Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist by Tim Federle

tequila mockingbirdAs a clever tribute to literature, Tequila Mockingbird is the cocktail book for the literary obsessed.

Combining beloved classic novels with witty humor and delicious drink recipes, some of the charming recipes include Vermouth the Bell Tolls, Gin Eyre, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margarita, Bridget Jones’s Daiquiri, and more. Accompanying the 65 cocktail recipes are a list of tools and techniques, a spirits glossary, and a handful of drinking games and bar bites, making this cocktail book both fun and functional. With a special cover designed to look like a classic novel, whimsical illustrations, and a two-color design throughout, Tequila Mockingbird is a one-of-a-kind cocktail book. (description from publisher)

Watch Your Step: The Crimson Petal and the White


I will say it right now: Romola Garai is the next Judi Dench. She was clever and charming in the BBC’s Emma, tragic in Atonement and lovely in I Capture the Castle, but it is her starring roll as Sugar in the BBC’s 4-part adaptation of Michael Faber‘s novel, The Crimson Petal and the White, that has devoted me to her as a fan for life. She is absolutely breathtaking and MESMERIZING as a shrewd Victorian prostitute who writes revenge slasher fiction featuring her “patrons” to amuse her friends and as a dream of a future life as a published author.

However, Sugar’s plan changes when a suppressed aristocrat seeks out her services after being cut-off from his wealthy father and repeatedly pushed away from his mentally ill wife. She quickly creates a mutually beneficial relationship with William Rackham, played by Chris O’Dowd (of IT Crowd, Bridesmaids, HBO’s Girls), and soon finds herself the invisible force behind his personal and financial successes. Eventually, Sugar finds herself entwined with the women of the Rackham family and her control over William’s affections begins to slip away.

Now for the warnings: This series features nudity and explicit content which, I’ll admit, took me off guard at first, yet felt very appropriate to the era and environment. What I really want to warn viewers about is how this miniseries made me feel. The depiction of the historical treatment of women mentally, socially, and sexually left me in very dark moods after each episode. The storylines following Mrs. Rackham and her illness were particularly difficult to watch. However, Sugar’s overall strength of spirit left me aggressively hopeful as the final scene faded into light.

I highly recommend The Crimson Petal and the White to adult fans of period films and miniseries and to those who enjoy dramas targeting the female experience in relationships such as HBO’s Girls.

Zinio: Now Available from DPL

zinio logoDo you love magazines? Do you have a Davenport library card? Now, you can get Zinio – the world’s largest newsstand, available through DPL! This service offers free online access to more than 150 current and popular magazines, and DPL patrons can access them on any internet-enabled device. To access Zinio, visit our digital gateway. From here, you will set up both a Library Collection Account and a Zinio.com Viewer Account: we suggest using the same email/password for both accounts. Now you’re ready to start reading! (for detailed instructions, email reference@davenportlibrary.com)

Whether you’re using a tablet computer, smartphone, laptop, or desktop, DPL’s free Zinio selection is the same. A few of the great titles that come free with your DPL card:

  • Rolling Stone
  • House Beautiful
  • Brides
  • Consumer Reports
  • Martha Stewart Living
  • Mental_Floss
  • O, the Oprah Magazine
  • Seventeen
  • Dwell
  • Cosmopolitan

…and more than a hundred others, covering every interest from gaming and technology to business and economics, the outdoors, lifestyle and fashion, fitness, science, spirituality, sports, scrapbooking, cooking, woodworking, and many more! There truly is something for everyone. Browse our Zinio pin board for another look!

Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger

EEOnce I devoured Gail Carriger’s excellent Parasol Protectorate series, I was delighted to see that Etiquette & Espionage represents her return to the same steampunk universe of  Soulless et al. It is also a first foray for Carriger into the field of YA. This is a true YA title – it’s perfect for, and I’d recommend it heartily to, almost any teenager/YA reader. It takes place at school; the main character is 14; the gore/sex/four-letter-words are tame or nonexistent. There’s a lot of emphasis on self-discovery, resourcefulness, learning, and intelligence, as well as bravery and friendship. The only element of a typical teen novel missing? ROMANCE!

