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Less cray cray, more namaste

Photo of My Librarian Darcee meditating with running child in background
If I’ve learned nothing else from my twenty-five years as a perpetual beginning yoga student, it’s to honor where I’m at in the moment. And in this moment I’m a total mess.

School started yesterday and with it, the slow begrudging shift back into scheduled living. I have a hard enough time just getting myself out the door in the morning, so trying to corral a free-spirited and easily distracted kid in addition, is easily my least favorite part of parenting.

The one thing that helps quiet my mind and find focus in the eye of the storm that is the morning ritual, is a regular yoga practice. Like many, I don’t have the time nor money to get to a yoga studio as often as I’d like and I lack the focus to go solo at home. That’s why, in anticipation of amped up school mornings, I’ve been turning to Hoopla.

Did you know that there is a treasure trove of wide-ranging yoga instruction videos available to stream right now on Hoopla? I didn’t until recently. So I tried a few out.

I started out bold with a Vinyasa class with Clara Roberts-Oss, jumping in at Episode 3, Twist it out Yoga.  The mountain setting was lovely but the Vinyasa flows were too fast and unfamiliar for me. Then Clara said “booty” and “awesome” one too many times and I went into child pose and didn’t come out.

Humbled by Clara, I next visited Rodney Yee Complete Yoga for Beginners -Season 1, starting with his morning workout. There’s something extraordinarily calming about Rodney Yee and this was a gentle and meditative workout.  And yes, for twenty glorious minutes and a few thereafter, the morning was all tranquil waters and clear skies. Then I got whacked in the face with a foam Thor hammer and realized I’m going to need something with a bit more vigor to reach a deeper calm.

I think I found my go-to class in Hatha Yoga with Cameron Gilley. Yoga videos can veer towards cheesy and over-produced, but Cameron comes off as just a straight-forward tattooed guy on a pink mat in front of what looks like a drizzly Northwest marina. Flow with Grace & Slow Burn Hatha feel a lot like the average yoga class you’d attend at any number of Portland studios and for me, that’s a good thing.

With a limit of eight checkouts per month, I can’t rely on Hoopla workouts entirely to keep me calm this school year. But maybe it can provide the bridge I need to finally inch towards a regular home yoga practice. And when I do lose my cool (because I will), perhaps I can return back to center just a little bit faster.

Check out my list for more online resources and books to help build your physical yoga practice at home. Are you loving an online yoga class that I've overlooked? Share your favorites in the comments!

Darcee M. | Fri, Aug 28, 2015
learn & create, adults, mcl blogs, nonfiction

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Roald Dahl: A Twist in the tale

I’ve wanted to write a little something about Roald Dahl for a long time.  Yes, everyone knows him for his children’s books: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The Witches, and Esio Trot seem to always have a permanent place on the bookshelves of many young readers.  Yet there is more to Dahl than his beloved children’s books.  His short stories for adults are among the best around. They are highly original, deeply engaging and filled with unusual characters who stand out from the ordinary but seem strangely familiar.  

Roald Dah's Collected Stories book jacket
The titles of Dahl’s stories suggest something of the intrigue to come.  Someone Like You and Lamb to the Slaughter, which can be found in his Collected Stories, suggest stories filled with unexpected twists and dark humor and they never fail to deliver both. In Lamb to the Slaughter’s title story, a disgruntled wife kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb and then feeds the roasted meat to the investigating policeman. In The Landlady, an unsuspecting traveler falls prey to a landlady who prefers stuffed guests. Dahl’s dark and often macabre stories are beautifully written and always contain at least one moment of absolute surprise that pulls the rug out from under the reader’s feet.

Dahl has been around for the long time, rising to eminence long before J.K. Rowling and writing before the days when series fiction was needed to draw young readers in.  Roald Dahl appeals to children because he takes them seriously and endeavors to treat them well.  Dahl created worlds where magic lived just along the edges of ordinary life and where a shove in any direction would turn that life upside down.

