Springfield Library Corner
October 31, 2002

ELEANOR'S CHOICE: FUN AND USEFUL WEBSITES FOR THIS WEEK

Animal Info – Information on Rare, Threatened and Endangered Mammals at http://www.animalinfo.org/

Earth Today: A Digital View of Our Dynamic Planet at http://www.nasm.si.edu/earthtoday/

Interactive Healthy Eating – U.S. Dept. of Agriculture at http://147.208.9.133/default.asp

ParentCenter at http://www.parentcenter.com

Plagiarism at http://web-miner.com/plagiarism

Victorian Dictionary at http://www.victorianlondon.org

Zeek Games – (For the Kids) at http://www.zeeks.com/zg_main.html

JOY'S PICKS

Just how loyal do we have to be to our friends and loved ones? Ann Packer examines this dilemma in “The Dive From Clausen’s Pier.” A young woman is forced to make difficult choices in this “coming of age” novel. It is a well written and captivating story that you won’t soon forget.

College friends are reunited to say goodbye to one of their own in Lee Smith’s “The Last Girls.” The author paints brilliant portraits of these women as she follows the paths their lives have taken. You’ll feel like you really know these now middle-aged characters that spent four years together as young girls.

Emma Sweeney’s “As Always, Jack” is a beautiful love story. Emma never knew her father. He disappeared before she was born. Accidentally discovering old letters that he wrote to her mother during World War II unlocks the mystery of who he was and what he was about. While reading them she meets this man for the first time. The letters are inspirational, uplifting, and filled with life lessons.

Do you have a dull area in your home or garden that needs to be “livened up”? Be sure and take a look at “Hanging Baskets: a Practical Step-by- Step Guide” by Jenny Hendy. This book has projects to suit every taste and budget. The instructions are easy to follow and the photographs are quite helpful.

If the cooler weather jumpstarts your “creative gene,” Sandra Hardy’s “Handcrafted Rugs” may be just what you’re looking for. Rug making has never been easier thanks to the author’s full instructions and patterns. You’ll learn different techniques and surprise yourself with the results.

NAT'S "YOU SAW IT HERE AT SPRINGFIELD FIRST"

"Jazz: the first 100 Years” is a textbook that will appeal equally to college students and regular people who have an interest in learning about jazz in a structured and comprehensive way. Beginning with jazz roots, New Orleans jazz, and the swing era, the book passes through the bebop era, sixties jazz and the jazz rock fusion movements. An excellent CD accompanies the text and provides audio tracks demonstrating arpeggios, syncopation, back beats, and counterlines in addition to short, familiar jazz segments.

Who wants to go to Australia? I do! If your bank account or schedule does not permit, take a photographic journey with Nick Raines through “South Australia.” Pictures of deserts, vineyards, rugged coastlines, camels, emus, kangaroos and Australia’s character-full human denizens will transport you to this sunny island continent.

Dig into “Tropical Fruit” with Desmond Tate. Illustrations by Bruce Granquist, and Anuar Bin Abdul Rahim among others are as lush and tantalizing as the fruits described. Recipes accompany each. You can make a rambutan tart with, what else, but a rambutan, a relative of the Chinese lychee that grows in Indonesia and Malaysia. If not to please your palate, satisfy your curiosity when you take a walk through an Asian market by learning to recognize the scaly, football-sized chempedak or the bulbous snakefruit or the Central American sapodilla.

LIBRARIAN'S PICK OF THE WEEK

A rousing good story about “The Hunt for Zero Point.” Author Nick Cook works for Jane’s Defence Weekly, and this book is an offshoot of his experience in writing about the aerospace world. Cook finds himself intrigued by the idea that the aerospace industry may have already perfected antigravity flight using a perfect disk shape, which may be the explanation for numerous UFO sightings.

He cites documents that show that toward the end of World War II, American and British forces entered German territory and removed literally tons of scientific material and working equipment and turned it over to the U.S. government, where experiments were carried out in secret, in the “dark world” of science and experimentation. Cook painstakingly recounts the search and the excitement of discovery in a world where a new discovery can go “black” at any time, and the public is kept literally in the dark.

Also new and recommended: “Sharp Shooter” by Nadia Gordon; “All is Vanity” by Christina Schwarz; “The Navigator of New York” by Wayne Johnston; “The Little Friend” by Donna Tartt; “The Adventures of Miles and Isabel” by Tom Gilling; “Blue Wolf in Green Fire” by Joseph Heywood; “Groucho Marx, Secret Agent” by Ron Goulart; “Council” by Greg Tobin; “Early One Morning” by Pamela Oldfield and “Across the Nightingale Floor” by Lian Hearn.

New nonfiction: “the Courage to be Catholic” by George Weigel; “Lynyrd Skynyrd” by Gene Odom; “The Demon in the Freezer” by Richard Preston; “Memoirs” by David Rockefeller; “The Book That Changed My Life;” “Meshuggenary” by Payson Stevens; “Organizing and Preserving Your Heirloom Documents” by Katherine Sturdevant; “Bears of Alaska” by Erwin Bauer; “The Real Mrs. Miniver” by Ysenda Graham; “Winston Churchill” by John Keegan; “Grieving a Suicide” by Albert Hsu, and “Training the Young Horse” by Pippa Funnell.