Go Green This Halloween

What a great idea!!  Donate your gently used Halloween costumes so that others can purchase them at the upcoming Halloween Costume Sale hosted by Bernardsville Library's Teen Group. Recycling a costume makes perfect sense these days and is in keeping with the Teen Group's interest in the "green" movement. Your slightly used Halloween costumes for children or adults are now being accepted in the donation box located in our lobby.  Costume accessories are also welcome.  The fun part starts on these sale days when great costumes will be available to buy, and the proceeds will benefit future Teen Group activities.  The sale will take place on two separate days as seen in the poster.  

Coming Full Circle

The Bernardsville Public Library Board of Trustees is pleased to announce that Anne Meany will serve as Interim Director while it conducts a search for a permanent director of our library.  Many people in the area are already familiar with Anne, a resident of Bernards Township, who recently retired as Director of Bernards Township Library. Prior to that position, she was Director at our library, Bernardsville Public Library. She has also worked in the Somerville and Raritan public libraries of Somerset County. We’re very happy to welcome her back starting August 21st.  During this interim period, a Board Search Committee will screen candidates for the library position about to be made vacant by our departing Executive Director, Karen Brodsky.

Pinterest Interests

Bernardsville Library is on Pinterest @http://pinterest.com/bvplnj/ with many interesting boards for you to explore.  

Pinterest is an online, image-based way to share creative ideas and photos using a bulletin board format.  Libraries use Pinterest as yet another way to enhance their Web presence and to promote themselves.  Our bulletin boards cover topics such as Jersey Authors, Library Displays, Adult Programs, and school-required/suggested Summer Reading lists, to name just a few.  We also feature some entertaining boards such as Edible Books! and Book Related Crafts.  In all we currently have 59 boards, with more being developed all the time.  We invite you to spend some pleasant browsing time on our Pinterest boards.  Feel free to re-pin and "like" any of them!

Summer Reading: Literary Novels Served Up With Werewolves And Robots

Better stockpile some silver bullets and wolfsbane; this summer could get hairy!

Supernatural fiction has elbowed its way to the forefront, but this year you'll find an even greater intermixing of genres such as science fiction or occult with literary fiction according to The Wall Street Journal article of today entitled "The Season of the Supernatural."  Novelists are taking a stab at writing crossover books which bridge literary fiction with the popular genres of fantasy and the supernatural.

Successful publications such as Justin Cronin's The Passage have encouraged writers to utilize vampires, werewolves and robots as devices in their new literary novels.  Well-known author Michael Chabon comments in this article on the similarity between writing a literary novel and writing science fiction, "Your job is exactly the same - to persuade the reader that it is all true. That's the same if you are writing about suburban New Jersey, as well as suburban Jupiter."

A number of new crossover fiction books are suggested for your summer reading in this interesting article. Perhaps Glen Duncan's upcoming book, The Last Werewolf, will grip you by the throat with heartfelt feeling  for the melancholy werewolf protagonist. And now that the recent interest in Doomsday predictions has surfaced, Tom Perrotta's book The Leftovers ought to take readers away, just as a Doomsday event described in the book has taken away a mass of people. Perrotta states, "I thought I could write a comic novel about the apocalypse, but I quickly realized it would be a book about grief."  Click on the link to read more.

Madame X in Literature and X-Rays

As a follow-up to the Saturday Samplers book group discussion of  Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X by Deborah Davis, here are a few points of interest that we learned.

The original version of the painting, Portrait de Mme ***, which caused such a stir at the Paris Salon of 1884, was captured in only one black and white photograph, seen above. The pose of Madame Gautreau with her jeweled strap seductively slipping off her shoulder brought notoriety to a painting which was not well received for several other reasons. Both the artist and subject were duly shocked by the critical furor, and Sargent retreated to England while Madame Gautreau (Mme. X) spent the rest of her life trying to reclaim her former position in Parisian society. At some point, Sargent repainted the strap to fit her shoulder (see image below.) Still believing that it was his finest work, he later sold the painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

By coincidence, two books published in 2003 (with similar book covers) addressed the compelling story behind this famous portrait. Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X used historical resources to describe Sargent's career and how it intersected with Mme. X in this one painting. While art historians know that there are many intriguing tales behind works of art, it takes a writer looking for a book subject to bring them to life for the general public. A second writer, Gioia Diliberto, chose to focus on Madame Gautreau, rather than the painting itself, in her publication, I am Madame X: a novel. This book is a highly imaginative, fictional account of an American woman born of French descent whose goal in life was to make a name for herself in belle époque France.

For interesting insights into how Sargent struggled with his composition of Madame X, repainting her profile at least eight times, please refer to the Saturday Samplers blog. There you will find a technical analysis done by the Metropolitan Museum of Art using X-radiography. You can see an X-ray image of the repainted strap as well.

Just For Fun

In keeping with the library's "be creative" summer theme, I thought I'd share this creative senior film project by Bang-yao Liu, a student at Savannah College of Art and Design. He stuck colorful Post-it notes to a facsimile of his dorm wall, over and over, to make a stop-motion film entitled "Deadline." Clever and fun.