Dahl’s personal life was filled with its own share of the unexpected. His autobiographical books including Boy and Going Solo detail his early school days
Going Solo book jacket
through his wartime service as a fighter pilot. After being shot down, Dahl eventually landed a post working in Washington D.C. at the British Embassy where he hobnobbed with Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn and played poker with Harry Truman. He also met C.S. Forester who encouraged him to write. Dahl started with short stories and magazine articles and eventually branched into his well-known children’s books and often overlooked adult works.  Roald Dahl’s stories are the kind that can be read over and over.  Lucky readers will discover new and exciting details with each reading.

carolg | Thu, Aug 27, 2015
adults, read, listen, watch

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Dreams of Africa

I fell in love in Africa once. On horseback. Surrounded by giraffes and impala. My boyfriend and I were backpacking around southern Africa, and that’s when I knew my heart was his.

Reader, I married the guy. We moved to Portland and acquired jobs, a mortgage, and two kids. It’s great, really, but I miss traveling. I miss that sense of not knowing what the day before me will bring, and I dream about going back to Africa.

Paula McLain, whose Paris Wife was a big success in 2011, has just published Circling the Sun, a new novel about Beryl Markham, the pilot, horse trainer, and author of West with the Night. West with the Night is an awfully good memoir that I’ve owned forever and finally read after finishing McLain’s book. Hemingway said of it that "this girl, who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade bitch, can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers ... it really is a bloody wonderful book." (The story goes that Hemingway wanted to sleep with Markham and she refused him!) 

It must be said that both books skirt the very real issue of how British colonists treated the natives-- but I still couldn’t help being beguiled by their descriptions of Kenya in the early 20th century.  I long to join all the expats on Karen Von Blixen's veranda to sip gin and tonics and watch the hills in the distance turn a darker and darker shade of purple as the sun goes down. I want to go riding along Lake Elementaita in the early morning, scattering  thousands of flamingos who take to the sky as we draw closer, and I want to go on safari again and see lions stalking a kudu in the long grass.

Paula McLain is so good at putting my fantasies on the page. Someday I'll get to travel the world some more, but until then, Circling the Sun offered a great escape, one I think you might enjoy. 

Diana A. | Wed, Aug 26, 2015
read, listen, watch, historical fiction

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Deep challenges - navigating mental and physical challenges

Challenger Deep book cover
The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that 1 in 25 Americans live with a serious mental health condition. Teens that are  facing these challenges--mental and physical--or caring for someone that is, know that they are very real and intense.

Teens want to understand, and to be understood.

The Hollywood Teen Council focused a month of reading on books that explored both mental health conditions and physical disabilities. One book that stood out was Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman, illustrated by his son Brendan Shusterman.

Sienna Lesher, Grant High School student and Hollywood Teen Book Council member, wrote this review:

“The bottom of the trench is only scratching the surface of the earth.”

Caden Bosch suffers from severe mental illness, causing him to live most of his life in a false reality, he sees himself on a boat sailing for the deepest point on earth: Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench. His life on the boat is hard, but really, life outside was no better. Though hard to understand at first, this book is beautiful and surreal, and I would definitely recommend this to another teen.”

Everybody Sees the Ants book cover

In A.S. King’s, Everybody Sees the Ants, Lucky has been having dreams where he visits his grandfather in a POW camp in Vietnam. Soon he starts to have daily visions of a Greek-Chorus-like group of ants that start to weigh in on the events of his life where he is dealing with severe bullying and his parents potential break-up.  

Alisa Folen, Grant High School student and Hollywood Teen Book Council Chair, created this playlist inspired by “The Ants.”

 

 

Hiding Tonight by Alex Turner

Hero by Family of The Year

Take A Walk by Passion Pit

Cigarette Daydreams by Cage the Elephant

Getting to Know You by Spazzkid

Oblivion by Grimes

The Hunt by Youth Lagoon

Silhouettes by Colony House

 
Danielle J | Tue, Aug 25, 2015
hollywood library, teens, mcl blogs

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Kissing aliens

The aliens slip into our universe through holes 1” by 2”.

Video game cartoon alien
The aliens have no legs.

The aliens have their mouths under their arms.

The aliens have half of their brains in their arms.

The aliens change colors at will.

The aliens can open locks without using tools..

Woman scuba diver and octopus

The aliens can tell what you’ve been eating, drinking, and what drugs you’ve been exposed to just by touch.