In Carriger’s adult series, romance and sex were a huge driving force behind both the plot and the characters’ motivations. Without ever being crass or gratuitous, those books are about the way adults fall in love and stay in love – emotionally and physically. But in Etiquette & Espionage, the much, much younger teenage characters are motivated by entirely different things. Sophronia, the main character, is a “covert recruit” at a floating school for future spies; here, she’ll be trained to curtsy perfectly, measure poisons precisely, and wield sewing scissors to deadly ends. Sophronia is interested in boys, and she knows about feminine charms and how she might need to deploy them in her career as a spy, but her motivation is never reduced to the moronic, unimportant whine of “I want a boyfriend!! Why doesn’t a boy love me?!” – a fixture of many other YA titles. As the series goes on and Sophronia grows up, I fully expect Ms. Carriger to allow her to expand her romantic interests in a way that is intelligent and logical for her age, but in the meantime I’m thrilled to read a novel about the teenage experience outside of the desperate “need” for a boyfriend. Etiquette & Espionage is refreshing, exciting, and leaves the door open for a bevy of sequels that will be even better now that the groundwork has been laid.

Among Others by Jo Walton

As you can reliably guess from the fact that I write for this blog, I am a librarian. So I knew I would love Among Others by Jo Walton as soon as I read the dedication page:

This is for all the libraries in the world, and the librarians who sit there day after day lending books to people.

among othersThis book is for me! Awesome!* And this Hugo & Nebula award-winning novel is a treat. Mori is a well read 15 year old who has already accomplished a lot: she overthrew her mother, an evil witch, in a magical battle that killed her twin and left Mori with a shattered hip. She’s read just about everything that’s ever been published in the SF genre (well, everything before 1979, when this novel is set), besides Philip K. Dick, whom she dislikes. In the Wales of Mori’s childhood, magic and fairies are very real, but they aren’t all-powerful. Magic isn’t even the focus of this story; what could have been a bombastic, typical tale of good triumphing over evil (at a great cost) in a climactic magical duel  is instead a bildungsroman, the story of a smart, confident, magical girl discovering her identity. Mori’s most important challenge is discovering the value in her life now that her deed is done and her twin is dead.

When you are the hero, when you’ve already saved the world, and you’re a teenager stuck at boarding school based on the whim of a father you’ve never known, where the other girls taunt you for your Welsh accent and your limp, and where both the fairies and the magic of your childhood and your twin – your other half – can never reach you, what is the point of living? On Halloween, Mori sees the ghostly remnant of her sister near a portal to the next world and is tempted to follow and join her in death, but:

…I was halfway through Babel 17, and if I went on I would never find out how it came out. There may be stranger reasons for being alive.

Her love of books, libraries, writing, and the other worlds of the SF genre buoy Mori through the turbulent year after her sister’s death and lead her to the path her adulthood will take, so though her tale may sound grim, it’s really effervescent and uplifting.

Among Others is a fantasy novel, but Mori’s engagement with the realm of science fiction is so cogent, meaningful, and pervasive in the novel that this is a must read for fans of both genres.

 

*I have to add, though, that we do a lot more than sit and lend books! Sometimes we stand and lend DVDs 🙂

How Pinteresting!

Pinterest logoFor even more recommended reads from your favorite blogging librarians, check out DPL’s new Pinterest page! On Pinterest, we share book recommendations and read-alikes, DVD selections, information about library events and programs, fun facts, library photos, and much more. To make it even better, every pin is a direct link to that item in our RiverShare catalog, making it easy for you to place a hold on anything you see!

  • Have you ever been frustrated by trying to browse our book club kits in the online catalog? Select your book club’s next title from our board “Book Club Kits @DPL
  • Curious about Zinio? Browse our selection of free digital magazines on “DPL’s Zinio Magazines
  • Fascinated by local history? Explore images from bygone Davenport on “Special Collections @DPL
  • Are eBooks your thing? Check out our selection on “eBooks available via DPL
  • Is your family getting excited for the 2013 Summer Reading Program? Visit our SRP pin board for program info, book recommendations, and fun stuff for the theme “Dig Into Reading!

Still Capturing the Castle: the Montmaray Journals by Michelle Cooper

~~Sigh~~ A windswept island, daring escapes from Nazis, British country estates, dancing with soldiers in London, writing Food Ministry brochures extolling the values of carrots to hungry British citizens and a funny little sister who bullies a young Princess Elizabeth at a aristocratic Girl Guides Meeting. The Montmaray Journals by Michelle Cooper (a series of three lovely books: A Brief History of Montmaray, The FitzOsbornes in Exile, and The FitzOsbornes at War) are those kind of books where the narrator feels so natural, so familiar that I often forget that the stories in the book didn’t actually happen to me. Sadly, the memories are not all pleasant. These books are about a teenager’s family evolving and trying to survive World War II, all with the weight of a small country on their shoulders. I had originally written “evolving and surviving World War II,” until I remembered the pages and pages of sobbing while reading The FizOsbornes at War. Don’t worry, there is a wonderful ending.

