Food glorious food

[A slight personal note: on Wednesday I wrote my 100th post for this blog! The 3-tier cake with which I celebrated was lovely, and the cascade of balloons falling from the ceiling over my desk was a nice touch.]
Do you like food? No, no, I mean do you really like food? Because if you are the type of person that enjoys cooking and culinary tradition so much that you even get a vicarious thrill reading about food, then we have the book for you: American Food Writing: an anthology with classic recipes edited by Molly O'Neill. O'Neill was the former food columnist for the New York Times and she has combed American history and literature to come up with over 100 essays and excerpts devoted to eating. Selections range from a description of making buffalo sausage in Meriwether Lewis' journal to instructions by Rex Stout (author of the Nero Wolfe mysteries) on how to make planked porterhouse steak. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ogden Nash, Gertrude Stein and Langston Hughes are all here in this book, as are dozens of other writers, chefs and politicians (Thomas Jefferson's personal recipe for ice cream is on page 5). When you think about it, it's not really surprising that so many people have recorded their thoughts and feelings about food. Eating is our first pleasure after we are born, holidays and celebrations always include a special food, and lack of appetite is always taken as a sign of illness or depression. The book is sprinkled with recipes, but it is the writing that takes center stage here. There is nothing as pleasurable as spending time with someone who shares your passions, and with O'Neill's book foodies can commune with an entire history of fellow enthusiasts.

The rough-and-tumble world of museum curation

We've all (hopefully) been to an art museum before and gazed at centuries of paintings, sculpture and handicrafts. But how did all those things get into that one building? How does a museum acquire art, decide where to put it, how to light it, how to clean it, how to protect it, how to promote it, and when to remove it to storage? Danny Danziger explains the ins and outs of running a museum in his new book. And it's not just any museum, either. Museum: behind the scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art details the inner workings of the grand dame of American art museums. [I was fortunate enough to go there on a college field trip - Art History 101 - and it is a truly wonderful place. The Egyptian room was my favorite]. The nicest thing about this book is that it shows you what a collective effort is required and the wide range of people who are attracted to caring for the art of human civilization. Danziger interviews a cleaner and a plumber as well as the Director. There is a curator devoted especially to armor, and another for costumes. There is a florist who spends 5 hours a day just doing the flower arrangements for the Grand Hall. The common thing amongst all the people who work at the museum is their deep devotion to their job and their realization about the importance of providing access to the history, beauty, and stories that comprise Art. This is a fascinating book.

Spook Country

William Gibson has been a highly regarded literary science fiction writer since the publication of his first book - Neuromancer - over 20 years ago. In his ninth book he continues to provide the reader a combination of wonderful prose and inventive plot. Spook Country is set in the present day, rather than some bleak future, but it still involves the dark side of postmodern life and Gibson still incorporates high-tech gadgetry (some real, some imagined) into his story. His well-developed characters include an investigative journalist, a young man from a Cuban/Chinese crime family, a creepy computer programmer and a mysterious man named Brown. Their individual stories gradually intertwine and meet, with unusual consequences. Gibson has received warm reviews for this book, and specifically for his talented writing and his uncanny perception of modern culture and the burgeoning sense of distrust and paranoia in post 9/11 America. Don't worry if you're not a fan of science fiction. This book is so much more than that.

Come on in, the water's fine

For the last 8 months now, we have been offering a really fabulous service to our patrons: free audiobooks online. The service - called ListenAlaska - is provided by the same company that services the public libraries of New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles, so this is top-flight stuff. It has taken a grant from the Alaska State Library, funding from the Friends of the Ketchikan Public Library, and the collected purchasing power of 13 Alaskan libraries to make this consortium system affordable, but it is worth it! We have been able to double the number of titles available to the people of Ketchikan, and these titles are available to you 24-7, even if you are traveling out of state. How cool is that?
But getting used to the system may seem a little daunting, especially since you have to download some software (it's free). So if you would like someone to walk you through the process, show you how to find books, see some cool shortcuts, and learn how to transfer your audiobook to a CD or mp3 player, then come to one of our Downloadable Tutorials. Tonight at 5:30 I will demonstrate how to use the ListenAlaska service and answer any questions you might have (well, not any - I don't know the capital of Botswana). More sessions will be held on September 11th and 25th, so mark your calendar and come see what all the hoopla is about.

Button, button, who's got the button?

Humans must be part magpie, because there is something irresistibly attractive about buttons. Tiny, shiny, brightly colored; there's nothing better than running your fingers through a big bucket of buttons (remember the button tin your grandmother had?). But what do you do with all of them? Well, Stephanie Bourgeois gives you 50 different ideas in A Passion for Buttons! The projects are all basically jewelry: necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and hair clips. Some of these projects are easy enough that my 5-year-old can do them (with a little parental assistance at the finish), whereas others require more time and manual dexterity. But the nice thing about them (and about buttons in general, I guess), is that the possibilities are endless. A different set of colors or textures, and you have a whole different product. And if you start off with buttons that are already little works of art in themselves (as opposed to whatever fell off your cuff last week), then the pieces you make can be quite impressive. The instructions are simple, with nice diagrams that demonstrate how to thread your string/tiger tail/wire through the button holes, a detailed list of all the tools and supplies that you will need, and nice color photos to help inspire you. So whether you're trying to dress up an outfit, recycle some beloved buttons, or find a way to occupy your kids on some rainy day, the projects in this book should fit the bill.

New audiobooks

Last Tuesday you may have caught the NPR profile of author John Burdett, who takes readers into the seamy (and steamy) streets of Bangkok with his Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep series. His newest title in the series - Bangkok Haunts - is here on CD. Sonchai must investigate the death of a woman he once loved.
Another book you have probably heard a lot about lately is A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini. It has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 13 weeks now, and is currently occupying the top spot. It's a poignant story about the friendship between two women in Kabul.
If you're a quilter, we have two different quilting-themed stories for you. One is by Jennifer Chiaverini. A Quilter's Homecoming is the tenth installment in her popular Elm Creek Quilts series, and this time she creates a cozy story set in 1924 and enchants readers with a love story between Elizabeth Bergstrom and Henry Nelson. For a slightly different tone, try Tumbling Blocks by Earlene Fowler. The protagonist of Fowler's mystery series in Benni Harper, an ex-cowgirl and quilter. She has moved to a small town in California following the death of her husband, and is the curator of the local quilting museum. Her boss asks her to investigate the death of a local socialite (we call these kind of job requirements "other duties as assigned").
We have 6 more hot new titles on audio as well - a little something for everyone!

One big damn hard slog

I had heard good things about One Big Damn Puzzler, by John Harding. It had received good reviews, and I like British authors, so when I opened it up and began reading I was expecting good things. I was not expecting to have to slog my way through sentences like "You is say he is rest for get rid of we so you is can talk". I'm all for acknowledging cultural diversity and for incorporating local patois in a novel, but I just don't have the strength for 500 pages of pidgin English.
If you would like to read a book about a Westerner attempting to adjust to life on a South Pacific atoll island, I recommend The Sex Lives of Cannibals: adrift in the Equatorial Pacific, by Maarten J. Troost. It has the self-deprecating humor and low-key tone one associates with British writers (although Troost is actually Dutch, but it's all one big European Union now, right?). You learn a lot about daily life on an atoll and the way the local inhabitants have cherry-picked various pieces of Western culture to incorporate into their lives. Oh yeah, and it's wicked funny.