Do you hear what I hear?

We just put over a dozen new audiobooks on the shelf today, so I thought I would highlight some of the most popular authors and hottest titles:

• A Lick of Frost by Laurell K. Hamilton. Another steamy blend of thriller and fantasy novel.
• The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. By the author of the bestselling novel The Lovely Bones
• Giving by Bill Clinton. The active ex-president puts forth his ideas for how everyone can help their neighbors
• Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. We can't keep this memoir of self-discovery on the shelf. Here's your chance to snatch it up in audio format
• Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell. A new Kay Scarpetta mystery!
• The Choice by Nicholas Sparks. This author is also very popular with young adults, who like his gentle romances and teary themes
• The Bone Garden by Tess Gerritsen. Flicking back between present-day Massachusetts and 1830's Boston, this novel is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat.

We have lots of audio options for you this month, and audiobooks are a perfect way to pass the time while you bake cookies, wrap presents, and hang up Christmas lights.

Sliced Bread

We have a new resource available to our patrons that is the best thing since you-know-what. It is an online database of repair manuals for a wide variety of small engines:

• Outboard motors
• Chainsaws
• Snowmobiles
• ATVs
• Weed whackers
• Motorcycles
• Generators
• Lawnmowers
• Diesel engines

So if you're trying to get the skiff ready for a little weekend fishing, or if your generator just went kaput, you can find the technical information you need 24 hours a day: no worries about the manual being checked out, no having to wait for the library to open, no having to drive into town. The link is on our website: http://www.firstcitylibraries.org/KPLhomepage.html Just scroll down the page to see the icon. It is next to another fabulous database - Auto Repair Reference Center - which is provided by the Alaska State Library. With these two databases, you can repair anything. The repair website does have database recognition, but if you can't access the site, just call us for the passwords: 225-3331. Good luck, and happy wrenching!

Nostalgic but bad

The holiday season is all about memories - some good and some bad - and this seems to be the one time of year when people are feverishly busy trying to recreate their childhood (how else could you explain the sudden popularity of aluminum trees?). Something that brings up warm fuzzies to you might just look like schlocky garbage to someone else, but that's life. So we have added a new DVD for the holidays that has little if any artistic merit, but is sure to conjure up waves of nostalgia in anyone who was born after 1965. Christmas Television Favorites sucks you in with "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" - one of the best cartoons you can find - and then piles on 4 cheesy stop-action animation specials done by Rankin and Bass: "The Year Without a Santa Claus", "Rudolph's Shiny New Year", "Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July" and "Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey" (I have never even heard of that last one). The set is then topped off with two cartoon specials: "Frosty's Winter Wonderland" and "'Twas the Night Before Christmas". It may have been 35 years since you've seen some of these productions, but they will definitely take you back to your childhood, back to those crazy days before cable television and VCRs when you gladly lapped up whatever the big 3 networks had to offer. Ah, memories.....

Art???

We have a couple of new books in our art section that have been cataloged into that section rather hesitantly, not because we questioned their artistic merit but because they are equally powerful in other contexts.
Burning Man: art in the desert by A. Leo Nash chronicles the more amazing installation art pieces that have appeared at this annual festival over the years. The photographs are all in grainy black and white, which not only highlights the details of the pieces but also fits in well with the desert environment. But this isn't just art. There are people here: in the photos, working on the crews, sitting in the audience, relaxing in the campsites. This makes Burning Man more than just a gallery collection of installation art (which is the shelf section where we ended up placing it); this book is also a photographic journey through time that depicts a unique subculture. In the text, Nash alludes to the Mad Max films as an inspiration for the Burning Man festival. Throw in Salvador Dali, and you've got a good idea of what you'll find in this book: unreal beauty and true free spirits.
Collect Raindrops: the seasons gathered is an interesting book by Nikki McClure. Two-tone prints created from papercuts, the beautiful images in this collection are idyllic and peaceful. These are pictures of friendship, cooperation, nature, contentment and hard work (the good kind, like weeding a garden or building a shed). Accompanying each image is a single word or phrase that invests the piece with more meaning. The designs in this book are reminiscent of the graphic design of the Arts & Crafts movement, which is why we placed it in with our art poster section. It could just as easily be with the poetry, environmentalism, or graphic novel books. Art as collective conscience.

