Princeton Library Lounge

We came across this blog post about a display created at an indie bookstore in San Francisco and love the idea. Martha Pettit, a staff member at The Booksmith created a list featuring music and literary pairings.
Check out the list:

MY AWESOME LITERARY MIX CD
by Martha Pettit, The Booksmith, San Francisco

1.”Killing an Arab” –The Cure (The Stranger by Albert Camus)
2. “Tear in Your Hand”-Tori Amos (Sandman series by Neil Gaiman)
3.”Wuthering Heights”-Kate Bush (Wuthering Heights by Emile Bronte)
4.“Ghost of Tom Joad”-Bruce Springsteen (Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck)
5.”Paranoid Android”-Radiohead (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams)
6.”Mr.Tambourine Man”-Bob Dylan (Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson)*
7.”Satellite of Love”-Lou Reed (Ghostwritten by David Mitchell)*
8.”The River”-P.J. Harvey (The River by Flannery O’Connor)
9.”Myla Goldberg”-The Decemberists (Bee Season by Myla Goldberg)
10.”Ground Beneath Her Feet”-U2 (Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie)
11.”Norwegian Wood”-The Beatles (Norwegian Wood by Hakuri Murakami)*
12.”Disorder”-Joy Division (Crash by J.G. Ballard)
13.”Girlfriend in a Coma”-The Smiths (Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland)*
14.”La Pastie de la Bourgeoisie”-Belle & Sebastian (Catcher in the Rye by J.G. Salinger)
15.”Holland 1945”-Neutral Milk Hotel (Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank)
16.”Alice”-Tom Waits (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll)
17.”Little Green”-Joni Mitchell (Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore)*
18.”My Vien Ilin”-Ted Leo & the Pharmacists (The Odyssey by Homer)

Distracted : the erosion of attention and the coming Dark Age
Jackson, Maggie, 1960-

This slim little book contains a wealth of information about the thought processes of the human race. The subtitle sounds ominous and indeed it could be if the wealth of "brain" studies which are currently taking place go unheeded. In the first of the three sections - exploring the "landscape of distraction" the author looks at life as we live it now –wired to our supersonic cell phones, beepers, MP3 players, television, emails, chat rooms, blogs and all things computers. There is no moment for deep reflection. What does this do to our brain cells? What does it do to our abilities to act for ourselves, make informed decisions and act responsibly? In part two she zooms in on the big three of healthy brain function, focus, judgment and awareness. Each of these is deeply affected by distraction from our mechanized world. In words meaningful to every librarian she reasserts the basic value of reading as a tool to develop reflective powers. Part three gives us a glimpse of current studies zeroing in on the importance of attention which may be the key to helping homosapiens deal with the unstoppable deluge of modern distractions. These are exciting developments and offer us hope that our children and grandchildren won't be turned into robots. Next time I travel I will think twice before popping my laptop, my MP3 player, my cell phone, palm pilot and all the chargers into my suitcase. Taking time to smell the roses, is good brain health.

Submitted by Mary Louise Hartman.

Librarians like lists. We like finding them, creating them, and using them to make lives easier - yours and ours. Some of us actually enjoy making lists of books we think you might like, but we do have a sense of humor. Check out this article we came across in the London Times. Richard Wilson, an average bloke, has developed a list of ten books you should not waste your time on. You may be surprised at some of his selections.

Join us in the library’s community room on Thursday September 18 at 7:30 as Alix Strauss kicks off the new season of the popular Writers Talking series. Alix , a media savvy social satirist, has been a featured lifestyle trend writer on national morning shows and talk shows including ABC, CBS, CNN and most recently, VH1. Her articles cover a range of topics, from beauty and food trends to celebrity interviews, appearing in an array of publications and newspapers such as: The New York Times, The New York Post, and Daily News, as well as national magazines: Time Magazine, Town & Country Travel, Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly, Wine Enthusiast, and Esquire among others.

Alix is author of The Joy of Funerals: A Novel in Stories (2004), which won the Ingram Award and has been optioned by Stockard Channing. Her most recent book, Have I Got a Guy for You (2008), is an anthology of blind date stories. In this take-no-prisoners collection of hilarious, wince-inducing true stories, you'll meet two dozen victims of Mom's well-meaning meddling and hear the unvarnished details of what they suffered through. Alix Strauss is currently hard at work finishing up her next novel. You can find out more about Alix at her website: http://www.alixstrauss.com/

Submitted by Janie Hermann.

He is writing a new novel, Corduroy Mansions, that is being serialized in the Daily Telegraph (an English newspaper), every weekday for the next 20 weeks and only available online (September 15-February 13). You can read it online, listen to it, have chapters sent to you as an email, or download it to iTunes.

Click here to read it or find out more about it.

*Illustration by Iain McIntosh from the Daily Telegraph website.

Submitted by Gayle Stratton.

Impartial information about the presidential candidates and the issues confronting the voting public are at a premium during the election season. The following websites help separate the wheat from the chaff in our quest to make informed decisions about the candidates.

The League of Women Voters Education Fund
www.VOTE411.org
A "one-stop-shop" for election related information, providing nonpartisan information to the public with both general and state-specific information.

Annenberg Public Policy Center
http://www.factcheck.org/
A nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics by the monitoring of factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. The Annenberg Political Fact Check is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

St. Petersburg Times/CQ
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/
PolitiFact is a project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly to help the public find the truth in the presidential campaign. Every day, reporters and researchers from the Times and CQ analyze the candidates' speeches, TV ads and interviews and determine whether the claims are accurate.

