"Bah humbug!" Almost everyone is familiar with this famous quote from Ebenezer Scrooge of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I grew up on such book classics as this and Twas the Night Before Christmas. I anxiously awaited the TV cartoons like Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. There were no cartoon versions of A Christmas Carol until 1983, when Disney released Mickey’s Christmas Carol.
Are you tired of being a One Day Novelist, as in "One day I’ll write a novel"? If you have always considered writing a book, November is the month for you. November is National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo), the endeavor where each participant cranks out 50,000 words of fiction in just 30 days.
Over the last few blog posts, in the spirit of Halloween, we've been looking at classic horror movies in the form of the famous Universal and Hammer monster films. In the process, we've looked at such scary movie icons as Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Claude Rains, the Lon Chaneys Sr. and Jr., Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing. But as I've been writing these, I realized that I had neglected one of the towering figures of the genre: Vincent Price.
In August, I posted a blog about how Interlibrary Loan items travel between us and other libraries in the country. I talked about the mail service, the greyhound bus, and our courier service. I did, however, forget to mention who is responsible for organizing the courier service for us. That would be MALA (Mid-America Library Alliance).
Ernest Hemingway is an American icon, but within that status, there are many depictions of the man including: Hemingway as the Nobel Prize-winning literary hero whose terse style became synonymous with his name; Hemingway the celebrity, who cavorted with film stars and romanced Marlene Dietrich; Hemingway the journalist, attracted to dramatic stories from war fronts; and Hemingway the archetypal macho man, a sportsman and gun aficionado who survived two plane crashes while hunting on the African safari.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins has been selected by the Metro Area Reader’s Roundtable (MARRT) committee of the Mid America Library Alliance as this year’s United We Read title.
Have you been too busy teaching that you just don't have time to come to the Library and get books for your class? Well, we are here to help. MCPL has a wonderful program for teachers called Teacher Assistance.
Have you been living up to your New Year's Resolution to read more? Does 6 in 12 sound familiar? This year the Library has challenged any adult above the age of 18 to read any 6 books. Are you still reading? I'll admit, I'm still reading, but I haven't been taking the time to keep track of my titles and submit them to 6in12.org. Even though I know each entry gets me closer to a chance at one of the 5 eReaders that will be given away at the end of the year. Sigh. Sometimes life gets away from you.
During WWII and even the Korean War, Hollywood produced films that doubled as pure support-the-war propaganda. Not so for the Vietnam War, filmmakers took an increasingly dim and damning view of this overseas conflict that proved so fractious for so long. But even the most cynical films focused on the Vietnam War offer important stories, and even these present moments of heroism and valor.