To see how he did it, watch the second film clip below, in which over 6,000 Post-its are put to good use over 4 days of shooting.

Worried About Swine Flu? At Least It's Not the Plague...

Get the latest information on the H1N1 flu virus (governmentese for swine flu) by going to pandemicflu.gov . Once you have calmed your nerves, experience real tears and feverish chills as you read about life during years of the plague in the following two books recommended by Evelyn Fischel of Bernardsville Public Library.

Dava Sobel's excellent biography of Galileo Galilei focuses on his relationship with his devoted, but cloistered daughter, Suor Maria Celeste - hence the title, Galileo's Daughter. It was a most remarkable and touching relationship brought to life via the daughter's preserved letters to her father which are integrated into the story. The author competently establishes the nature of 17th century science, catholicism, and Italian politics and clearly demonstrates what a challenging force Galileo was to all three. Scorned and put under house arrest for his theories, Galileo's only true source of comfort and support came from his exceptional daughter's selfless devotion to him. Where does the plague fit in here? It appeared throughout the book as a scourge which wiped out nuns in their convents and merchants in their city apartments, restricting travel for Galileo, and causing the Pope and Medici rulers to enact harsh public health edicts. The different ways religion, politics and science responded to the plague also mirrored the different ways Galileo's ideas were received at that time.
The plague also plays a symbolic role in Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks' fictional account of a plague-stricken English village in the 17th century. Based on a true story of the village of Eyam in Derbyshire, Year of Wonders recounts how the villagers chose to face the greatest threat to their survival when the plague was brought into their community on an infected bolt of fabric. What they chose to do and how they faced the consequences of that decision make Year of Wonders a dramatic, sorrowful and inspiring story. The plague here could easily be exchanged for any other destructive phenomenon which creates societal tension and moral dilemmas, forcing characters to make choices no one would want to face.

~ Evelyn Fischel

Earth, Trees and Thee

photo source: Bernardsville Public Library

This is a busy week for ecological celebrations. Earth Day will spring up for it 39th anniversary on Wednesday, April 22nd. Two days later comes Arbor Day which was first organized in 1872 and is always held on the last Friday in April. What both these days need (besides water and sunshine) is an army of volunteers to tend to the landscape and care for the earth. Good thing National Volunteer Week is taking place this very week as well! Click on the active links here to find out how you can participate in the celebrations and activities planned.

Bernardsville Public Library has a number of books about environmental issues. Included among the newer books are the following titles:

You'll find these among the new nonfiction books near the circulation desk.

Click Away

"So, just what are those links on the sidebar of the Book News and More blog and where will they take me?" Well, they certainly will not take you to creepyville or spam territory or the dreaded crash zone. These links are here to provide you with great reading and reference resources. They will help you find such varied information as the ratings of popular movies or a list of books in a particular series. There's even a link that lets you bypass the usual long phone menu when you dial a company's 800 number - instead you speak directly with a live human being. That's pretty powerful information, isn't it? To get linked in, all you have to do is scroll down the sidebar of our blog and click away.

Doctor, Heal Thyself: An Addiction Memoir With A Happy Ending

Evelyn Fischel, staff member at Bernardsville Public Library, recently read this compelling nonfiction account of alcoholism and a promising drug treatment "cure." Here is her review:


Olivier Ameisen is a notable French cardiologist who practiced medicine and taught at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College. A talented pianist, Ameisen was urged by no less than Arthur Rubenstein to pursue music rather than medicine as his intended career. He was also the first and only student to pass the French baccalaureat without having finished his last two years of high schooling. In addition, President Jacques Chirac awarded him the Legion of Honor for his "contributions to the image of France abroad and to cardiology." But Olivier Ameisen is also an alcoholic whose disease brought him to deepest despair, ruined his practice, and almost killed him.

The End of My Addiction, published in January 2009, chronicles Dr. Olivier Ameisen's desperate attempts to save himself from a hopeless descent toward incapacitation and likely death due to his advanced alcoholism. Having severely injured himself repeatedly in drunken falls, Ameisen found himself admitted to city emergency rooms where he risked having his secret condition discovered by fellow doctors. Personal relationships suffered, and his successful career as a New York cardiologist came to an end when he decided that he could no longer practice. Although he checked himself into numerous rehabs and participated in recovery programs, none of these therapies worked for him.

Some colleagues turned away from him, wondering why he just couldn't stop; a few tagged him as a hopeless case; others gave him encouragement and support. One man in particular, his M.D. thesis advisor Phillipe Coumel, expressed compassionate understanding, saying to him, "As a physician, how can you be embarrassed about having a disease?" This good mentor also motivated Ameisen's scientific curiosity, stating, "I cannot believe that a man of your intelligence cannot find the solution." And Olivier Ameisen did find a solution that worked for him.

