Fictional Women Beware

by Paul Birkhead  Rowan Public Library


      If you’re a character in a literary work, and a woman, watch out.  You could be in mortal danger.  I’ve noticed several books coming and going from Rowan Public Library and they all have hinted at how perilous a time it is for female book characters.  If you’re brave enough, come into the library and check out these alarming titles.

      Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn has been out for several years now and has even been made into a movie.  From the moment the book hit the shelves, it was very popular and library patrons couldn’t get enough of the story of Nick and Amy Dunn.  The Dunns are getting ready to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary when Amy suddenly disappears.  As the reader learns more about the troubled couple, it’s not clear if Nick should be consoled or convicted of murder.  There are definitely some plot twists that will shock you and keep you turning the pages.

      The clever turns in Gone Girl left readers hungry for similar titles and several authors were happy to oblige.  The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins enjoyed its own popularity and was also made into a movie.  The book’s protagonist is Rachel Watson, a thirty-something divorcee who rides the same train and looks out the same window on her daily commute.  Rachel’s loneliness and frequent drunkenness causes her to imagine she knows the couple she sees in the house across the tracks.  When that woman disappears, can Rachel find out what happened or did she even exist in the first place?

      The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware is a psychological thriller set on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean.  The main character is Laura ‘Lo’ Blacklock, a writer for a British magazine, who is reporting on the inaugural cruise of the boat.  Meeting the woman in the cabin next door doesn’t seem like a memorable event until a woman’s body is thrown overboard from that same cabin and no one besides Lo had ever seen her.  Lo attempts to solve the mystery, but being tipsy and over-medicated makes that difficult and could even cause her to become the next victim.

      Yet another title with a lonely, inebriated woman in danger is The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn.  The setting this time is a New York City brownstone where Anna Fox lives as a recluse with a few bad habits.  Anna likes to watch old movies, drink too much, and spy on her neighbors.  In a very Rear Window-ish plot, Anna sees something through her binoculars one night that sets some dangerous events in motion.  Soon, her insulated world starts to crumble.

      If these book titles have piqued your interest, come into Rowan Public Library and check them out.  They are available in regular and large print and most are in CD and electronic format as well.

Biographies

Gretchen Beilfuss Witt

March 17, 2019

            Biographies have held an endless fascination for me.  Not only does the reader get to discover the life and achievements of a particular person, often the milieu of the times is revealed and considered as well.   The library has just received a new assortment of biographies with fascinating experiences to share. 

            The biography “Bluff City” by Preston Lauterbach is just such a book.  Subtitled The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers, the book describes Withers life as he grows up in Memphis TN, the son of a postman, who discovers photography as a teenager, develops his skills as a photographer during his army experiences in the Pacific theatre of WWII.  After returning to Memphis after the war, he becomes one of the first black members of the Memphis police, but continues to hone his photography skills taking pictures of the baseball greats of the Negro League and attendees of the games.  Losing his job as a policeman, he supported his growing family as a freelance photographer.  The book continues to expound on Withers involvement and photographic witness of the action in Memphis from Elvis Presley to the strike in 1968 that drew Martin Luther King Jr. to the city before his assassination.  This is a fascinating look at one man’s observations and contributions to a complex and remarkable era in American history.

            Also exploring a tense and changing time in American history is “Born Criminal:  the story of Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist” by Angelica Shirley Carpenter.   The only child of a liberal Quaker doctor and his wife, Matilda was constantly involved in the family’s discussions on politics.   In an age when children were to remain quietly invisible among company, her father insisted she be educated and her opinions regarded as important.  Matilda’s parents were initially involved in the Underground Railroad, welcoming former slaves traveling through New York to Canada and their freedom.  She was raised to think for herself and to challenge social injustices.  She was an active partner with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the suffragist’s movement although she is not as well known as the others.  Interestingly, she is also the mother-in-law of L. Frank Baum of “Wizard of Oz” fame and had a great deal of influence on him as a person and writer.