Project Vote Smart
http://www.votesmart.org/
Picture this: thousands of citizens (conservative and liberal alike) working together, spending endless hours researching the backgrounds and records of thousands of political candidates and elected officials to discover their voting records, campaign contributions, public statements, biographical data (including their work history) and evaluations of them generated by over 100 competing special interest groups. Every election these volunteers test each candidate's willingness to provide citizens with their positions on the issues they will most likely face if elected through the Political Courage Test.

The Tax Foundation
http://www.taxfoundation.org/
The mission of the Tax Foundation is to educate taxpayers about sound tax policy and the size of the tax burden borne by Americans at all levels of government. From its founding in 1937, the Tax Foundation has earned a reputation for independence and credibility.

The Tax Policy Center
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/
The Tax Policy Center is a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. Made up of nationally recognized experts in tax, budget, and social policy who have served at the highest levels of government, TPC provides timely, accessible analysis and facts about tax policy to policymakers, journalists, citizens, and researchers.

Center for Responsive Politics
http://www.opensecrets.org/
The Center for Responsive Politics is the nation's premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy. Nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit, the organization aims to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more responsive government.

Submitted by Barbara Silberstein.

For those who like period dramas, there is the recently released movie, The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley, to see in the theaters. For those readers who like to read biographies of interesting and influential women, this movie is based on the book, Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman. Her sister, Harriet, is featured in the more recent biography, Privilege and Scandal: The Remarkable Life of Harriet Spencer, Sister of Georgiana by Janet Gleeson. Much of the publicity for the movie seems to focus on parallels between the Duchess and her more recent relative, Princess Diana (most recent book, The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown), since both are members of the Spencer family.

Winston Churchill was also a Spencer, his parents being Jennie (Jerome) Churchill and Lord Randolph Spencer Churchill, second son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough. Jennie led quite an eventful and colorful life as told in American Jennie:The Remarkable Life of Lady Randolph Churchill by Anne Sebba and The Titled Americans:Three American Sisters and the British Aristocratic World Into Which They Married by Elisabeth Kehoe.

Another prominent, wealthy, famous or infamous, British family, is the Mitfords (who also have Winston Churchill in their family tree), six sisters and one brother. The Sisters:The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell tells the story of Nancy, Pam, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah. Brother Tom is a lesser player in the family. The sisters were prolific writers of correspondence, particularly to each other, some of which is collected in The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters edited by Charlotte Mosley. Nancy became a writer (A Talent to Annoy: Essays; Articles and Reviews, 1929-1968, edited by Charlotte Mosley). Diana married British Fascist leader Oswald Mosley (Diana Mosley, Mitford Beauty, British Fascist, Hitler’s Angel by Anne DeCourcy). Unity was enamored with the Nazis and a friend of Adolph Hitler and came to a tragic end. Jessica also became a writer (The American Way of Death Revisited). Pamela seems to have led the quietest life of all. However, it is Deborah, the youngest, who brings this blogpost full circle. You see, Deborah, (whose biography is Counting My Chickens…and Other Home Thoughts) through her marriage to Lord Andrew Cavendish, was, until recently, the Duchess of Devonshire. And just an extra little tidbit of trivia – Chatsworth House, home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, was the house used for Mr. Darcy’s home, Pemberley, in Pride and Prejudice, also starring Keira Knightley.

Submitted by Gayle Stratton.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

The Booker Prize is Britain's best known literary award. Winners will be announced October 14th. Interested in reading one of the shortlisted titles with your book group? Click here to access readers guides for each of the titles.

A big thanks to all of you who participated in this year's adult summer reading club. A big congratulations to our four winners of a $25 gas gift card from Larry's Sunoco:

Joyce Howe
Lee Moody
Bonnie Shawa
Janet Young

Our count indicates that you've read 255 books! That trumps last year's count of 185. Thanks, again to all of you. Keep an eye on our Books and Reading page as we'll soon post a list of the titles you have read.

We hope you join us, again, next summer!

No Graves as Yet is the first of Anne Perry’s new mystery series set in England before and during World War ! which includes five entries in all (Shoulder the Sky, Angels in the Gloom, At Some Disputed Barricade, We Shall Not Sleep in that order). Her previous two very popular series took place in Victorian London.

The story centers around the Reavley family in and around Cambridge on the eve of World War I. The description of the beauty of Cambridge and the lives of the young men who study there, many of whom will not survive the war, is bittersweet in the extreme and is an absorbing backdrop to the plot of the mystery. John and Alys Reavley are killed in a car accident on the same day that a Serbian dissident assassinates Archduke Ferdinand of Austria. He is carrying an alarming document to his son Matthew who is in the secret service. It is soon discovered that their deaths are not an accident and intrigue begins to mount.

In stark contrast to this is A Test of Wills by Charles Todd. This is the first of the Inspector Ian Rutledge series of mysteries that take place in England just after the war. The massive destruction and death wrought by the war, which few ever believed could be possible, is now a reality. Virtually everyone has been affected or damaged by it in some way, including Inspector Rutledge, a veteran who regularly has to fight his own demon to maintain his sanity.

A famous and popular colonel is murdered in a small country village, and the main suspect is an equally famous and popular war hero, decorated by the King himself. The main witness is a shell shocked veteran who has descended into alcoholism and madness, an object of shame and disgust.

The portrayal of a community recovering from a terrible war, now having to face a crime to which there seems to be no easy or comfortable solution is excellent. Inspector Rutledge is an extremely sympathetic well drawn character, and the mystery story itself is fascinating. As a police procedural series goes, this is one of the best. (NOTE: Charles Todd is a pseudonym for a mother and son writing team who live in the United States. I find this amazing. I never would have guessed—they seem quite genuinely English to me).

Submitted by Jane Brown.