Montmaray is a (fictional) tiny island monarchy between England and Spain whose already small population was decimated during World War I, and there are only a few village families left living in the shadow of a romantic, crumbling castle when 16 year old Sophie begins keeping her journal in 1936. Oh yes, ROMANTIC, CRUMBLING CASTLE. Sophie is actually Princess Sophie of the FitzOsborne Royal Family– she is one of three Princesses of Montmaray (the others being her stunning, intellectual cousin, Princess Veronica, and her younger tomboy sister, Princess Henry) and also the younger sister of the future King of Montmaray, charming Prince Toby FitzOsborne. However, Sophie’s royal title does not correspond to a royal lifestyle, at least not while she is living on a remote island in a stripped bare castle under the rule of her mentally ill uncle. Their wealthy aunt is forever trying to get the girls to move away from Montmaray and become a part of British Society, but their loyalty to Montmaray keeps them grasping to its shores until they have no choice but to fall into the lap of luxury. And then, of course, the war begins and Sophie’s home seems lost forever.

It is no secret among people who know me that my favorite book is I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (I have written about it on the blog here and compared it to another fabulous book, The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, here, and the Montmaray Journals shares much in common with Dodie Smith’s fantastic novel (which is pretty much the highest praise I will give a book!). Both stories are told in thoughtfully-written diary entries by quiet teenage girls in 1930’s and whose lives seem both beautifully ordinary and bohemian at the same time. Both girls fall in love with men named Simon. Both feel inferior to their prettier, outgoing relations. And yes, both live in ROMANTIC, CRUMBLING CASTLES!

P.S. I will just say, that for those of you who thought the end of I Capture the Castle was not a happy one (and I disagree with that! but now is not the place to discuss…), you will be very satisfied with the ending Sophie chooses for herself.

Why we can’t we get some of your favorite eBooks for download on WILBOR (Overdrive)

While working at the reference desk, the librarians at the Davenport Public Library have many questions from patrons about the titles and authors that are available through our eBook catalog, WILBOR.  Did you know there are many titles that are not available as eBooks for library patrons?  Locked bookDo you also know that we cannot buy eBooks from many of the biggest publishers because they refuse to sell or license eBooks to libraries?  We want to offer as many eBooks as we can to our patrons, however the publishers’ policies are preventing us from doing so.

A library, unlike a regular person, cannot pay Amazon or Barnes and Noble for an eBook and then lend it out to our patrons.  To provide digital rights management (the thing that keeps pirates from pirating the eBook file) we have to pay a third party vendor, Overdrive, to purchase our eBooks.  Our purchasing power is diminishing in the digital world, meaning we can’t get certain titles for you at all, or we can’t afford to buy all the titles we should have available.

Please know that the Davenport Public Library is committed to advocating for a change to these policies!

Below is a listing of a few publishers who currently refuse to sell eBooks to libraries or only provide a limited number of titles:

-Macmillan Publishers

-Simon & Schuster

-Hachette Book Group

Color Your World with Picture Books!

When the Iowa weather is gray and bleak, it can be a relief to enter the colorful world of picture books! Here are a few books that have thrilled me lately from the “E” section:

  • beware of the frogBeware of the Frog by William Bee: vividly colored illustrations and a sinister frog make this twisted fairy tale unforgettable.
  • And Then It’s Spring by Julie Fogliano: more lovely illustrations from Caldecott winner Erin E. Stead of A Sick Day For Amos McGee. Here, the story is about seeds planted at the beginning of a long gray spring and the anticipation that follows. A gradual increase in color and warmth marks the passage from winter to spring, and as in Amos, touches of humor are added in the illustrations that aren’t part of the  text.
  • oliviaOlivia and the Fairy Princesses: Ian Falconer’s beloved pig is NOT just going to be a pink frilly fairy princess like all the other girls (and some of the boys)! Olivia is at her feisty finest in this tale of individuality and being true to yourself. I adore the contrast of turquoise and pink on the cover, too!
  • Lester’s Dreadful Sweaters: Of the picture books I’ve written about, this is the only one in which the text was more memorable than the illustrations (although the pictures are great too). For example: “Cousin Clara’s cottage was consumed by a crocodile…[Lester] added crocodiles to his list of Suspicious Stuff Starting with C.” Thus, cousin Clara comes to live with Lester and his family, and as a “curiously speedy knitter,” Lester’s wardrobe is soon bursting with hideous handmade creations that he is forced to wear to school, leading to the inevitable humiliation and eventual sweater-murdering. Lester is a brainy, neurotic young man, and the way he squirms out of this pickle is satisfying.
  • this is not my hatThis Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen: Klassen’s second book exactly mirrors the plot of his first, but from the point of view of a thief, rather than a victim. Also, it’s fish instead of woodland critters. Just as beautiful, just as funny, just as appealing as I Want My Hat Back.

