Voracious : a hungry reader cooks her way through great books

by Nicoletti, Cara,

January 13, 2016

Call Number: 641.5 N643

A recurring dream, shared by generations of immigrant parents and grandparents, is that they their offspring get an education, a good job and not have to earn a living doing manual labor. According to Cara Nicoletti her grandfather,  “ . . . always said he wanted us to ‘sit at a desk and have clean hands.’ “  She and her female relatives all worked in the family butcher shop, and Cara attended New York University, earning a degree in English literature.  However, the very job her grandfather would not have wished her to have was the one she loved.  Coming from... Read Full Review

Maze : solve the world's most challenging puzzle

by Manson, Christopher.

December 21, 2015

Call Number: 793.4 M289

In 1985 there was a competition to solve a puzzle--a puzzle in the shape of a book. Christopher Manson presented this strange puzzle in an eerie picture book that he wrote and illustrated. Taken all together, the book itself is the maze. You enter the maze by turning the first page. But once you do, will you be able to find the center? Will you find your way back out again? Each page of the book represents a room. Each room has multiple doors that lead to different pages, and you have to chose the right ones to walk through. As you make your way through the maze the... Read Full Review

Made to kill

by Christopher, Adam, 1978-

November 30, 2015

Raymond Chandler HATED science fiction and he made no bones about it. In a letter to his editor written in 1953, while working on what would ultimately be his last novel, Chandler wrote this:

"Did you ever read what they call Science Fiction? It's a scream. It is written like this: 'I checked out with K19 on Aldabaran III, and stepped out through the crummalite hatch on my 22 Model Sirus Hardtop. I cocked the timejector in secondary and waded through the bright blue manda grass. My breath froze into pink pretzels. I flicked on the heat bars and the Brylls ran swiftly on five... Read Full Review

Sorcerer to the crown

by Cho, Zen,

November 16, 2015

It is a difficult time for The Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers. While they are one of the most respected organizations in pursuit of the study and practice of magic in the world, certainly the foremost in all of England, recent events have thrown the society into chaos. While there are many Unnatural Philosophers, or Thaumaturges, in England only a magic-user with a familiar (a native of Fairyland who has chosen to exile itself and bond with a human) may call himself a Sorcerer. And the number of Sorcerers within England has been declining at an alarming rate for years.... Read Full Review

Free spirit : a climber's life

by Messner, Reinhold, 1944-

November 1, 2015

Call Number: 796.012 M585-4 2014

Reinhold Messner is the king of the world's mountains. Now half-retired to his Sigmundskron Castle near Bolzano in the South Tyrol, he is most famous for having made the first successful summit of Mount Everest, minus additional oxygen supply. He is the author of numerous books about mountain climbing, biographies about other famous mountaineers, and a book about his quest for the yeti or abominable snowman. Messner has been a businessman, an elected MEP (Member of the European Parliament) for the Italian Green Party, and established the Messner Mountain Museum. He is irascible... Read Full Review