Biblio File

I've always been curious about Neil Peart. You could say he's the George Harrison of the band Rush. He's the quiet one, but he is anything but silent. In addition to the complex time keeping duties the drummer extraordinaire is also the band's lyricist. With the song's varied themes ranging from philosophy to fantasy you have to assume he is well read.

Of all the books in last year's Children's Books: 100 Titles for Reading & Sharing, my favorite title turned out to be Anne Ursu's Breadcrumbs. Anne was nice enough to answer a few questions about the book and provide valuable insight on one of the most imaginative literary works published last year.

My mother is a special education teacher, and I had the pleasure of giving presentations about public library services in some special education classrooms. Since gifted education used to be classified as special education, I was curious to see if I could find any libraries on that subject; I did not. I also wanted to know what topics special education libraries covered, and below are some that I found.

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 

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

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!

Last month at Jefferson Market, our new romance book club had its first meeting. There were cupcakes, giveaways, a great discussion of Thea Harrison's Dragon Bound, and a lot of laughter.

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...

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 

What could the NYPL have planned for the end of the summer? We know you’re on the edge of your seats! 

…Have you guessed it yet?

We're holding our first ever Google+ Hangout Book Club! (Did you guess correctly?)

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. 

[Note: The following is an imaginative work of fiction. For some decidedly non-fiction resources for your own fantastic feats, see below.]

The opening article in the 1836 edition of the Magician's Yearly Trust, published then by a British organization of the same name, entitled "On performing magic in the most frozen parts of the world" caught my eye. It was the word "frozen" in the title that made me wonder what the article really was about. So I began reading the article and learned that there was a small group of professional magicians based in London, about 18 to 24 in all (members were unsure just how many of them there were since 

While I was in the neighborhood (visiting the library of the American Museum of Natural History - AMNH), I serendipitously noticed that the New-York Historical Society (NYHS) was next door. After visiting the AMNH, I decided to check out the library of the historical society.

You may not be aware, in this age of social media and auto-generated recommendations, but librarians are usually pretty good at suggesting books that match your reading tastes and habits. The technical term for this is "Reader's Advisory," and we try to spend time getting to know a wide variety of authors and genres of writing so that we are always ready to give you a tip when you ask for one.

Fictional works are usually cataloged by author and title, not by subject or plot line, which makes identifying books by their plot or story line difficult.

Before you start your search it would help if you can identify everything you remember about the book, plot, character names, time period in which the book may have been published, genre, etc. All these can help in identifying the title and author of the book.

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. (The Catcher in the Rye)

Over the last few months, I have read all seven novels, many of the poems, and selected bits of juvenilia by the three Brontë sisters — as well as several biographies, odds and ends of literary criticism, and a fascinating volume about the Brontë legend, which over the years has sometimes overshadowed the facts of their lives.

She's not really his girlfriend. He's not really her boyfriend. She says she doesn't like him like that and he says he thinks of her as his little sister, but smarter. But she still sometimes tells others he's her "boyfriend" and he tells his classmates that she's his "girlfriend."

Prohibition. Politics. Corruption. Alcohol was not illegal to drink. It was just illegal to manufacture, sell, or transport. Various organized criminal enterprises saw fit to illegally manufacture, sell, and transport alcohol to those who wanted it. 1920. Money. Politics. Corruption. This is Boardwalk Empire.

What can books become? A response to this query may be found in "Bookman," (2010), an exuberant sculpture of a man, made entirely of discarded library books. The work, a self-portrait by Barry "Butch" Sigel, was, until the week before last, on view in an adjunct gallery space, at Westbeth, the artists' community, in the Far West Village. Now partially dismantled, it is scheduled to be exhibited again in a storefront window on the ground floor of the complex.Bisected at the waist by a colorful tablelike structure made of inlaid book covers, "Bookman" appears to be in contrapposto position, standing with most of his weight shifted to his right