Have I read this before?

If you read a lot of books, you have probably asked yourself this question many times as you stand in the library or the bookstore browsing for a new read: "Have I read this before?" Luckily, I'm usually able to figure out if I've read something before or not. But for some people, like my Mom, they can be halfway through a book before realizing that they have read it already. Thankfully, there are many ways to keep track of what you have read and what you would like to read.

The first way is a good old-fashioned written list. This can be as simple as writing down titles on a scrap of paper or buying a Book Journal. Some people will even try keeping a list on their computer using a spreadsheet. While this is a good option, there is always the problem that you could lose your file if your computer crashes.

The other option is keeping track of your books at an online "catalog" service. The big three are LibraryThing, Shelfari and Goodreads. These are a bit more safe because your titles are being saved somewhere other than your personal computer.

LibraryThing

This site was created in 2005 as "an online service to help people catalog their books easily." A free account with LibraryThing lets you catalog up to 200 books. If you have more books than that, a personal account with no limit costs $10 a year or $25 for a lifetime. This site is most appropriate for readers who are most interested in keeping track of their personal library collection, more than just tracking what they have read. LT allows you to use Library of Congress or Dewey subject headings, or you can create your own tags. There is a social aspect to LT, but it is not the main function of this web site.

Shelfari

Shelfari began in October 2006 and is has been owned by Amazon since 2008. This is a social networking site for book lovers. Here you can create a virtual bookshelf of your books. Then you can rate, review, and tag your books. If you are so inclined, you can share this information with your friends. You invite friends and find friends in much the same way as you would on Facebook. In fact, if you have a Facebook account, you can allow Shelfari to access it and share your Shelfairi comments with your Facebook friends. There are also thousands of groups on Shelfari that are generally open to anyone to join.

Goodreads

Started in December 2006, it is the newest of the three sites, but equally as popular. The creators of Goodreads envisioned it as a place to not only keep track of what you've read, but also as a place for book recommendations from your friends. Like Shelfairi, Goodreads is a very social site, with virtual bookgroups available to join (or you can create your own). GoodReads also has sections for trivia, quizzes, and favorite novel and author quotes -- which are a lot of fun and very addictive, so be careful!

Overall, the three sites are quite similar, in that they give you a place to keep track of your reading. The biggest difference is that LibraryThing is restricted to only 250 books for free, while Shelfari and GoodReads are not. After that, which one you choose to use is based on personal taste.

And while they all provide a form of book recommendation, don't forget about your friendly librarians here at Monroeville Public Library. We are here to help you find your next book, DVD, or CD -- in person, by phone, or via email.

-- Post by Tracy

iPixar

The online world was shocked and saddened last week with the news that Steve Jobs -- the cofounder of the computer company Apple Inc. -- had passed away. Famous for his work with Apple computers, Job is credited as one of our great modern inventors and entrepreneurs, having been listed as either the primary inventor or co-inventor in over 300 US patents and patent applications.

If you've heard the name "Steve Jobs" before last week, changes are good that you knew him as "the Mac guy." What's not so well-known is that Apple Inc. is not the only company that Steve Jobs had a close connection to. There was NeXT Computer, an American computer company that never received the attention or recognition that Apple did, but which was notable for manufacturing powerful computer workstations for places of business and higher education. And then there's Pixar.

Yes, as in Pixar Animation Studios. Known now as the Disney-partnering company that has produced such animated films as Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and WALL-E, Pixar started off as a division of the company Lucasfilm, Ltd. -- the George Lucas company behind such movies as the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film series. Jobs purchased the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm from the company for $10 million, establishing it afresh under the new name "Pixar." About 44 people were employed by Pixar at the time, and in 1986 the company released its first animated short: Luxo Jr., starring the now-famous Pixar lamp. The short would go on to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Film.

