Lean on Pete is an unsentimental story about a 15-year-old boy who dreams of a normal home and the chance to play high-school football. Newly arrived in Portland with a mostly absent father, Charley hopes for the best and gets the worst. Suddenly homeless, he hangs out on the backstretch at Portland Meadows racetrack and finds a friend—an aging Thoroughbred named Lean on Pete (with thanks to Booklist).

Not only a writer, Vlautin is also the lead singer and songwriter for the Portland-based alternative country band Richmond Fontaine, which cites Husker Du, Willie Nelson, X, The Blasters, and The Replacements as musical influences. Vlautin’s story-based songs have often drawn comparison to the short stories of Raymond Carver, so it is natural that he is also a published author of three novels, of which Lean on Pete is his most recent.  The novel won two Oregon book awards last year: the Ken Kesey award for fiction and the Readers’ Choice Award. His first novel, The Motel Life, is currently in production to become a major motion picture starring Emile Hirsch, Stephen Dorff, Dakota Fanning and Kris Kristoffersen.

The Library has copies of Vlautin’s novels The Motel Life, Northline, and Lean on Pete, as well as Richmond Fontaine’s new song-novel CD, The High Country.

This event, which is sponsored by the Friends of the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, is free and open to the public.  We’re excited to have Willy Vlautin come to Corvallis and hope to see you on the 16th at 6:30!

Posted by Alex, a second floor librarian

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Friday, February 24, 5 pm – 9 pm.

Saturday, February 25 will be 10 am to 5 pm

Sunday, February 26, from 11 am to 4 pm.

Children’s books, history, mystery, gardening, and  fiction books will be for sale at the following prices: $3.00 for hardbacks, $2.00 for adult paperbacks and trade paper backs, $1.00 for children’s hardback books, and $.50 for children’s paperbacks. Prices drop each day of the book sale, and on Sunday an entire box of books is available for just $5.  Cash, checks and Visa, Mastercard, and Discover will all be accepted.

Thank you to our marvelous Friends of the Library.  Their annual Used Book Sale is their largest fundraising event and is completely volunteer run.  Proceeds from sales help support both adult and kids’ programming at the library including the children’s summer reading program.  Funds also help purchase furniture and equipment as needed throughout the library.  A big thanks to everyone who visits the sale and helps make it a successful event.

Posted by Alex, a second floor librarian

World Book Night gives you the opportunity to give 20 copies of a book to 20 people you do not know at community gathering places of your choosing.  It can be a coffee shop, hospital, shopping center, shelter, but you may NOT give them out at the library!  The aim is to promote reading to people who might not otherwise buy or borrow a book.  We want you to share your love of books and your enthusiasm for reading.  Here is the list of books.

There is no cost involved.  Publishers, printers, and paper companies are picking up the tab.  And the authors are waiving their rights to royalties.  You can find all the information about WBN, as well as the sign-up form, at the website.

The idea for this book giveaway began last year in the United Kingdom as a way to bring books to light readers, not dedicated readers like yourself.  It has spread to the U.S. and Germany this year.   So join other readers in Benton County in signing up today to participate.  And ignore the “Night” part of the title, you may give your books away anytime during April 23, 2012.  But first, you must sign up by February 1.

Want more information?  Click here for a list of FAQs about World Book Night.

Posted by Alex, a second floor librarian

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To learn more about Martin Luther King, Jr. and his legacy, check out the suggestions below. (To view additional library resources on Dr. King, view a larger list here).

Books from the Library Collection:

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. / edited by Clayborne Carson

Martin Luther King, Jr. / Marshall Frady.

He had a dream : Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement / by Flip Schulke

DVDs from the Library Collection:

Citizen King (PBS documentary)

Martin Luther King, Jr. “I Have a Dream” (documentary of the speech and the 1963 Civil Rights march at the Lincoln Memorial)

Martin Luther King, Jr. “Leading America to the Promised Land” (CBS documentary)

On the web:

MLK Jr. Research and Education Institute: Hosted by Stanford University, this is a very comprehensive site that includes links to his speeches, papers, audio/video/multimedia, an encyclopedia and more.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial: Website dedicated to the National Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The King Center: Established in 1968 by Coretta Scott King, The King Center is the official, living memorial dedicated to advancing the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Posted by Lindy, a second floor librarian.