A reasonable effort

How many times have you resolved to change your diet, eat healthier and lose some weight? And how many times did you give up in frustration after a couple of weeks of eating tasteless food and yearning after your favorite dishes? Let's be honest - cutting out a few calories is better than not cutting out anything at all. So if you could find a cookbook that would show you how to shave a few calories off of yummy dishes like macaroni and cheese, brownies, and french toast, wouldn't that be a blessing? Well, here you go: The Complete Light Kitchen by Rose Reisman will help you whittle down your daily intake without making you feel like you're on bread and water rations. Chicken and Eggplant Parmesan for only 312 calories a serving? Bake, don't fry, and use skinless chicken breasts and part-skim mozzarella. Make a pesto cream sauce with low-fat sour cream, use cocoa, oil and yogurt to replace the butter and chocolate in brownies, and egg whites in your omelets. Nothing earth-shattering, but it's nice to have someone spell it all out for you. Each recipe has a nutritional analysis, so you can see how much fat, protein, sodium, cholesterol and fiber is involved. Instead of choosing a radical diet for your New Year's resolution, try easing yourself into healthy eating with this book.

An eye-opener

Our new book Earth Then and Now: amazing images of our changing world by Fred Pearce is many things. It is a graphic representation of the effects of climate change. Pearce presents 'then and now' photos of receding glaciers, melting ice caps and shrinking lakes. It is a sobering documentation of the result of industrialization and urbanization. There are photos of urban sprawl taking over forests, towering skyscrapers replacing two-story houses, and dry riverbeds downstream from dams. It is testimony to regrowth and healing as photos of rebuilt and restored towns replace the bomb debris left over from World War II. One particularly sad photo is the gouged fields of the Somme. Green grass has grown over the mud and trenches of the first World War, but you can still see the impact that was left. The photographic evidence of Mother Nature's ability to wipe us off the map is very chilling (earthquakes, landslides and floods), but there's always hope for mankind. Pages 74-75 show the ability of civilization to change, as Mexico City shrugs off its notorious smog after 20 years of clean-up efforts. Mostly, though, this book is hugely depressing. It's one thing to hear about our negative effect on the environment, its another to look at big color pictures of our destructiveness

Valerie Plame Wilson

I heard former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson on the NPR program "Fresh Air", and I was mesmerized. Like everyone else, I had followed the story of her 'outing', the subsequent investigations and the trial of Vice-Presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby. It was interesting, but when it was all over I moved on, with no intention of giving it much more thought. But Mrs. Wilson's new book - Fair Game: my life as a spy, my betrayal by the White House - has reopened the topic for discussion, and in her publicity interviews for the book she comes across as matter-of-fact about the damage that was done to her career and her life without sounding angry or bitter. She was composed and erudite, with a certain sense of humor, and I was very impressed.
I found her book interesting for two reasons totally unrelated to the scandal surrounding the disclosure of her identity. The first reason was that the CIA deleted large sections of her manuscript prior to publishing (like any CIA employee, she signed a confidentiality agreement). The publisher - Simon & Schuster - felt that the editing went beyond the bounds of national security so they not only left in the big black boxes that replaced the censored text, they had reporter Laura Rozen write an afterword that uses publicly available information to basically fill in the CIA-deleted text. Therefore, the CIA comes across as looking totally idiotic.
The second reason I found this book intriguing was that smack in the middle of the book was a chapter describing the premature birth of her twins (now 7) and her struggles with postpartum depression (PPD). The difficulties she encountered getting anyone, including her husband, to appreciate the severity of her problem are clearly laid out. Treatment and time eventually cured her depression, and she went on to volunteer at a support group for new mothers with PPD, and she includes a list of resources in the back of the book for anyone suffering from this problem. This chapter is a very powerful episode of humanity in the midst of a CIA memoir that is full of dates, facts and quotes.
It will be interesting to see what path Valerie Plame Wilson follows from here. I'm sure it will be a successful one.