We have quite a few of his works, in English and in Spanish. Click the links below to see what’s available.

Vargas Llosa in English and in Spanish

Happy reading!

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian

One of my consolations this summer has been the fact that I’ve had some great fortune in the reading department. For a couple of years I kind of got out of the habit of reading regularly. Over the past few months, however, I’ve been able to get back into it, with the help from some great books.

So I’m enjoying the cool summer evening breezes, in town, with a book in hand. I might not be going anywhere, but my brain is traveling far and wide. This is especially true with the book I’m reading now. It’s was a bestseller when it was published in Europe, and lucky for us, it was translated into English. It’s called Measuring the World, and it’s by a young Austrian writer named Daniel Kehlmann.

Here’s a blurb from Publisher’s Weekly:

“Loosely based on the lives of 19th-century explorer Alexander von Humboldt and a contemporary, mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, Kehlmann’s novel, a German bestseller widely heralded as an exemplar of “new” German fiction, injects musty history with shots of whimsy and irony. Humboldt voyages to South America to map the Orinoco River, climb the Chimborazo peak in Ecuador and measure “every river, every mountain and every lake in his path.” Gauss is the hedgehog to Humboldt’s fox, leaping out of bed on his wedding night to jot down a formula and rarely leaving his hometown of Göttingen. The two meet at a scientific congress in 1828, when Germany is in turmoil after the fall of Napoleon.”

It’s a fascinating and engrossing read, so check it out! There’s no one on hold for it after me, and I’m almost done.

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian

We will always have Paris, by waldopepper on Flickr

I grew up in a climate slightly rainier than Corvallis, so I  learned to appreciate sunny days! Because of this, I always feel guilty staying inside when the weather is nice – it just feels wrong.  So normally I would feel bad enjoying a great book on the couch in June, but since the weather is so crappy, I’m focusing on the bright side – guiltless reading!

And the weather isn’t getting me down too much, because I’ve discovered a new author (well, new to me anyway).

I’m reading The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald. It was on my list of books to try for a long time and I’m pleased I got around to it. Fitzgerald won the Booker for her novel Offshore, and The Blue Flower was chosen nineteen times as “Book of the Year” in British newspapers in 1995, according to the back cover of the edition I’m reading now.

It shows -The Blue Flower is a great read. I’m never good at summing up books in an elegant way, so here’s a quote from the Library Journal review (3/1/97):

[Fitzgerald] reconstructs the life of 18th-century German romantic poet Novalis, focusing on his boisterous family, his struggle to articulate his longings, and, most tellingly, his passion for 12-year-old Sophie, a simple child he intends to marry despite the furious reservations of family and friends. Fitzgerald doesn’t make it entirely clear what draws Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis’ real name) to little Sophie–but that is precisely the point. Throughout, he is carried aloft by an inchoate desire for something beyond that is summed up in his little story of the blue flower: “I have no craving to be rich, but I long to see the blue flower….I can imagine and think about nothing else.” As a counterpoint to her protagonist’s beautifully captured romanticism, Fitzgerald successfully evokes the sights, sound, and smells–and the constant sorrows–of domestic life in 18th-century Germany.

The book isn’t very long, but I look forward to reading the other titles we have in our collection. I love when I discover another author I like, because then I know I have a guaranteed selection of good books ahead of me. I’m a pretty picky reader, so it’s a nice feeling.

As a person, Fitzgerald is interesting – she didn’t publish her first book until she was 60 years old. The Guardian has a nice obituary of her (she died in 2000), that includes interesting observations on her body of work. Harriet Harvey Wood writes about Fitzgerald:

What is striking is the accuracy of her observation, the aesthetically satisfying precision with which, stylistically, the arrow goes straight into the centre of the gold. The economy with which she achieved her effects – “I always feel the reader is very insulted by being told too much,” she said – and her ability to combine a microscopic with a panoramic perspective, made most other contemporary novels appear flatulent and over-written.

Anyway, I wanted to share my “discovery” with you. Are there any authors you’ve found recently that you want to share with other readers?

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

*Photo credit below

Recently, NPR listeners cast 136,000 votes on what they thought were the best beach books ever.

You can find the top 100 list here.

It’s interesting to read the comments talking about what defines a good “beach book.”

Some feel many books on the list are too heavy for beach reading, others say that’s the only time they have to concentrate on a “weightier” book. What do you think makes a good vacation read?

Here’s a random selection of the books on the list:

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian

*Photo entitled Beach book, by Steve and Jemma Copley, on Flickr

She’s got lists of read-a-likes (e.g. if you like Jodi Picoult, try…). You’ll also find a list of classic fiction you might want to try, as well as “Books to film,” and a list of new releases recommended by indie booksellers.

Take a look, and let us know what you think! Is there anything that you would like to see on there?

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian

Pride Flag, by lewishamdreamer on Flickr

This weekend is the PRIDE Corvallis celebration (events calendar here).

