Holiday Entertaining & Cookbooks

Don't forget to check out a few books for the upcoming season! Browse the front-wall display in the library for holiday items, including:




Holiday baking : treats filled with cheer for a magical time of year.





Healthy holidays : total health entertaining all year round





Christmas with Paula Deen : recipes and stories from my favorite holiday

Click on the websites below for more holiday ideas:

• Martha Stewart Holidays
• EPICURIOUS: for people who love to eat
• Food Network: Holiday Archive

Booklists!

Searching the Catalog and looking for suggestions? Try "Featured Booklists"!

While searching the Library's online catalog, click on the Featured Booklists link at the top of the webpage. Here you will find links to a variety of ideas for both fiction and non-fiction titles.

Best sellers, Caldecott award winners, and mysteries are examples of the types of lists you can find. Click on a booklist and the Catalog will automatically perform a search providing you with the location, call number and availablity of the book!

You can also access the booklists by following the link below:

http://catalog.einetwork.net/screens/featured.html

Meet Mystery Writer Kathryn Miller Haines at the Library!

Meet the local author, actor and award-winning playwright here at the Bethel Park Public Library on Saturday, Sept. 29th at 1pm! She will discuss her new novel The War Against Miss Winter.

Kathryn Miller Haines is an actor, mystery writer, and award-winning playwright. She grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and received her BA in English and Theatre from Trinity University in San Antonio and her MFA in English from the University of Pittsburgh. She's a member of The Mary Roberts Rinehart Chapter of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America. She lives in Western Pennsylvania with her husband, Garrett, and their three dogs.

Register at the front desk today!

AirPAC - Search for books, movies, music and more on your cell phone or PDA!

AirPAC allows you to search The Catalog on any portable device that is internet ready; such as your PDA or cell phone. In addition to searching, you may also place requests and access My Account to renew your items.

To use AirPAC on your portable device go to the following address:

http://iiisy1.einetwork.net/airpac/jsp/airpacIndex.jsp

• Perform title, author, subject, or keyword searches.
• Advanced Keyword Searching available for detailed searches using limits.
• View your patron record to view items checked out, renew items, view requests, cancel requests, and view fines.

Bookmark or save this address for easier access!

Adult Summer Reading Club

Win Prizes!!!!

Reading a good book? Why not win a prize while your at it?!

Enter the Bethel Park Public Library's Adult Summer Reading Club and you could win one of the following prizes:

$20 Border's Gift Card

Movie Gift Card

Starbucks Gift Card

Bethel Bakery Gift Card

Al's Cafe Gift Card

2 Tickets to the Heinz History Center

Check out the display at the front of the library or ask your librarian!

Playaway's MP3 Players - New Way to Listen to Books!

About the size of a pack of gum, the library's new Playaways are a convenient way to listen to your favorite book!

Located by the Circulation Desk, these advanced audio wonders are waiting to be checked-out by you! Features such as fast-forwarding, chapter selection, and voice speed offer up easy listening enjoyment!

New and favorite titles available, ask about them today!

What Should I Read?

With so many books to chose from, it can be very difficult to decide what to read. Fortuantely for us book lovers out there, two of the finest reader's advisory websites are just a few clicks away! NoveList and Whichbook.net


Whichbook.net is a very original and unique way to find the perfect book for you. Whichbook.net allows you to browse a database of books by selecting specific elements that you find the most interesting. Chose your level of how sad or happy the book is, how funny or serious, if it is larger than life or a more realistic read, or if it is a optimistic or bleak novel. With many other personalized options such as characters and settings, Whichbook.net is sure to provide the type of book that will fit your mood! Accessible without your library card number on any internet computer.

http://www.whichbook.net/

and

NoveList is a library database, accessible from any internet computer with your library card number, that provides read-alikes, lists of award winning literature, bibliographies, and book reviews on a varitey of genres.

Access NoveList by following these steps:

1. Go to the Bethel Park Library website: http://www.bethelparklibrary.org/
2. Click on the "Find It!" link at the top of the library website.
3. Click on the "Databases A-Z" link.
3. Scroll down the alphabetical list of databases and click on "NoveList".
Must have a Library card from any Allegheny County Library.

Questions on what to read? Please ask your librarian!