Interestingly enough, Jobs's original intention was not for Pixar to solely produce animated films (in the early 90s, Pixar Animation consisted of dozens of computer-animated commercials for various companies). Jobs actually envisioned Pixar as a high-end computer hardware company that would sell its Pixar Image Computer to agencies and corporations. One of those corporations would, however, be Disney studios, who in 1990 commissioned Pixar to animate three computer-generated films. The first of those would of course be "Toy Story," the first-ever film animated exclusively with CGI, or Computer-Generated Imagery. (Next time you pop "Toy Story" into the DVD player, watch the credits closely: Steve Jobs is listed as one of the film's executive producers.) The film would go on to gross over $360 million worldwide, ushering in an era of Pixar/Disney-partnered productions: A Bug's Life; Toy Story 2 (the first film in history to be entirely created, mastered, and exhibited digitally); Monsters, Inc.; Finding Nemo; and The Incredibles. To put it mildly, the films were a critical and commercial successes, smashing box office and DVD sales records while sweeping the Oscars, Golden Globes, and Annie awards.

In 2006, Disney acquired Pixar through an all-stock transaction of $7.4 billion -- a transaction that left Steve Jobs as the single largest shareholder of Disney stock. Under the Disney umbrella, Pixar would go on to create such films as Ratatouille, Up, and Toy Story 3, and continues to be one of the biggest animation studios -- both in terms of critical acclaim and box office success -- in the world.

A major Pixar fan myself, I can still remember sitting in the movie theater to see "Toy Story," the first-ever computer animated feature film. Nowadays, of course, CGI is the norm for animated films -- but back then, it was unlike anything audiences had ever seen before. The level of detail and realism to the movie's computer-wrought world was breathtaking, ushering in a whole new era of moviemaking and storytelling.

Steve Jobs will rightly be remembered as a master innovator and entrepreneur, without whom the technological world would not look the same. But we can also offer him our thanks for his hand in the creation of the worlds of Pixar. Film would not have been the same without him.



Pixar's Animated Short "Night and Day"




-- Post by Ms. B

Beyond the Horror

Last week I discussed my all-time favorite author: Stephen King. I mentioned how odd it was, in some respects, for me to be a fan of his -- primarily because I am absolutely not a horror fan. And yet there's something about Stephen King's writing style and thematic story elements that draw me to his writing regardless of that.

But another reason I can enjoy him so much is that he's not, strictly speaking, a "horror writer." Oh, he definitely writes horror -- make no mistake about that -- but many of his books can be classified as thrillers, or mysteries, or science fiction. And even his straight-up horror offerings have more to them just the scares (not that he doesn't write some pretty great scares).

So if you, like me, are not generally a fan of the horror genre, but find yourself wanting to give King a try, here are some alternate-genre reads of his that might be more up your alley.

Duma Key

Edgar Freemantle, owner of a construction company, hasn't sketched a picture in years -- until a construction site accident leaves him with an amputated right arm, memory and speech problems, and a flush of anger issues. Renting a beach home on the west coast of Florida to recover, Edgar takes up his old art hobby once again, only to discover two things: his paintings are better than they've ever been before, and the things he's painting are starting to come true. While many critics commented on the obvious parallels between Edgar's experiences and Stephen King's own near-death experience from several years previous, what I was more impressed by with this novel was the characters. The main characters are interesting and well-developed, and you come to genuinely care about them by the end of the novel.

"Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" // "The Body"

"Different Seasons" collects four short novels by Stephen King, and two of those -- "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" and "The Body" -- are among his finest non-horror works ever.

"Rita Heyworth" -- considered to be one of King's all-time masterpieces -- tells the story of two prison inmates: Red, a "lifer" who has just been denied parole; and Andy, one of the more unusual inmates to serve time at Shawshank. What follows is a story that is equal parts hope and redemption; to give away any more of the plot would be a disservice to the story.

