech portion of wedding receptions! I can usually tell within the first couple of sentences whether that speech is going to make me laugh or cringe.

irish toasts

 

In order to help prepare said speech-giving people, I have found some toast-giving books to make designing your speech a little easier. First up let’s try something humorous like the book Irish Toasts, illustrated by Karen Bailey. *DISCLAIMER – Please make sure you know the couple REALLY WELL before decided to go a little crazy in your toast. If they’re okay with it, YOU. ARE. GOLDEN!* While some of these may be uniquely set to Ireland, note that they can also be changed to fit your specific circumstances. These are meant to give you ideas. Read these classic and witty Irish toasts and find the one that will fit your toast.

 

 

 

 

 

wedding toasts and speeches

 

Perhaps the couple is more along the traditional sense and you are as well. Maybe you’re looking for the right quotes and toasts about love to add to your speech or need some inspiration. If so, check out Wedding Toasts & Speeches: Finding the Perfect Words by Jo Packham. In this book, Packham has compiled a wide variety of quotes that can easily be slipped into any wedding toast. Whether you’re looking for something long/short, funny/romantic, or well-known/by a nobody, this book has gathered something for you. It even offers you advice on how to be a good speaker in front of a crowd. Extra Bonus.

 

If you’re still looking for inspiration to create that perfect wedding toast, head to the library and we can help you find something that will help you wish that lucky couple the very best in their new life!