Scrapbooking!

by Dr. Betty Middleton Rowan Public Library

If you are a scrapbooker you have something in common with Thomas Jefferson,

Mark Twain  and President Rutherford B. Hayes.  Scrapbooks!  Mark Twain reserved

Sundays for scrapbooking and in 1872 patented an adhesive scrapbook with prepasted

pages.

Scrapbooking has been around for centuries. They were called friendship albums,

common-place books or memory books. Statistics indicate that scrapbooking is the

fastest growing sector of the craft and hobby industry today.  Many contribute the passion

for scrapbooking to the renewed interest in genealogy, while others find it a good way to

save and display their photographs.

What a great way to preserve your precious memories.  “The Ultimate Book of

Memory Albums” published by Leisure Arts and “The Creative Memories way: creating

keepsake albums and building your family legacy” by Cheryl Lightle, Rhonda Anderson

and Shari MacDonald will get you started from how to organize your material to the

types of paper to use.

Ideas for those fantastic vacations can be found in “Scrapbooking your vacations:

200 page design” by Susan Ure, or “Travel scrapbooks: creating albums of your trips and

adventures: by Memory Makers Books.  These publication include creative uses for

memorabilia including passports, coins, brochures, maps, and more.

“Scrapbooking baby’s cherished moments” by Rebecca Carter and “Memory

makers school days scrapbooks” by Memory Makers Books provide a wide variety of

ideas to help you capture those fleeting moments in time.

With the digital age upon us, more and more people are creating their scrapbooks

using scanners to reproduce the photographs, and desktop publishing programs to create

professional-looking layouts. If that is you, then check you will find an exciting range of

creative possibilities found in Maria Given Nerius’s book “Digital scrapbooking: using

your computer to create exciting scrapbook pages”.

Many more titles on this subject are available at your library.  Come by soon.

Fantasies at Rowan Public Library

 by  Edward Hirst Rowan Public Library

Fantasies have been a part of some of the most celebrated works of literature and have long been popular with readers because authors place their characters into worlds where the unexpected and unexplained happens. 

The novel Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce tells the story of a teenager who took a walk in the woods one day from her home in the English countryside and disappeared. Twenty years have passed when the doorbell rings at her family’s home on Christmas Day and there Tara stands. Tara doesn’t seem to have aged at all and claims that she had only been gone for six months and had been abducted by fairies.

In Neil Gaiman’s novel The Ocean at The End of The Lane a forty something year old man returns to the small English town where he grew up to attend a funeral.  On his way to visit with friends and family after the service he takes a detour to see the place where his old home once stood. He is drawn further into his past down a winding country lane to a dilapidated old farmhouse. Arriving there he begins to reflect on his childhood and the dark things that happened.

The Returned by North Carolina author Jason Mott begins with a knock on the door of an elderly couple in the small town of Arcadia, North Carolina.  While his wife Lucille Hargrave watches television in the living room, Harold answers the ringing doorbell on a sunny afternoon to find a government agent on their doorstep with a young child.  Their child Jacob, who died when he was eight years old, has returned. Their story becomes one of many as the deceased start turning up, looking for their loved ones, and the living attempt to grapple with what it all means.

Helene Wecker writes about New York City at the turn of the century in The Golem and the Jinni. She combines the magical realm in which golems and jinnis exist with New York’s enclaves of tenements and immigrants. The Jinni, a magical being of fire, born in the Syrian desert,  finds Chava, a Jewish creature made of mud, and the adventure begins. Wecker explores what it is to be human describing the interactions of these mythical creatures with New York citizens. 

These fantasies and others can be brought to life through books at Rowan Public Library.

 

Everyone Loves a Good Heist

by Marissa Creamer Rowan Public Library

The masked intruder slipped through a French door of the lavish Carlton International Hotel, scooping up rings, pendants, and diamond-encrusted earrings before making his escape out a window. The brazen daytime heist was over in roughly 60 seconds. With an estimated value of $136 million, it is the largest-value jewel theft in French history and one of the largest in the world.

