What I didn’t expect was how brilliantly the new edition of this classic helps readers navigate the choppy social waters of the modern physical and digital world. Written by Post’s descendants, the new book pays homage to those that came before, but is strengthened by the inclusion of modern social pitfalls such as unfriending someone in the social networking realm, and assisting teens with pressures of cyberbullying and sexting trends. Although I haven’t completed all 698 pages of the work, I put it down feeling I’d learned not only which fork I should pick up first, but also how to be a better young professional and woman.

Interested in learning more about the original Emily Post? The library owns an engrossing biography written by Laura Claridge that takes readers through Emily’s handling of her own scandals and rise to stardom as a manners expert.

If you’re interested in opening up a manners discussion with your kids, check out Jennifer LaRue Huget’s Thanks a LOT, Emily Post! This picture book takes a humorous look at Emily Post’s work but includes lots of  situations that will spark a conversation about proper behavior.

For many of us, scanning 698 pages for the right answer or needed inspiration doesn’t fit into the daily schedule. The Emily Post Institute maintains a fabulous and easy to navigate website that features categorized etiquette help and the easy to use Etipedia that allows browsing for the curious and keyword searching for the determined or desperate.

Finally, check out the blog Emily Post’s Etiquette Daily which is moderated by The Emily Post Institute and fields questions from everyday Americans hoping to handle uncomfortable situations with grace.

Posted by Ashley, Extensions Librarian

All rights reserved by gademocrats

Last May was the fiftieth anniversary of the Freedom Riders.  The Freedom Riders were civil rights activists, most of them college and university students, who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States. American Experience aired a film to tell “the story behind this courageous band who in 1961 creatively challenged segregation.”

You can get up to speed on the Freedom Riders with this Wikipedia article but to get a frightening sense of what these people faced, watch the  PBS film online.

The library owns a copy of the DVD so if watching on your TV works better for you than watching on your computer or device, I urge you to check it out. I am in awe of the courage displayed by these people and I feel inspired by their example.

People overcoming adversity motivates us to overcome our own.  Check out some of the biographies and videos on this website. The Library of Congress celebrates Black History Month with images, slideshows, author interviews, and more.

We have a display of biographies here on the second floor if you want to choose a book for a longer read.  Come visit us and be inspired!

Posted by Amy, a second floor librarian

	fiction:A visit from the Goon squad by Jennifer Eganalso available as a downloadable ebook
	non-fiction:The emperor of all maladies: a biography of cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

	poetry: The best of it: new and selected poems by Kay Ryan
	biography: Washington: a life by Ron Chernow.also available as a downloadable ebook

Posted by Alex, a second floor librarian

Looking back on the top memoirs and biographies is always interesting, as we see the lives and the themes that captured our attention. If you’re interested, compare it to 2009′s top biographies. But let’s get to the books you voted as the most popular by checking them out with your library cards! Here they are…

