New Book Tuesday!

We just got a whole bunch of fabulous new story time books in to the library, so I decided it was once again time for New Book Tuesday!! Here are the books we are going to read today!!





And, as always, it is FMRNS!! WHOOOOOT!!! Have I ever told you how much I love Tuesdays?!?! This week's feature is Amityville Horror, the original from 1979 with James Brolin and Margot Kidder.

As backups, we have Somewhere in Time, a romantic drama from 1980 with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, or Meet Me in St. Louis, a family musical from 1945 with Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien.

I have to admit, I'm kinda crossing my fingers for one of the backups...I am NOT a horror fan... :::shudder::: (don't you love the tag line on the Amityville Horror poster?!)

Reading a whole book?! *gasp*

Love this article from The Onion.

Thanks to The Librarienne from Closed Stacks for posting!!!

In other news, I finally finished Memory Keeper's Daughter!!! WHOOOOT!!!

I've now moved on to Born Standing Up: a comic's life by Steve Martin. Here is a review posted on Amazon.

At age 10, Steve Martin got a job selling guidebooks at the newly opened Disneyland. In the decade that followed, he worked in Disney's magic shop, print shop, and theater, and developed his own magic/comedy act. By age 20, studying poetry and philosophy on the side, he was performing a dozen times a week, most often at the Disney rival, Knott's Berry Farm. Obsession is a substitute for talent, he has said, and Steve Martin's focus and daring--his sheer tenacity--are truly stunning. He writes about making the very tough decision to sacrifice everything not original in his act, and about lucking into a job writing for The Smothers Brothers Show. He writes about mentors, girlfriends, his complex relationship with his parents and sister, and about some of his great peers in comedy--Dan Ackroyd, Lorne Michaels, Carl Reiner, Johnny Carson. He writes about fear, anxiety and loneliness. And he writes about how he figured out what worked on stage.

This book is a memoir, but it is also an illuminating guidebook to stand-up from one of our two or three greatest comedians. Though Martin is reticent about his personal life, he is also stunningly deft, and manages to give readers a feeling of intimacy and candor. Illustrated throughout with black and white photographs collected by Martin, this book is instantly compelling visually and a spectacularly good read.

Another update to my 2008 Book List!!

Click to Give

The Literacy Site is doing amazing things!! Sponsors will give a book to a deserving child - and all you have to do is click a button!! Please take the time to visit Click to Give @ the Literacy Site - you can make a difference in a child's life!!!

This site also provides links to other organizations where you can click to fund things such as cups of food, mammograms for breast cancer awareness, child health care, to protect an endangered habitat, and to provide free food and care for animals.

Thanks to Kimbooktu for bringing this to my attention!!

Bonus Night!

I know you are all impatiently waiting to hear what A and I watched on Tuesday for FMRNS. We had started to watch The Canterville Ghost, but the VHS copy we had didn't even work to get to the opening credits. So, we decided Terminator 2: Judgment Day would be the backup! It didn't disappoint!!!

Tonight, A and I are having FMRNS Bonus Night! WHOOOOOT!!!! We've decided that tonight is going to be a double feature, because two of the movies we have are both only 1.5 hours long!!! The first feature of the night is going to be Seven Year Itch from 1955 with Marilyn Monroe. The second feature is Lair of the White Worm from 1988. This movie is a comedy/horror (Com-orror? Hor-edy?) with Amanda Donohoe and Hugh Grant.

Remember, A and I are trying to get through the list before I move to Minnesota. The list has quite a few more movies on it that we have weeks left before I leave, so we're needing to squeeze in as many movies as we can!! The list is getting smaller and smaller, and I have to tell you, it's totally depressing. *sniff*

Anyway, I am looking forward to tonight's double feature!! WHOOOOT!!!

Germy Tuesday!

It's that time of year when lots of people are getting sick. So, I decided to do a story time about germs and feeling icky! I found some really cute books to go with this theme, too!! Here they are!