DVDs for March

MARCH 2

twilight saga part 2Twlight Saga : Breaking Dawn Part 2 – Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart

After the birth of Renesmee, the Cullens gather other vampire clans in order to protect the child from a false allegation that puts the family in front of the Volturi. Rated PG-13

 

MARCH 5

intouchablesThe Intouchables – Francois Cluzet, Omar Sy

An irreverent, uplifting comedy about friendship, trust, and human possibility. Based on a true story of friendship between a handicapped millionaire and his street-smart ex-con caretaker, The Intouchables depicts an unlikely camaraderie rooted in honesty and humor between two individuals who, on the surface, would seem to have nothing in common. Rated R.

wreckWreck-It-Ralph – John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman

For decades, Ralph has played the bad guy in his popular video game. In a bold move, he embarks on an action-packed adventure and sets out to prove to everyone that he is a true hero with a big heart. As he explores exciting new worlds, he teams up with some unlikely new friends including feisty misfit Vanellope von Schweetz. Then, when an evil army threatens their world, Ralph realizes he holds the fate of the entire arcade in his massive hands. Rated PG

unconditionalUnconditional – Lynn Collins, Michael Ealy

A woman’s idyllic life is shattered when her husband is killed in a senseless act of violence. As she prepares to take matters into her own hand, two unexpected encounters begin to change everything. Rated PG.

 

red dawnRed Dawn – Chris Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson

The unsuspecting citizens of Spokane, Washington, wake up one morning to the shocking sight of foreign paratroopers dropping from the sky in a surprise attack on the United States. Soon the entire city is under enemy control, but a group of courageous teenagers has decided to fight back, waging an all-out war against the invaders, to take back their town and their freedom! Rated PG-13

MARCH 12

man with iron fistsMan with the Iron Fists – Rza, Russell Crowe, Lucy Liu

On the hunt for a fabled treasure of gold, a band of warriors, assassins, and a rogue British soldier descend upon a village in feudal China, where a humble blacksmith looks to defend himself and his fellow villagers. Since his arrival in China’s Jungle Village, the town’s blacksmith has been forced by radical tribal factions to create elaborate tools of destruction. When the clans’ brewing war boils over, the stranger channels an ancient energy to transform himself into a human weapon. Unrated.

rise of the guardiansRise of the Guardians – Alec Baldwin, Isla Fisher

When an evil spirit known as Pitch lays down the gauntlet to take over the world, the immortal Guardians must join forces for the first time to protect the hopes, beliefs, and imagination of children all over the world. Rated PG.

 

life of piLife of Pi – Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan

Based on the bestselling novel by Yann Martel. A young Pi Patel, overcoming a cataclysmic shipwreck, finds himself stranded on a lifeboat with the only survivor, a ferocious Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Rated PG

 

annaAnna Karenina – Keira Knightly, Aaron Taylor-Johnson

In Tolstoy’s powerful tale of family passions set in Russia in the 1870s, Anna, the young and beautiful wife of a powerful older man, risks more than she can imagine when she runs away with the dashing Count Vronsky. Rated R

 

rustRust and Bone – Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts

Ali and his son depart Belgium for Antibes to reside with his sister and her husband. Ali’s connection with Stephanie, a killer whale trainer, intensifies when she endures a horrific accident. Rated R.

 

zeroZero Dark Thirty – Jessia Chastain, Joel Edgerton

Chronicles the decade-long search for Osama bin Laden following the September 2001 attacks, and his death at the hands of Navy SEAL Team 6. Rated R

 

hobbitThe Hobbit – An Unexpected Journey – Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage

The first chapter in Peter Jackson’s new epic trilogy set in Middle Earth 60 years before J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings saga. Follow Bilbo Baggins as he’s swept into a quest to reclaim the Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached by the wizard Gandalf, Bilbo joins a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior Thorin Oakenshield. Along the way they face many dangers; Bilbo meets Gollum and takes possession of the ‘One Ring.’ Rated PG-13

MARCH 26

lincolnLincoln – Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field

A revealing drama that focuses on the 16th president’s tumultuous final months in office. In a nation divided by war and the strong winds of change, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country, and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of generations to come. Rated PG-13

parentalParental Guidance – Billy Crystal, Bette Midler

Oldschool grandparents Artie and Diane get more than they bargained for when they get stuck babysitting their type-A daughter’s overprotected kids. But things go from hectic to hysterical when Artie realizes the kids are running the house with their newfangled technology. By playing by his own rules, which include sugary snacks, old fashioned games, and tough love, Artie manages to outsmart the kids and achieve the impossible – bringing the family closer together. Rated PG