	1. Spoken From the Heart By Laura Bush From the publisher: “With deft humor and a sharp eye, Laura Bush lifts the curtain on what really happens inside the White House, from presidential finances to the 175-year-old tradition of separate bedrooms for presidents and their wives to the antics of some White House guests and even a few members of Congress. She writes with honesty and eloquence about her family, her public triumphs, and her personal tribulations. Laura Bush’s compassion, her sense of humor, her grace, and her uncommon willingness to bare her heart make this story revelatory, beautifully rendered, and unlike any other first lady’s memoir ever written.”
	2. Hitch-22: A Memoir By Christopher Hitchens “This memoir, bracing, droll, and very revealing, gives him yet another description: storyteller. He writes with a voice you can hear clearly, warmed by smoke and whiskey, and draws readers into his story, which proves as personal as it is political. As with many memoirs, it is not the public moments that are so fascinating, though there are plenty of those. Hitchens takes readers with him to Havana and Prague, Afghanistan and Iraq; tests himself by being waterboarded (he was disappointed in his early capitulation); and hobnobs with politicians and poets. He almost gets himself beaten up by defacing a poster in Iraq with a Hitler mustache. But the most intriguing stories are the personal ones, both from his early days, at home and at boarding school, and from his later life.”
	3. Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage By Elizabeth Gilbert “After her Brazilian boyfriend is denied re-entry at a border crossing, Gilbert must marry him if they want to continue living together in the United States. Despite her insistence in Eat, Pray, Love never to remarry, Gilbert comes to terms with the institution after several months of enforced exile abroad with her boyfriend.”
	4. A Game of Character: A Family’s Journey from Chicago’s Southside to the Ivy League and Beyond By Craig Robinson “Robinson takes readers behind the scenes to meet his most important influences in his understanding of the winning traits that are part of his playbook for success.”
	5. Dead-End Gene Pool: A Memoir By Wendy Burden “Burden’s acknowledgment that she is focusing her memoir on her father’s family (Vanderbilt heirs) because “rich people behaving badly are far more interesting than the not so rich behaving badly” reassures us at the outset that this will not be another standard-issue poor-little-rich-girl memoir. After her father’s suicide when Burden was six, she spends her childhood largely ignored, shuttling between the home of her self-centered, globetrotting mother and her eccentric Park Avenue grandparents. Burden offers fascinating and voyeuristic insights into a little-known segment of society, the mega-rich American plutocracy in decline.”
	6. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future By Michael J. Fox “In his new book, he inspires and motivates graduates to recognize opportunities, maximize their abilities, and roll with the punches-all with his trademark optimism, warmth, and humor. Michael draws on his own life experiences to make a case that real learning happens when “life goes skidding sideways.” He writes of coming to Los Angeles from Canada at age eighteen and attempting to make his way as an actor.”
	7. This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection By Carol Burnett “In her second book, comedy legend Burnett looks back fondly on her long and successful career in short, easily digestible chapters that part the curtain on her private life. Told in a chatty, intimate way, the stories encompass the star’s childhood; early days as an actress doing bit parts in New York City, appearing on game shows and various variety shows; her 11 years hosting The Carol Burnett Show; and life after the show ended its run. Readers will enjoy the comical reminiscences included, such as how she once used her famous Tarzan yell to disarm a mugger, funny interactions with fans who recognize her on the street, and the origin of famous scenes from the show, such as Scarlett O’Hara in a curtain-rod dress.”
	8. The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee By Sarah Silverman “Comedian Sarah Silverman is an acquired taste. If you like orgasms, farts, and excrement, she is delicious. In her memoir, Silverman takes readers on a tour of the underground tunnel that is her mind, and believe me, it is as full of muck as the sewers of Paris. Only funnier. She comes by all this filth naturally. By the time she was three, her father had taught her every swearword known to man, and she quickly learned that spouting them on any occasion was adorable.”
	9. Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated By Alison Arngrim “For seven years, Alison Arngrim played a wretched, scheming, selfish, lying, manipulative brat on one of TV history’s most beloved series. Though millions of Little House on the Prairie viewers hated Nellie Oleson and her evil antics, Arngrim grew to love her character and the freedom and confidence Nellie inspired in her. In Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, Arngrim describes growing up in Hollywood with her eccentric parents.”
	10. Unfinished Business: One Man’s Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things By Lee Kravitz “After losing his job, Lee Kravitz, a workaholic in his mid-fifties, took stock of his life and realized just how disconnected he had become from the people who mattered most to him. He committed an entire year to reconnecting with them and making amends. Kravitz takes readers on ten transformational journeys, among them repaying a thirty-year-old debt, making a long-overdue condolence call, finding an abandoned relative, and fulfilling a forgotten promise.”

Image credit: Biography Sign by herzogbr on Flickr

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian

All of the titles were published in 2009 or earlier, except Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest, Committed. Gilbert is enough of a draw to make our top 20 list only 6 months after publication. Interestingly, Eat, Pray, Love was still checked out more than her new book this past year.

Mary Karr’s 2009 title Lit also boosted the numbers of her previous memoir, The Liar’s Club, published in 1995. As a result, Karr is in the top 20 list for both books.