As for FMRNS, we have several choices for tonight's feature. They are The Seven Year Itch, Canterville Ghost, Somewhere in Time, Meet Me in St. Louis, Terminator 2 and Amityville Horror. Both A and I put a bunch of stuff on hold, and they all came in at once!!!

Seven Year Itch is a romantic comedy from 1955 with Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell.
Canterville Ghost is a comedy/fantasy movie from 1944 with Charles Laughton, Robert Young and Margaret O'Brien.
Somewhere in Time is a romantic drama from 1980 with Christoper Reeve, Jane Seymour, and Christopher Plummer.
Meet Me in St. Louis is a family musical from 1944 with Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien and Mary Astor.
Terminator 2 is an action/adventure/sci-fi/thriller movie from 1991 with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton.
And finally, Amityville Horror is a history/horror film from 1979 with James Brolin, Margot Kidder and Rod Steiger.

As I've said before, it's always good to have a backup, but this is a bit ridiculous!!

So, it's time for audience participation!! Vote for your top two choices!! I'll let you know tomorrow which one we decide to watch! =)

American Gods

This weekend, I found myself with four days off, and plenty of time to read!! I was so excited to finish Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards - until I realized that I had left it at work. Go figure.

So, I looked through my TBR pile and came up with American Gods by Neil Gaiman. This one has actually been on my pile for a long time. I keep meaning to pick up a Neil Gaiman book because I've heard he is the man, and I heard American Gods was one of his best works. He did not disappoint. This book was AMAZING. I read it - all 592 pages of it - in two sittings. Here is a review from Amazon, where American Gods made Amazon's Best of 2001 list:

American Gods is Neil Gaiman's best and most ambitious novel yet, a scary, strange, and hallucinogenic road-trip story wrapped around a deep examination of the American spirit. Gaiman tackles everything from the onslaught of the information age to the meaning of death, but he doesn't sacrifice the razor-sharp plotting and narrative style he's been delivering since his Sandman days.

Shadow gets out of prison early when his wife is killed in a car crash. At a loss, he takes up with a mysterious character called Wednesday, who is much more than he appears. In fact, Wednesday is an old god, once known as Odin the All-father, who is roaming America rounding up his forgotten fellows in preparation for an epic battle against the upstart deities of the Internet, credit cards, television, and all that is wired. Shadow agrees to help Wednesday, and they whirl through a psycho-spiritual storm that becomes all too real in its manifestations. For instance, Shadow's dead wife Laura keeps showing up, and not just as a ghost--the difficulty of their continuing relationship is by turns grim and darkly funny, just like the rest of the book.

Armed only with some coin tricks and a sense of purpose, Shadow travels through, around, and underneath the visible surface of things, digging up all the powerful myths Americans brought with them in their journeys to this land as well as the ones that were already here. Shadow's road story is the heart of the novel, and it's here that Gaiman offers up the details that make this such a cinematic book--the distinctly American foods and diversions, the bizarre roadside attractions, the decrepit gods reduced to shell games and prostitution. "This is a bad land for Gods," says Shadow.

More than a tourist in America, but not a native, Neil Gaiman offers an outside-in and inside-out perspective on the soul and spirituality of the country--our obsessions with money and power, our jumbled religious heritage and its societal outcomes, and the millennial decisions we face about what's real and what's not. --Therese Littleton

YAY! Now I have 2 books on my 2008 Book List!!

Dress a librarian!!

LibrarianDressup is a fun site where you can dress up a librarian!! Get rid of her boring clothes, and dress her up in fun Super Hero costumes or more trendy outfits!

Thanks to Kimbooktu and The Hedgehog Librarian for posting about this link!!

In other news, I just sent out my first job application for a librarian position in Minnesota. It is due on Monday, but I sent it overnight, and they received it yesterday. The application itself was the Application from Hell!! But it's sent and received - too late to turn back now. Wish me luck - the job sounds pretty perfect!!!