//

"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. ... does anyone?"
"The Body" details the summer adventure of four pre-teen boys in 1960s Maine. While the object of their quest -- another boy who went missing and is now presumed dead -- is macabre, the story itself is not. It is, as the saying goes, about the journey, not the destination, and it's more about the stories of these four boys than it is anything else. King captures the voices of four youthful characters with his usual precision -- the kids are buoyant, silly, crude, and above all optimistic, giving a portrayal of childhood that is far from idealistic but still, in its way, fondly remembered.


(Both of these novellas happen to have been made into truly excellent film adaptations: The Shawshank Redemption starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, and Stand By Me, starring Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, and Richard Dreyfuss.)

The Eyes of the Dragon

As I mentioned last week, this was my first Stephen King novel, given to me by my mother when I was in high school. George R.R. Martin meets Grimm fairy tale, it's a high fantasy adventure about two royal brothers -- one of whom is Crown Prince, while the other becomes a witness to a murder of their father and King. Simply and straightforwardly told, it's something most fantasy fans should enjoy -- while also being a pleasant change of pace from the usual Tolkien derivative fare.

The Dead Zone

This one's a science fiction read that doubles as a thriller: if you could see the future, how far would you go to prevent it? Johnny Smith is injured in a car accident and put in a five-year coma; when he awakens, he finds himself with five years of his life gone, his parents stressed to the breaking point, and his former girlfriend now married to someone else. That in itself could have made for an interesting story, but King takes it a step further: the accident has left Johnny with psychic abilities. By touching an object, he has visions about the person that the item belongs to -- including visions of the future. And one vision in particular is cause for alarm, detailing the cataclysmic fate that awaits the world if presidential hopeful Greg Stiltson is elected to office. As sci-fi thrillers go, you can't ask for much better than this. (And yes, this book resulted in both a motion picture adaptation, as well as a six season TV series.)

The Green Mile

King is well-known to his fans for being unafraid to try different formats for his work: Riding the Bullet was originally released exclusively online, Ur is only available to read on the Kindle, and his new short stories are still routinely released in magazines. With "The Green Mile," King tried his hand at the serial novel -- the book being released in six parts that were issued monthly in low-priced paperback format. (The book has since been collected into one large novel.)

Another prison novel, this one differs from "Shawshank Redemption" in its supernatural twist. Told from the perspective of Paul Edgecombe, the block supervisor of the Cold Mountain Penitentiary death row, it details the story of inmate John Coffey, a man on death row for a crime he may or may not have committed. Another story about redemption and innocence, with a decidedly different twist from "Shawshank," this story comes to focus on Coffey and the question of his innocence or guilt -- not to mention his mysterious healing powers. This book, too, has been made into a well-known film, starring Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

Nine-year-old Trisha McFarland is hiking with her mother and brother when she falls off the trail for a few minutes to get away from her family's bickering. A nightmare follows when a wrong turn finds her lost in the woods with nothing but a backpack of snacks, a Walkman, and her Tom Gordon baseball cap. The plot is simplistic in set-up, but the story it tells -- about courage, determination, family, and the power of faith (in both God and baseball) -- is anything but. I read this book for the first time over a decade ago, and it still remains my favorite King read.

The Dark Tower series

"Go, then -- there are other worlds than these." Stephen King's masterpiece is also his hardest work to describe. Science fiction? High fantasy? Epic? "Epic," at least, is certainly a word to describe this seven-book series that was nearly 20 years in the making, and which also serves to tie together many of the characters, settings, and stories of the rest of King's novels. And yet, it's not a horror series, reading more like a Spaghetti Western tribute crossed with post-apocalyptic fantasy ... and that's just the first book. Whether you like fantasy, science fiction, Westerns, or Epics, there's probably something in this book for you. (There's even a Harry Potter reference for the particularly sharp-eyed!)


-- Post by Ms. B

Ghost Agnostic

I love Stephen King.

This fact often surprises people. I am not the sort of person you'd think of as being a fan of a horror writer, mostly because I'm not a fan of horror stories. At all. I avoid horror movies at all costs and don't read any horror novels that don't have Stephen King's name on the cover. I hate the Saw films without ever having seen them and I don't like zombies even though I've been a Monroeville resident for nearly seven years now.