Photo credit: Library of Congress

The Oregon Book award winners will be announced by Literary Arts on April 23, and the Oregonian is sponsoring a Readers’ Choice Award.  Click here to vote for your favorite book by an Oregon Book Award finalist.

In February you’ll have an opportunity to hear a reading and music by a 2011 Oregon Book Award winner.  Willy Vlautin will be here on Thursday, February 16th, at 6:30 PM, to read from Lean on Pete, which won two Oregon Book Awards last year: the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and the  Readers’ Choice Award.  Since Vlautin is also an accomplished musician, he will also play music inspired by Lean on Pete.  Read more about Willy Vlautin here.

Posted by Alex, a second floor librarian

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If you aren’t familiar with opencourseware (OCW), it is a term applied to course materials created by universities and shared freely with the world via the internet. MIT is a leader in this area, having opened up many of their courses in 2002 and expanding ever since to include access to syllabi, exams, assignments and solutions. MIT Opencourseware, now in its 10th year, includes nearly 2,100 MIT courses and has been used by more than 100 million people.

Reading the article above made me think about other free, awesome educational websites that are open to anyone, any time. I’d like to share them with you!

Kahn Academy: The Kahn Academy has a library of over 2,700 videos and 268 practice exercises “covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history.” Their mission is to help people learn what they want, when they want, at their own pace. The Kahn Academy is a great place for short, informative videos on old-school subjects (geometry, anyone?) to current, timely issues (can someone please break down mortgage-backed securities please?) The Kahn Academy videos work for people of all ages, with videos covering developmental math through organic chemistry. Named one of Time’s Top 50 websites of 2011, I highly recommend them.

Academic Earth: Academic Earth was founded with a goal of extending high-quality online learning opportunities to people around the globe. Academic Earth provides videos of college-level lectures from professors from many top universities in the US (e.g., Yale, Harvard, Stanford, NYU), covering over 30  subjects (from art & architecture to writing). AE was one of Time Magazine’s Top 50 websites in 2009.

OpenCulture: Although not an opencourseware site, they do provide links to many open courses. Dubbing themselves as having “the best free cultural and educational media on the web,” they update daily with informative, educational material and serve as a one-stop-shop for such things. Beyond their comprehensive link to free courses, they also offer links to free audio books, textbooks, movies, and language lessons. (Scroll past the advertisements to get to the good stuff).

Opencourseware Search: The OCW search engine searches for open courses over 10 universities. This can help you shop for courses in one place.

To find more open courses at other universities (beyond what the OCW search engine retrieves), try this little search in the Google machine: “opencourseware site:.edu” (without the quotes), and all sorts of goodies from various universities will be retrieved — Tufts, Notre Dame, the University of Utah, the University of California, Irvine, Harvard, John Hopkins School of Public Health, and many more.

The opencourseware movement is changing the way education is accessed, providing an opportunity to get educated for free, any time, any place, from excellent teachers!

Posted by Lindy, a second floor librarian.

Image credit: ralph and jenny

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to show my appreciation more, so let me start by thanking all of you who read this blog, use library resources, ask us questions, and give us suggestions and inspiration.  You are great!  Just for fun, here are a sampling of resolutions for 2012 from library staff across the different departments and branches.   What changes do you want to make?

Go to the gym four times a week

Ride my bike more

Buy less and be happier with what I have

Complain less about the weather

Be more organized

Get rid of clutter

Exercise less and read more

Do yoga at least three times a week

Hike in Corsica

Mediate every week

Complain less about being cold

Let the good times roll!

and here are a few resources to help you keep your resolutions:

This year I will . . . How to finally change a habit, keep a resolution, or make a dream come true / M. J. Ryan

The art of extreme self-care : transform your life one month at a time / Cheryl Richardson

Organized simplicity : a clutter-free approach to intentional living / by Tsh Oxenreider

The 10 commandments of money : survive and thrive in the new economy / Liz Weston

The happiness project / by Gretchen Rubin

Posted by Alex, a second floor librarian

Image credit:  week 1 – Fresh Start by CreativeGem Designs

Our focus will be getting new device owners up to speed with our ebook collection through Library2Go! We would love to have you bring your device with you and attend either hour (11:00 AM or 12:00 Noon).  Our patient librarians will be “standing by” to help you maneuver the ins and outs of downloading and enjoying library ebooks! If you need help before then, try our ebook help pages. See you on the second floor.

