Now ready to download to your ipod.  Click on the titles below to read about the books, to read customer reviews and to listen to samples. Then, bring your ipod to the library or borrow one from us.

Gulliver’s Travels

All the Pretty Horses

A Passage to India

Heart of Darkness

Merchant of Venice

For a complete list of the library’s ipod-ready books, click here.

The book of Genesis / illustrated by R. Crumb

As literature, the biblical book of Genesis has it all: sex, violence, angels, war, murder, heroes, incest, world-wide disasters, spooky mystery, and a timeless story. All it needed was illustrations by the comic genius R. Crumb and you’d have a underground manga hit. And that’s what this book is. Crumb brilliantly did not alter or omit any words from the scriptural text, and even toned down his drawings to a PG-13 rating. But man, is this strong drink. It will burn your eyelashes. Like it must have done 2,000 years ago. Now you have absolutely no excuse not to read the first book of the Bible. - Cool Tools

The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy

by Bill Simmons

 Simmons, aka the Sports Guy, is a regular columnist on ESPN.com. He writes about all sports, with a particular affection for his hometown Boston teams. Stylistically, there’s no one quite like him writing about sports. Sardonic, both irreverent and reverent, silly, self-deprecating, and melancholy are all adjectives that can be used to describe his work. The NBA seems to bring out his best stuff, perhaps because of its unique mix of personalities and cultures and the mysteries of its team dynamics. This monster of a book (more than 700 pages) is equal parts history and analysis. Simmons summarizes the history of the league, discusses his personal fandom, includes a great what if? chapter (what if Michael Jordan had been drafted second by Portland instead of third by Chicago?), analyzes Most Valuable Player choices through the years, and dissects the careers of the league’s all-time best players. The true NBA fan will dive into this hefty volume and won’t resurface for about a week, emerging from the man cave unshaven, smelling of beer and pizza, grinning, and armed with NBA history, insight, anecdotes, statistics, and a dozen new examples of Simmons’ Unintentional Comedy Scale. This is just plain fun. Expect significant demand from hoops junkies.–Lukowsky, Wes Copy Booklist 1/15/09

Mental Floss

Reason

Check out the new books! Click on the titles to check the library location and availability.

Thelonious Monk : the life and times of an American original

This first full-dress biography of Thelonious Sphere Monk, legendary jazz pianist, prolific and vastly influential composer, and one of the creators, in the 1940s (along with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie), of the revolutionary new music called bebop, is nothing short of a landmark in jazz literature…. “Jazz is my adventure,” Monk said. “I’m after new chords . . . how to use notes differently.” Kelley gives us that adventure in the epic scope it deserves.  - Booklist

The best American poetry 2009 / David Wagoner, editor

Sometimes a year doesn’t fully oblige the editor of a best-of annual. Wagoner, one of the finest senior American poets, edited Poetry Northwest for 36 years, a fact reflected in the huge number of journals-56-from which he drew this volume’s 75 entries. He knows where to look for poems. ..   – Booklist

Iranian rappers and Persian porn : a hitchhiker’s odyssey into the new Iran

When Englishman Maslin decides to hitchhike across Iran, his friends tell him he’s insane, that he’ll be taken hostage or worse. Instead, Maslin is welcomed with dizzying delight and staggering generosity. One English-speaking Iranian after another shows him the sights and invites him home.  – Booklist

Dark side of the moon : Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the space race

“Beautifully readable and fascinating in its dissection of von Braun’s layers of lies and deceptions-including his self-deceptions. ” - Book jacket

And last, but not least. The holidays are over, folks —

You, on a diet : the owner’s manual for waist management

For a complete list of our new books, click here.

It’s here!  The 100 Notable Books of 2009 (not to be confused with the 10 Best Books of 2009) 

An unnamed New York Times Book Review Editor writes: “It was not easy picking the winners, and we doubtless made mistakes. To the authors who made the list: congratulations. To the equally deserving ones who did not: our apologies.”

To visit the list of 100 click here.  To see the top 10 (to decide whether or not you agree) click here.

Happy reading!                    – Alison Ernst, Library Director