We call the aliens octopuses. They broke off from our evolutionary line back when we were barely protozoa. Yet they’ve developed an amazing brain and a complex body. And, according to author Sy Montgomery, they can connect with us in a deep way. Sy herself has spent many hours with an octopus holding her arms with its many suckers,  even ending up with an “octopus hickey.”

If this fascinates you, join Montgomery in her new book, The Soul of an Octopus, as she dives heart and soul into the world of octopuses. For some great photography, or to share with children, follow it up with her newer children’s book, The Octopus Scientists.

No alien lover or animal lover should miss these latest works by this prolific author. In fact, while you're waiting for the octopus books, try some more of Sy Montgomery's titles for both adults and chidren.

Karen S. | Mon, Aug 24, 2015
science, nonfiction

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True Colors? Walter White and Piper Chapman

When I was

a kid I begged my parents to buy me what was billed as a 'scultping' toy. The ads showed cool kids with berets chipping away at small square blocks of stone and then, voila! - the stone would reveal a figure. Never mind that the sculpture was actually pre-made and your job was just to peel away the outside, no creativity required.

I never did get my longed for toy, it reminds me of Breaking Bad. Why? Because sometimes art is just about uncovering what's already there. At first blush, Walt seems like a good-natured sort, a sometimes overly moralistic guy affected by bad circumstances, always trying to do the right thing for his family. But as time goes by the real Walt is revealed. I would argue that the pragmatic guy who views the murder of one of his dealers as collateral damage is in fact the real Walt, the one who has always been there and who uses his upright personna as a cloak for his real self.

Is Walt corrupted by his desperate circumstances, or do his circumstances just uncover the true Walt? I think the criminal mastermind was always
lurking in the stone. It's an interesting question to ponder, and the fact that Walt inspires that kind of inquiry is a credit to how well-crafted the character is.

I find myself wondering if the character of Piper in Orange is the New Black will follow a similar arc. I'm referring to the series and not the original, non-fiction book - you can hear what Piper Kerman thinks of the liberties the show has taken with her memoir on a Fresh Air interview; I wonder if the character will do a 'Walter White' and the softness of her constructed self will be peeled away by prison life. What do you think?

Alison K. | Sun, Aug 23, 2015
adults

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Gentrification in Portland: the rising costs of buying or renting a home in the city

What is gentrification?

Gentrification is the process by which neighborhoods undergo a rapid increase in value as properties are purchased and renovated by wealthier people than those currently living in the community. This most often occurs in poor and working-class urban neighborhoods resulting in the displacement of those residents. In recent years the signs of gentrification in Portland are easily identifiable and abundant. New owners purchase properties then either improve or tear down and replace what was there. This leads to rents going up dramatically, wealthier people moving into the neighborhood, and area businesses becoming more upscale. All this means that less wealthy, long-time residents can no longer afford to stay.  In fact, a 2015 study by Governing Magazine found that Portland, Oregon has experienced this gentrification process more severely than any other U.S. city since 2000. This has had a profound impact on many Portland neighborhoods as housing costs continue to rise.  More and more people are unable to remain in the neighborhoods where they have long resided and some are unable to find affordable housing within the city limits at all.

What causes gentrification?

Gentrification can happen in any neighborhood where property values suddenly rise as newer, wealthier residents move in, invest in improvements and/or new construction then displace those who have previously lived there. Often, gentrification is a legacy of past policies that restricted people of color to certain neighborhoods and denied them access to financing. This process occurred through redlining. This excerpt from the documentary Race: The Power of an Illusion illustrates how redlining worked:

 

Redlining

 

In Portland, African Americans were largely restricted to North and Northeast Portland, so it is no surprise that those are two parts of the city undergoing the most rapid gentrification. The Oregonian’s “Roots of Gentrification” series provides an excellent overview of the changes in the city that have greatly contributed to the gentrification of North and Northeast Portland.  Also, the city’s State of Housing in Portland report provides a good overview of the scope of the problem.

 

What has been the result?

