It may be a little slushy right now, but it's supposed to get cold again, and we might get a teeny bit more snow. So - before it's too late - grab our latest book on outdoor fun: Snow Play: how to make forts & slides & winter campfires plus the coolest Loch Ness monster and 23 other brrriliant projects in the snow by Birgitta Ralston.
Glow cones, snow caves, sculptures, mazes and icy decorations are all here in this fun book that will give you and your kids plenty of ideas for playing outside. (You don't have to play with kids....there's no reason why adults can't have fun outside in the snow by themselves). We have another book - Make it wild! : 101 things to make and do outdoors, by Jo Schofield - that also has ideas for chilly outdoor activities and art projects.
If the sun's out, it's a good time for you to be out.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Inventory is over
The library finished conducting it's annual inventory of the collection....thank you so much for bearing with us while we closed our doors for 3 days. We put computers on carts, stretched network cables and extension cords hither and yon around the library, and scanned the barcode of every single book, audiobook, CD, video, read-along, and reference item in the building. That's over 45,000 barcodes!
This was also our opportunity to put the books in perfect order, straighten the shelves, and refresh some of the displays. In fact, it looked so lovely and tidy this morning when I came to work that my little librarian heart just glowed with happiness and I filmed the entire Adult collection to save the memory for posterity.
That might seem a bit odd, but it's the simple pleasures in life that keep us all going....
This was also our opportunity to put the books in perfect order, straighten the shelves, and refresh some of the displays. In fact, it looked so lovely and tidy this morning when I came to work that my little librarian heart just glowed with happiness and I filmed the entire Adult collection to save the memory for posterity.
That might seem a bit odd, but it's the simple pleasures in life that keep us all going....
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
New Alaska fiction
We have two new novels from Southeast Alaska authors David Vann (Caribou Island) and Lynn D'Urso (Heartbroke Bay).
OK, so technically, David Vann is not a Southeast Alaska author - he's a professor at the University of San Francisco. But he was born in Alaska, he did spend part of his childhood living in Ketchikan, and many of the stories in his acclaimed 2010 collection Legend of a Suicide are set in the local area. So we'll just go ahead and claim him as one of our own. His new novel is set on the Kenai Penisula and tells a story that will resonate strongly with many Alaskans: a couple bucking the elements trying to build a cabin in the middle of nowhere as their marriage slowly disintegrates, their dreams and wants slowly diverging. Expect the same sort of bleak, compelling, emotionally charged atmosphere that Vann created so well in his previous work.
Lynn D'Urso is a Juneau-based writer (who has written some very interesting Alaskana books under his real name, Lynn Schooler). His first novel, Heartbroke Bay, is based on a fascinating incident from Alaska's gold rush history. An English maid working off her father's debts is bored with her life, and elopes with a prospector on his way to the gold fields in Alaska. Overwhelmed by the reality of Alaska (always a tough location for newbies), they team up with three other prospectors with interesting stories of their own and end up in Lituya Bay. From there, things go rapidly downhill. This is a page-turning story that has gotten good reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist.
OK, so technically, David Vann is not a Southeast Alaska author - he's a professor at the University of San Francisco. But he was born in Alaska, he did spend part of his childhood living in Ketchikan, and many of the stories in his acclaimed 2010 collection Legend of a Suicide are set in the local area. So we'll just go ahead and claim him as one of our own. His new novel is set on the Kenai Penisula and tells a story that will resonate strongly with many Alaskans: a couple bucking the elements trying to build a cabin in the middle of nowhere as their marriage slowly disintegrates, their dreams and wants slowly diverging. Expect the same sort of bleak, compelling, emotionally charged atmosphere that Vann created so well in his previous work.
Lynn D'Urso is a Juneau-based writer (who has written some very interesting Alaskana books under his real name, Lynn Schooler). His first novel, Heartbroke Bay, is based on a fascinating incident from Alaska's gold rush history. An English maid working off her father's debts is bored with her life, and elopes with a prospector on his way to the gold fields in Alaska. Overwhelmed by the reality of Alaska (always a tough location for newbies), they team up with three other prospectors with interesting stories of their own and end up in Lituya Bay. From there, things go rapidly downhill. This is a page-turning story that has gotten good reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist.
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