NYPL Blogs

By now we are well into The Servants by M.M. Smith. Our protagonist, Mark, is 11 years old and unhappy. Having just relocated to Brighton from London, he has no friends and spends the rainy, chilly days skateboarding by himself. Full of resentment against his new stepfather, David, and confused by his mother's illness, he meets an old lady who unlocks for him a bygone era in her basement flat in the 200-year-old house David owns.

Henry Roth was living at 61 Morton Street in New York City while writing his classic novel of the immigrant experience, Call It Sleep, published in 1934. His birthday is February 8.

I hear the phrase uttered often, "There are no good Rock & Roll Bands any more" and there has been recent talk about the death of mainstream rock and roll. Over the next few weeks I will highlight 4 modern day groups that deserve attention from young and old fans of mainstream Rock and Roll.

After reading Greg Rucka's Batwoman Elegy last year, I've been thinking a lot about graphic novels featuring the original Caped Crusader, Batman. Stories involving Batman and the characters in his universe have been published for over seven decades! Since that's a lot of reading to do, I've singled out 10 of my favorite Batman tales, all available to check out or request at your neighborhood library with your library card. Enjoy!  

Jennifer Crusie's Bet Me is more than a love story. It's also a book about calculating risk, eating food, taking chances, friendships, comedy, and did I mention food? After I finished the book last weekend, I immediately picked up the phone and ordered chicken marsala. If you've read Bet Me, you know why! And if you haven't read it yet, maybe you should. Unless, of course, you're trying to avoid doughnuts and Italian food, or if you're training for a marathon.

Sinclair Lewis, like many writers who lived in the Village, came from elsewhere — from Sauk Centre, Minnesota, in fact, whose citizens did not care at all for how they were depicted in his phenomenally popular novel Main Street.

For the week of February 5, 2012 we have hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, and children's chapter books.

If any of you has a new iPhone, iPad or Android phone, there is a free app! Use it with your Library card/username and pin.

Click on any of the titles below and place a hold to request the item. Remember to update your contact information (phone number or e-mail address), so you are notified when the book arrives for you at your local library. Don't have a library card yet? It's simple! Find out how to get one. Titles are available in regular print, large print, audio, and in electronic format — 

William S. Burroughs was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on February 5, 1914, but became involved with the Beats in the Village in the 1940s. He lived at 69 Bedford Street in New York City.

Perhaps it's because audiences for poetry are a bit smaller than some of the other genres I'm drawn to, but whenever I finally get around to reading a poet others have recommended to me, it seems like knocking on the door to a little club of sorts. When the poet is as interesting as David Shapiro, one hopes to return to that door again and again.  

As the centennial year of The New York Public Library's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building comes to a close and the next 100 years begin, it's a good opportunity to journey through the history, collections, and people behind the scenes of one of the world's premiere music collections. 

On Saturday, December 3, 2011, Phyllis Newman, the Tony-award winning actress and illustrator of What's New at the Zoo? by Betty Comden, came to the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building's South Court Auditorium to read from the book. Kids from PS 212 sang the book, which is actually the lyrics to the song in a Broadway Show, Do Re Mi.

NYPL's business library, SIBL, learned recently that it had been named the 2012 recipient of the Malcom S. Forbes Public Awareness Award for Advancing Financial Understanding. The Financial Planning Association of New York will present the award at its annual spring forum in April, but there's no time like the present to highlight the financial education resources and services that garnered this recognition for NYPL. It's a given that there's something here that can help you better manage your personal finances starting now.

Well, Yudie is not exactly a Bubbie, but I simply could not resist the alliteration. (Although, Tante and the Beats would make an excellent band name, don't you think?)

This month's Lower East Side Heritage Film Series (LESHFS) pairs the seemingly improvised storytelling of the Beat Generation with the candid and (seemingly) unrehearsed historytelling of a first generation American to Russian-Jewish parents that landed in the Lower East Side.

Happy New Year from TeenLIVE! For our first TeenLIVE event in 2012, we were lucky enough to hear from teen author and activist Gaby Rodriguez about her book, The Pregnancy Project. Seeing the effect of teen pregnancy on her family and peers, the straight A student decided to stage a pregnancy for a senior project at school to combat stereotypes and gossip. The day after she revealed that her pregnancy was, in fact, fake, her life was blown into a media whirlwind! News outlets swarmed her small town of Toppenish, Washington, and less than a year later, she’s flying across the country to Hollywood and New York City for talk show and radio appearances, book signings and 

This February in the eReading Room we'll be celebrating all the different ways we love to read. If you're the kind of person who will read a cereal box if it's the only thing nearby, you'll want to pay special attention to this four-part series. I'll be detailing some of the new ways we read now, outside of the traditional printed-and-bound-and-published volume (which, don't get me wrong, we still love just as much). This purpose of this series is to help you get the most out of online reading at work, at home, or on the go.

Richard Yates, born February 3, 1926, lived at 27 Seventh Avenue South, at the corner of Bedford Street in New York City, just steps from Hudson Park Library.

The steampunk genre has been around for some time now, and while some may disagree, I most strongly associate it with The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a graphic novel, by Alan Moore.

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that  Library users have suggested we acquire!

The January 14 issue of The Economist has reviewed (and maybe recommended...) five new books on a few different business topics. I'm using this as an opportunity to post a list of these titles with links to the Library's collections.