While gentrification has affected areas across the city, among the most impacted has been North and Northeast Portland, the long-time center of the city’s African American population. The impact on that community has been profound. Largely priced out of their homes, the city’s black residents are increasingly moving into east Multnomah County where housing is less expensive. This has meant there is far less diversity in traditionally black neighborhoods. A clear example of gentrification in an historically African American community is the Alberta neighborhood. Studies done in 1992 and 2015 show just how much the area has changed. Gentrification also contributes to the rapid increase in rent. A recent study showed Portland's rents rose at  the nation's sixth-fastest rate over the last five years.

 

What is the solution?

That all depends on who you ask, but because gentrification is not the result of a single, simple cause, there is likely no single, simple solution. It is an issue intimately tied to other challenging social problems surrounding race, class, and economic opportunity. The City of Portland has prepared a study of gentrification risk that identifies different strategies to address the issue. Recently, the Portland Housing Advisory Commission recommended a significant increase in the amount of public money spent on affordable housing. In August 2015, city leaders announced new projects in Northeast Portland to provide jobs and subsidized housing. A coalition of community groups has recommended a comprehensive 11-point plan to combat gentrification but still recognize that there is “no silver bullet” that will solve the problem. To address the issue of high rent, the Portland Renters Assembly organizes meetings across the city and would like to take direct action against the rising cost of rent. Clearly, a variety of tactics are needed to ease the most damaging effects of gentrification. It is impossible to know now what will ultimately be the result.

Rodney M. | Sun, Aug 23, 2015
local interest, current events, mcl blogs

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Simply a literary gold mine: Langston Hughes’ Simple stories

Our guest blogger is Memo. Memo works at the Central Library. Besides reading history and literature about Latinos, workers, and immigrants, he enjoys re-reading the great literary works of nineteenth and twentieth-century realist writers.

The Collected Works of Langston Hughes book jacket
I had never read the literary works of Langston Hughes before coming across The Collected Works of Langston Hughes at the North Portland Library.  I knew of him as a great poet and poetry was not my favorite genre.  Nonetheless, I leafed through the seventeen volume set on the shelf and I immediately was hooked on the works of one of the literary lions of the Harlem Renaissance.

Not sure where to begin, I skimmed through the volumes on poetry.  I read quickly a few poems, tried to digest others, but it was his prose that truly beckoned me.  I paused skimming midway through his oeuvre and read the first two short tales in depth.  I knew then, as I do now, that I had found a literary gold mine because weeks later, I’m still digging through the Simple stories in volumes 7 and 8.

Originally published in the Chicago Defender from 1943 to 1965, the Simple stories read more like weekly columns on race relations in the U.S. The tales are narrated in a conversational form to engage readers on multiple levels.  On one level, the stories are comical and reader-friendly, designed to show the human soul of Jesse B. Semple, or Simple as he is known, and draw the reader in.  Readers get to see and feel Simple’s failures and successes as well as his frustrations and dreams.  On another level, the stories portray the complex world that evolved in the Jim Crow era in a non-antagonizing way.  Simple’s conversations with his bar buddy not only lured readers into the national dialogue over race, but they also engaged readers in a constructive conversation over racism—the ideological foundation that defined the racial boundaries of Simple’s life and, by extension, African Americans.

Though it has been sixty-five years since Langston Hughes published the first Simple stories in book form, the ideas in these tales still resonate.  Racial progress has been made, but we still have a long way to go.  Both fictional characters would probably nod their heads.  Yes, over a cold beer.  Still, such ideas, now more than ever, need to be part of a national discourse.

 

Library Staff | Sun, Aug 23, 2015
adults, read, listen, watch, literary, classics

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I see the future and I don’t like it

The Water Knife book jacket
I’ve been thinking a lot about climate change lately. It isn’t surprising, I suppose. After all, it was a very dry winter and spring here followed by one of the hottest summers in Portland history. What sparked these thoughts, however, wasn’t the weather but a book, The Water Knife, by Paolo Bacigalupi. The novel is set in a near future Phoenix where prolonged drought has left the American Southwest a place where states compete for what little water remains and refugees from climate disasters in Texas eke out a bare existence. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great book and I highly recommend it, but you need to start it knowing a few facts: the story is dark; and it’s brutally violent; and it’s all too plausible.

