I had my wedding shower last weekend, and one of the gifts I received was a bread machine! I am just terrible at making bread myself - my loaves always end up heavy lumps. I’m not sure why, but I’m an impatient cook, which may have something to do with it. I’m counting on this bread machine to improve my performance. How hard can it be? Really, all you do is measure the ingredients into the machine and wait. Well, I’ll tell you, I seriously messed up the first loaf I made! Too much flour, I think. To help improve my next performance, I checked a couple of bread machine cookbooks out of the Fairborn Library. I didn’t take them all, so if you would like to check some out, here are some suggestions:

America’s best bread machine baking recipes / Donna Washburn, Heather Butt.

Betty Crocker’s best bread machine cookbook : the goodness of homemade bread the easy way.

Bread machine baking– perfect every time : 75 foolproof recipes for every bread machine on the market–including yours / Lora Brody and Millie Apter.

Whole grain breads by machine or hand : 200 delicious, healthful, simple recipes / by Beatrice Ojakangas.

Video bread machines / Stephen J. Ryan.

The best bread machine cookbook ever. Ethnic breads / Madge Rosenberg.

The breadman’s healthy bread book : use your bread machine to make more than 100 delicious, wholesome breads / George Burnett.

I’m getting married this June, so obviously, I’ve got weddings on the brain. When I got engaged, one of the first things I did was go through all the books available at the library looking for ideas. I also picked up Miss Manners on Painfully Proper Weddings, because if there’s one event that is sure to arouse hurt feelings and cause etiquette missteps, it is a wedding. I really get a kick out of Miss Manners. If you’ve never read Miss Manner’s Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, you ought to check it out. The book is laid out as a series of question letters and Miss Manners’ replies which are both excruciatingly correct and pithy. I knew Miss Manners would have something useful (and funny) to say about getting married.

The library carries quite a few different wedding books. We’ve got everything from the traditional 1000 Best Secrets For Your Perfect Wedding to The Alternative Wedding Book: Create a Beautiful Wedding That Reflects Your Values and Doesn’t Cost the Earth. We have hilarious treatises on Bad Bridesmaids and one about the rise of the American wedding. We have books by Martha Stewart and books by Modern Bride magazine. Click here for a list of over 100 different wedding books available at your library!

The library also carries back issues of Brides and Modern Bride magazine. We have books put out by The Knot, a well-known online wedding planner. There are books on how to give toasts, and how to buy everything you need on eBay. There are books on how to plan bridal showers and how to bake your own cake. There are books for grooms and books for bridesmaids. There are even books on how to conduct your newlywed life!

If you are getting married soon, or know someone who is, give your finances a break from buying and stop by the library for a few helpful books and magazines.

The Friends of the Fairborn Library have decided to help Fairborn residents do their part in keeping our Earth a little greener. To help reduce the use of plastic bags, we now offer reusable, recyclable polypropylene bags for library patrons to carry books home in! Bags are only $3.00 each and come in blue, red, hunter green, and black. Currently, only blue bags are available, but more colors will arrive soon! The bags feature the Greene County Public Library logo in white ink, with “Friends of the Fairborn Library” below that. These very excellent bags are strong and water resistant.

The bags are quite snazzy. The handles are long enough to go over your shoulder comfortably. I just checked and was able to fit 15 novels and 10 DVDs in the bag at the same time. It was really heavy and full, but the bag seemed to be able to handle that much weight, no problem!

The $3.00 price tag goes to cover the cost of making the bags as well as a small portion to the Friends group for supporting the library. Every year the Friends buy new furnishings and materials for the Fairborn Library as well as sponsoring great programs, like the Dulcimer group that was here last week. Your money will go to help make your library even better.

A couple of the employees here plan to purchase extras to use for grocery shopping; these bags are much more durable than the typical plastic grocery bag. They are just as good as the reusable bags stores sell, but you can feel good about the effect your dollars will have. All the proceeds stay right here helping your community. Stop by the Fairborn Library today and pick up a couple of these great bags. You’ll be supporting the library and the Earth!