And yet -- Stephen King. He is, hands-down, my favorite author. But why? How does an author like King appeal to someone who has a general dislike of horror fiction?

King -- with a literary career spanning 40 years, nearly 50 books, and over 350 million copies of his works in print -- is known as America's Horror-Meister. And yet part of my love for his storytelling may stem from the fact that King may not completely deserve the title. ("You can't even be a 'mister' when you write horror," King commented recently. "They downgrade you to 'meister.'")

The first King novel I ever read -- given to me by my mother when I was a high school student -- was The Eyes of the Dragon. It was not a horror story but rather a high fantasy novel, in the vein of George R.R. Martin or Robert Jordan. It took place in the same sort of vaguely-medieval settings that high fantasy novels always seem to take place in, and the story had more to do with magic and family than it did guts and ghosts. True, it did possess some of the trademark darker flares that make up King's style (there's the standard touches of gore and vulgarity, which always strike me as being less about sensationalism and more about King's perspective of the grittiness of life). But for the most part, The Eyes of the Dragon is a fairytale-like fantasy story, less like a horror read and more like a lost volume of Lord of the Rings. (Only, y'know, more interesting; forgive me, but I am not personally a Tolkien fan.)

Speaking of The Eyes of the Dragon, King's magnum opus is also not horror, but rather a crazily epic, science-fiction/high-fantasy blend of a series called The Dark Tower. This seven-book series took nearly 20 years for King to finish and has sold over 30 million copies alone, and was inspired chiefly by the poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Robert Browning. (This series is particularly notable to die-hard King fans -- like myself -- for being the series which ties many of King's other works together; there are numerous references to other characters and stories from most of King's other novels.)

Of course, King's written plenty of novels that focus on the things that go bump in the night: 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, Pet Sematary, It. But King has a very specific interest in horror, and it's not just about cheap thrills. It is, rather, his fascination in what can happen when "the window between reality and unreality breaks and the glass begins to fly."

One of my favorite King quotes is from the dedication in "It," when he says that, "Fiction is the truth inside the lie." King's horror isn't really about gore and violence for the sake of gore of violence, but rather are gateways to the themes he really likes exploring: how hard it is to close Pandora's box once it's opened, why terrible things happen to good people, the thin line between fantasy and reality. (Check out King's memoir On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft to hear him discuss these themes himself.) And, too, themes about love, family, friendship, and God.

Ultimately, King is an optimist. Can an author be a "Horror-Meister" if he's also an optimist? True, King has said, "Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win." Sometimes, the monsters in King's books win -- but most of the time, his books are about bad things happening to good people and the good people overcoming in the end. The good guys don't always win (Cujo, Bag of Bones, and one of my favorites -- Duma Key -- have victories that come at a price). But most of the time the good guys do win, possibly because, as King himself says in The Shawshank Redemption, "Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best thing, and no good thing ever dies." It's that, more than anything, that makes me such a King fan -- well, that and the fact that he's a crackerjack storyteller. (A King novel, for me, is the very definition of a page-turner; putting one of his books down when I'm in the middle of a great scene is more or less impossible.)

Last weekend, George Mason University presented bestselling author Stephen King with the Mason Award, for his "extraordinary contributions to bringing literature to a wide reading public." It was part of GMU and Fairfax, Virginia's annual "Fall for the Book" festival, a weeklong community event that celebrates authors, readers, books, and literacy.

I was lucky enough to be there. King came out to give a wonderful speech about his experiences as an author (including a delightfully terrible -- or perhaps terribly delightful -- story about the worst place where he'd ever been asked for an autograph). This was followed up by a Q&A session (when asked if he believes in ghosts, King merely answered that he was a "ghost agnostic"), before he was presented with the award.

For me, the thrill of the evening came towards the end of the speech when he read a new passage from his current project, a novel he's titling "Dr. Sleep." If there's anything more awesomely entertaining than getting to hear your favorite author tell you a story, live and in person, I haven't found it yet.