It isn’t like I’m a newcomer to apocalyptic stories. As one of my earlier reading lists will attest, I grew up in the 1980s convinced the world would end in a nuclear holocaust. I’ve reveled in apocalypses from a variety of causes, comet impacts, plagues, alien invasions, you name it, but this one has bothered me more than others. It isn’t even like this is the first Paolo Bacigalupi novel I read in which climate change is a major point. So why has this one stayed with me? I think I’ve figured it out, at least in part. First, not only did I grow up in Arizona and Texas but I still have friends and family in both places. Thus what Bacigalupi describes has a certain familiarity. Also, while it has been around for a long time, there have been an increasing number of books in this cli-fi (climate fiction) genre. Most disturbing, though, is the fact that the book seems more and more prescient. Many scientists are saying that the worst-case scenarios of climate change are not only increasingly likely but will occur much faster than expected. In other words, The Water Knife has shown me the future and it scares me.

While some people think the new cli-fi could be beneficial and lead to positive change, I’m going to have to take a break from this sub-genre and other dystopias for a while. It has been like a cloud hanging over me for weeks now and I’m in need of some sunshine. Maybe you can suggest a book that will brighten my day? I could really use something with a hopeful ending.

For more cli-fi, check out this list.

Rodney M. | Sat, Aug 22, 2015
adults, read, listen, watch, science fiction/fantasy

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He blinded me with science! (Neal Stephenson, that is)

Seveneves book jacket
When they announce they end of the world, they’ll do it at Crater Lake. Or at least that’s how Seattle author Neal Stephenson envisions it in his hefty new hard SF tome, Seveneves.  So how is the world ending this time? When the Moon explodes due to some unknown force, it’s shocking at first, but quickly becomes an astronomical edutainment show. The pieces are even given cutesy names such as Potatohead and Mr. Spinny. But then two fragments collide and become three, and three become four. Astronomers start running simulations and discover that life on earth is going to come to an end in about two years’ time. The continued fragmentation will create a massive debris cloud called the White Sky and a catastrophic meteor storm dubbed the Hard Rain (perhaps after this appropriately dire and prophetic Bob Dylan song?).  After this, Earth will be a flaming ember for at least 5,000 years. S’mores, anyone?

Our heroes are the astronauts of the International Space Station, who must transform it into a self-sustaining habitat capable of supporting as many people as can be launched off the ground during the two years before the Hard Rain. These launches are hasty and kludgey… (although I kind of enjoyed it when a Walla Walla vineyard got taken out by an errant rocket). Yes, there’s a lot of engineering and orbital mechanics involved, but this is a tense, sad, and harrowing read, and I couldn’t put it down. Later some humor surfaces, and the story is not without a glint of far-future hope, but the beginning is just wrenching. If you like (or at least don’t mind) your nail-biting human drama salted with delta vees, mass ratios, and Tsiolkovskii equations, this is the book for you.

Erika B. | Fri, Aug 21, 2015
adults, read, listen, watch, science fiction/fantasy

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Small book bites from Toro Bravo chef John Gorham

John Gorham is the culinary genius behind restaurants Toro Bravo and Tasty n Sons, among others. He believes that a chef’s cuisine and style is influenced by travel, work and place, as well as the food he grew up with. His advice about cooking: Fall in love with food, go traveling and taste everything. His reading interests reflect this philosophy. Here are some of his favorite books:

A Year In Provence.  This book just makes you want to throw caution to the wind, and go travel and dine. A must-read for any chef or person in love with food and travel.

The Alchemist. Another book of adventure, but also of self-reflection.

Another Roadside Attraction. I read my first Tom Robbins book when I was about 21. I hadn't really fallen in love with reading until I found his books. I read the rest of his books in the next couple of months. But of all of his books, Another Roadside Attraction was always my favorite.

Tender At The Bone. This is the story of Ruth Reichl. This book came at a time in my life when I really looking inward to what kind of chef I was becoming. It inspired me to take some risks — I moved to Berkeley a few months after I read this book — and really focus on the food.  

Danzigers Travels : Beyond The Forbidden Frontiers.  An old friend of mine gave me this book in the mid 90s. It's a true story of a man that walks the Marco Polo trade route in the 80s. It was the first time I ever really got a feeling of what the Middle East must be like. It inspired my cooking as well as my view of the world. This is a hard book to find, but worth the search. (Note: This book is available through interlibrary loan.)