Posted by Christopher, a second floor librarian

Image credit: kodomut

This trip is the subject of a documentary that CBCPL has on order (it should show up in the catalog within a week or so), titled The Magic Trip.  Kesey and the Pranksters recorded hours of footage and audio clips from their cross country bus ride and intended to make a movie one day.  The movie sort of happened – Kesey and the Pranksters managed to par down the footage to 30 hours  – but it wasn’t until this year that the movie became a more digestible 107 minutes.  It is a revealing, intimate look at the cross country trip and Kesey’s motivations for initiating it.

Later, and as famed book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test begins, Kesey was imprisoned for a short time for marijuana possession and, after his release, he began encouraging everyone to “graduate” from acid.  Kesey and the Pranksters organized an acid graduation.  Believing that only so much enlightenment could come from drug-induced states, he began to encourage folks to seek new forms of enlightenment.

After reading The Electric Kool-Aid Test just a few months ago and seeing the documentary, I can say with some certainty that I could not have passed the acid test.  But, really this aspect of the story wasn’t what resonated with me – it was Kesey himself, the all-American, upstanding young man that believed experimentation and mystery was an essential part of life.

I’ll leave you with a quote and a list of books and websites so you can read up on Kesey and this wild time in our nation’s history:

“I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”

BOOKS

The Beats: From Kerouac to Kesey: An Illustrated Journey Through the Beat Generation

Citadel of the Spirit: Oregon’s Sesquicentennial Anthology
An anthology of essays about all things Oregon including one by Kesey, “How it All Came Together: A History of the Oregon Media Referendum”. The title of the book comes from a quote of Kesey’s, “Oregon is the citadel of the spirit” (for more information see this page).

The Further Inquiry
Kesey’s book based on the bus, his travels, and Neal Cassady

Last Go Round:  A Real Western
Co-authored with his good friend and fellow Prankster, Ken Babbs, this is a western telling the tale of the 1911 Pendleton (Oregon) Round-up.

Off the Road: My Years With Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg
Neal Cassady, the man who the character of Dean Moriarty from On the Road was based on, went on the trip with Kesey and the Pranksters. This book by his wife is a good bio of Cassady that will come in handy if you decide to read The Further Inquiry.

On the Road
Kerouac’s famous book inspired Kesey and the Pranksters to take their cross country trip.

WEBSITES & ARTICLES

The Art of Fiction: Ken Kesey
A 1994 interview with The Paris Review from which the above quote is taken.

Down On the Peacock Farm
A 1999 interview with Kesey from Salon.com

Ken Kesey, Author of ‘Cuckoo’s Nest,’ Who Defined the Psychedelic Era, Dies at 66
An article on Kesey’s death in 2001. He lived most of his life and died in Pleasant Hill, Oregon.

Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters
A short biography of Kesey, his literary achievements, and the Merry Pranksters.

Kesey…
A tribute to Kesey and a timeline of his death and burial from his friends at Intrepidtrips.com.

The Magic Trip
The documentary’s website including a preview.

Posted by Bonnie, a second floor librarian

I’ve discovered two things: 1. 1984 is a phenomenal book for fans of sci-fi and great literature alike, and, 2. 1Q84 seems only loosely related to 1984, so I could have skipped it and still understood the Murakami novel.  Reviews of 1Q84 have ranged from glowing to scathing, but no matter what I personally end up thinking of it when I finally finish 700 or so more pages (!), I will be forever grateful to it for encouraging me to read a bold, intense classic I’ll never forget.

Reading 1984 is in keeping with last year’s New Year’s resolution to read more classics I’ve missed.  I also read Love in the Time of Cholera (boring!) and tore through Wuthering Heights (loved it!)  Have you read a classic recently that has knocked your socks off?  What are some of the best classics out there, in your opinion?  Reading classics has definitely given me a greater appreciation for and understanding of my favorite genre, contemporary fiction.  Classics are key to fully appreciating great literature.

If you’re a fan of 1984 or 1Q84, below are some other books you might enjoy.  Also, don’t forget about our amazing database, Novelist ( look under “N” in the A-Z list of databases and use your library card to access it from home).  If you want to find books to read based on other books you’ve enjoyed that have been recommended by a trained and well-read librarian, take a look at Novelist.

If you like 1984 try:

The Children of Men by P.D. James

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut

If you like 1Q84, try:

Brida by Paulo Coehlo

The Changeling Kenzaburo Oe

Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

V. by Thomas Pynchon

Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins

Posted by Bonnie, a second floor librarian