Have you stopped by the Fairborn Library lately? In honor of the start of baseball season, we have a jar of chocolate baseballs on display right now. Adults can fill out a form with their guess as to the number of chocolate pieces in the rather large jar; whoever gets closest to the actual number, wins all the chocolate! It looks like enough chocolate to last until football season starts!

Here are a few books about baseball you may want to check out when you come in to the library to make your guess.

Basebal between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know about the Game Is Wrong

The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip through Buck O’Neil’s America

The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia

Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners , Semi-Experts and Deeply Serious Geeks
Echoes of Cincinnati Reds Baseball: The Greatest Stories Ever Told

These are just a few of the many books about baseball the library carries that you could take home. Check out the other offerings on the shelf at Dewey Decimal number 796.357. You’ll find our baseball books there. You can even look for baseball related documentaries at the same call number in the nonfiction DVDs. Books about baseball card values will be located at 769.5. Any of the Greene County Public Library branches will have the same things at the same number. The great thing about the Dewey Decimal System is once you know the call number of your subject, you’ll be able to find the same types of things at other libraries at the same call number.

Well, the Jane Austen film festival on PBS is over. What will her legions of fans do now to keep Jane in their lives? Never fear, we feel your pain and we’re here to help. You can start by buying as many versions of the books on DVD that you can: www.amazon.com is the place to start. You might not find every version of every book (I hear there’s a 1970s BBC version of Pride and Prejudice starring Christopher Lee as Darcy that’s never been released) but you will find at least one of each.

What’s next? You will definitely want your very own Jane Austen action figure, available from www.mcphee.com.She comes complete with her own copy of Pride and Prejudice, plus a writing desk and a removable quill pen!

Want more? How about a Jane Austen paper doll? There are lots of them out there.At www.paperdolls.com you can get Jane herself plus books featuring the main characters from all six of her novels. At www.marilee.us/paperdolls3.html you will find the excellent Fashions of the Regency and Pride and Prejudice paper doll sets. If you don’t want to wait for your dolls, at www.janeausten.co.uk, the website of the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, England, there is a lovely printable paper doll. Go to the online magazine and click on “Hands On Regency,” then “Hands On Crafts.”

From the Gift Shop at the Austen Centre you can order your own fan and parasol, hatpins and reticules, patterns for period gowns, and cross-stitch kits of Chawton Cottage, an alphabet sampler, and a cross-stitch version of a portrait of Jane done by her sister Cassandra. If you’re a cross-stitcher, you’ll be excited to know that there’s a lovely new sampler called “The Daughters of Longbourn” by The Stitching Parlor, available from your local needlework store.

If crafts aren’t your thing, and you can’t see yourself ever sewing, let alone wearing, a period gown, but you still want to display your sartorial devotion to Jane, try The Republic of Pemberley Shoppe at www.cafepress.com/pemstore. There you’ll find Jane Austen tee shirts, hoodies, mugs, totes, and magnets. You can search by item or book, so if you’d like to see all of the “I (heart) Mr. Darcy” stuff they carry, you can.

Now that you have your “Fickle, very very fickle” tee shirt, what do you do? How about playing a rousing game of Pride and Prejudice: the Board Game, available from www.ashgrovepress.com? Can’t find anyone to play with? (They were probably scared off by your “I prefer to be unsociable & taciturn” tee shirt.) Go back to www.amazon.com and order the Tarot of Jane Austen.

It’s hard not to wonder what Jane herself would have thought of a tarot deck inspired by her books, but if you’d like to start a discussion of that very thing, click over to either the Jane Austen Today blog at www.janitesonthejames.blogspot.com or the AustenBlog at www.austenblog.com. Connect to Janeites all over the world!

Just one last website.We’d heard rumors of a Pride and Prejudice Barbie, and of course we had to check it out (this is our kind of research). We found a website called Crawford Manor, at www.crawfordmanor.com, which features ordinary fashion dolls that have had extraordinary makeovers. Click on “Tyler’s New York Penthouse” and scroll down to find gorgeous “Emma” and “Elizabeth Bennet” dolls. You can’t purchase them—they’ve already been sold—but at least you know what to ask Santa for for Christmas!