123 Capitol Street, Charleston, West Virginia 25301, (304) 343-4646
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Gale Virtual Reference Added to Your Research Toolkit
Now, with a Kanawha County Public Library card and an internet connection, you have 24/7 access to the new Gale Virtual Reference library featuring premier reference works.
Book Brawl:
What’s Kanawha County’s favorite book?
“War and Peace?” “To Kill a Mockingbird?” “The Good Earth?” “Pride and Prejudice?” What’s your favorite book of all time?
Kanawha County Public Library is holding a Book Brawl to determine Kanawha County’s literary leviathan! The event closes KCPL’s year-long celebration of 100 years of service to the Kanawha Valley. The head-to-head battle of the books begins on November 23 and continues throughout the final six weeks of 2009.
Each week, voting will begin at noon on Monday and conclude at midnight on Sunday. The weekly winners will be posted on Monday afternoon. The ultimate champion will be announced January 4, 2010.
Unplug the Christmas Machine
Have a more joyful, less stressful holiday season this year. Kelly Gilbert, Family Life Educator at CAMC's Family Resource Center, shows you how in this one-hour workshop designed to help you define what you value and enjoy about the holiday season. This workshop is based upon the book, Unplug the Christmas Machine by Jo Robinson and Jean Coppock Staeheli. Participants will leave with materials to help them plan their own more joyful, less stressful - and maybe even more economical - holiday.
Adults • Registration required.
- Cross Lanes Branch Library: Thursday, December 3, 6:30 p.m.
- Dunbar Branch Library: Monday, November 23, 6 p.m.
Take the WrestleMania Reading Challenge
Now through January 18, students in grades 5 through 12 are invited to take the WrestleMania Reading Challenge at all locations of the Kanawha County Public Library system.
Create a design for the optional bookmark contest in three age categories. Entries from our local winners will be sent to the regional level, where finalists in grades 7 through 12 will go on to compete in the national finals in Houston, the host city of WrestleMania XXV.
This event is sponsored by the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). Reading logs and bookmark contest entry forms are available from the Teen Zone. Call Amy Arey at 304-343-4646 for more information.
5 Things We Love This Week
The Fate of Katherine Carr By Thomas H. Cook
George Gates used to be a travel writer who specialized in places where people disappeared-Judge Crater, the Lost Colony. Then his eight-year-old son was murdered, the killer never found. Now he writes stories of redemptive triviality about flower festivals and local celebrities for the town paper, and spends his evenings haunted by the image of his son's last day. Enter Arlo MacBride, a retired missing-persons detective still obsessed with the unsolved case of Katherine Carr. When he gives Gates the story she left behind, he too is drawn inexorably into a search for the missing author's brief life and uncertain fate. And as he goes deeper, he begins to suspect that her tale holds the key not only to her fate, but to his own. (Product description)
In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue By Lauren Weber
In these tough economic times, everyone is learning to be frugal. But are these lessons really new? In this lively treatise on the virtues of being cheap, Weber explores provocative questions about Americans' conflicted relationship with consumption and frugality. Why do we ridicule people who save money? Where's the boundary between thrift and miserliness? Is thrift a virtue or a vice during a recession? In answering these questions, In Cheap We Trust offers a colorful ride through the history of frugality in the United States. (Product description)
Homeland By Barbara Hambly
As brother turns against brother in the bloodbath of the Civil War, two young women sacrifice everything but their friendship. Susanna Ashford is the Southerner, living on a plantation surrounded by scarred and blood-soaked battlefields. Cora Poole is the Northerner, on an isolated Maine island, her beloved husband fighting for the Confederacy. Through the letters the two women exchange, they speak of the ordeal of a familiar world torn apart by tragedy. And yet their unique friendship will help mend the fabric of a ravaged nation. (Product Description)
In Every Tiny Grain of Sand: a Child's Book of Prayers and Praise By Reeve Lindbergh
As Thanksgiving approaches, the hearts of people of all faiths fill with thoughts of gratitude for blessings received. Lindbergh's book of prayers is divided into four sections: For the Day, For the Home, For the Earth, and For the Night. It includes seventy-seven prayers and poems from many cultures and many faiths. Readers may also be interested in Thanks Be to God: Prayers from Around the World by Pauline Baynes and The Circle of Thanks: Native American Poems and Songs of Thanksgiving by Joseph Bruchac.
The Case for God By Karen Armstrong
Moving from the Paleolithic age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the great lengths to which humankind has gone in order to experience a sacred reality that it called by many names, such as God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. Focusing especially on Christianity but including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Chinese spiritualities, Armstrong examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time, when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. Why has God become unbelievable? Why is it that atheists and theists alike now think and speak about God in a way that veers so profoundly from the thinking of our ancestors? (Product description)
Year-long Read 100 Challenge Continues…
Patrons of all ages are challenged to read 100 books during the year, and it’s not too late to earn your commemorative gold library card. Use these tips to help you towards your goal.
- Get your family reading–you can encourage each other
- Listen to audiobooks in the car, bring a Playaway to the gym
- Join a book group
- Keep a book with you in case you get caught waiting in line
- Read on your lunch break (this will also make you look smart)
- Try poetry or short stories
Above all, don't give up! Keep your eyes on the prize–a gold library card.