I thought this would be a fitting time to highlight some of the great GLBTQ books in our collection here on the second floor.

(The youth services librarians also have great resources and GLBTQ fiction for young adults – contact them for more information: 541-766-6794 or askalibrarian@ci.corvallis.or.us.)

A few fiction classics:

For more information on GLBTQ literature, check out GLBTQ.com‘s Literature page.

Anthologies:

Contemporary fiction:

Multnomah County Library has a nice list of GLBTQ fiction. We’re a smaller library, so don’t have all of the titles, but you can always request that we get them from another library for you (interlibrary loan).

We also have non-fiction to support the GLBTQ community and their families, including books on coming out, health and legal information, etc. And if there’s something you need that we don’t have, we can get it from another library for you.

Ask a friendly second floor librarian (or our youth librarians) for help any time. If privacy is a concern, you can chat with us anonymously online.

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian

1. Literature-Map

This site is neat. You type in the name of an author you like, and it will return to you a dynamically-generated constellation of authors that are similar to the author you searched for in some way.

Clicking on an author you find will put that author at the center of a new constellation, with different authors surrounding him/her.

You don’t get any information about the authors or their books from this site, but it’s a great way to just get the names of some new authors to try.

2. The Book Seer

This site has a cute interface. You enter in the title of a book you’ve read and the author, and it should give you a list of related books from Amazon and LibraryThing.

There are a few caveats with this site however. Because it’s UK-based, it pulls data from amazon.co.uk (likely from the “Customers who bought this also bought” section). A book that is popular in the US might not be popular in the UK (or even available), so occasionally you’ll come across a book that is popular here in the US  that has no results in Book Seer.

This seems to happen more with new-ish non-fiction. But it seems to work great for fiction especially. Here are some searches to try:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

It also seems to not be pulling data from LibraryThing at the moment, but I assume that’s a bug that will be worked out.

Have fun!

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian

Well Read, by EJP Photo, on Flickr

I recently discovered the wealth of book lists available on the Multnomah County Library website.

Last week I used it to help a patron who wanted a list of mystery authors from other countries.To find the book lists, all you need to do is go to the library’s homepage (http://www.multcolib.org/) and click on Readers.

They’ve got all sorts of great lists – Adult and Teen booklists covering everything from Biography to Graphic Novels to GLBTQ to Multicultural to Mysteries to Science Fiction to… (you get the idea).

Of course, the downside is that their lists don’t link to our catalog, and we might not have everything they do. However, if you are looking for some ideas on what to read next, try checking out what Multnomah has put together. We just don’t have the staff here at the library to maintain lists like Multnomah does, but thanks to their website, the great work they have done is available to everyone.

Here in Corvallis-Benton County we do have ways for our readers to get lists of new fiction and DVDs at the library, as well as staff picks and more, sent to your inbox or RSS reader. Stay tuned for a post on all of those options.

Why not subscribe to our blog so you don’t miss another post? Sign up to have updates sent to your email inbox, or subscribe to our RSS feed. To sign up for either of thse options, take a look at the right hand side of the screen, near the top.

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian

]]> http://thebestlibrary.net/wordpress/blog/archives/867/feed 1 http://thebestlibrary.net/wordpress/blog/archives/589 http://thebestlibrary.net/wordpress/blog/archives/589#comments Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:03:57 +0000 Lisa http://thebestlibrary.net/wordpress/blog/?p=589 On Monday, April 20th at 7pm, we are honored to have three Oregon Book Award winning and nominated authors visiting our library. They will be reading from their books, and afterward there will be conversation with the authors, book sales and book signing.

Corvallis’ own Ehud Havazelet,  a professor in the Creative Writing program at U of O, will be reading from his novel Bearing the Body. The book won the 2008 Ken Kesey Award for Fiction.

Booklist says about Havazelet’s novel: “Havazelet writes with almost hallucinatory acuity of the mind’s endless churning of memories, fears, and dreams, of how the body manifests the soul’s torment, and of the way the past is forever bleeding into the present, creating a darkly perceptive, transcendently rapturous drama of devastation and renewal.”

Sara Ryan is a novelist and librarian from Portland. Her book, The Rules for Hearts, is the winner of the 2008 Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature.

School Library Journal says about Ryan’s book: “Ryan does a wonderful job of portraying a group of creative young people with limited finances, fluid sexuality, and complicated relationships. This novel celebrates the process of becoming an adult without providing any easy answers.”

Neil Browne’s book, The World In Which We Occur, was a finalist for the Sarah Winnemucca Award for General Nonfiction.

About Browne’s book: “The degradation of the physical environment and democratic decay, for Browne, are rooted in the same problem: our persistent belief that humans are somehow separate from their physical environment.”

Thanks to Literary Arts, the organization responsible for the Oregon Book Awards, for organizing this event. Thanks also to the Friends of the Library for their sponsorship. Books will be sold by the OSU Bookstore.

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian