Last night we had the first of a series of Monday evening crafts. Each Monday until Christmas, Mary Fordon is conducting a holiday craft project in the basement of the library for adults. The projects shouldn’t take much more than a half hour, so you can drop by any time between 6 and 8pm. All programs are free, but you must be 18 and older to attend. Please call the reference desk at 878-9383 ext. 3 to reserve your place.

Next week Nov. 10, we have invited Carolyn Hollon back to help us create a floral centerpiece. This class is the only one that requires participants to arrive at 6:30 and will last until 8pm. Unfortunately for those of you reading this blog, the class and its waiting list are full, but Carolyn’s programs are very popular, so keep your eyes open in the next year for others.

On Monday, Nov. 17, Mary will be hosting a rolled beeswax candle program. Come create long lasting, sweet-smelling beeswax candles. We have examples displayed at the front of the library if you want to stop by and check them out!

On Nov. 24 we will be making chenille stem ornaments. Try your hand at creating the cutest reindeer ornament out of pipe cleaners. As with all the programs, the library is providing all the materials; just bring your enthusiasm and imagination.

More programs will follow in December. Just keep watching the blog and I’ll let you know all about them.

Last week we took a look at the Novelist reading advice tool, now I want to talk about another online tool. Books and Authors is similar to Novelist in that you can easily find thousands of books to read just by clicking around. You get to it the same way you get to Novelist: point at the purple Find Answers tab, choose Research Databases, then choose Literary Sources and finally click on Books and Authors.

Books and Authors is a little more polished and modern looking than Novelist, and there are a few really neat options. You can choose to create an account and keep track of lists of books you’d like to read, authors you enjoy and even write reviews of books you’ve read and save them for access later. You can also use the browse function and browse through hundreds of thousands of titles, clicking on those that pique your fancy.

Like Novelist, there are lists of award winners and expert-created booklists. One really neat feature is the Recommended Similar Reads list for most novels. Let’s say that I really enjoyed the book The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. If I search that title and open the screen about it, I find a list of 15 other books I may alos enjoy. Turns out, I’ve read 8 of the recommended books, and I did enjoy them! They aren’t all exactly alike - The Historian is about an academic’s search for Dracula, while the recommended The Egyptologist is about intrigue and murder surrounding an archeological dig in Egypt - but all share some similarities. You can also use the Read-A-Like Wizard to specify what exactly it is you enjoyed about a particular book and find some similar reads.

Spend some time with the Books and Authors database and I guarantee you’ll find something new and interesting to read. Give us a call at the Reference Desk if you have troubles using it and we’ll try to help you out as much as we can.

If you’ve ever finished a book and thought, “Wow, I’d like to read another book like this” or “I’ve read all this author’s books, but I want more,” if you’ve ever come into the library and been overwhelmed by the incredible number of unread books, if you’ve ever wished you could find a novel about a specific subject, the library has a couple of resources to help you.

The first is a database called Novelist. Novelist is a website that you can access with your library card from home or at the library. It has reading advice, author profiles and bibliographies and reading lists. I think it is fun to explore through the website, following various links. Whenever I start playing with Novelist, I come away with a huge number of new reading possibilities.

To get started, go to the library’s homepage, and point at the purple FIND ANSWERS tab across the top. When you point at this tab, a menu will drop down; you should click RESEARCH DATABASES.  When the new page loads, you click where you are: IN LIBRARY or HOME. You’ll then get a list of categories. The library offers many different home-accessible products, for our purposes today, choose LITERARY SOURCES. You’ll get a list of the resources we offer with their descriptions. Click NOVELIST. At home, you may have to type in your library card number or your zip code. You’ll get a screen telling you what to do next. Once you do that, you’re in! It sounds like a lot of work, but, trust me, it’s worth it if you’d like help figuring out what to read next.

Now, you should be in Novelist. Give us a call (937-878-9383 option 3) if you are having problems.

The very first thing you should notice is the search bar. You can just go ahead and get started using it if you like. Try typing in the name of a book you enjoyed or an author you like (last name first) Anything that is written in underlined blue letters is a link. Why don’t you just start clicking away? I typed in one of my favorite books, I, Claudius, and a couple of screens later I found out that it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1934. I was able to browse the list of other winners, and I saw quite a few books that I’ve already read and enjoyed (The Prestige by Christopher Priest (which won in 1995,) The Road (won in 2006,) Saturday (won in 2005)) so I might pick a few more to request and read.

I’m not going to spend too much time describing what is available, since it can be fun to discover some things on your own. I will tell you, though, that on the right hand side of the home page is a link to a nice tour of the site that you can watch.  Here’s a link to a QuickStart Guide, also. Remember, you can click absolutely any link (blue underlined font) and explore some more.

Novelist is particularly nice if you are reading a series and you want to know what the next book (or the first book) is. To get a list of a series of books in order, type in the title of one of the books. Let’s say you read The Cat Who Played Brahms. If you type in that title, you’ll see in the record that shows up, SERIES, VOLUME: The Cat Who mysteries, 5. Go ahead and click The Cat Who mysteries (because it is blue and underlined), and voila! a list of all the Cat Who mysteries, in order, many with descriptions of their plots! How neat is that? You can print out the list and keep track of the ones you’ve read. You can use the list to look up the next ones you need in the library catalog and place requests on them. It is just so incredibly convenient!

With the return of autumn weather, especially with the rain and cool temperatures, I thought we all might need a big bowl of soup. Whether you prefer chili, stew, chowder or broth, check out one of these books guaranteed to warm your tummy, if not your soul.

Happy stewing!

Vampires inspire series books. I think it must be because vampires are known for being immortal, and therefore lead such long “lives.” I’ve written about Anne Rice, MaryJanice Davidson and Christopher Moore’s short series. How about a few more to fill out your reading lists?

Laurell K. Hamilton writes about vampires in a series with a slightly different viewpoint. Her main character is Anita Blake, a vampire hunter. The novels are a bit on the racy and violent side, so be forewarned.

1. Guilty Pleasures
2. The Laughing Corpse
3. Circus of the Damned
4. The Lunatic Cafe
5. Bloody Bones
6. The Killing Dance
7. Burnt Offerings
8. Blue Moon
9. Obsidian Butterfly
10. Narcissus in Chains
11. Cerulean Sins
12. Incubus Dreams
13. Micah
14. Danse Macabre
15. The Harlequin
16. Blood Noir

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro writes the long-running series about the vampire Saint-Germain. With the first book published in 1978 and the 20th book published just last year, you’ll be able to keep your vampire thirst quenched for a long while. Interestingly, Saint-Germain is portrayed not as a blood-thirsty paragon of evil, but as an heroic being; his stories are often set against the most horrendous periods of human history in order to make the reader wonder just who is the real monster. These novels combine elements of horror, romance and historic fiction. If GCPL doesn’t have a copy (and there are several that we don’t), we can usually get the book from another library system in about a week. Just ask at the reference desk.

1. Hotel Transylvania
2. The Palace
3. Blood Games
4. Path of the Eclipse
5. Tempting Fate
6. The Saint-Germain Chronicles
7. Darker Jewels
8. Better in the Dark
9. Mansions of Darkness
10. Writ in Blood
11. Blood Roses
12. Communion Blood
13. Come Twilight
14. A Feast in Exile
15. Night Blooming
16. Midnight Harvest
17. Dark of the Sun
18. States of Grace
19. Roman Dusk
20. Borne in Blood

Hope you find something you enjoy!