Library Staff | Thu, Aug 20, 2015
learn & create, cooking, guest picks, travel

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Inhabiting other lives

Are you moving out to a house in the country anytime soon? No? Me neither. And yet there's always that little 'what if' in the back of my mind. Find a nicely formed plot of land with swoops, curves, nooks and crannies, and build a small, self-sufficient house nestled into the hillside. Solar power, check. Gravity-fed water suppy, check. Composting toilet, uh, ...

Luckily those of us who make our living in the city can experience country-living vicariously through others. We can mentally inhabit the space that Dee Williams created in The Big Tiny (though even our ghosts might take up too much space in her tiny house); and now we can also enjoy the view from Evelyn Searle Hess's handbuilt house in the Coast Range in Building a Better Nest. Though the title might lead you to believe that you've picked up a how-to manual for building a sustainable house, the book is really a rumination on the meaning of home, how much is enough and the significance of community as we grow older. 

Hess and her husband aren't neophytes; they lived in a tent on their land for many years while dreaming of the home they'd build. Then, finally, when they were both in their 70s, they began. Yes! That's just one of the remarkable elements of this story, that reads more like an adventure than an instruction manual. And throughout there's Hess's calm and wondering voice thinking aloud about living more mindfully among the myriad creatures whose home she has invaded. I have a feeling she'll put out the welcome mat should you chose to inhabit her space for a while.

Alison K. | Wed, Aug 19, 2015
biography/memoir, northwest

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In which yours truly finally falls in love with manga

As with many pleasures,  like food, music, movies and books, we tend to find what we love and stick with that. When readers ask me for suggestions on what to read next, they usually know what they like and want to read more of it. But as with food, music, movies and other such pleasures, it never hurts to try reading something new. My something new is manga.
 
The most basic definition of manga is comics that are originally produced in Japan. Manga includes works in a wide range of genres. You can find manga translated into a variety of languages 
Manga reading direction example
but they all retain the traditional reading direction of Japanese manga, which is that is you read from right to left. If you are used to reading from left to right, manga will take a little getting used to. But believe me when I say that when you find a series that sparks your interest, reading from right to left will come easily.
 
The following three titles have been my introduction to this popular comic medium, and each one has made me finally fall in love with manga. 
 
Wandering Son book jacket
Wandering Son by Takako Shimura is a series that is hard to miss. Among a sea of similarly sized paperback manga, Wandering Son is the rare hardcover series. The story centers around a fifth grader named Shuichi Nitori who has just transferred to a new school. During their first day of school Shimura meets Yoshino and the two become instantaneous best friends. And both Shimura and Yoshino are transgender. I really love Takako’s minimal and dreamy illustration style, and that this series focuses on the elements of curiosity and discovery that go along with gender identity and puberty.
 
Black Butler book jacket
I admit that I was so excited and impatient to read Black Butler by Yana Toboso that I bought the first book. Set just outside of London during the Victorian era, this series revolves around a young noble, Ciel Phantomhive and his loyal butler Sebastian. Ciel is quite demanding and Sebastian is ever willing to oblige, to the point that it appears that Sebastian can do what no other human can. So, is Sebastian human? I love Toboso's  gothic and lush illustrations and the melding of historical fiction, mystery, and a bit of fantasy. 
 
Blue Exorcist book jacket
In Blue Exorcist by Kazue Katō you meet Rin Okumura and his twin brother Yukio. Rin and Yukio were both raised by Father Fujimoto, an exorcist. Rin has only ever known the world of his adoptive father, a world in which demons are to be fought and killed. But one day Rin finds out that both him and his brother are the sons of Satan, the most powerful demon. Rin being the stronger of the two brothers is the only one who has inherited demon powers. Determined to use his demon side for good Rin enrolls in the True Cross Academy, a school for exorcists in training. I’m a big fan of all things horror so this series immediately grabbed my attention. But I also love the dabs of comedy that are played out in the sibling rivalry between Rin and Yukio.
 
I am crazy in love with these series and excited to find more manga to dive into. If you have never tried manga I hope that I can convince you to give it a try. If you are already a manga fan, I'd love to hear about your favorite titles!
 
