Libraries organize, preserve and perpetuate the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the world. Starting with cuneiform-inscribed clay tablet “books” and business records in 2800 BC to contemporary electronic books and online data, libraries have served citizens in the critical role
Libraries organize, preserve and perpetuate the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the world.
Starting with cuneiform-inscribed clay tablet “books” and business records in 2800 BC to contemporary electronic books and online data, libraries have served citizens in the critical role of keeping information and literature accessible to them.
As we celebrate National Library Week this week on Kaua‘i we are reminded that libraries in Hawai‘i have taken a 10 percent state budget cut in response to the economic downturn. Any further cuts will mean closing libraries. It is hard to imagine losing even one of Kaua‘i’s libraries.
All our libraries are busier than ever these days. Families cutting costs for buying homework, how-to and entertainment books, people saving money on DVD movie rentals, job-seekers using computers and career and testing materials, and businesses looking for ways to get lean or profit in a new niche are all turning to their neighborhood libraries for the support they need to help themselves.
This week as we remember all that we celebrate for National Library Week, it is the time to tell state legislators that libraries are needed too much to do without. Book Buzz this week is an eclectic collection of titles about libraries, books, and words.
Happy reading.
Book Lust & More Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason
By Nancy Pearl
R 011.73 Pe
In these two volumes, the delightful librarian, Nancy Pearl, famous for her nationally syndicated radio book review program, offers recommended reads organized into tons of creative, useful, and often witty lists, forever forestalling the question, “What should I read next?”
The Book that Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them
Edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannessen
028.8 Bo
Through reading we can live lives that are completely different from our own, experience foreign worlds, learn to understand others and develop compassion for their situations. The lively essays of this collection are testaments to the transformative power of reading.
Classics for Pleasure
Edited by Michael Dirda
809 Di
To some readers this may seem an oxymoron. Aren’t classics supposed to be difficult, esoteric, and boring? One can sympathize with this common view, even if it is largely wrong. Classics are classics not because they are educational, but because people have found them worth reading generation after generation. Dirda introduces nearly ninety of the world’s most entertaining books. Use it to find out what to read next.
Honolulu Stories: Voices of the Town Through the Years: Two Centuries of
Writing
Edited by Gavan Daws and Bennett Hymer
H 810.8
You think you know Honolulu? Try out this fat multicenturied, multicultured, and multilingual literary guide to Hawai‘i’s city with its dazzling array of written voices singing the song of lives in Honolulu and you may be surprised. The teeming anthology with its luminous, context-setting companion essay is a gift to the people of Hawai‘i-and a gift from Hawai‘ito the wider world.
How to Read and Why: Through the Eyes of the Ancestors
By Harold Bloom
028 Bl
Information is endlessly available, but where is wisdom found? Now when faster and easier electronic media threaten to eclipse the practice of reading, Bloom draws on his experience to plumb the great books for their sustaining wisdom. This is an impassioned book on the pleasures and benefits of reading well.
How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read
By Pierre Bayard
809 Ba
If cultured people are expected to have read all the significant works of literature, and thousands more are published each year, what are we supposed to do in those inevitable social situations where we’re forced to talk about books we haven’t read? In this delightfully witty, provocative book the author argues that not having read a book need not be an impediment to having an interesting conversation about it. His comments on non-reading may not be what you think. In the end this book is a love letter to books, offering a whole new perspective on how we read and absorb them.
Oxymoronica: Paradoxical Wit and Wisdom from History’s Greatest Wordsmiths
By Cr. Mardy Grothe
082 Gr
Definition? Any variety of tantalizing, self-contradictory statements or observations that on the surface appear false or illogical, but at a deeper level are true, often profoundly true. Examples? Victor Hugo: “Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad.” Dolly Parton: “You’d be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap.” 1,400 of the most provocative quotations of all time in a deliciously browseable form.
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
By Simon Winchester
423 Wi
Before Wikipedia there was the Oxford English Dictionary. Begun in 1857, it took 70 years to complete, drawing from tens of thousands of brilliant minds. But hidden in the rituals of its creation is a mysterious story of two remarkable men whose relationship lies at the core of the historic undertaking: Professor James Murray, editor of the OED project and the precise and prolific Dr. William Chester Minor who Murray eventually discovers to be a murderer, clinically insane and locked up in England’s harshest asylum for criminal lunatics. What a tale this is!
The Web Library: Building a World Class Personal Library with Free Web Resources
By Nicholas G. Tomaiuolo
025.04 To
Kapaa Librarian and Councilwoman, Lani Kawahara attaches this phrase by Roger Ebert to her email, “Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.” Many have discovered this on their own. How do you sort through the nest? Other than having your own personal librarian, rely on this print resource to point the way. If you pick up even one new tool, Web searching will be enhanced and expanded. The book illuminates a vast rich collection of data, documents, and images from free or nearly free authoritative Web resources. Start building your personal Web library today.
Words Fail Me: What Everyone Who Writes Should Know About Writing
By Patricia T. O’Conner
808.02
In the laptop age, never have so many written so much-and so badly. If our words fail us we don’t do justice to our ideas. This painless and practical guide to writing not only works but makes you laugh. O’Conner helps you sort your thoughts and turn them into sentences that make sense. A tip. Watch out for colliding words, for example: Yves likes his coffee mildly strong or little Ricky will grow taller shortly.
• Carolyn Larson is head librarian at Lihu‘e Public Library. Her weekly column brings you the buzz on new, popular and good books available at your neighborhood library. Book annotations are culled from online publishers’ descriptions and published reviews.
