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

Asylum : inside the closed world of state mental hospitals / photographs by Christopher Payne ; with an essay by Oliver Sacks.

From Booklist, September 01, 2009

From the 1870s to the 1930s, huge, flattened V’s of interconnected buildings following a plan developed by mental-hospital superintendant Thomas Story Kirkbride rose across the U.S. Called asylums, they were intended to extend to all classes of mental patients the so-called moral treatment of the insane pioneered by Quaker reformers (see Robert Whitaker’s Mad in America, 2002). Individually designed by major architects, they were built with the finest materials and craftsmanship to be monuments of American optimism. But too many became the overcrowded, understaffed, eventually neglectful human warehouses exposed by angry 1950s crusaders. Nearly all are now boarded up, awaiting razing. Payne’s careful 2002-08 photos catch them at the last minute; indeed, a sequence late in the book traces the demolition of one of the largest. Their exteriors remain grand, their corridors imposing, while images of sneakers and bowling shoes, of practical rooms and outbuildings (barns, shops, lounges, gyms, theaters, a TV studio) poignantly recall the dream that these places would be self-sustaining, working communities as well as safe havens for their endangered, sometimes endangering inhabitants. – Olson, Ray

Making Mischief: A Maurice Sendak Appreciation

by Gregory Maguire
Booklist (September 15, 2009)
Maguire begins his affectionate appreciation of America’s (the world’s?) greatest picture-book artist by recalling the ferrous tang of terror he tasted on first talking to the man he calls the original wild thing. The experience seems to have concentrated his mind wonderfully, for his insights into Sendak’s work are erudite and imaginative. Maguire’s appreciation is rooted in his subject’s own appreciation of such artists as Randolph Caldecott, William Blake, Phillip Otto Runge, Winsor McCay, and a host of others. Happily, Maguire, in the best picture-book tradition, doesn’t only tell, he shows, offering a generous selection of Sendak’s own work and often coupling it with the work of those others who have been his inspiration. But there is more: Maguire also offers sober and well-informed thoughts on theme and technique, a quirky list of his personal top-10 images from the oeuvre, and a tour de force retrospective of Sendakian leit motifs set to the music of the text from his masterpiece Where the Wild Things Are. Early on, Maguire acknowledges that he regards his subject as a genius. Surely he will get no argument from readers of this beautifully conceived, gracefully written, and lovingly considered tribute.  –  Cart, Michael

New titles come into the Schauffler Library all the time! (Well, maybe not in the middle of the night…) How to keep track of them all?  (Uh….we catalog them….that’s how.)

Here’s an easy way to browse new books virtually.  Just click here to connect with the online catalog’s featured list.  Enjoy!

Intersted in new reference books?  Click here!

For your browsing pleasure:

Free Inquiry – bi-monthly journal of secular humanist opinion commentary

GamePro – video game monthly

G.Q. – monthly men’s magazine focusing on fashion, style, and culture

I.D. – magazine covering art, business and the culture of design

Lenswork – a photography magazine focusing on ideas and images rather than technique

Macworld – computer magazine dedicated to Apple Macintosh products

Nylon – monthly magazine covering pop culture and fashion

PC World – computer monthly for pc users

Slam – a basketball magazine that combines sport with hip hop culture

Vanity Fair – monthly covering pop culture, fashion, and politics

The Week – current affairs magazine