One Book One Community

Unifying a community, like reading a good book, requires an understanding of the entire cast of characters and the experiences they share.
The Allegheny County Library Association is pleased to announce our 5th annual One Book, One Community program. One Book programs are bringing communities together for stimulating discussions, and to challenge stereotypes and generate ideas. The goal of One Book, One Community in Allegheny County is to build a better community through reading and civic discourse.
Our fifth One Book selection is:
The Glass Castleby Jeannette Walls
This debut memoir centers on the trials and tribulations of a homeless family, told from the point of view of one of the children. The book encompasses themes of love, family, and redemption. Set in various locations throughout the United States, The Glass Castle details the effects of being homeless on families and specifically children.
The One Book, One Community choice for middle schoolers is Money Hungry which chronicles the adventures of Raspberry Hill as she struggles to earn enough money to keep poverty and homelessness at bay.
Through our One Book programs and discussions, we hope to broaden perspectives, share thoughts, and learn from the wealth of knowledge and experience that many in our community are happy to share. Programs and events to support One Book will be announced throughout March and April.

Creative Nonfiction

Creative Nonfiction combines the research involved in traditional nonfiction works with the style and techniques used in fiction writing. Memoirs, autobiographies and journalism are examples of this growing genre. The idea behind this type of writing is that it makes what is true more interesting. Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is an example of how using fiction writing methods can add something extra to the characters and dialogue of a true story. This combination of true events and the imagination of the author can create problems however. James Frey's A Million Little Pieces was proven to have had many exagerations and fabrications, leaving many to speculate the credibilty of this increasingly popular genre.

Ask your librarian to find out more about reading and writing creative nonfiction!

Example of Creative Nonfiction:

The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden

Learn more at www.creativenonfiction.org

You: On A Diet: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management

You: On A Diet: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management by Mehmet C. Oz & Michael F. Roizen
People can not get enough of this book. The authors are everywhere from Good Morning America to being featured on Oprah! Roizen and Oz will invigorate you with equal parts information, motivation, and change-your-life action to show you how your brain, stomach, hormones, muscles, heart, genetics, and stress levels all interact biologically to determine if your body is the size of a baseball bat or of a baseball stadium. In YOU: On a Diet, Roizen and Oz will redefine what a healthy figure is, then take you through an under-the skin tour of the organs that influence your body's size and its health. You'll even be convinced that the key number to fixate on is not your weight, but your waist size, which best indicates the medical risks of storing too much fat.

The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (Oprah's Book Club)

The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (Oprah's Book Club) by Sidney Poitier
"I have no wish to play the pontificating fool, pretending that I've suddenly come up with the answers to all life's questions. Quite that contrary, I began this book as an exploration, an exercise in self-questing. In other words, I wanted to find out, as I looked back at a long and complicated life, with many twists and turns, how well I've done at measuring up to the values I myself have set."—Sidney Poitier
When Oprah selected The Measure of a Man as her latest book club selection it flew off the shelves. Not only is it what we are reading it's what you are reading too! If you aren't then come on in or call to reserve a copy today!

Barack Obama The Audacity of Hope

Since announcing his run for the presidency this weekend folks have been pouring into the library looking for Barack Obama's book The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. His first book Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance is also in high demand. Stop in or call to reserve your copy.
In The Audacity of Hope, Obama engages themes raised in his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, shares personal views on faith and values and offers a vision of the future that involves repairing a "political process that is broken" and restoring a government that has fallen out of touch with the people.

Love Ireland?

Our new Librarian Anne New will be here on March 13th at 7:00 p.m. or March 16th at 2:30 p.m. to delight us with her Musical Book Talk: Travel and Read Ireland. No genre will be left out! Travel, romance, mystery and even cookbooks all brought to you with song! Come on in and check it out!

Book Talks

Looking for something new to read? Stop in for one of are book talks.

• March 12th at 7:00 p.m. author Glen J. Kashurba M.D. will be on hand to discuss his book Quiet Courage – the definitive account of Flight 93 and its aftermath. The Definitive Account of Flight 93 and its Aftermath combines the oral histories of Courage After the Crash (SAJ Publishing 2002) with those recorded through 2006, adding details of the 9/11 plot and what occurred on Flight 93. It is important to have the saga of Flight 93, from the plot to the memorial, all in one book. This will help readers understand the continuing courageous acts of forty ordinary people. Author Glenn J. Kashurba, M.D., nationally known speaker, writer and advocate for children and families Board certified Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, will be at the Bethel Park Library for a book talk and presentation. Please register.