 
Alicia T. | Tue, Aug 18, 2015
teens, comics/graphic novels

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Time for ice cream

Baby, it’s hot outside. So what are you going to do? I’m going to cool down.  And that means ice cream. Something cold and delicious no?  What’s your favorite?  Are you a foodie?  I usually go for the nutty classics like pistachio or butter pecan. Jamoca almond fudge anyone?  But now after ice cream endeavors of the foodie kind I am quite taken with my husband's chipotle chocolate. And lately I have liked putting buttermilk lemon ice cream on chocolate cookies.

Next up I want to build an ice cream cake.  Are you with me?  

Laural W. | Mon, Aug 17, 2015
read, listen, watch, cooking

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I want to be teleported

I judged a book by its cover.
The cover is fantastic—I mean look at it.

the-teleportation-accident_custom-aa41ab132419ab6099ba85520ed1eda25636fae9-s300-c85.jpg

 

It was screaming for me to pick it up and then, well that’s a coincidence, the author’s name is Ned Beauman. Could it be? Why yes. This is the son of Nicola Beauman, founder of Persephone Books Ltd.—and we all know how I feel about Persephone Books.

Ned, I congratulate you on the stunning representation of L.A.

"The whole city felt like an apartment for sale, which the estate agent had sprayed with perfume just prior to a viewing."

and the many other, equally unique sentences that I wanted to copy down and pin to my wall. However, I could have done without reading the whole of the book. 

Can someone please just put together a book of collected witticisms by Ned Beauman and call it good?

 


 

Heather E. | Sun, Aug 16, 2015

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The "next book" conundrum

dog and jim butcher book

 

Thanks to a colleague's enthusiastic recommendation of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, my summer reading is all set. 

However, all good things must come to an end(or at least until a new book in the series comes out…) and the hunt for the ever elusive "next book" begins.

 

 

 

If you are looking for your next book, check out a few of the many ways you can discover them through Multnomah County Library

Don't forget that you can always ask any of us on the My Librarian team for a personalized recommendation!

Take a look around! While you do that,  I'll be hunkered down with Stella and Chicago's best wizard for hire...

 

 

 

Matthew S. | Sat, Aug 15, 2015
science fiction/fantasy

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Sexual orientation, sexual identity, and gender identity

Sexual orientation, sexual identity, and gender identity have been getting more attention in the news lately, with the Supreme Court decision about same-sex marriage and Caitlyn Jenner's public transition.

Confused? Curious? Concerned? All of the above? The library is a great place to learn more. Teen Health and Wellness has informative articles and also offers teens the opportunity to submit your own stories and videos.  

If you're in or close to Portland, the services of the Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center and TransActive Gender Center may be helpful.

No matter where you are, you can call, text, or chat YouthLine.

And the video below, LGBTQ: Understanding Sexual Orientation and Gender Identities, is a good brief overview of these topics that includes stories from several youth.

LGBTQ: Understanding Sexual Orientation & Gender Identities (short version)

 

Sara R | Tue, Aug 11, 2015
teens, mcl blogs, social issues resources

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An ode to letters

Ah, the lost art of letter writing. I still find myself checking my mail hoping that there will actually be a personal letter mixed in with the credit card applications. But alas, I can’t recall the last time I received a real letter. When I want to immerse myself in the beauty of letter-writing, I shall open up Shaun Usher’s, Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of A Wider Audience. 

Letters of Note bookjacket

Shaun Usher loves letters (and lists too. His second book, Lists of Note includes such wonders as Michelangelo's illustrated shopping list and Marilyn Monroe’s New Year’s resolutions written when she was 29-years-old.).

But back to the pleasures of letters. Usher has collected 125 letters from far and wide and long ago to more recent times. Many of the letters are from well-known figures but some are from everyday folks. All of the letters have a short introduction to put them into historical context and a good share of them include a reproduction of the letter itself. The effort and creativity that went into these letters - a 13-year-old boy at a school for the blind wrote in Braille to President Eisenhower. The sadness - Virginia Woolf’s note to her husband before she committed suicide. Witty, funny, artistic ones. Beautiful, heartfelt, poignant letters. They’re all here.