The End of My Addiction is a compelling story about the terrible struggles and discrimination facing individuals with an alcohol addiction. It is also a work of medical detection recounting the author's self-experimention with an older medication, baclofen, approved as a fairly harmless muscle relaxant, but found to quell the cravings of cocaine addicts in a University of Pennsylvania study. Ameisen learned about this small study and ran with it, medicating himself with higher and higher doses of the drug until he reached a level where his brain no longer responded to any typical triggers and thus no longer created the cravings which drive addicts deeper into their addictions. Baclofen had completely suppressed the symptoms of his alcoholism, and no serious side effects were experienced. Dr. Ameisen believes this drug deserves a large-scale study, but points out that baclofen is an off-patent product and fears that pharmaceutical companies will not be interested in this kind of study. He has written this book to encourage investment in such a study and has provided chapters on the science behind his experiments.

At the same time The End of My Addiction offers a vivid, but compassionate portrait of what it is like to be an alcoholic today. It was very moving to read about the author's struggles with this disease, and he clearly makes the point that "willpower" is not equivalent to medicine. If people with other diseases were asked to will away their conditions, we would say that was absurd. The author does support the 12 step programs for their helpful behavorial adaptations, and he believes that attention should be given to underlying depression and anxiety when treating patients. Ameisen makes us rethink our assumptions about alcoholism, and he has demonstrated that there may be real hope of a successful medical treatment for this addiction. ~ Evelyn Fischel

How Do You Value Your Library?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Today’s front page article in The Wall Street Journal, “Folks Are Flocking to the Library, A Cozy Place to Look for a Job,” is just one of many news articles reporting an up-tick in library usage during this deep economic downturn. The MSNBC video above further elaborates on the increasing number of people returning to their local libraries for services which will aid them in finding a job. People are also using libraries more often for the free materials (books, wireless access, computers, and videos) they may have overlooked in the past.

The Wall Street Journal states that career resources provided by libraries are in high demand right now. In fact, library computer usage has risen dramatically due to people checking job listings and updating their resumes.

Our own patrons and surrounding communities should know that Bernardsville Public Library offers a Career Center dedicated to career planning and job searches. Two computers are specifically loaded with programs and databases to assist you as you target your career move. Included among these online career resources are programs to help you with interviewing and resume writing, links for continuing education, and employer contact information. A large collection of career advisement books is available as well.

While library usage is rising, The Wall Street Journal reports that public funding for libraries is facing dramatic reductions due to the economy, and library services across the nation are jeopardized by budget cuts. Some libraries have shortened hours, closed branches or trimmed staffing, and all public libraries today are carefully managing their expenses while looking for the most cost-efficient ways to provide valuable services to their patrons. The American Library Association has provided a link for patrons who value their local libraries and want to advocate for them.

Contact your local library director to find other ways you can show just how much you value your library.

Spare the Burn

The EPA's Web site offers a daily UV Index chart for the United States compiled from National Weather Service data. Here are today's pretty colors!

Take this link http://www.epa.gov/sunwise/uvindex.html to learn about the index and to get the UV forecast for the following three days as well. As you head to the beach, pool or lake, enjoy the sun's rays, but take appropriate precautions. Also, don't forget to take your summer reading with you, so read on to the next posting below.

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month, and Bernardsville Public Library has been busy celebrating the art of verse all month. A number of New Jersey and local poets (including Sondra Gash, Susan Jackson and Dorothy Ryan) have given readings in the Community Room. In addition, a charming selection from the library's poetry collection has been included in our book display, entitled "Poetreats", which can be found in the nonfiction wing atop the Oversize Book area.Look there for an interesting array of poems to suit your every mood. Please feel free to borrow any of these poetry books. For information about New Jersey poets, visit the Academy of American Poets Web site at http://www.poets.org/state.php/varState/NJ.

Carpe Diem, Quam Minimum Credula Postero

Just a little note to mark the Roman Ides of March (or mid-point of March), which was not a good day for Julius Caesar back in 44 B.C. This, in turn, reminded me of several Web sites where you can look up Latin words and phrases. For instance, the Latin phrase in the title of this post can be found at http://www.yuni.com/library/latin.html. The saying comes from the ancient Roman poet and satirist, Horace, who might have been thinking of Caesar on this memorable day. Translated, it says, "Seize the day, trust as little as possible in tomorrow." For some fun zingers and clever phrases in Latin, try these sites: http://www.biopsych.net/psyhumor/latin_phrases_for_all_occasions.htm and http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/omnibus.html.
If you want to learn more about Julius Caesar, the library has a number of books about him including Adrian Goldsworthy's Caesar: Life of a Colossus (Yale University Press.)

"w00t" - It's the Word of the Year, 2007!

Merriam-Webster OnLine has announced the results of its contest for Word of the Year, and the prize goes to a word so new that it is not yet in the print version Merriam-Webster dictionary. The word, w00t, also spelled w00t!, is a gamer's exclamation of victory or happiness, but it is being used increasingly in instant messages, emails, and even conversationally. Are you familiar with several other new words in their top ten list, including blamestorm and sardoodledom? Rest assured that old favorites, especially for the SAT crowd, like conundrum and quixotic are among the top ten winners, too. To read more about this, click on the title of this posting above.