The movie Julie and Julia brought Julia Child’s 2006 book memoir up into the top 20 list as well. And the statistics also show that Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors, published in 2002, remains firmly in place as one of the top memoirs of all time here at the library.

So here are the top twenty biographies and memoirs, in descending order:

	Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman Jon Krakauer 2009
	Strength in What Remains Tracy Kidder 2009
	True Compass: A Memoir Edward M. Kennedy 2009
	Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia Elizabeth Gilbert 2006
	Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage Elizabeth Gilbert 2010
	Going Rogue: An American Life Sarah Palin 2009
	My Life in France Julia Child 2006
	Lit: A Memoir Mary Karr 2009
	Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home By Rhoda Janzen 2009
	Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival Norman Ollestadt 2009
	Running With Scissors Augusten Burroughs 2002
	Traveling With Pomegranates: A Mother Daughter Story Sue Monk Kidd 2009
	Lost Boy Brent W. Jeffs 2009
	The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America Douglas Brinkley 2009
	Paul Newman: A Life Shawn Levy 2009
	The Liar’s Club: A Memoir Mary Karr 1995
	Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir Christopher Buckley 2009
	Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist Michael J. Fox 2009
	American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot Craig Ferguson 2009
	Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story Isabel Gillies 2009

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian

PS. This is a good time to remind everyone that our new library hours and other changes will be taking effect this Thursday, July 1st.

Fenway Park 2, by Werkunz1 on Flickr

Spring is here (more or less), and for many people, that means baseball. What does baseball have to do with libraries you ask? Well, besides our baseball book, DVD, and video game collections, we have a baseball author talk coming up in May.

Mark Armour is a Corvallis-based author who published his second baseball book this spring. It’s called Joe Cronin: A Life in Baseball, and it’s received some great reviews.

Not being a big sports fan myself, I found this review from Library Journal to be most intriguing:

This is a rich account of one of the 20th century’s great player-managers, his rise from modest beginnings all the way to Cooperstown, and presidency of the American League. Armour … deserves the greatest praise in light of not only Cronin’s importance but also of the critical elements that form the book’s second half: the role of race in sport and America, the rise of unionism, and the class interests of those claiming to have the welfare of fans in mind as they decided upon franchise location, playoff timing, etc. Though Armour is fair in his criticisms of Cronin, he also rightly points out the great contributions of a man whose love for the game brought him to the attention of popes and presidents.

Mark Armour will be speaking at the library on Tuesday, May 11th at 7:00 PM. There will be copies of the book for sale (10% of proceeds to the Friends of the Library), and Mark will be available to sign books.

Mark will be appearing at other locations in the Northwest this spring and summer. Let’s give him a great hometown crowd!

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian

American novelist and short story writer J D Salinger, author of The Catcher In The Rye, died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010.   He was 91.

Click here for more biographical information including encyclopedia and news  articles from Biography Resource Center

The Catcher in the Rye has always been popular at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library.  We have 11 copies and almost all are checked out.   As I type this blog post one copy is available in Corvallis and another one at our Monroe branch.  The good news is that there are no holds on this title so the wait time should be fairly short.

Posted by Sharon, a Second Floor Librarian

Fireworks #1, by Camera Slayer on Flickr

As we head toward the end of the year, all the “Best of 2009″ lists start coming out. You’ll find all sorts of best books of the year lists online, but here’s something uniquely Corvallis – a list of the memoirs and biographies you thought were best this year. I generated this list by running a report of the titles that got checked out the most times in 2009. Of course, this means that a book released last month may be popular, but hasn’t had time to achieve greatness in terms of circulation statistics.

Anyway, here are the top 15 memoirs and biographies, as chosen by you, Corvallis library patrons…1. Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story by Isabel Gillies

“Gillies pens a fast-paced, intriguing memoir in which she is forced to come to terms with the swift destruction of her picture-perfect life after her husband leaves her for another woman–something her rival reminds her, happens every day.”

2. Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist by Michael J. Fox

“The beloved actor–and #1 bestselling author–writes about the personal philosophy that has carried him through his darkest hours, and speaks with others who have emerged from difficult periods with optimism to spare.”

3. Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir by Christopher Buckley

“Bestselling author Buckley’s most personal and transcendent work–the tragicomic true story of the year in which he lost both of his parents.”

4. Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer

This was just released in September, which is why it’s not at #1. Otherwise, in terms of demand so far, this would easily be in the top spot. “Krakauer chronicles the riveting, tragic story of former NFL player Pat Tillman, who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004, in engrossing detail highlighting his remarkable character and personality while closely examining the murky, heartbreaking circumstances of his death.”

5. Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder

“The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the modern classics “Mountains Beyond Mountains” and “The Soul of a New Machine” returns with the extraordinary true story of a young man and his will to turn his life into something truly remarkable.”

6. True Compass: A Memoir by Edward M. Kennedy

“In this landmark autobiography, five years in the making, Senator Edward M. Kennedy tells his extraordinary personal story–of his legendary family, politics, and 50 years at the center of national events.”

7. A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy by Thomas Buergenthal

“Buergenthal arrived at Auschwitz at age 10 after surviving two ghettos and a labor camp. Now dedicated to helping those subjected to tyranny throughout the world, Buergenthal writes his story with a simple clarity that highlights the stark details of unimaginable hardship.”

8. Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime by Bill Gates, Sr.

“In a heartfelt, deeply personal book, Gates shares the values and principles he has instilled in his children, and continues to practice on the world stage today as the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.”

9. The Sisters Antipodes by Jane Alison

“Once there were two families, one Australian, one American: each family had a mother, a father who worked for his country’s foreign service, and two little girls. The older two girls were the same age, while the younger two–one of them Jane Alison, whose memoir this is–shared the same birthday, although Jenny was a year older. In this book, Jane describes the events that followed when the adults got divorced in order to exchange spouses.”

10. My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs and Stand-Up by Russell Brand

“In 2006, Brand exploded onto the international comedy scene, but his life was anything but glamorous. He was bulimic at age 12 and began drinking heavily and taking drugs by age 16–even setting himself on fire while on crack cocaine. This is his amazing memoir of recovery.”

11. Not Becoming My Mother: And Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way by Ruth Reichl

“Bestselling author Reichl embarks on a clear-eyed, openhearted investigation of her mother’s life, piecing together the journey of a woman she comes to realize she never really knew.”

12. Paul Newman: A Life by Shawn Levy

“Film critic and pop-culture historian Levy gives readers the ultimate behind-the-scenes examination of actor Paul Newman’s life, offering a fascinating portrait of an extraordinarily gifted man, who gave back as much as he got out of life.”

13. Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival by Norman Ollestad

“A heart-stopping adventure that ends in tragedy and in triumphs, ["Crazy for the Storm" is] a love story that fearlessly explores the bond between a father and son and what it means to lead a life without limits.”

14. A Little Bit Wicked: (Life, Love and Faith in Stages) by Kristin Chenoweth

“In this exuberant, candid memoir, entertainer Chenoweth provides an intimate look at her life as an actress, a Christian, and a small-town girl in the big city, reflecting on how faith and family have kept her grounded in the dysfunctional rodeo of show biz.”

15. The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them by Amy Dickinson

“Dickinson has made a career out of helping others, through her internationally syndicated advice column “Ask Amy.” Readers love her for her honesty and for the fact that her motto is ‘I make the mistakes so you don’t have to.’ Here, she shares those mistakes and her remarkable story. ”

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian

If you’d rather browse a bit online, here’s a selection of some of the biographies recently added to our collection. Enjoy!

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian

He will be reading from and talking about his latest book, Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme.

Hiding Man was well-reviewed in the New York Times Book Review; we did a blog post about the review as well.

Ehud Havazelet, the Oregon Book Award-winning author of the novel Bearing the Body, will be introducing Daugherty at the reading.

The OSU Bookstore will be there selling books, and the Friends of the Library are co-sponsoring the event.

If you have any questions about this event, please ask us.

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian