New and old books you may have missed…

Here is a late summer edition (July/July 2012) of Catharine Rambeau’s Short List.  Click on it to enlarge it:

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Short List for June 2012

Hi everyone. 

I did not upload Catharine Rambeau’s Short List for June 2012.  The Library  now has Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs,” Rachel Maddow’s “Drift,” Alan Bennett’s “Untold Stories,” Elizabeth Bloom’s “See Isabelle Run,” “James Sallis’s “Cripple Creek,” and Frank McCourt’s memoir, titled “Teacher Man.”   

Please click on the link to the PDF file.

ShortList_June2012

The Short List from April 2, 2012

Greetings Lantana readers!

We now have a new short list of new and older books.

Click on the image below to see what’s available to you.  You may need to magnify your browser’s view (in Internet Explorer, it’s on the bottom right of your browser screen).

From the Shortlist: The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok (a memoir)

The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok 
Lantana Public Library Call No.: B Bar

 A powerful, courageous book about a mother who became so deeply lost in schizophrenia that nothing could salvage her. She became a constant physical and mental threat to her two daughters after their father disappeared for good when the oldest daughter was four. Hospitals failed, the police were useless, good will was wasted, halfway houses gave up, none of the drugs worked. There’s a reason people don’t discuss schizophrenia: it is terrifying, likely incurable and never kind.

As soon as they were old enough, Mira Bartok and her sister left “home,” changing their names and moving to other states. Bartok wrote children’s books, married, divorced and traveled, rarely losing touch with her mother, who, for the 17 years before either sister saw her again, sent notes to Mira at her untraceable address. Pieces of those letters preface each chapter. And, in a very odd way, there is a happy ending of sorts.

(From The Shortlist by Catharine Rambeau, Sept. 8, 2011)

From the Short List: biographies of two American women writers

Edith Wharton    Lantana Library Call No.: B Wha
by Hermione Lee
Mining previously untapped sources, Hermione Lee gives readers a new look at Edith Wharton in a landmark biography that is as tough, modern, brilliant and complex as Wharton’s own fiction.

(From the Short List by Catharine Rambeau, Dec. 19, 2007)

Eudora Welty: A Biography            Lantana Library Call No.: B Wel
by Suzanne Marrs

An icon of American fiction, Welty loved the written word from early childhood. An astute shrewd observer, she studied people and loved strangers, and her work reflects humor and tragedy with lyric style. Marrs, who knew Welty for the last 20 years of her life, makes brilliant use of that access. An appendix, bibliography and notes are included.
(From the Short List by Catharine Rambeau, April 23, 2007)

From the Short List: Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible      Lantana Library Call No.: F Kin
by Barbara Kingsolver

A richly satisfying novel about Nathan Price, a brutally ignorant American missionary in 1959 Belgian Congo. Written in alternating narratives spanning 30 years by Nathan’s wife and their four daughters, these stories, each in its distinct voice, omit none of the politics, folly and willful ignorance of this stranger in a strange land.

(From the Short List by Catharine Rambeau, Dec. 19, 2007)

Available: The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge

The Brain that Changes Itself 
by Norman Doidge
Lantana Library Call No.: 612 82 Doi
When Dr. Doidge, an M.D. and psychiatrist, first noticed that some patients responded to treatment in ways that indicated that their brains were not hardwired and that brain damage might be undone, he didn’t believe it. Research led him to the relatively new science of neuroplasticity, which appears to allow a damaged brain to reconstruct itself. This is gripping stuff, and you do not have to be a doctor to understand it: It is also a pleasure to read, and the case histories give room for hope.

(From the Short List, March 11, 2009, by Catharine Rambeau)