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Posts from Mid-Manhattan Library

NYPLarcade Asks: What Are You Playing?

This week, I'll be delving into FTL: Faster Than Light, which was recently released for the Mac. If you haven't played it, the concept is a roguelike set in space, or "Firefly by way of Spelunky." Each time you play, you can expect permadeath, dangers lurking around every corner, and a new randomized world. So far, it's been a lot of fun successfully fending off space pirates and navigating asteroid fields, only to accidentally sacrifice my last crew member by leaving the airlock open too long. (In my defense, I was trying to get rid of hostiles who had boarded the ship.)

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The Country, the Economy, the Election... and Why Haven't I Marched with Occupy Wall Street Yet

The U.S. economy and the upcoming presidential election are on my mind as well as on the minds of many Americans.

I'm not an economist, a political science major or an historian.

I'm a librarian at the Mid-Manhattan Library who specializes in health and medicine — but, I am interested in understanding what has happened to our country over the past ten years.

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The Google Challenge: Google Images versus The Picture Collection

(with apologies, in advance, to the amazing Chris Raschka.)

"Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one." —Neil Gaiman

In September 2015 the Picture Collection, which is located on the third floor of the Mid-Manhattan Branch of The New York Public Library, will celebrate its centennial.

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Mixed Bag: Story Time for Grown-Ups, Featuring Alice Munro

Mixed Bag: Story Time for Grown-Ups is a short story read-aloud program that meets every two weeks at lunch time (1:00 p.m.) Mixed Bag PM meets at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesdays every two weeks. This story is a Mixed Bag reading for September and October.

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NYPLarcade Asks: What Are You Playing?

I'm currently working my way through Borderlands 2 as an assassin who almost exclusively uses Maliwan weapons. It's a lot of fun and (as most reviews have indicated) a nice improvement on the first game. The wacky humor, mindblowing variety of guns, and drop-in, drop-out cooperative play are all back again, but with a tighter story and pacing.

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September in the Reader's Den: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde - Wrap-up and Reading List

Welcome back to the Reader's Den for the final post in our discussion of The Eyre Affair by Japer Fforde. Did you enjoy this literary silliness? As mentioned in the earlier posts, this is the first novel in the Thursday Next series.

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NYPLarcade Horror Games

Our first NYPLarcade Game Club explored the works of thatgamecompany's Jenova Chen. In this six week series, we will look at a variety of horror-themed video games, from the terrifying Amnesia to the utterly bizarre Deadly Premonition to the experimental Dear Esther.

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A List of Lists: September 2012

Visit NYPL's BiblioCommons for these lists and many more. You can also create your own and share them with us in the comments! See below for some interesting staff picks from the past month, on topics both timely and timeless:

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September in the Reader's Den: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde - Discussion Questions

"The murders are tragic, obviously," I replied, "but Jane Eyre is the thing here... Jane Eyre is bigger than me and bigger than you."

“Governments and fashions come and go but Jane Eyre is for all time.”

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My Mystery Summer: A Summer Reading Log with Lists, Part II

Welcome back to My Mystery Summer. In Part I, I reported on some of my own summer reading and viewing and shared some lists of books and DVDs that we put together for our Mystery Summer program at the Mid-Manhattan Library. The previous post included some historical mysteries, Italian and other international mysteries, and international and British crime dramas. This time we have lists of classic mystery films and film noir, mysteries set in New York City, mystery shorts from our Story-time for Grown-ups program, teen mysteries, "bookish" mysteries, true crime, and mysteries from NYPL's online book discussion group, The Reader's Den. And don't forget 

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September in the Reader's Den: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde - Week 2

“Take no heed of her.... She reads a lot of books.” 

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More Graphic Novels for Children

Due to the popularity of last month's post, here are six more recent works of comic titles for the young or maybe just the young at heart. The last three titles are also available as eBooks through Overdrive, which you can know check out directly through the library's Bibliocommons catalog interface. Click here to access specific intructions on how to download eBooks to your eReader or visit the Help section on Overdrive's website. I hope that you enjoy these titles as much as I did!

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Reader's Den: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett - Week 4

Welcome back to the Reader's Den. We've just finished reading The Maltese Falcon. This is the final post and finally — spoiler alert — the identities of the murderers will be revealed!

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September in the Reader's Den: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde - Week 1

Imagine a world where the military-industrial complex wants to control everything you do, where the media outlets seem to be competing to win an award for most inane or banal programming, where violent gangs battle over who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays, where you could find yourself trapped inside a poem, and a character from your favorite book just might save your life...

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My Mystery Summer: A Summer Reading Log with Lists, Part I

So what have you been reading this summer? Here at Mid-Manhattan we’ve been celebrating Mystery Summer with a monster film noir series on Wednesdays and Sundays, mysterious Story Times for Grown-ups, suspenseful selections in the Reader's Den, and and lots of reading and viewing lists. Personally, I’ve managed to do quite a lot of mystery reading over the past few months, but I’ve still got many more books on my For Later shelf. Fortunately, mystery reading (and viewing) is a year round activity, so we hope you’ll find some intriguing suggestions for the rest of the year on the lists of books and DVDs we put together for 

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Reader's Den: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett - Week 3

Welcome back to NYPL’s August Reader's Den. We’re three quarters through Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. In chapters 11-15 things begin to fall into place.

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A List of Lists: August 2012

It's the end of August, which means soon we'll be trading in our fluffy beach reads for heartier winter tomes. NYPL librarians have plenty of suggestions for you.

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Yayoi Kusama Now (and a Booklist for Later)

Yayoi Kusama is one of the most famous Japanese artists right now. Well known for putting colorful polka-dots on every imaginable surface, she has also used lights and mirrors to create her artistic environment, and her naked body has been a canvas, as well as a tool for political protest.

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Reader's Den: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett - Week 2

Welcome back to the New York Public Library's Reader's Den, a monthly online book discussion. For August, we are reading Dashiell Hammett's novel, The Maltese Falcon, as part of Mystery Summer.

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Great Recent Graphic Novels for Children

Did you know that for the past few years there have been a great list of annual graphic novel selections for kids on the Children's Books: 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing list? I'm helping out on the committee this year, so I've been reading a bunch of comics aimed at younger readers. While not all of these titles will make our year end list, I thought I might share a few of my favorite books so far. 

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