The July 28, 2013 robbery in the French Riviera resort of Cannes captured attention around the globe.  Stories of heists have long fascinated readers, and jewel heists have been featured in a number of recent books, including these titles available at Rowan Public Library:

                In “The Great Pearl Heist: London’s Greatest Thief and Scotland Yard’s Hunt for the World’s Most Valuable Necklace,” Molly Caldwell Crosby tells the true story of the 1913 collaboration between a notorious jewel thief and the Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard as they hunt  for a precious pearl necklace worth more than the Hope Diamond. Reading like a fast-paced crime thriller, the book describes the theft of the famed pink Meyer pearls, worth nearly $20 million in today’s currency.  Set in the underworld of London’s Hatton Garden jewelry district in the days before World War I, the sting operation to regain the pearls and subsequent highly-publicized trial were a major influence on British crime detection and the legal system.

In his first novel to be released in the U.S., best-selling Flemish author Pieter Aspe introduces us to Belgian Detective Inspector Pieter Van In, who solves crimes in the medieval city of Bruges.  “The Square of Revenge” involves a most unusual jewelry store robbery: the precious gems were not stolen, but melted in a vat of acid. Left behind in the empty safe is a scrap of paper with a Latin message in the form of a square.  As the investigation progresses, these cryptic messages continue to appear, and Van In discovers that the crime involves secrets from generations past.  

Ally Carter brings us a jewel heist story for teens in “Uncommon Criminals,” part of the Heist Society series. Raised in a family of art thieves, Katarina Bishop has decided to use her skills to return items to their rightful owners. Returning priceless objects of art plundered by the Nazis is one thing, but stealing the infamous Cleopatra Emerald from an unscrupulous dealer is another job altogether. Kat and her team concoct a scheme to liberate the reputedly cursed jewel. It’s a whirlwind adventure around the globe as Kat seeks the elusive Cleopatra. Will she be able to dodge the curse and return the emerald to its rightful owners?

Best-selling authors Catherine Coulter and J. T. Ellison team up to introduce a new series featuring Chief inspector Nicholas Drummond of Scotland Yard. In “The Final Cut” Drummond investigates the theft of the crown jewel of the Metropolitan Museum of Art:  the Koh-i-Noor diamond from the Queen Mother’s crown.  In the course of this action-packed thriller, Drummond connects with FBI agents Savitch and Sherlock from Coulter’s previous works.

Whether factual or fictional, you are sure to find a good heist story at Rowan Public Library.

Gathering Around the Table

by Paul Birkhead  Rowan Public Library
     
      What comes to mind when you think about having supper?  Do you dread making the meal, the lack of conversation, or cleaning up afterward?  Perhaps you deal with things by joining the masses in the local drive-thru lines.  Rowan Public Library has many resources to make mealtimes enjoyable again.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about supper lately.  Not just because I stay hungry or it’s getting darker earlier.  I read a book a few weeks ago and it was very inspirational.  Dinner with the Smileys was written by Sarah Smiley to document a year-long experiment with her family.  Sarah’s husband was deployed for a year overseas and she took it upon herself to invite a guest every week to fill his ‘empty’ chair at supper.  These guests ranged from her children’s schoolteachers to a U.S. Senator from their home state of Maine.  The book is an honest portrayal of the family’s struggles and accomplishments during that year.  Sharing a meal as a way of building relationships with family, friends, and complete strangers is what really stuck with me after reading the Smiley’s story.

    While you might not be hosting a local celebrity or a state politician every week, you can still make suppertime a memorable event.  One way to do this is by starting traditions involving food.  One idea mentioned in Laurie David’s book The Family Dinner, is to start a weekly ritual such as Taco Tuesdays or Burger Fridays.  Also in the book are tips to make dinner conversation fun and memorable.  Among the many recollections and quotes from celebrities, there’s a very interesting anecdote about what suppertime conversation was like around the Robert F. Kennedy family table.

    One sure way to add excitement to your dinners is to try some new recipes.  The library has shelves full of books about cooking.  They range from the traditional (Betty Crocker’s Cookbook), to the essential (Joy of Cooking), to newer titles such as Michael Symon’s 5 in 5.  If you are not familiar with him, Michael Symon is a co-host of the popular TV talk/cooking show, The Chew.  One of the most popular parts of the show is Michael’s 5 in 5 segment.  In it, Michael Symon creates a dish with five ingredients in five minutes or less at $5 or less per serving.  Think you’d like to try your hand at that?  If you’re up for the challenge, check out Michael’s book and see what meal peaks your interest.

    Perhaps you want to master a traditional recipe or try a new one.  Perhaps you desire to spend more time with your children in the kitchen.  Perhaps you want to create some memorable dinnertime conversations.  Whatever your desire, Rowan Public Library can help you make supper something to look forward to.