Whether you're a horror fan or not, the world is frequently a scary place. But by writing about the dark places, Stephen King shines a light on the better things. His novels may be frightening, but they're also full of hope -- which might be one of the real reasons King appeals not just to me, but to his millions of Constant Readers.

That, and the fact that, as my mother says -- the man can tell a story.

(Check back next week for Part Two of this entry, where I'll share some of my favorite, horror-lite King reads.)


-- Post by Ms. B

Pittsburgh's Day of Giving

Pittsburgh's Day of Giving @ Monroeville Public Library

October 4, 2011


On October 4, all charitable donations made to Monroeville Public Library through the Day of Giving website will receive a portion of The Pittsburgh Foundation's pool of matching funds (totaling $500,000).

You can give to Monroeville Public Library at anytime on that day (from 12:00 a.m. midnight to 11:59 p.m.) to see your donation matched. It's simpler than ever to make a difference -- here's how!

• Go to www.PittsburghGives.org at any time on October 4.

• Click on "Donate Now."

• Enter your name, email address, and phone number in the appropriate boxes.

• From the drop down box, select "Monroeville Public Library Fund."

• Enter the donation amount and your credit card information.

• Click "submit."

And -- that's it! So mark your calendar now for this year's Day of Giving on October 4th. And check out our website for additional details on this important day. (You can also check out our profile at the Pittsburgh Gives website.)

Many thanks for your continued interest in and support of Monroeville Public Library!

TV Tropes

2001:

VS

2011:

A couple of weeks ago, I watched a really fantastic documentary called Exporting Raymond. It was written by, directed by, and starred Phil Rosenthal, whose name you might not recognize but whose work you almost certainly do. Rosenthal was the creator, executive producer, and head writer of the much-loved sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. Raymond -- which, as you probably know, was a show about a guy living with his family, with the in-laws living right across the street -- ran for nine years. During its run it won 13 Emmys, and from Season 4 onward it remained in the top ten of most-watched shows in the U.S. Critics attributed its success -- almost certainly correctly -- to its honest and hilarious portrayal of family life. (Nearly all the episodes, including the one with the fly lady, were based on true stories from the lives of the writers.)

Exporting Raymond details the experience Rosenthal had when he was sent by Sony Pictures International to Russia, to assist a Russian production team in getting their own version of Rosenthal's show up and running. It was a somewhat unusual situation (though not unheard of), as many production companies will go in their own direction while remaking a show -- but in this case, they wanted Rosenthal's input. So off Rosenthal went to Russia, ready to help assist the production team in the making of their pilot episode for Everybody Loves Kostya.

The documentary is at once a great look at culture clash (with Rosenthal's fish-out-of-water experiences in Russia) and being lost in translation (Russian culture has a different sense of humor than American culture, the Russian production team asserts -- and the American humor of Raymond won't work here). But it's also a look at what makes stories and storytelling any good -- and whether or not the answer differs from culture to culture. (And, perhaps, from decade to decade.)

You'll have to watch the documentary yourself to see what conclusions Rothenthal draws to these particular issues. But between this documentary and last night's Emmy awards, I found myself thinking about the shift in television-watching that we've seen over the past decade.

Everybody Loves Raymond is notable for being one of the last "classic" sitcoms to become a phenomenon. By "classic," I mean any sitcom in the multiple-camera, live-studio-audience, broad-laughs vein -- one of the oldest forms of the television series (going back to series like The Honeymooners, which Rosenthal has cited as one source of inspiration for Raymond.)

The classic sit-com is not completely extinct -- Jim Parsons's second Emmy win Sunday night for his starring role in The Big Bang Theory is proof of that, and before his publicized collapse Charlie Sheen was the highest-paid actor on television for his work on Two and a Half Men. These classically-shot sitcoms are becoming the exception rather than the norm, however, as single-camera, audience-less sitcoms have taken over. Newer sit-coms like Modern Family, which won 5 Emmy awards on Sunday -- or the long-running American version of The Office (which, much like Everybody Loves Kostya, is a show which started in another country).

Reality shows and cable TV have also changed the face of television, the former providing uber-popular shows at a fraction of the cost of traditionally-scripted programming, the latter allowing for niche entertainment that the broadcast networks couldn't afford to support. When it comes to cable, well -- whether you were a fan of USA Network's Monk or FX's Rescue Me, shows on cable television can be considered big hits despite pulling in a fraction of the audience size of network television. And HBO shows like The Sopranos have allowed for further cable hits like True Blood, Dexter, and Game of Thrones -- shows which have ratings to sometimes rival network offerings.

And then there's the final new twist on the television-watching experience: watching television without a television. Hulu, Netflix, and TV channels' own websites all offer episodes of TV shows available for streaming online onto your computer (with limited or no commercial interruption). And DVD sets of complete television series -- which you can check out, ahem, from your local library -- are available in a way that simply did not exist ten years ago. (Anybody remember taping episodes of their favorite TV show on VHS cassette tapes so that they could rewatch them later? Now we all just wait for the DVDs to come out.) Nowadays, people watch TV shows on their laptops the day after the show had aired on television -- or pop in DVDs of shows that haven't been on the air in twenty years.

Thinking about the way American television has changed just in the past decade makes some of the facts in Exporting Raymond seem all the odder. Before Everybody Loves Kostya, Russia's top-rated sitcoms were remakes of three other American shows: Married ... With Children, Who's the Boss? and The Nanny. (In particular, the Russian version of Nanny was such a runaway success that after the Russian production staff ran out of American episodes to adapt, Sony brought back the original American writing team for the show to come up with 25 more original stories for the Russian version.)

Nowadays, Americans seem to have traded The Nanny for SuperNanny and Nanny 911. Reality shows, cable, and the internet have given us television in a way unheard of a decade ago. With critics proclaiming the death of the sitcom and shrinking TV ratings due in part to digital viewing, television -- like all technology -- is changing fast. And, some would argue, not necessarily for the better.

Of course, if Exporting Raymond is about anything, it's about universal storytelling truly being universal -- even in television. Despite the changes, good storytelling will always endure, no matter its methods in being told.

Or, so Rosenthal hopes to prove. Check out the documentary for more.


Click here to find out more about the history of television.


-- Post by Ms. B

"So much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it."

Working at a library can sometimes be very frustrating when you love to read. We are surrounded by so many books but we don't have time to read anything while we are at work, even though we really want to! And unfortunately, life sometimes gets in the way of reading when we are away from work. At least this is my personal point of view. So if I had more time to read, these are a few of the titles I would like to try:

Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt

Two women running away from their marriages collide cars on a foggy highway, killing one of them. The survivor, Isabelle, is left to pick up the pieces, not only of her own life, but of the lives of the devastated husband and fragile son that the other woman, April, has left behind. Together, they try to solve the mystery of where April was running to, and why.

Swamplandia by Karen Russell

Twelve year old Ava must travel into the Underworld part of the swamp in order to save her family's dynasty of Bigtree alligator wrestling.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Discovering a magical manuscript in Oxford's library, scholar Diana Bishop, a descendant of witches who has rejected her heritage, inadvertently unleashes a fantastical underworld of daemons, witches, and vampires whose activities center around an enchanted treasure.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

A haunting novel about the tenuous friendship that blooms between two disparate strangers--one an illegal Nigerian refugee, the other a recent widow from suburban London.

2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America by Albert Brooks

The first novel from actor, writer, and director Brooks--set in the near future where a dramatically aging population combined with an unprecedented natural disaster leads to a nation so hamstrung by debt that the only way out is almost unthinkable.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home to care for their ailing mother, and to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. But the sisters soon discover that everything they've been running from might offer more than they ever expected.

-- Post by Tracy