Holiday Weekend at Home

If you're planning to stay home for the 4th of July weekend, but you'd still like to get out and do something, how about taking a scenic drive to enjoy some of the diverse beauty of Colorado? For books to help you find a day trip to suit your mood, click here. Some of the books include maps and driving details, others focus on interesting tidbits of history. One that does a nice job of both is The Colorado Pass Book. It includes information about 62 of Colorado's passes, rating the driving difficulty, scenic quality, and historic interest.

For other family-friendly activities, one of these titles might interest you, like Best Hikes With Children in Colorado. It identifies a number of locales in all parts of the state that are suitable for children, what will interest children there, and other information parents need to know.

So, enjoy a day out with family or friends, and be back in time to fire up the grill and watch the fireworks.

Summer's Here - Time to Cool Down

Now that the cool weather reprieve we've had seems to be over, it's time to find a way to keep cool. If you're like me, you know that there's an edible solution to nearly every problem, and the library can help you find it!

If fruit is your thing, try a book of smoothie recipes. You can find several here. Smoothies are great anytime, from breakfast to dessert.

If you like something a little stronger, we have several books on mixing cocktails. Cocktails 2007 by the publishers of Food & Wine magazine contains recipes from restaurants and bars around the country, and includes sections on non-alcoholic drinks and bar food, as well.

For more adventurous types, we have several books on making your own good-old-fashioned hard and soft drinks from scratch. Early American Beverages covers some history of beverage making as well as historic recipes. According to one of the sources "Beer is a good family drink" (p. 40). Hmm. Times sure have changed since 1833. For books on modern brewing, you'll find lots of choices here. You can also learn to make your own wine, cider, and pop.

Outstanding SciFi, Fantasy, & Mystery

In late April/early May, the winners of three major genre fiction awards were announced: the Edgar & Agatha awards for mystery, and the Nebula awards for science fiction & fantasy. If you need some new ideas for your summer reading list, the nominees and winners of these awards can get you started.

The Edgar® Awards, presented by the Mystery Writers of America, are named for Edgar Allan Poe, whose Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, and The Purloined Letter are seen by many to be the first modern detective stories. The winners of the three main fiction categories are:

Best Novel: Blue Heaven by C.J. Box
Best First Novel by an American Author: The Foreigner by Francie Lin
Best Paperback Original: China Lake by Meg Gardiner

A complete list of this year's and past winners and nominees, as well as information about the Mystery Writer's of America can be found at: http://www.mysterywriters.org/

The Agatha® Awards are given for traditional mysteries, exemplified by the writing of Agatha Christie, that are often categorized as "cozies." Works considered for this honor, according to the awarding body, Malice Domestic, generally "contain no explicit sex; contain no excessive gore or gratuitous violence; usually feature an amateur detective; take place in a confined setting and contain characters who know one another." The winners of the top awards were:

Best Novel: The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny
Best First Novel: Death of a Cozy Writer by G.M. Malliet

More information about the winners, nominees, and Malice Domestic can be found at http://www.malicedomestic.org/

The Nebula® Awards for science fiction and fantasy writing are brought to us by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. These can be harder to track down, since the categories include many shorter works of fiction, which may only appear in magazines, as well as one for best screenplay. The two awards given for novel-length works this year went to:

Best Novel: Powers by Ursula Le Guin
Andre Norton Award (for best young adult work): Flora’s Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom Despite Being Confined to Her Room by Ysabeau S. Wilce

For a complete list of these nominees and winners, including past years’, go to http://www.nebulaawards.com/

In Defense of Short Stories

I often hear from people that they don’t like short stories. Their reasons are not always clear, but one seems to be that the story ends just as they have gotten caught up in it. Well, I love that about a really good short story: it leaves you longing for more - wanting to learn more about the peoples’ lives, or at least wanting more from that writer. It’s quite a skill to be able to make readers care so much about people and events in only about 20 pages.

While I enjoy short stories for their own sake, I also use them to find new authors when I’m looking for a change. Many fiction writers dabble in short stories on occasion, and a short story collection can be a great way to discover an author who becomes a favorite. Search the catalogue for "short stories" and you will come up with hundreds of possibilities.

The most recent short story collection I read was Black Juice by an Australian named Margo Lanagan, and I can’t stop recommending it every chance I get. In each of her stories, Lanagan manages to create an environment both comfortably familiar and chillingly surreal. She manages this without explaining the context of each story, rather revealing it gradually as events unfurl, giving the impression that you have been dropped off in a foreign country without a guidebook.

You can find Black Juice and other books by Margo Lanagan in the teen section of the library. If you’re not a teen, don’t let this stop you. Trust me, you’ll be sorry if you pass this one up.

It's Gardening Season!

Okay, so maybe it's BEEN gardening season, but for those of us getting a late start, your local library has some great guides.

This year, I'm trying to do the organic thing, i.e. not using harsh chemicals to kill those pesky bugs that inevitably show up to eat my entire crop of radishes. If you're interested in the more natural way of doing things, too, may I suggest "The All-New Illustrated Guide to Gardening" from Reader's Digest books, now completely organic.

This book has it all: flowers, shrubs, vegetables, and more (and also some great advice for killing garden eaters...organically, of course).

Find more information or place a hold on it here.

And for more organic gardening ideas, please see this list.

Enjoy!

Nazi Noir

March Violets by Philip Kerr is a fantastic book--reminiscent of Raymond Chandler but infinitely tougher and more hard-boiled. It's the first book in the Berlin Noir trilogy by Philip Kerr, and is set in 1936 Berlin before the Olympics. It's dark and twisted stuff, full of the everyday horrors of Nazi Germany, and full of cynical wit as well. A Pale Criminal and A German Requiem follow, with the more recently written The One From the Other and A Quiet Flame after that. I had to request the first two from Inter-Library Loan, since no Marmot libraries owned it, but I did make a request for the library to purchase them. I'm hooked now.

Mystery lovers site

I found this site in my travels and it looked neato. If you like mysteries with unusual settings, give this a try. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/crime-fiction-around-the-world-in-80-sleuths-873660.html