If you’d like to peruse even more letters, take a look at Shaun Usher's website where he has posted a whopping 900 letters; they’re indexed in various ways so one could spend weeks reading all of them. Or take a look at some of these books that are chock full of letters. I, however, think I’ll go write a letter to a friend.

Karen E. | Mon, Aug 10, 2015
learn & create, adults, read, listen, watch

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Milligan & McCarthy - Bare living in the 80s

RoganGoshMcCarthyArt
Dark Horse Comics' The Best of Milligan & McCarthy is a gorgeous and (almost) exhaustive compendium, collecting the duo's legendary runs like "Paradax!," "Rogan Gosh," and the previously unavailable "Skin."  Both Milligan and McCarthy went on to forge distinctive careers, but the work collected in this collection is explosive, bewildering, and immediate - completely ignoring the careerist ambitions and institutional strictures both artists eventually had to confront and contend with . 

The comics are all over the place (sometimes head-wreckingly so) but they're always readily situated in the catastrophic top-spin of Thatcher-Reagan economic/social tachycardia.  McCarthy's artwork is typically hyper-active and color-saturated, pushing the physical boundaries of panel and page (the exception being the provisionally censored "Skin" - which is wrought in unique pastel colors by the always incredible Carol Swain). Milligan's writing winds a loose balance between non-linear and scabrous - taking very little seriously - but capable of surprising moments of tenderness and expansive vision.

Their work can definitely jolt - and possibly offend (especially "Skin" - which tells the sad angry, and brief tale of a thalidomide-deformed skinhead in the 1980s UK).  But it's heavily recommended for fans of politically-charged comics that explore the horizons and possibilities of graphic narrative and page art (see Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Sandman-era Neil Gaiman).

 

Eric G. | Sun, Aug 09, 2015
adults, comics/graphic novels

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The medium is the message, and these books are creepy

Hello, library blog reader! I’m typing this post to you from the air-conditioned confines of my carpeted library cube, quiet save for the [•hum•] of the computer and the sounds of other librarians at their other computers: [clickity-click], [clickity-click], and the occasional sniffle or private exclamation. 

Photo of Ross holding a copy of Horrorstor
\\ Why am I typing this? \\ Sending this digital blog bottle out into the big Internet ocean? (That is an excellent question.) There is a type of book that I want you to know about. It doesn’t have an official name™, at least none that I know of, but I’ll call it the book as thing, or BAT*.

Most of the world’s books take their book-ness for granted. They line up their letters and words in comfortably normal columns on perfectly(1) numbered(2) pages(3), and you read them and say to yourself “Oh what a fine story.” But the BATs don’t conform to such literature societies' niceties. They chop up their sentences and paragraphs and strew them about, they dye their letters in garish colors, they go up-side down. They’re the punks and iconophiles of the book world, and they shout in your face:

- I AM MY OWN BOOK! -

Photo of Ross holding a copy of Ship of Theseus.
And you, my dear computer-screen confidante, are forced to acknowledge:

I am this book’s reader.

Suddenly the act of reading has become a little more intimate, a little more personal. The walls between fictional world and your world have gotten a little more not-there. Creepy books become creepier. Weird books become weirder. Real books become real-er.

Where can you find a BAT in the wild? It's not easy. They might be hiding under the subject heading "experimental fiction" or "marginalia -- specimens." Helpful, I hope, will be a list that I have made for you called "Multcolib My Librarian Ross: The book, the thing," which will provide you with some specimens for your consideration.

Photo of portion of Ross's foot and The Familiar.
When you’ve finished a BAT, you can close it up and put it back on your bookshelf, or back through the steel door of the library book drop. [•clank•] But unlike other books where the story is more tidily stored between the covers, it won’t be easily forgotten. Because this book isn't just a container for the story, it’s the story itself. It’s got your fingerprints all over it.

                                                                              ·°°≈≈≈≈≈≈

{*: Inspiration for this appellation - book as thing - should probably be credited to the wonderful, the amusing, The Thing The Book.}

≈≈≈≈≈≈°°·

Ross B. | Thu, Aug 06, 2015
read, listen, watch, mcl blogs, literary

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