            David Grann’s “The White Darkness” tells the tale of Henry Worsley, a contemporary British polar explorer following in the footsteps of Ernest Shackleton.  The slim volume fits nicely in your hands and has startlingly lovely photography of Antarctica as well as pictures of Worsley and his fellow explorers.  Henry Worsley, a distant relation of Shackleton’s teammate Frank Worsley, teamed up with the great-grand nephew of Shackleton, Will Gow and Henry Adams, the great grandson of Jameson Boyd Adams, second-in-command of Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition.  After training together for two years they successfully walked to the South Pole.   Several years later, Worsley attempts to walk across Antarctica alone and these experiences are also related in the book.

            Other folks may be more interested in sports or literary figures.   Catherine Reef’s “A Strange True Tale of Frankenstein’s Creator Mary Shelley” is a fascinating look at the complicated life of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.  “Bobby” a pictorial autobiography of hockey legend Bobby Orr is a fun and uplifting journey through his growing up years and through to his work after his retirement from hockey.  Pick up these or other personal stories at the library and enjoy today.

NC LIVE

by Amanda Bosch Rowan Public Library

I’m taking an online course this semester and our professor has been asking us to contribute to online discussions with comments that are based on scholarly or trade articles.  I am one of the few librarians in the course and knew I could find articles using databases at Rowan Public Library but many other students enrolled in the course from a variety of states and countries had no idea where to begin their hunt for articles they could use in their comments.

I knew the first place to begin is with the public library. Rowan Public Library has an array of online resources via NCLIVE, a statewide consortium that provides database resources via the state to public libraries and colleges and universities. Many of my peers enrolled in the course simply used GOOGLE to conduct their searches and when it came to high quality resources, they were unable to find many resources  and wasted a lot of time checking out websites that had paid to be a top hit for the google term they were searching.  By using the resources that Rowan Public Library provides via NCLIVE, I was able to target my search and find articles from high quality sources that specifically met my needs.

How did I find these resources? I didn’t even have to leave my living room, which is where the majority of my research and class projects were completed! From the library homepage, I clicked Services and Support where I selected the NCLIVE link. From there I was able to choose the topic I was studying and link to an interface where I could search by keyword to find articles for my class. Since I was using the site from home, I did have to input my library card number and PIN to access the databases I had selected.

The amount of information that was immediately accessible was mind-boggling. Sorted alphabetically, I could select from databases for any topic I could imagine. And all for free – unlocked with the simplicity of a library card!

Back in the day it was a rite of honor to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone

by Jim Whalen Rowan Public Library

The 1950s brought us beautiful record album artwork. The album that impressed music lovers was the Nat King Cole Trio in 1945, Topping the Billboard Best Selling Popular Record Albums. Many singles were released from the four 78rpm work.  What was so different was the artwork. It was given praise as one of the reasons for sales. This was the beginning of record companies hiring artists for album covers. 

Some of the iconic covers include Sgt Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band, Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Bruce Springsteen, and of course Elvis.

When Rolling Stone premiered in 1967 the first cover was John Lennon. Remember the song Dr, Hook & The Medicine Show “The Cover of Rolling Stone.” Shel Silverstein wrote the Cover of Rolling Stone song. It was an honor to appear on the cover and also helped record sales.

Fast forward to 2019. CDs are difficult to find. Barnes and Noble have eliminated CDs and replaced with albums. The once $5.00 album is selling for $30 plus. You know the ones you could not sell in a yard sale for $1.00.                                                       

Dust jackets or covers have also been responsible for book sales. In the 1820s books were sold in a wrapping paper with enough information to identify the book. This paper was meant to be discarded after use. Lewis Carroll is credited with asking his publisher to design a dust jacket that would keep the book in a cleaner condition in 1876  After World War One artists were sought to design more appealing jackets with less emphasis on the ornate pages. This is a similar history of the recorded album.

If you see a book on display with no dust cover, plain brown book would you select it or the one with a

dust jacket next to it? We like shiny colorful objects and will probably select the more colorful one. I have put both out of display and almost always the one with the dust jacket is checked out.

The libraries webpage is attractive with scrolling books https://www.rowancountync.gov/307/Library

You may not check out that particular one, but you will look at it further because of the cover.

Libraries are different than the saying Don’t judge a book by its cover. Patrons and employees pick up a book because of the cover. Employees work hard to make sure displays draw you in and offer a wide variety of what you want.